Bathroom Monologue: End

Ouroboros finished her meal.

Bathroom Monologue: My Space Plane

My space plane would have no leaks. The hull would be brand new, up to code, and spotless. Three robots would be attached to the exterior, polishing the hull at all times, humming admiration for its glory into the airless void.

My space plane would have no angry women. On my space plane, all the women would have at least minored in Advanced Engineering and would be able to rig the jets so we'd get there on time. They would have too many functions for them to all be crowded into the cockpit, second-guessing and decrying, "It's a lost cause."

My space plane has no shifty cooks who constantly talk about mutiny in Portuguese. If there was such a man on my space plane, he would not be in the cockpit. Why would such a cook be in the cockpit? He would be where he belongs: in the airshaft. On my space plane, the airshaft would be opening right now. A robot would pause, lift its polishing rag, and wave it as the former cook decompressed.

My space plane would not be under attack. Certainly it would not be outnumbered six-to-one. Its destination would not possibly already be overrun. Its destination would be a beach. A powder-white beach with no angry women screaming what a moron I am in my ear. If, for whatever reason, our visibility were reduced to zero when the viewing screens were shorted by the enemy arrays, the women would certainly not yell even louder in that same ear.

My space plane would positively never have its hull breached by enemy lasers. It would be enemy-laser-proofed. And if it somehow was breached, that single laser would not miss an entire room of annoying people and somehow hit me in the thigh.

When we arrived at our destination, my space plane would hover nine millimeters above the surf, at the request of the robots. The robots would know how stupid a space plane looks with sand on its butt. And as I disembarked, my all-female engineering corps would follow, stripping down to starfleet-approved bikinis, asking me what the old life was like. And I'd make something outlandish up. Something like this. Yes, on my space plane, this is all a dumb hypothetical that isn't happening.

I wish I was on my space plane.

Bathroom Monologue: Abolishing True Love

We the undersigned do hereby agree to abolish any notion of "true love." The undersigned shall abstain from the consumption of, and from permitting their offspring and loved ones from the consumption of, any media of any format, including but not limited to text, film, videogames and mystical potions, which leaves the impression that any special feelings were ever thought possible by the human species. Conversations about "true love" and/or related media shall be similarly verboten, and redirected towards subjects of chemical coincidences. This is for sundry benefits, including but not limited to: 1: making impressionable girls easier to fuck on the first date; 2: TBA.

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Bathroom Monologue: Quiet in the Library

Four teens at the counter. The aged, permed librarian talks louder than any of them, about PIN codes and dates of birth and where you sign. When a fifty-ish woman in a red coat crosses from the other side, the librarian yells, "There's my sweet. Girl, you look good."

A-C. Unattended.

D-M. Unattended.

Audiobooks. Unattended.

Six computers, five in use, two occupants who won't shut up. They whisper at each other about what they're doing on Facebook - by the sound, the photos they are sending each other in real time.A third occupant leaves her computer to run in circles around the other two, to see it all. She is obediently silent in her orbit. She only pauses to take a single earbud, pulsing so loud with tunes that it can be heard two stations over.

N-SAN. Unattended.


S-TAN. Unattended.

Printer screeches.

A man steps out into the vestibule so he can hear his cellphone. Something important about where his honey is tonight. He puts his hand over his mouth in excitement, but you can still hear him through the glass.

Even the computers hum a little obtrusively. At least they're always here. Maybe they've forgotten the rules.

Or maybe he's forgotten to check if they've changed.

Bathroom Monologue at a Public Library Bathroom, OR, Immortally Yours

Apologies for the late post today. Almost broke my everyday posting streak. Terrible ice storm in my country; still without power at home, typing this one to you live from the library. Full story on the storm to come later, including photos of frozen trees, flooded farms and frazzled hair.




"Who wants to live forever? I mean, in some moments, I guess everyone does. That whole fear-of-death thing can getting pretty big if you're going to die. But I'm not, so I want to.

"I mean, who wants to live forever? To see all the progress in society and science? What kind of person wants to see the catscan developed? To see our species go from cave paintings to photos of the earth? To see cancer cured?

"I mean, I guess most people do.

"Listen, I mean, who wants to keep making friends forever? Continuously meeting new people with new dynamics, new values, new interests, new jobs, new passions, new things to offer. Every century touching new lives, experiencing fresh innovations, and having even more sex?

"Shut up. All your friends will die. Unless they live forever, but they don't. I'm asking, who wants to live forever and be the only one? Because then you'd have to keep watching friends die. Yes, now you see. To see everyone you know pass away and leave you behind.

"Now, true, if you live a normal life you still have people die on you. I guess any group of friends dies off, invariably leaving one person the sole survivor. So even if you don't live forever that can happen to you, unless you die first.

"So I guess that's the angst of the immortal. Because doesn't everyone crave to die first, see none of the suffering of others, and leave everybody else sad? Wouldn't that be great? Isn't that what living is all about? Isn't that why you make friends, so you can make them sad before they can do it to you? Ultimately desiring what would make you the worst possible friend to them? Well an immortal can never have that. Yeah. Living forever is hard, because you have to spend the maximum amount of time with everyone you like."

Bathroom Monologue: Caller Id

I used to have Caller ID. It broke and now I'm left with caller id, which only tells me what the person wants. I have to guess who'd want that thing. If it's "Sexual" then it's probably not Mom, but Mom could want anything. "Your location," "To see you," "To talk for half an hour about wallpaper" - all of these could be covert Mom calls. She can even fake what she wants. Twice now she's pretended "To help pay off student loans" just to nag me about doing my laundry at her place. Dad's never like that. He only calls "To bitch about the Yankees" or "To get you to call your mother."

Recording: Not For a Doomsday Weapon

This post is exclusively for the reading of "Not For a Doomsday Weapon." People voted for it, and I stayed up until 2:00 AM recording it.

You can listen to today's story by clicking the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio, or by clicking this text to download the MP3.

If you want reflections on it, I'm just happy it no longer sounds like the narrator is from Brooklyn. Nothing against Brooklyn, they just don't see many sky-whales. All feedback is welcome.

Bathroom Monologue: New Rule for the Game

“Some day in the future we are all going to have microprocessors in our heads that record everything we say and do. We’re going to pay for the privilege because it’s going to do all sorts of radical stuff, like auto-friend hot girls you pass on the street and get you the best discounts on the music you just heard. It’s going to do something else, too. It’s going to log everything you say, so that when you use 'qoph' in Scrabble, I can check if you’ve spoken it in the last five years, and if you haven’t, you lose those fucking points because there’s no God damned way that counts.”

Bathroom Monologue: Not For a Doomsday Weapon

By popular demand there is an audio edition of this story. You can listen to it by clicking the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio, or clicking this text to download the MP3.

This is all your fault.

So Nothning was running away. You know his name, right? That's the little guy whose soul you hid your doomsday weapon in, or whatever the hell is actually going on there. That's one of the two loose ends I don't understand yet. But you scared the crap out of Nothning, and he ran away, and to the best of my knowledge, you have shadowy goons chasing him.

Nothning has two very dear friends. I'm one of them, and I certainly wouldn't have the brass to talk to you if I wasn't. There's me and Furnhang. The three of us have always been very loyal, so when he ran with assassins at his back, we tailed to protect him. In that horse chase, it was Furnhang that brained your guys with a yoke. In case that story's reached here, that was him. Not me. Yes.

Your eyes tell me the stories haven't reached here. Okay. We're little people, except Furnhang. He's the big guy, flowing golden hair. Obscenely attractive. He's in one of your cells. Was captured protecting Nothning.

You don't care. Why would you? You're evil. You’re powerful. You do things.

You should care because of these two ladies. When a guy is that charismatic, love interests follow. The first was this shopkeeper girl. Don't know her name. She never talks to me. Honestly, she's kind of a bitch. She was bent on following the golden-haired guy on his big adventure, which chaffed Pandling. Commander Pandling.

See, the shopkeeping bitch is in a rivalry with Pandling over who's going to bang/marry/live-happily-ever-after with Furnhang. So when Pandling hears that shopkeeper girl is following him to certain death, she's all, "Let me die for him too, and more tragically! Then he'll love me."

A commander doesn't follow somebody into contested territories alone. She is followed by her command, in this case some five hundred highly trained foot soldiers who unquestioningly followed her highly questionable lead. They crossed over and even your army shrank back. Which we appreciated, because you totally would have had us that night if you kept going.

It was pretty startling on our side, too. So startling that Pandling's fellow commanders thought she was making a power play and moved their forces in to steal the glory. That's why you had three hulking commands bouncing into the contested territories instead of one. None of these people were coming to help Nothning. They didn't even know he existed.

Too late. They do now. I told them.

The next part is entirely your fault. I assume it's you, or some paranoid admiral. Because no sooner are Nothning and I kicking back and relaxing, no longer fearing death amongst the thousand-plus heroes around us, then your freaking Serpent Fleet comes sailing up the coast. So now three commands are looking at dozens of corsairs and cannons. Were those warning shots? Because I thought so, but the commanders did not agree. You fired in the vicinity of three overachieving commanders and immediately they called in the aquatic cavalry. That is seriously the only reason you've got an oceanic stalemate right now.

I don't know what brought on the sky-whales. Didn't think those were real until they swooped through the clouds and started eating people. From the number of ogre skeletons in their droppings, I'm presuming your side doesn't have a much better handle on them. We have no idea what they're after. Commander Pandling thinks your cannonfire woke them up. Nothning thinks they're after your weapon.

Good damned luck finding my buddy, by the way. Thanks to everyone overreacting he's got the biggest, bloodiest crowd in creation in which to hide. And if the commands retreat, he’s going with them and letting them have your stupid weapon, even though as I’ve just described, these people are nuts.

But Nothning extends you this offer: if Furnhang and I go back to him alive before sunset, we’re going underground. Permanent style. Your enemy does not get the big doomsday weapon. You don’t, they don’t, and everybody deals with the sky-whales in their own way.

Up to you how this goes. That’s only how it’s unfolded so far. How it’s actually unfolded. Maybe you can team up with the commands and we’ll all survive this mess. I doubt it - I mean, I'll survive. Providing you don't kill me, I'm digging the deepest hole possible and staying down there until the smell of whale droppings fades. I just presume you're going to charge and get everyone killed, because that's the kind of stupid drama this situation seems intent on heading toward.

Bathroom Monologue: Marriage of Evolution

Crickets and violinists played in tandem for their earless common ancestors. The chimp had carried The Bride’s train since he was the most genetically similar to her, and because he looked the most adorable in a tiny tux. Simple bacteria chatted about how relevant they were to digestion until everyone was bored. Hunter/gatherers brought flowers, though it was the Neanderthal that caught the bouquet. The Missing Link read the rites and asked for their vows. The crowd waited hours for the newlyweds to kiss, a long wait since The Bride first has to pick lice from her love’s scalp. Understandable all in all, given that a gorilla was The Groom.

Bathroom Monologue: Regarding Mr. Floyd, OR, Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2, Take 2

[The bar has been painted lime green, with an additional unique color to each booth. Our booth is virgin cherry pink. At the center of the booth sits DARKLOSS SOULRIPPER VON ALUCARDIA, wearing a cloak made of living bats with their wings sewn together. DARKLOSS and HIS BATS are sharing a single margarita. To DARKLOSS’s left sits MEGATRAN, a Chinese knockoff of Megatron made from blue plastic instead of white. To DARKLOSS’s right sits SAMID, wearing a pink tuxedo and pink reading glasses, scrutinizing over the liner notes in what we presume is the last compact disc case in existence.]

Samid: "We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom." What the hell is this?

Darkloss: Who needs education? Addition, subtraction, history - it's all useless. With grammar like that, of course you don't need no education.

Megatran: Double negatives are the standard in French.

Samid: Unfortunately not in English.

Megatran: Any linguistic form used reliably is grammatically correct. If they keep using double negatives, they're correct.

Samid: Firstly, if I start calling "first aid" by the name "bacterial infection," I've done something incorrect and unhelpful to everyone else who's using the terms correctly. "Do you want me to get you some bacterial infection for your gaping leg wound?"

Megatran: I don’t get infections.

Samid: Secondly, if Mr. Floyd was trying to make a point to me about not needing an education, failing to use the correct grammar you get from an education doesn't help his case.

Megatran: That's part of his point. He's expressing his argument without conforming to your educational standards.

Samid: So he's failing to use correct grammar in defense of his failing English class. Again, his argument isn't working on me. Maybe it’s all that dark sarcasm I learned at university.

Darkloss: But he's not trying to convince you. The song is directed to kids.

Samid: Directly spoken at educators.

Megatran: Using the direction at educators to make its point which is directed to kids.

[SAMID feeds the liner notes to DARKLOSS’s cape.]

Samid: Oh, well if he's so juvenile that he's attacking one group to win over another, no wonder he doesn't need no education. He’s a child.

Megatran: I don't think Pink Floyd was a person. It's just the band name.

Samid: Again, mucking up the conventions of language. He needs yes education.

Darkloss: Needs yes...?

[DARKLOSS tries to read the liner notes, but HIS BATS will not yield them. He looks in confusion to SAMID.]

Samid: If "needs no education" works, then "needs yes education" works.

Megatran: Nobody says that.

Samid: Nobody intelligent says "needs no education," because they can speak with adult grammar and because they recognize that education is important. I can find data on incomes and schooling levels if you want. Maybe set them to petulant verse.

Darkloss: I don’t see how you can take this much umbrage with Pink Floyd’s lyrics and still listen to Bob Dylan.

[MEGATRAN hides its faceplate in its robot hands.]

Megatran: Please don’t let this level of lyrical scrutiny spread to any other music. I don’t believe the institution can withstand it.

Samid: Oh, stop that.

Megatran: Why?

Samid: Because these things have to close on a clever line. If you don’t rebut in sidesplitting fashion in the next three seconds, the whole thing’s been for naught.

[MEGATRAN hesitates. They sit there.]

Bathroom Monologue: Coldblooded Body Image

“I try not to talk about it because it's unfashionable for men to have body image issues. Society is acutely aware of how unrealistic their demands are on women's appearances, but you never think how much pressure you put on a man. I spend hours in aerobics classes, arms behind my back and undulating on my belly. I've paid thousands for skin creams and mud treatments without a single scale to show for it. There's a surgery to bifurcate your tongue if you want to half-ass it. Truth is, science won't ever give you a reptilian mouth. The funding isn't there. It isn’t profitable enough. Now you're going to tell me I'm silly, that I'm too hard on myself, that nobody expects me to become a snake. Ride the rails in my shoes for just one day. How they stare at me while I’m trying to coil in my chair. They're all thinking, "What a worthless cobra he makes." But none of them are willing to help me become whole!”

The Bathroom Monologues Movie Awards

It's almost March 2011, so of course we're all talking about the best movies of 2010. If all the complaining on Twitter is any indication, I'm once again happy to have skipped the Academy Awards. Naturally I disagree with some of the winners. More naturally, I don't understand what some of the categories mean. But nothing shall dissuade me from telling a sizable democratic body of people who devote swaths of their lives to film that their mass conclusions were wrong. So here we go.

The Robbed Award
Going to the movie that got no play last year
and is still on my mind more than whatever won Best Picture

Moon

The Too Little/Too Late Award
Going to the movie I missed by several years,
but have now seen and wish I'd been on the bandwagon for at the time

Brick

The Raddest Scene Award
Going to the raddest scene in a motion picture

Regatta Race to Trent Reznor's "In The Hall of the Mountain King" remix, The Social Network

The Best Soundtrack Award
John's already used the "going to the obvious thing-award" joke,
so this is embarrassing

Inception

The Dark Horse Award
Going to the movie that was way better than you all led me to believe it would be

Devil

The "What Have I Done With My Life?" Award
Going to any kid born in 1996 who should not be nearly this good at acting

Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

You're Actually All Great At This
Going to the best ensemble in a motion picture

Everybody, Inception

The Frank/Nixon Memorial Award
Going to all actors who performed as well or better than Frank Langella did in Frost/Nixon

For the third year in a row, nobody

The "There's No Such Thing As The Best Movie of the Year" Award
Seeing as there is no such thing as a best movie amidst a field of comedies, dramas, musicals, period pieces, speculative fiction, animation, blockbusters and an international film market we're both not watching enough of as it is, the award that simply goes to whatever movie brought me the closes to both crying and laughing

Toy Story 3

(Baleful apologies to The King's Speech, Black Swan, Mother and other potentially fine films,
but for the life of me I could not convince one person to go see any of them.
Everyone else wanted to see Tron 2, so I stayed home and read a book instead.)

Bathroom Monologue: The iBelieve

To hear today's blasphemy either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio or click this text to download the MP3.

Your religion needs an update, Father. This crucifix. Yes, it's a cross, and the image of Christ suffering for mortal sins, but those are just two functions, and most consumers see them as one. Single-use devices are unfashionable. Can't it be a keychain, too? Put a bottle opener at your Savior's feet. Can't this thing play music? I've seen MP3 players and flash drives smaller than this. You could fit a terabyte in Jesus's chest. It needs WiFi; pray with the rosary beads, fine, but get some Facebook integration so God can Like your best prayers on your Wall. Twitter integration, for short requests and pithy spiritual thoughts. Boundless functionality. Auto-updates. The Vatican authorizes new canon and bang, streamed straight to your personal iconography. Launch it next month. A new model next year. Make people feel like they've got outdated faithware. If you can't make Steve Jobs convert, you can at least convert his methods. You're not going to Hell because you don't have one; life is Hell because you don't have one. The iChrist. The iBelieve. Think about it.

Bathroom Monologue: Monologue for a slightly tipsy Stephen Fry who may have forgotten he’s still on stage

“Wouldn’t be caught dead with Naked Lunch. Caught stone dead. I wouldn't be caught dead, but still upright, my corpse sodomizing a chained five-year-old boy, with a copy of that book. Though without it, I don't know where I'd have gotten the idea for the evening."

Bathroom Monologue: What You Need

I’ve done everything. I listened to you bitch for thirteen straight hours. I missed work to stay up with you. I bought your greasy comfort food, and I threw it out and cooked chicken breast when you started bitching at the mirror about your waistline. I talked you out of calling him, then I told you it was a good idea after you did it anyway. I paid for the liquor, and I held your hair while you tossed cookies. I cleaned the bathroom and made you six different hangover remedies. What did you do when you sobered up? You started crying at photo albums again. So I’m doing this. This is what you need.

You take this end here and stick it on your chest. Right over the chest. Grip it firmly. Now when you squeeze, it latches on and zaps you with subzero molecules. It would flash-freeze a polar bear’s balls. All your ventricles and tissues, just like that. Simultaneously these clamps will extend in and grab the whole mess, so before your blood stops pumping you can pull it out, have a look and dash it on the floor. You can watch it shatter on the linoleum and finally get what you want so bad: you can die of a fricking broken heart.

Excuse me if I don’t watch. I’ve got to go pay the landlord.

Bathroom Monologue: At Death's Daughter

This dialogue sprang out of a brainstorming session for a new Fantasy world. They've just suffered a mass demise of various cosmic beings, leaving messengers and executors woefully busy. One such executor, a winged man in a suit, stops by a girl's apartment to drop off her inheritance. It's a large and rather unruly scythe.

Moffet pushed the thing back across the table with two fingers, like the angel might take it to the back and have the chef whip up something better.

"No. I don't want it."

"You have to want it." The man folded his arms, refusing to pick it up. " It's rare. It's a multi-functional device. It could only be more desirable if it had an Apple logo."

"I don't want the scythe."

"You should want the scythe."

"Well, I don't."

"Fine. There's still good news."

"And that is?"

"Your mother wasn't unfaithful."

"Pardon?"

"Olivia Constantine was an absolute, one-hundred-percent lesbian. Your father was not that gardener you've heard about."

"Don't bother sticking up for him. He ran out on us."

"No, he moved because there was a new green house. He's actually just two counties over, and he doesn't think about you ever because he's not your father. Your mother never slept with him or any other man. She found them quite gross from her first day seeing a wee-wee on the playground to her last night in the hospital."

"Uh-huh. I guess she molded me from magic clay."

"Don't be petulant. You were immaculately conceived."

She rolled her eyes over the scythe, the man's suit, and his stupidly handsome face, giving the whole business a sweeping dismissal.

"That doesn't happen."

"Does too. Happened to you."

"Don't tell me I'm Jesus. I'm agnostic."

"You're getting a special delivery from a ghost. You're gnostic now. And you're not any sort of Sloppy Seconds Coming. He was a better dresser and conversationalist." He pushed the scythe across the table towards her, using the same two fingers she had. The blade made a sphincter-tightening scrape across the tabletop, though it left no mark. "He wasn't the first to be immaculately conceived, though, or the last. There have been at least six hundred immaculate conceptions this year alone, and it's not even cold yet. Snow makes those Winter Gods get kinky."

"That's ridiculous."

"You know what's ridiculous? That a lifelong lesbian can make eye contact with a man just once in public, and the first time somebody calls her a slut, the consensus is 'Guilty.' That, by the way, is how most immaculate conceptions get covered up. Statistically insignificant, and you never catch a ghost boinking a girl on film, so of course she's a dumb whore."

"Okay, now you're ridiculous." She rose, jerking a thumb towards the door, and accidentally pointing it at the only picture of her mother in the entire apartment. "Get out."

He rose along with her. He was unfairly taller.

"You think that's ridiculous? Think how many immaculately conceived prodigies have been aborted. Let me tell you, at least three of them would have changed the world if their moms hadn't flushed them. Their fathers knew it, too. Planted them down here to prove a point to all the other gods."

"And what was the point of predestining a bunch of aborted messiahs?"

"You ever see a horrible plane crash?" He stuck out his pinky and thumb, turning his hand into a mock airplane. It sailed down across his smile and crashed into the adjacent palm. "Thing's on fire before it hits the tarmac, airport crew swear they could hear the screaming over the engines, and whatever mangled survivors crawl out of the smoke spend the rest of their life in nightmares?"

"What could the fucking point be in that?"

"The point? Why should they bother stopping it if you won't? It's your fucking world. You strapped yourselves to a rocket built by the lowest bidder and fired it into weather you weren't paying enough attention to. It's your damned plane, your damned fault, and it's your scythe now."

He stooped just low enough to meet her gaze. Those two fingers came back, nudging the scythe to the very edge of her side of the coffee table.

"Here you go. Do whatever with it. I only did this as a favor to your father anyway. I'm going to go sprout wings and do something you don't believe in."

Something stupid made her touch the scythe. Not take it. She wasn't that stupid; only stupid enough to touch it with two of her own fingers. Enough of a gesture to make him pause.

"You said I didn't have a father."

"I said your mom wasn't knocked up by any man."

"Okay. In the world where you sprout wings and think you're clever, just how did I immaculate my way into the world?"

"Baby, you just inherited a scythe. Notice you spent your whole life wearing hoodies? Where'd you think you got that?"

"Mom loved them."

"Maybe that's what attracted him. Goodnight. Enjoy your immortality."

And then he wasn't there. Ghost, angel, nutter - now he was only absent. Moffet thought she saw a glowing wing pass by her window. Then she thought again. No, that was not what she felt like having seen today.


She still saw the scythe, though. Ugly black, both dulled and too dark to go with anything in her wardrobe. She hunkered down over the thing, breath leaving no fog along the blade. She nudged it with two fingers. It jostled to no particular affect. There was no particular affect about the thing until she actually picked it up.

Bathroom Monologue: Very Smart

"You have to stop telling people you're dumb. You're very smart. You're smarter than them, and it unnerves them when they hear you cut yourself down. They ask you to look over their taxes. They look at you when someone mentions thermodynamics. You watch PBS and read articles on the internet that are longer than one page. You calling yourself dumb means they are all barely functional slime pods. Barely sentient pustules of DNA. That's very rude. And don't say that they have skills you don't. Yes, she fixes your computer. She also thinks you ask her because you're too busy learning astrophysics to pick up mundane nonsense. And it's not nonsense to her most of the time, only when she's in the knowledge radius around you. That's what you do to people. You can't cut yourself down or you drop the whole thing on them. I'm sorry that you're smart, and I'm sorry that you're too stupid to know you're smart. But this is your burden. You have to carry it. Pick it up just as soon as you finish the weekend crossword puzzle."

7 Things I Want From Novels

Recently T.S. Bazelli put together a list of the things she’d like to read in a novel. Some of her points were appealing (“Magic with serious consequences.”), but I was left wondering just what mine would be. We should keep such inventories as readers so we can acknowledge the writers who take such risks, and as writers so that we can attempt to fulfill them if no one else will. So here's my current tally. I focused on things I don't see often enough. The tally is incomplete. I guess it will remain incomplete until I die. Somebody remind me to do a draft on my deathbed.

1. Humor at its own expense. Not sarcastic, not wry or counter-cultural, not essentially “meta” or any other postmodernism that allows people to avoid direct feeling. Preposterous humor that exposes and cherishes quirks. This culture has an excess of humor that can only make me nod in concession that the writer was somehow clever. It's so plentiful I now read it as dead inside. I want you to actually make me laugh. Douglas Adams, Gail Simone, Stephen Fry, Jeff Smith and Mary Roach have all pulled this off, so I know it's possible.

2. Main characters that form a strong artificial family. They've elected to care for each other, tease and torment, stick up for each other, even support to irrational degrees. Think Lupin, Jigen and Goemon. Think Aragon, Legolas and Gimli. Hell, “A priest, a rabbi and a minister walk into a…” is one of the most boldly diverse casts in literature. Whether we watch them meet and develop together like the ka-tet of The Dark Tower, or they simply seem to have always co-existed like the surgery team from M*A*S*H, I will follow you anywhere for those clusters of people that just go together.

Poster art from Lupin the 3rd: Castle of Cagliostro. How we got an anime franchise out of a series of dimestore French novels, I don't know.

3. People possessing supposedly deviant characteristics who are not defined by those characteristics. I'd be much more interested in a gay character that was defined by his love of collecting Russian nesting dolls than by his sexuality.

4. Sex other than fucking. Fucking is not only tasteless, bland, and more base than sentimentality while managing to lack the soul – it’s also played out to the point of eye-rolling cliché. It doesn't even essentially bond characters anymore. It's both masturbatory and only good for masturbation. If you're going to write sex, have characters getting it wrong, being vulnerable, confused or cracking up laughing. Give me something distinct, something personal rather than prurient. I’m thinking of James Clavell’s hilarious all-dialogue sex, or Stephen King’s teens who don’t understand why it’s nothing like media led them to expect, or Ethan Coen comparing it to having your genitalia stuck in a paint mixer (“for the full quarter hour”). Or you could not have it at all. When it doubt, don't have it at all.

5. Absurd characters who relish in their own absurdity. One of my favorite character traits is that of Marvel’s Bullseye, a supervillain who wears a ridiculous costume because he actually loves the garish fashion. While few of us are that way (or have the guts to buy the wardrobe), most of us have our own absurdities. The state of satire has left many of us thinking the height of creativity is pointing out someone else's flaws, sheltering and reinforcing our own habits of being. The dubiously mature take on this in literature is to reveal the deep desire in some Gatsby-esque tragedy. Well folks, Jay Gatsby is dead. Give me characters who live their personal absurdities.

"It's perfect," he says, not comforting his tailor at all. Art by Steve Dillon, an interior from Bullseye: Greatest Hits.

6. Characters who survive and have to deal with circumstances. Death is often a cop-out from consequence. One of the best books I've read in recent years is Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is all about living through the damages of tragedy. The survivors come out of it monumentally messed up, leaving it far more interesting than if they'd all simply died in tragedy. I cut slack for works that truly earned the punch, like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, but these are the exceptions. The best fiction can offer us ways out of deep depression and hardship. Mediocre fiction can at least be more interesting than “He was sad, and sadder, and even sadder, and then he died."

7. Take me into another view. I don’t need to agree with their morals, religion or actions. In fact, it’s better if I don’t. Humbert Humbert and Hannibal Lecter are not people I'd want to be around. They are fascinating on the page. Characters can exceed being mouthpieces or pawns for an agenda. If I even suspect you're trying to convert me you've already lost. I'll turn against you and rip apart your novel with a critical acumen I've been building for years. Most readers can do the same. I'm not asking for propaganda. What I love are those characters so broad in scope that they are twisted within things I'd never accept personally, and which I can sympathize with on some level. Plenty of the best Horror operates using such literary sympathy. I have a sense of smell, was raised by both of my parents and have never come close to an obsession that would lead me to kill, but I am left feeling deeply for Grenouille in Patrick Suskind's Perfume. That's success.

Bathroom Monologue: Twinkle, Twinkle, Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ Superstar

How I wonder what you are

Up above the world so high

Like a diamond in God's eye

When the blazing sun is gone,

When he nothing shines upon,

Then you show your little lights,

Twinkle, twinkle, Jesus Christ,

what have you sacrificed?

This is a song merger I've done over a dozen times in the bathroom. It always falls apart after two stanzas, because neither song is worth much after the initial flourish. Hope this gets it out of my head once and for all.

Bathroom Monologue: Whitewashing Covers Monologue

To hear this excuse rather than just read it you can either click the triangle on the left to begin streaming audio or click this text to download the MP3. Enjoy!

I thought that question would come eventually. The cover.

He is a pretty, pretty white man. I don’t even think he has follicles. Look at that. Why couldn’t they airbrush my author photo like that? God, I look even more like an ogre than usual when you have me lying in print next to this guy.

This is supposed to be Zhange. That’s what my editor told me that the art department told her. He doesn’t look like a Zhange. He looks decidedly like a Fabio. Like a Theodore. Like a Donovan.

For the record, Zhange is not white. I was not included in discussions about the cover art and do not have any contractual say about it. I was not happy about the decision. My agent says it looked like I bit into a lemon when I first saw it.

My alternative would have been to return my advance, breach my contract and have my publisher sue me whenever I tried to publish the novel in the future. I’m hoping you all liked the book enough to forgive me getting it published. That choice was my prerogative. How much you resent me is yours. We are left with four options.

The first is we can remove the dust jacket, like this. I brought some silver pens to autograph the exterior cover so you have something else to look at than blue hardcover binding.

Second, I brought these other permanent markers so we can make him mauve, or orange, or put him in blackface. I’ve been practicing on advanced copies. I’m getting good at it.

The third option will cost you a dollar, because it cost me about that much to print up these stickers. Full page white stickers on which I’ve written the title of the book and drawn this non-racial stick figure. He’s got a sword and everything. Look at that bad ass. There’s also this wide white area on the side where I’ll write whatever autograph you feel like. “To Cindy, please don’t take the stick figure as a body image role model. Jesus God, that’s a controversy I don’t need right now. Ex-oh-ex-oh, jay-see-double-yew.”

The fourth option is that when you come up I can give you the address of my publishers. You can take it and write very intelligent letters, which you will mail to them because the time it takes and postage you pay convinces corporations more than any angry Facebook petition. You can forward the address to your friends who like the book, and they can write their letters and spread the address on to others. When my publisher sees that there are however-many literate people who buy books and don’t mind or actually like people of other races and ethnicities on their covers, I can make a stronger argument the next time they put out an edition.

Please don’t boycott the book. Please don’t wait for e-books to kill paper books. Please don’t pirate a copy and think that some racist in the art department justifies it. Instead, please realize that some of the boundaries I attempted to push inside this book are a lot bigger than the cover. As angry as some of you are, and as angry as I got with them in private, I am still grateful to most of the people at that company. They got the words in my book to you. In the process of doing that, they did something offensive and we can spend the rest of the Q-and-A talking about it. I think we’ve got the space until eleven. I’ve got time. I’ve got water. Let’s go.

Next question?

Bathroom Monologue: Song and Arrow

Sam had Black Eyed Peas stuck in his head. The witch doctor fixed it. Unfortunately, the arrow stuck in his head was even less comfortable.

Bathroom Monologue: The Torment of Mr. Yellowbelly, OR, Monologue for an older brother

In the year 2032, no one brushes their teeth. There is no water to run the brush under.

"Good, I hate brushing."

If they found a tube of toothpaste, its moisture would be siphoned off and sent to The Central Collective. So valuable is the commodity that is water.

"Why is water valuable in the future?"

Hubris, Sally! Hubris. There was an arms race, and technology left the oceans barren. Where once there were seas, now there lie only crags and dried weeds.

"But the fishies are okay, right?"

They flop on the shores, slowly drowning in air, begging the heavens for relief from this man-made horror.

"But my fish is okay, right?"

One lone goldfish survives to an old age...

"Mr. Yellowbelly?"

Watching his dozens of children spawn...

"He gets a big family? Yay!"

Only to see the water vaporized from within their gills, boiling them alive.

"...What?"

Their eyes burst from their heads, and the last thing Mr. Yellowbelly knows is that somewhere, his owners have forsaken him.

"I didn't forsake you, Mr. Yellowbelly!"

He lies shriveled on the ground, without fluid or fish food to sustain him. It is only by hideous miracle he has survived this long, and survival itself is agony.

“I’ll save him!”

He asks the arid world, 'Why? Why did Sally do this to me?'

"I didn't! I love Mr. Yellowbelly! He's my baby!"

“'If only,' he says with his last glurgle of hydrogen-dioxide, 'if only a little girl had truly loved me, then man would not have played God.'”

"Mommyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"

Pitch: SPIDER-MAN: SIDEKICK OF THUNDER

Street level in Manhattan, New York. Chunks are missing from buildings. Avengers are lying strewn around the place. We glimpse the Destroyer armor beating the crap out of Thor. Spider-Man barely rises from the pavement, half his costume torn away. He sees the beating Thor is taking. He sees Mjolnir, Thor's trusty magic hammer, lying in the rubble. It's upside down, so we have to turn the comic upside down to read the inscription. Only the worthy may lift it. Spidey actually twists his head to read it. He decides, what the hell.

"I'll help you, big guy. Hang in there."

Spidey braces. He grasps. He lifts.

It won't budge.

He struggles. We can see every muscle in his body stand out through the spandex. Nothing.

"To me, Mjolnir!" Thor calls from off-page. The hammer flies from Spidey's grip and to its master. We hear Thor saving the day off page while we see Spidey just staring.

Skip forward. Peter Parker is with his girlfriend. Mary Jane or a new girl? Depends on what Marvel's doing. The conversation goes the same either way, because girls always treat him the same. He's trying to explain how he should be able to lift that hammer, how close everyone came to dying, and that he couldn't do anything worthwhile. The girl is preoccupied with something trivial and blows him off, because like I said, girls always treat him the same.

A pundit questions if Spider-Man doesn't create more crime than he stops. J. Jonah Jameson is a jackass in some needless way. There's a new blog like Icanhazcheezeburger, which is just every photo of him looking stupid (anyone can add them, and it the last photo we see was uploaded by user "MJ").

We see a giant robot on the horizon. Spidey looks for a place to change. We see Thor fly in and decapitate the robot before Spidey's even in the alley.

"Fine then."

He buttons up his shirt again and walks in the direction Thor is flying.

Somewhere, Norman Osborn has planted a bomb in Parker's apartment. Tonight it will kill him.

Yes, tonight.

Tonight...

Tonight comes. Parker has not returned to his apartment. Osborn is unhappy.

On the rainbow bridge, Thor is trying to shoo Spider-Man away. Spidey is in the spandex, with luggage.

Thor proclaims, "Gods don't have sidekicks."

'"What do you call the apostles?"

"Who are the apostles?"

"That's the sort of thing I can look up for you as your sidekick."

Spider-Man explains that he needs a vacation, but he has a bad history with vacations. If he tries to take a full break, somebody he loves will get kidnapped or some psychopath will wire his apartment with bombs. It's happened before. It always happens. But if he takes a summer as Thor's sidekick, maybe things will be different. He can pretty much coast. And if there's trouble? Thor can hit it with something heavy.

"But you're a world-respected hero."

"You bench press the moon. I can't even save my Aunt's mortgage. Please. Don't break my heart here. I'll turn into a supervillain."

So begins the miniseries, SPIDER-MAN: SIDEKICK OF THUNDER

Spidey builds a web hammock to ride that's suspended from Thor's hammer. When he sees a magazine cover posing Mary Jane and Tony Stark, he retaliates with his own photo-shoot of Spider-Man and the Norse Volley Ball Team. In a very special tear-filled issue, they figure out why Hogun the Grim looks like the only Mongolian in Asgard. At one point Spidey trolls his own villains (Doc Ock, Rhino, Hobgoblin), luring them into fights and then dropping Thor on them. "Dropping The Thor" is a running gag in the series. Sometimes Spidey saves Thor's bacon with smarts and looking out for him, but largely it's him in spandex try to fit in with Valkyries and bear-cloaked warriors.

Every issue ends with Norman Osborn, looking increasingly disheveled, staring into monitors waiting for Parker to come home and be blown up. Eventually he kills time with a Nintendo DS. When Spidey finally feels rested and returns home, he disarms the bombs without trouble. Osborn does not notice, for by this point he has taken up playing Pokemon and is too engrossed with tracking down a Victini to care.

The Bernard Pivot Questionnaire

This is for a bloggy-go-round based on the famous Bernard Pivot/James Lipton list of ten questions.

1. What is your favorite word?
"But." By sheer unnecessary use of a word in my vocabulary, my favorite has to be "but." If I'm not careful every paragraph in every given story and article will have at least one "but." I'm a but-oriented. A but-man. It's seldom conscious. My conscious favorite of late has been 'defenestrate,' because of how amusing it is to have a word for throwing something out a window.

2.What is your least favorite word?
A special lady has demanded I not say. In lieu of naming and complaining about that word, I'll say that any word can be reduced to a nuisance. Just look at how teenagers have turned "fail" from my greatest fear to something at which I frown in disappointment.

3.What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Being left alone. Nothing gets me going like nobody being around to stare.

4.What turns you off?
My grandmother looking through the curtains and seeing us. Now this has never happened - but I guarantee it would turn me off. Probably you, too. I don't know for certain. I'm willing to guess it's not a fetish of yours.

5.What is your favorite curse word?
"Fuck" is the one I overuse. Apparently I'm a but-man and a fuck-man. This list is going poorly for me. Recently I've been trying to invest in "eff" and "nozzle" as neologist swears. I'd like to get some creativity into the swearing process. I doubt they'll work.

6.What sound or noise do you love?
Water running into a tub that's already partially full. Cancels enough external noise, echoes and creates an atmosphere I associate with being able to unwind.

7.What sound or noise do you hate?
Babies crying, opera singing and that vaguely Middle Eastern chanting/wailing that appears for no good reason in so many soundtracks. They all hit a certain pitch that makes my muscles tense up. With my neuromuscular syndrome, that tensing is very painful. Thus physiologically these are among my least favorite sounds.

8.What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
I'd go on the road with a specific few friends, camera crew and $50,000 for damages. We'd visit a new location every week and be inane together. First had the idea at a CostCo, a wholesale warehouse, seeing that you could climb up three stories of goods. I wanted to jump off it and into this massive display of pillows they had.

9.What profession would you not like to do?
Fluffer.

10.If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
"Who wants a hug?"

Bathroom Monologue: If writing were a regular job

-I’d be fired for showing up in pajama pants.

-Also fired for showing up at noon and/or after midnight.

-When he wasn’t pissed at me for working three-hour-days, my boss would be terrified of the overtime and golden time I was working into.

-When my boss tried to get me to go home, I’d roll my chair from the keyboard and over to bed.

-My co-workers would likely not appreciate my looping the Inception soundtrack over and over because it helps “set a productive mood.” Even the few that tolerated me would still get annoyed when I burst into laughter every single time the lady starts singing during “Waiting for a Train.”

-My employers might be concerned that I spent half an hour a day doing a smaller version of my job for free, then another hour trying to get people to read that.

-Someone might stick a meat thermometer into my manuscript. They would wear thick gloves.

-I’d be pretty pissed at my “company” agent and publisher for expecting me to write, edit, polish, find venues, schedule signings and talks, then singlehandedly do those promotions and talks for the team product.

-I wouldn’t need a regular job to sustain this one.

-People thinking they could do my job better than I can would be exactly as annoying as they are right now.

Bathroom Monologue: At Our Best

He set aside his entire evening. He spent half a month's salary on bribes to get them a table at the city's most exclusive restaurant. He bought her the best chocolates. He found her favorite wine, in its best year. Nervous, he showered three times and used that cologne he couldn't stand, but that she said reminded her of the ocean. She loved the ocean. So he made sure that their table overlooked it. He had his best suit dry-cleaned and held off wearing it for a month, saving it just for that night. He wore the tie she'd gotten him last year. He got a dozen black roses, and put them in a bouquet with a dozen white ones. In the very center, he placed a single, brilliant red rose. That bouquet sat on the middle of their table for two hours as he waited for her. She never came. At the stroke of ten, he looked out at the night city skyline. His jaw fell as he realized. He'd forgotten to invite her.

Bathroom Monologue: Serpents and Stones

"I don't know," Medusa said. She began to draw away from the bed, but he held onto her arm. "I've never done this before."

"Neither have I," said the golem, brushing the snakes away from her eyes.

Bathroom Monologue: The Won’t

"This religion is a little hard to tell from the more popular ones. They possess a peculiar afterlife. Right? Whereas the popular ones say you cease to exist upon death, these folks have disproved that. They say you will continue to be, and have provided the evidence of a hundred corpses. These deceased people are plainly still in existence, simply not doing anything. The body, the brain, all in tact, while the individual does nothing. You continue to be, but you won’t. You won’t run. You won’t participate in orgies. You won’t tell that joke the way no one else can. Bits of you will do things. Bits of you are already rotting, and some will be eaten by maggots or plants or burned in cremation. One day the world may be blown up and bits of you will float around as cosmic silt, or be sucked into a star and become part of a distant light. You won’t do that. Bits of you will. You have bits of others in you right now: the chicken you had for lunch, and flakes of dandruff from my scalp that you’ve inhaled. I’m not climbing into your nostrils; bits of me are. I won’t, you see. Quite elegant. The locals either see it as sublime, or as sort of a dodge. Impossible to display, you know, that some essential you doesn’t go, that you don’t go do something without all the present bits of you that we’re presently regarding. It'll be some time before we know for certain about that - or, we won't."

"Kill Mommy" at Untied Shoelaces

I'm pleased to announce that "Kill Mommy" was purchased by Untied Shoelaces of the Mind. The editors called it one of the best stories they've ever read. I was pretty darned flattered.

It follows a boy who plans to kill his mother, and his father's unusual reactions to the threat. If you'd like to read it, you can click any of the links in this post. Like this one.

You can comment on it here or on the Untied site. Ratings and Comments on the site are most welcome, as they'll help me get published again in the future. Thanks for your interest!