Bathroom Monologue: Numbah One!

Their most popular beer is 'ichiban,' which is Japanese for "number one," I guess because once you've had an atomic bomb dropped on you, you never feel the need to be subtle ever again. But "ichiban" means something very different in English. Ichiban has had a dramatic effect on my life and family, particularly through my brother. Some of you may have family members who can't hold their imported drinks, but not like mine. You have not experienced the depths of foreign-alcohol-fueled dilemmas until you've been frantically trying to pay the bill at a Thai restaurant while your brother is so wasted on ichiban, which he brought himself because it's a fucking Thai restaurant and they don't sell Japanese beer, while he is so wasted on the stuff that he gets in a fight with the chef, who doesn't a speak a word of English, and when the language barrier overcomes his beer-addled brain, grabs the chef by his poofy hat and screams into his face, "No hable Chinkanese, padre!" Then you're chased ten blocks by Thai immigrants wielding samurai swords, even though those are also Japanese and struck you as inappropriate decorations even before they were pulled off the wall and swung at your brother's head for blaming Pearl Harbor on the waiter. Then, then my friends, you've learned what "ichiban" means in English.

Bathroom Monologue: I was never the same after... (Try it at home!)

-After I figured out most of my writing assignments in second grade could be about X-Men and Swampthing.
-After my third reading of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, realizing some of his plots had practical applications in my school and neighborhood.
-After realizing matches and bug spray might be boring separately, but...
-After that first accidental swear in front of Grandma.
-After the doctor fled the state, leaving me to learn I'd long since been incurable and inoperable.
-After I wore those jeans to school, the ones with the logo I tried to show off, that nobody noticed.
-After I realized that a close friend of two years was gay, and had been hitting on me all along.
-After that disturbed boy tried to strangle me to death in front of a laughing crowd.
-After two professors turned me down for classes without talking to me about my submissions, and a third talked down about every writer I liked, forcing the realization that there is someone in power who vehemently hates every little thing you could possibly like, no matter how trivial to their existence, or how important they are to yours.
-After I told that to one of my professors.

Bathroom Monologue: Why is World Trade Center a Flop?

Even though this one has a better soundtrack and more star-power, we've all seen this movie before. It's rare that a film hits theatres years after it's been on TV, but most everybody saw this one years ago, on a Tuesday morning in September. Even if you missed the premiere, it was rerun so much that month that most of us got our fill. The president of the United States even visited the set. The novelization (written by Congressmen, of all people) sold pretty well. If it wasn't weird enough that the book came out after the movie, we got hundreds of them, with every bias you could imagine, which slaked the thirsts of most of the remaining curious people. And then there was the t-shirt, the interviews with the characters, the slogans, and soon, by God, if we saw one more commercial with so much as a clip of this movie in it, we'd scream. Then this movie came along. Nobody likes a remake. You see, the story was gripping, the strife was greater than any cinematic experience before it, and while I'm sure Hollywood could have deployed shinier special effects at the time, the original had a better director than Oliver Stone.

Bathroom Monologue: A Violence of History

There is a cult in the east that expounds on a plane of existence above our own, which is populated exclusively by the spirits of weapons and sheathes. Each has a distinct and rich personality that is expressed esoterically on the physical plane, perhaps by cutting the hand of the wielder, fitting nicely on one’s belt, or being difficult to draw from a scabbard. Bare blades are feminine, wily and highly active, necessitating (and hence causing) the production of more weapons. Sheathes are masculine, shrouding the weapons, subverting them into docility and social harmony. The drive of blades and scabbards to reproduce, to couple and harbor the spirit for the creation of superior weapons, is what drives creation on our plane. Our consciousness and social hierarchies are mere tools through which the weapons reproduce and evolve. Guns and bullets may be the next step in the genetics of weaponry. Scientists accuse the cult of subscribing to a theory too abstract to prove. The sword cult admits that their theory is out there, but asks anyone to provide a better explanation for the violence of history.

Bathroom Monologue: Like your first words were better

The government sealed the audiotapes for years, just because these seemed like the sort of thing they were supposed to seal for years. Theologians and scientists were in an uproar before they even understood what the recording meant. Building a time machine to eavesdrop on pre-history was unpopular enough when the budget was announced; if the nation figured out that they'd left the lens cap on the camera, everyone in the department would be fired. Still, the recording device had gone through and not only picked up audio of the Big Bang explosion; thanks to the time warp, it got four seconds of audio from before the Big Bang. When the recording was still just a rumor it was decried a fake by people who hadn't heard it yet, and was heralded as proof of the existence of God by people who had money on the line. It was first released to the public by accident, when the MP3 somehow got onto someone's iPod, and onto 100,000 other iPods the next downloading day. An informal poll suggested most people thought these words supposedly recorded from just before time began were a mix-up, but everyone felt the same awkward peace when they heard them: "Did that do it, Gabe? No? What about this?"

Bathroom Monologue: No Gay-Dar

I don't care if you're gay. I never have cared. I'll care if you're lonely, I'll care if you two just broke up, and I'll care if your lover stole all the money from your joint-accounts and moved to Hawaii. But it's your sexuality, and I don't want to watch you have sex with anyone of any shape in possession of any form of genitalia. Besides, I suck at sexualities. I've had gay people hit on me, for years, and I didn't realize they were gay. I've had a gay professor talk to me about stalking his boyfriend, and I didn't realize he was gay. I've had gay people ask me out on dates. And I've gone. And at the end of those nights, I didn't realize they were gay. I can't tell why I can't tell. Everyone else seems really good at it. It wouldn't bother me so much, but I'm a little worried that I'll wind up married to one of them, and still not notice.

Bathroom Monologue: Bloody Unlikely

Everyone talks about that million-to-one odds business. Like they studied probability beyond what was necessary to pass Math in high school. It’s never a million-to-one. Listen, you could have a million monkeys flipping coins, and not one would land on its side before brunch. And the lottery? You wish it was only a million-to-one odds. Even surviving this plane crash has got to be somewhere around 240,300,605-to-one. See here, I did the math on these napkins. The stewardesses don’t seem to want them anymore. Getting a million-to-one odds, well, the chances are about a million-to-one. Hey, could I have that life preserver under your seat? Mine’s punctured, if you believe it. I know, I know, what are the odds?

Bathroom Monologue: A Response to No One in Particular

Yes, Fantasy is make-believe. But you know what? Make-believe is no worse than real-doesn't-care-if-you-believe. And your so-called realistic fiction is a million miles from real life, so I don't give a crap if my Fantasy is a million and ten (and your non-fiction isn't close to orbit, either). Why write make-believe? Because eventually you get tired of writing about middle-aged women who are afraid they got herpes off a subway bathroom seat, the heartbreak of the little league semi-finals, and sardonic Christmas-time department store elves. Eventually you say, "Screw writing about reality and sardonic department store elves. I'm gonna write egregious fantasy about woodland elves with D-cup breasts that defy gravity in every way my excessive vocabulary can muster." No, it ain't real, but this is Literature and life doesn't come in text form. Your favorite biographies probably so inaccurate that they belong on the Fantasy shelves anyway.

Bathroom Monologue: Tribute to Zapp Brannigan

"Sexist?" This word intrigues me. Is it like "typist" and "novelist?" Does it suggest that this is my trade? That I am a sexual specialist? A professional sexer? I know I get around, but to be an outright sexist... I'm honored. Yes, I approve of this... "sexism."

Bathroom Monologue: Eight Sentences, You Old Bat

I still remember Mrs. Cronenberg harping in fifth grade about how all paragraphs were at least eight sentences long. I never got an eight-sentence note sent home, no matter how elaborately awful I was. Any child who picked up a newspaper would find not one paragraph with eight sentences in it. Even today, four sentences is usually pushing it, with two-sentence paragraphs ruling the newsprint world, often beginning with "and," "because" or "but," and even ending in the forbidden "of." And I'm waiting for the girl who gets bored mid-essay to stop, write "Cont. Page 38" and inform her English teacher that she thinks the Science teacher has the Arts & Leisure section if she wants to read the remainder of her article. And the commas! I understand that it's difficult to explain the precise nature of independent clauses to a ten-year-old high off a twenty-ounce Pepsi, but come on, at least teach the kids rules that aren't broken every day in national media and bestsellers! In that respect, I guess we're fortunate that the literacy level is so low, or we'd never teach our young'uns how to write.

Bathroom Monologue: Bump in the Game Night

It's one of the most terrifying places in the world of the supernatural. So many have died here that fiends no longer believe it's real. It stretches disbelief too far.

It's a baseball diamond. The lights are solar powered, and with the flick of a switch can go from fluorescent to solar reproductive light. In the middle of any inning, they can reduce vampires to ash - ash that, if you believe the local stories, is used as the dust on the playing field.

The sprinklers, like every sprinkler in town, draw water from the local river, which runs behind the local church. The priest blesses it every morning, so the grass is slick with holy water.

The concrete of the dugouts is fifty feet deep, an unnecessary depth for such a construction. The reason? Immortals. You can't kill an immortal, but you can throw him in a pit and fill it with concrete. So if you believe the stories, there are some fifty immortal warriors under the stands, trapped forever in a soundless, airless, dark prison.

Two independent sources verified that the diamond is perfectly feng shui against evil magic, and if you look under the bases and benches, you'll find a lot of brand symbols for companies you've never heard of. That's because they aren't real companies, though their symbols are real - real holy symbols that nullify both black and white magic, rendering even the strongest magicians powerless if they're even within shouting distance of the ballpark. It keeps the neighboring high school safe (you wouldn't believe the anti-sasquatch stuff they've got in the chemistry lab). The baseball field is one of the town's most storied features, and one of the reasons there's never been a monster under a single bed.

Bathroom Monologue: Busy Serpent

"What really got me about the story of Eden was everything else in there. The birds, the bugs, even the trees are on the earth as well as in Eden. Humans weren't on earth before the fall. So logically, neither was anything else. God had to trick everyone with His magic fruit gag; eventually even the carnivores, dumb as they were, took a bite of the apple and were cast out. Insects that would perish from trying to fill their mouths with apple took a bite. Even trees! Look at all the trees on the earth. How the Hell did God trick all of them into eating from the Tree of Knowledge? Of course, the Tree of Knowledge didn't eat from itself, as it isn’t on earth (if it was, we’d all do better in Calculas). Maybe it tricked the other trees. Maybe it was God’s co-conspirator. Being that it was dropping fruits of genius left and right, the Tree of Knowledge ought to have been able to fool things without mouths into taking a little bite. Oh, but don't say it's impossible, since trees can't move. They've fooled you all into thinking they're immobile, but actually they're just waiting. Yes, waiting..."

Bathroom Monologue: We loosened the technology for you

"But if women found out how to reproduce with artificial genetic material, men were done for. But we couldn't destroy the technology. Sam and I had worked so hard on it. Then Sam came up with a genius solution: put it in jars. That'll teach 'em the importance of men."

Bathroom Monologue: Lineage of Dedication

John was begat by Erma Bombeck, Douglas Adams, Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift, but please don't hold it against him; the son is never greater than the parent, except in those cases where no one cares who the parents were. John was begat by Dante Allighieri, who was begat by Virgil, who was begat by Homer, who was begat by some kind of muse, if he existed. John was begat by Joseph Campbell, who was begat by Carl Jung, who was begat by Sigmund Freud, who, as he would have told you, was begat by his father. John was begat by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was somehow begat by Jesus Christ, who was begat by Moses (don't tell the Christians their faith is plagiarism), who was begat by Pagan folks (don’t tell the Jews their faith is plagiarism), "Pagan" means pretty much everything not listed above, so they were begat by earlier Pagans who bore no resemblance to later Pagans (but for God’s sake, don’t tell the kids in pointy hats), and they were probably begat by some people who didn't really know what the sun was, but were very creative (and probably black -- don't tell any of the above faiths that, though). John was begat by a bunch of other people, but their names are withheld by request of the authors.

While Pan-Frying Beef Monologue

Lo's first weapon was a jintachi, a sword with a long blade and curved handle designed for horseback fighting. He was a slave, so of course he didn't fight mounted, but the revolutionaries only had a few horses and made use of whatever weapons they had. It was severely dishonorable to use a mounted weapon on foot, but again, he was a slave. The jintachi gave him two things: a preference for swords in combat, and a disregard for personal dignity.

Long after he was freed he bypassed the expensive practice of buying master-make weapons and just picking up whatever was available: a broken claymore, a fallen branch, a bow no one in Ulysses' house could string but that still really stung if he smacked you in the eye with it. He dueled one master of the katana by dual-wielding a salad fork and a really big rock.

His favorite weapon was a giant's speartip. It was five or six foote long, very thick and hard, a dwarf-make thing. It was flat and triangular, with a jagged point and a blade on either edge. About a foote thick, he could hide behind it when he was showered with arrows, doubling as a shield. He held it by the butt, the tab of metal below the spearhead where a giant would insert a shaft. Being human-sized, he never bought a shaft. He wielded it like a big, ornery horsekiller, though he applied it in less orthodox fashion, too, such as riding it like a sled down a hill into the enemy cavalry.

He only graduated to using fine, honorable weapons when his friends started to be embarrassed by his antics, and got him one for his birthday. Being a former slave, he didn't have a birthday, but they made one up as an excuse to make him throw that damned thing away.

Bathroom Monologue: Liberal Arts Course Offering (Fall)

-Intro to Cloud Gazing
-Traditional Bread Crumb Reading
-Egg-Nog Smithery (belt sanders required; on sale in bookstore)
-Advanced Tree Re-Fueling
-Musical Botany
-Non-Linear Elephant Discovery (twenty hours lab/field-work required)
-Art History
-Intermediate Conversational Binary
-Honors Seminar in Paper Shakespeare Wiped His Ass With One Time Some Scholars Say

Bathroom Monologue: Bright Shines the Light of Scrutiny

Yes, ghosts do watch you. If you’re curious, their view of us is best-likened to our view of celebrity news. The dead spend most of their time obsessing over gossip and tidbits of what's going on in the real world, mostly so that they can roll their eyes, say how dumb some living person is, and speculate on how much better they'd do in their place. Coincidentally, the dead don’t talk much about what they did when they were alive. If you bring it up, they get all uncomfortable and evasive, much the way you would if I started probing about your violent divorce instead of that actress’s.

Bathroom Monologue: "John, what would your children's book be about?" -Jennifer Hyatt

Rumors that the governor's wife had a troubled labor and lost the child bring people from all over the county to the mansion the next morning. Startlingly, the child is alive and resting peacefully, but every doctor, nurse and maid in the estate is dead, torn limb from limb and strewn about the birthing chamber. The mother must have had a troubled birth, for she hasn't woken up since. The governor will have a lot of questions when he gets home, especially when he sees what is growing in the basement.

What? It's about a child.

Bathroom Monologue: Think of the Ballot as an Ark

Safari having reminded him what he loved about politics, Theodore Roosevelt returned to the United States figuring the Republicans would make him their presidential candidate again. When incumbent president William Howard Taft led the Republican Convention in a round of laughing him out of the building, Teddy stormed across the street with his loyal supporters and rented out the opposing hotel, founding the Bull Moose Party that very night. Rumors hold he named it after the moose head hanging in the hall of the building. But did you know other political parties are associated with animals? For instance the Republicans chose to embody their sense of humor with their token elephant, a creature indigenous to countries they looked down on. The Democrats wanted to embody their spendthrift spirit and debated between notoriously cheap animals: the goldfish and the donkey. The donkey eventually won out, because after Democrats lost damn near every election, they couldn't take out their anger beating goldfish. Even the American Socialist Party had an animal. No one knew what it was, though, because it was in jail for sedition.

Bathroom Monologue: Nerds v. Jocks: Ancient Edition

During the Ting Period, strategist philosophers enjoyed many games, both solitary efforts and competitions between teams, which taught them about interaction with the physical world. The favorite of philosopher generals was the finger puzzle, which trapped the index finger of each hand inside an unbreakable tube. The dualism of the solution, that submission and aggression would have to coexist for the problem to be solved, was very amusing to these generals. They used it as the foundation for several lectures on tact and careful touch in the execution of commands. One day Keiji, a great man of the wilderness, visited the capitol and was jokingly invited to test the finger puzzle. He was in good humor until people started laughing at him, at which point he growled, tore the puzzle in half, and ate it. The philosopher generals cried, "Impossible!" to which Keiji responded with an offer to further illustrate "my point" on the battlefield. With padded swords, of course. The generals declined, and afterwards amended into their lectures that care in military operations was only necessary if one wasn't overwhelmingly strong, and only if one actually cared; and that if one was dealing with an easily frustrated party of overwhelming strength, it was wise to ingratiate oneself to them. Keiji was invited to attend any and all of these lectures, and whenever there was a rumor he would attend, the lecture was curiously well-catered.

Bathroom Monologue: Could Have Been Worse

"I mean, I could have walked in on her going down on -- no wait, that happened. Well, it could have been my brother she was -- no wait. Well, in my disgust I could have whirled around and accidentally fallen down the stai-- right, that's why I have this cast. Jesus. And my freaking car was towed after only being there for three minutes! But, but, I mean, it totally could have been worse. I mean, when I was haling a cab to get to the hospital, I could have been hit by a -- I was? Dragged for four blocks? Wow.... Still, it could have been worse. It's not the end of the world-- what's that noise outside?"

Bathroom Monologue: Doublespeak, meet Liespeak

-“Epic” now means, “long.”
-“This is a smart comedy,” now means, “It isn’t funny.”
-“Fiery” has always meant, “bitchy.”
-“Upcoming bio-pic” means, “The screenwriter, director and producers were thoroughly out of ideas, so they plagiarized the life of this other person who had some left.”
-“Thrillride” means, “You can take your desensitized children to this without worrying that they’ll be confused by the plot.”
-“Sexy” now means, “There’s no way in Hell you’ll see sex in this movie, but we guarantee the wardrobe people are making her bustier a size too small.”
-“Never since [anything],” or “The best [anything] since [anything],” both probably mean, “We’re taking massive bribes from the studio.”
-“A spirited performance,” means, “She didn’t graduate from acting school.”
-“For anyone who has ever [anything]” really means, “Good afternoon, Fly. Come into my parlor.”
-“From the [anyone] who brought you [anything]” means, “This guy is coasting on his reputation.”
-“Academy Award Winner,” means, “Guaranteed to disappoint this time.”

Bathroom Monologue: You'll never look at grandma's toaster the same way again

When Maurine Ellington stopped by Clarice James's yard sale, she couldn't have known she was going to walk away with a piece of history. For three dollars she got a rusty old steam iron and some unused tennis balls. The balls were uninteresting, but the Casco iron, a brand she didn't even recognize, was actually a sixty-year-old prototype that the company never meant sell in the first place. It was one of the three first irons ever produced by the Casco company, and vintage collectors priced Mrs. Ellington's new iron in the neighborhood of $500,000, if she didn't use it first. Though unavailable for comment, friends of the Ellingtons say she intends to move to Florida with their newfound wealth. This station contacted Mr. James, keeper of the yardsale, and asked if he would sue for possession of the iron or a part of the profits when it goes on sale next month. He said, quote, "Aw no, I sold it to 'em fair. That was my own stupidity. Just wish I hadn't given 'em a discount on them balls."

Bathroom Monologue: Theodicy is that book by Homer, right?

Theodicy is, of course, the greatest work of poetry in any language and follows the rise of the Thousand Year Republic. Its central theme is the existence of suffering and injustice in a world ruled by a benevolent, all-knowing, all-powerful god. The problem of theodicy still mystifies philosophers, and the poem's handling of it attracts scholars and authors even today. Since the fifth century it has been custom to name a book in a poem or a chapter in a novel "Theodicy" as a sign of humility to that greatest of all works. Recent critics have questioned the paradoxical nature of titling a single chapter in a much larger work after something the author is admitting is superior to the entire novel itself; that one part, in name, is greater than the whole. Haruis Kwail, the modern author responsible for the best-selling Theogyny, answers that, "believing in theodicy means accepting a lot of paradoxes."

Bathroom Monologue: What do you get him for Father's Day?

Yusef was a very wealthy man. He was born into money, grew up in money, went to college to learn how to make even more money, and the summer after graduation he made such an embarrassing amount of money for his father's company that the few people who had tolerated him in college stopped talking to him, to focus on their screenplays and jobs at McDonalds. Yuseff inherited his father's company, and built himself a palatial mansion. He had symmetrical swimming pools, a private lake (not for swimming, but to repopulate a couple of endangered species his daughter thought were cute; his children got whatever they asked, no matter what), a private road, and a private airport (which sported its own symmetrical swimming pools that Yuseff and his family could take a dip in if they didn't feel like flying once they got there).

But Yuseff was unsatisfied. Sure, he had a platinum-plated wrist protector that kept his gold watch from chaffing, and a road no one else could drive on, but he didn't have enough. Consumer culture was too small for him. He lost sleep and spent an increasing amount of time away from his wife and kids trying to create something worth having.

One night, inspiration struck. A map. The world's first real map. Not a flat one, not a globe, not one that made Greenland look accurate in size, nor even one of those adjusting zigzag maps in the background of all the movies about the White House or U.N. Building. A map of total accuracy. A map that would have every coastline accurate to the kilometer, every building represented, and a key that read "1 Mile equals 1 Mile." That would show Capitalism how it was done!

Immediately he hired thousands of scientists who were very relieved to be employed after all that time in college with their parents asking what they would do with their lives. They experimented on how to get paper to fold extra times, on refractive light and holographic technology, and spent an awful lot of time surveying. Meanwhile, Yuseff handled the logistical end, trying to secure a place for his map. He wanted to try the moon, but his close advisors apologetically informed him that it was smaller than the earth, and even with cutting edge paper-folding technology, the map would probably knock the moon out of orbit. He almost licensed the sun for storage space, but it was informed that it was a poor locale, even if it was well-lit, and that if he tried to claim property on the sun, the Russians would probably declare war. And then, while he was filing the patents, he heard a nasty rumor and almost sued Google Earth for trying to steal his idea.

Early one morning he got a call from his wife. She was worried about their youngest daughter, Anita. The girl had been acting strangely for months, had been coming home covered in white paint, and wasn't playing with the other children. Yuseff begrudgingly cancelled his afternoon meetings and flew home to meet his daughter, who ran into his arms, her hands and face smudged with white paint. Yuseff asked her what this was all about and what was wrong with her, but her first reply was only to point at an industrial paint machine, usually applied for making lines on football fields. Before he could ask further, she dragged him to the roof of the mansion, where a telescope was fixed. After she threatened to cry if he didn't humor her, he looked through. Every so often in the distance of all four directions were large, white line segments, all perhaps fifty feet across, each row emanating from their property.

Yuseff gave his daughter a flabbergasted look, to which she responded, "One Mile equals One Mile!"

He blinked, looked through the telescope one more time, turned back to her, and hugged her to his side, saying, "Well, that'll do."

Bathroom Monologue: Some Words of Unwisdom

“You can fireproof it, keeping flame from scorching the interior; you can waterproof it, keeping storms from ruining the wood paneling; you can tamperproof it, keeping clever people from rewiring it while you aren't looking. But you cannot foolproof it. Those who believe in foolproofing are a hundred times as stupid as those who believe in the gods. Gods, if they exist, will screw you. Idiots, if they exist, will screw you, and you hired them. And the worst thing is that maybe there’s a god of thunder running around in the sky, but there’s a potential fool running around in every brain. I’ve been around a long time, and I can attest that no one, no matter how wise or mighty, is so dangerous as in that one critical moment when they don’t know what they’re doing. For every master thief and prodigy commander, there was a fool who let them succeed and become famous, and two-to-five fools who foiled their own team's mission without an enemy hero around to take credit for the "victory." The fool is more powerful than the flood, because there is no dam that defend against him. And that is why I'm a fool."

Bathroom Monologue: Things weren't supposed to be this way

Puck: There is a way that things are supposed to be, and then there is the way that things usually are. I expect that you sometimes create an idea of the way things are supposed to be from the way that things usually are, which is a terrible idea. Watch a hundred movies, and the first ninety-nine all either have the guy getting the girl at the end, or the girl dying, or the guy dying, or some mixture. Then the hundredth is different. The girl wasn't there at the end, and the guy didn't die. Other relationships explored in the movie are abruptly severed -- and because I've seen ninety-nine movies lately that all ended with the guy dying or the guy getting the girl (or the girl dying), I can't even appreciate what the end or suspension of those relationships meant. It's different, and the good parts of my brain have rusted over, oxidized by the redundancy of old stories, so I start off any thoughts with a dislike for this movie's difference. That ain't right. That's a collective consciousness gone wrong, a collective close-mindedness, a self-enforcing stupidity. So now I try to think differently, because once I watched a hundred movies, and now I'm afraid that I've neglected the one or ones that were different in good ways. Now I'm careful to check if I'm disliking something because it's not the way it's supposed to be, or if it's just not the way things usually are.

Lo: Oh, our story is way better than that. Even if you don't like the way things develop, we get fightscenes for every couple of plot points. That makes up for any literary faults.

Puck: Oh yeah, this, this, this is great! I was talking about, you know... other stories. Of course.

Lo: Of course. And what's a movie?

Bathroom Monologue: Favorite Writers

No author has more implausible or unexplained plot twists; no author relishes in so much violence; no author switches focus so often; no author has such muddied ideologies and themes; no author has more poorly fleshed out characters; no author repeats Himself so often; yet despite it all, there's an undeniable charm in God's work.

Bathroom Monologue: (b th r m m n -lôg , -l g ) OR (it would have looked a lot more clever if the site could handle Greek letters)

1. (n) One of a series of short fiction or essay pieces written for general amusement and casual enlightenment, which were so much funnier on the can.

2. (v) An attempt for a cheap laugh.

3. (v) A desperate cry for help.

4. (n) The philosophical artifice of an individual not nearly so worldly as he ought to be, but considerably more worldly than was good for his mental health.

5. "Well, when I was at college I spent an unreasonable amount of time researching, reading and writing papers for my professors. I went there to study composing fiction, but was exclusively writing non-fiction essays, and I feared that I would lose my personal creative drive, that thing that makes writers write without the commands of an academic setting, since the commands of an academic setting don't exist in the money-making, and hence, bill-paying and life-affirming real world. So whenever I got up to go to the bathroom, I would try to improvise a narrative. Sometimes I thought they were funny, and would type them up into IM's for friends when I got back to the computer. Sometimes my friends would say they were funny, which is a service friends provide to artists to keep them from committing suicide too early in life. Then one friend in particular pointed me to a place to catalog them. I don't even know why I-- is that tape recorder on?"