Bathroom Monologue: Rejected Proposal #6

So what we’ll do is re-title the many genres in print. With the recent decline in book sales comes many stupid ideas on how to sell books, but I think there’s a whole new generation of Alexander Pope fans just waiting to be fooled into thinking he’s like Jay Z – which is why “Poetry” will now be known as “Hip Hop.” It doesn’t stop there. We’ll do…

Horror – Scary
Humor - Funny
Biography – I Lived This!
Fantasy – Magic
Science Fiction – Magic 2.0
Speculative Fiction – Guessin’
Romance – Fuckin’
Culinary – Do Not Eat This
Classics – You’ll Impress Girls
Psychology – Brainstuffings
Science – We Checked
History – Boring But No Wait Come Back!

Bathroom Monologue: Rejected Proposal #5

So what we’ll do is make a videogame based on all those dystopias. It’ll be spin-off from Koei’s Dynasty Warriors franchise that pits several ancient Chinese kingdoms against each other in beat-em-up action. Our Dystopia Warriors is set in a terrible pan-future. Instead of Asian emperors, you’ve got Big Brother. Those freakish convoys from Beyond Thunderdome go head-to-head with a zombie apocalypse, with the winner taking on the Terminators. One level will require you to escape L.A., while another forces you to face the irradiated mutations of a nuclear disaster. All the infamous awful futures collide, not to taint the present, but to beat on each other – and they have all always been at war with Oceania. Coming this Fall – A Brave New Asskicking.

Bathroom Monologue: Rejected Proposal #4

So what we’ll do is print a small explanation along with the coin. You can’t have failed to notice that the U.S. Mint has set George Washington’s giant head looming over president elect Obama on the one side, which is a very odd idea on its own. President Washington owned Negro slaves. They worked for him in Virginia. I guess the vague idea was that he has a really idealized image as president, and so we’ll just associate him with other guys we like, like Obama. They could have just as easily put Thomas Edison’s head behind him – if anybody knew what he looked like. But we don’t, and we don’t have a Lincoln/Obama coin here. We have a Washington/Obama coin, on which we will print the bold-faced rationalization that President Washington emancipated his slaves in his will, and thus had he lived to this century he would have happily let Obama stop working on his plantation and let him be president just as soon as he died. I think that should take the potential offense out of it for everyone.

Rejected Proposal #3

So what we’ll do is knock down the external wall of the church. Not the whole wall, just the little bit beside the padre’s confessional. We’ll build in the same little wicker thing to obscure the face of repentant, but realistically we’ll want intercoms so that they can confess from the drive-through. Maybe we’ll install an automated system so they can tell the operator the nature and severity of his sins, so the padre can produce pertinent penitence in the most expeditious manner. I don’t know who the operator will be. Do you have a spare nun around?

Bathroom Monologue: Rejected Proposal #2

So what we’ll do is abduct babies straight from the nursery. Publishing is dwindling and some say we should go to all e-distribution, but do you really want to depend on a medium where piracy is the norm? We’ve got to create brand new technology. We’ve got to pre-load our books in the brains of children straight from the womb, then charge for the privilege. It’s what PC’s have been doing with software for years – Microsoft Office comes loaded, with charges going back to the home company. The moms won’t even know what happened, but their little chubby miracles will be pre-loaded with Melville and Proust. Their first words won’t be, “Dada,” but, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It’ll be tacked on to the bill as they exit the hospital. Nobody reads those.

Bathroom Monologue: Rejected Proposal #1

So what we’ll do is load a super-virus into the server that only appears on that one page. They can search Wikipedia for King George, Sesame Street or Absurdism, but not Wikipedia itself! It’s like biting your own teeth. Instead of a normal page what loads is a series of flashing messages like, “Why would you do this to me? Why, operator, why?” before their hard drives fry. It’ll be hilarious.

Rejected Proposal Week

This week, from today to Saturday, I'll be posting monologues with the theme of Rejected Proposals. You'll see recommendations for the U.S. Mint, the Catholic Church and videogame companies looking to court our ever-increasing interest in the end of the world. Please vote for your favorite in the poll, which should show up in the next couple of days.

Bathroom Monologue: To Be Wrong

“My greatest unease is when I don’t hear any of the loons saying this stuff anymore. It’s not when all the men of reason disagree that I become worried. Einstein was the only one to believe certain things for a time, as was Newton’s lot, as was Galileo’s. People make reason say whatever they want it to say; it’s a puppet that can do any dance. It’s when all the crazies disagree with me that I worry. They are such a diverse lot, some with theories of UFO puppeteers, some of a violent blasphemous trinity, of fairies controlling gravity, and all of them so divorced from sense as I know it that if not one of them has any thoughts congruent with mine, I must be worse than mad. No, for a hundred geniuses are apt to agree with each other, but a hundred madmen have a hundred ideas, and if none of the hundred so much as echo mine, my theory must have gone wrong somewhere.”