Bathroom Monologue: Crotchety Bathroom Aphorism?

“Some say the situation defines the person, and some say the person defines the situation. But in truth, what transpires between the person and the situation is a private affair that no one else really cares about. The public will define both for you at half the cost, often before either is finished.”

Bathroom Monologue: Friendly Tortragon

All dragons require some form of treasure to make a comfortable bed. This is considered psychosomatic, or magical. It’s hard to tell the difference when you’re studying a creature whose nervous system is made out of fire.

The internal workings of most dragons are entirely flame-based, though the tortragon is filled with pure plasma – the stuff of stars. Biologists theorize that this creature may be the oldest living kind of dragon, and its plasma interior may hold the keys to the modern, bellicose and fiery dragons of the land and sky. They note that the plasma-based interior has allowed the single generation of tortragons to survive nearly as long as the seas themselves, peacefully drifting inside their giant shells without disturbing people or other aquatic life. Their fusion cores as so efficient that they don’t even need to eat, which explains why so many tasty fish and marine mammals play on them.

The only thing that routinely makes a tortragon testy is finding a bed. They like shiny seashells, and will go to war with an entire human flotilla if enough pearls are smelled to be nearby. They have little interest in gold or sunken treasure, so there’s no use to searching for it around them.

Ironically it is not pearls that bring them into conflict with humans most frequently. At least seven out of every nine cases of tortragon-on-human violence are initiated by people landing on the giant shells of slumbering tortragons and attempting to dig for buried treasure. This, along with the immorality of theft, is a key reason to not go treasure hunting.

Bathroom Monologue: Newton and Priestley Become the Two Old Muppets on that Balcony

The two looked around the room. The walls and floor were steel, with only a wooden table in the center. There were no windows, and still stranger, they both suspected that they were supposed to be dead.

Both being upright gentlemen, one extended a hand in greeting shortly.

“Isaac Newton.”

“Ah, pleased to meet you. Joseph Priestley.”

“Didn’t you discover air?”

“Why, yes. And didn’t you discover gravity?”

“Among other things.”

“Never thought much of that. Not so difficult to realize things fall down.”

“As opposed to the staggering genius of realizing there was something in front of your face? Wind never gave that away?"

“You don’t think we’re consigned to this box because we discovered obvious things, do you?”

“Not unless Rene Descartes shows up shortly.”

“Why Rene Descartes?”

“Because he discovered that he existed at all.”

Oh, and they laughed.

Bathroom Monologue: Space as a Starting Point

“Well, I noticed that we had a massive sexual liberation movement going on at the same time as an end-death movement. People want to rut at will and live forever, ignoring that combined you’re going to have serious space issues. That’s when I realized if I wanted to make an impact, I should start this movement: building more apartments. Condos on the moon are cheap, but if you want a view, I consider my Venutian garden apartments underpriced. These are all run for profit, mind you, intended to fund my actual philanthropic endeavor. I’m going to generate entirely new planets. We’re building an engine that will break the laws of physics and manufacture matter, because let’s face it: there aren’t enough moons and planets in all the cosmos to house the fruits of kinky immortals on Viagra.”

“Obama to ease Cuba travel restrictions” –Headline on CNN.com, OR...

“Obama to ease Cuba travel restrictions” –Headline on CNN.com

OR

“The decision, which comes just days before President Obama leaves for the Summit of the Americas…” –Same article

-Anyone named “Barack Obama” may travel to Cuba and enjoy total diplomatic immunity
-All Cuban nationals must refer to foreign presidents as “Superman,” and follow any comment, be it negative, positive or neutral, upon his person with a compliment of his most fabulous cape
-The Cuban government must provide President Obama with a most fabulous cape
-For the next two weeks you can bring as many cigars into the country as you can hold in your wheelbarrow
-Wheelbarrows will now be allowed on international flights to Cuba
-All international flights must attach a special strap to left wing upon which a man wearing a most fabulous cape may be secured such that he can pretend he is flying
-All shops in Cuba will operate as “duty free” whenever anyone named “Barack Obama” walks into one
-Anyone named “Barack Obama” may punch babies with impunity
-Does Cuba have heat vision yet?

Bathroom Monologue: Ping-Ponging Kids

Edmund and Isaiah were very good friends with two very prudent mothers. They ping-ponged between houses on weekdays: Edmund at Isaiah’s on Monday, Isaiah at Edmund’s on Tuesday, and so-forth, for help with homework, sharing of videogames, and eventually social discussions, and eventually covert hashish, and eventually inexplicably hilarious social discussions that you couldn’t have understood if you weren’t there and you’re sure your mom can’t smell it from under the door?

Their prudent mothers armed their sons with gifts for the opposition, and when a son spent so much time at another mother’s kitchen table, the foreign mother was determined to become opposition. So a little thing of nutmeg went from Shirley (Edmund’s mother) to Aliyah (Isaiah’s mother). Aliyah responded with a Hummel figurine, and the ping-ponging escalated from just boys to boys and goods.

The boys knew no more of what they were doing than settler children when their Puritanical parents asked them to bring the blanket grandpa died in to the Native American camp. They dumped their goods at the door and ran off for the Wii. The whole affair might have calloused over there if not for one errant pong in response to a ping.

If you asked either mother she would have told you her opposition had re-gifted the Morthful’s Chocolate Sampler, a fine box of candies retailing between $15-35, depending on how little you paid attention to where you got it. It was by the far priciest gifted ping-ponged between the children, and one Wednesday it wound up back at Aliyah’s. She became so furious that she had only one course of satisfaction: to send it back to Shirley.

But Shirley received it and had the same sense of re-gifting, with no memory of having re-gifted it herself. To even propose she had re-gifted the Morthful’s Chocolate Sampler would have brought about such a rage that nothing short of divorce and witness protection would save you.

So Shirley sent it back with a little note, saying she hoped Aliyah enjoyed the chocolates.

It returned to Shirley’s abode the next time Isaiah came over, now with a smiley face sticker on it. She loathed that smile, especially once she realized she couldn’t peel it off without leaving evidence behind. For an hour she knew the panic of a chess player caught in a gambit, until she found a bigger, orange smiley face sticker to place over the original.

It became an arms race of good will. Bigger stickers, wrapping paper and ever-lengthening, increasingly saccharine notes on how this was my favorite brand and I thought you’d like it, and everyone says you’re getting so skinny, and didn’t you know chocolate is good for stress? Neither would blink.

Aliyah was preparing a three-page letter with quotes from the Talmud, Francis Bacon and Bernard Shaw to attach to the parcel one the final day. She didn’t know it to be the final day and was printing the thing out when she went to the door to collect the sampler, only to find it missing. The boys were home, so they had to have brought it. But it wasn’t by the door, or on the kitchen table.

She found the box half an hour later, in Isaiah’s garbage can. It was opened and looted of everything but the chocolates with fruit in the middle. She could not make a move with Edmund there, but she stared waves of spanking and suspended allowance from his door for fifteen straight minutes as he tried to beat a boss monster. Neither boy turned to recognize her. The brown smear on one corner of her son’s left cheek seemed to stare back at her, emanating equal and polar opposite waves of maternal defeat and social disgrace.

She interrupted their game, not to scold but to say she’d be back in an hour. She knew what she had to do. The local Pharmacist had to have more of those samplers, and a fresh package meant fresh space upon which she could wage her war of passive attrition. Hell, maybe she’d buy two of them. See that old bag re-gift them both.

The old bag did re-gift them, attaching not a three-page scholarly note on charity, but a coupon for another sampler. Aliyah went and used the coupon, then sent all three boxes to Shirley the next day. Shirley sent them write back, done up in a basket with several layers of colored cellophane paper. Aliyah typed up a note, stuck it in the basket, and had Isaiah march it right back to Shirley’s the next day.

That night, Aliyah got a phone call from Shirley’s husband, Wilson. He thanked her profusely for all the chocolates, said they’d been a big hit at his poker game, and invited her husband to join next week.

Aliyah was stunned. When she hung up, her husband asked who that had been. She threw a chocolate at him.

Bathroom Monologue: Ghoulish

She liked to waltz through graveyards, dancing and calculating. How much body mass was left in all the coffins under here? If the average person was one hundred and seventy pounds, how many coffins would she have to empty out to get a full man? Would they add up a whole person if you pushed all the rot together? And would such a golem be interested in the kinds of films and foods she liked, or would she just have to put up with him like all the men already above ground? Matters of the heart were so difficult, especially when it was decomposing.