Bathroom Monologue: It Feels (A Godzilla Haiku)

Army sees my breath,
teeth, scales, spines. All that I am.
Except my feelings.

Bathroom Monologue: The .lit Revolution

New .lit files aren’t just rich text files – they’re enriched text files. Download one directly to any internal mind hard drive, and a .lit file will cause you to remember everything the author thought as she wrote her book. From the first day she sat down at the computer through the drafting process, you’ll know the intention of every single word. Where an annotated version can only give you footnotes, .lit simultaneously allows you to remember up to sixteen revisions of the same sentence with perfect 64-bit clarity.

Gone will be the mystery of what was allegory and what was accident. Gone will be scholarly and message board debates over an author’s feelings. Does fiction reveal autobiographical information? You’ll never know unless you get the .lit.

And using existing .lib ™ technology, .lit files will give you a full memory of having read the book, without the hassle of actually experiencing it. No hardcover prices. No waiting for e-reader editions. No hours of sitting there listening to an audiobook narrator. No, with .lit you will remember the book perfectly without ever having had to experience it.

The .lit revolution hits this fall with twelve blockbuster titles from premiere authors. Feel the fear in a Horror novelist’s gut as he tries to write his protagonist out of a corner. Feel a poet laureate’s soul sing as difficult meter is achieved. Some readers may wonder how we get writers to plug themselves into a USB for the entire writing process, but don’t worry – it’s entirely ethical and the compensation is highly competitive. Pre-order your .lit copies today and you’ll receive bonus content: memories of having been at the author’s release party, accessible to you before the book even comes out!

Bathroom Monologue: Karen Schindler and Jodi MacArthur want me to write about “Comment Gobblers”

Comment Gobblers are actually the abducted children of Pac-Man. You know Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. Perhaps you even know of Jr. Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man, but those were unauthorized children, adopted to fill the hole the Pac-Family's lives. Software developers kidnapped the Pac-Brood as soon as they were conceived, before the zygote split and there was just one pixel of Pac-ness.

Stolen from the warm embrace of their yellow parents, the Pac-Brood were raised in harsh environments like Doom and Pit Fall. A Pac-Person’s inability to jump makes Pitfall an emotionally scarring experience. These games left them both callous and with a deep hunger for something. In the absence of little white pellets strewn about a maze, these Pac-Persons could be directed at anything and expected to swallow them.

What did they swallow? Your Comments on various blogs. Your personal information on e-forms. Anything you’ve ever typed and submitted only to be told the server lost it and you’ll have to fill it out again – that was the work of an abused Pac-Person. They buzz through dial-up and T-1 lines, relishing in the bonus stages that crappy Word Verification programs enable. They’re not doing it out of malice to you – they’re just starving for approval, and desperately running from the ghosts of their lost past.

Bathroom Monologue: From Oosa

I'm from Oosa.

Oh, where is that? Scotland?

What? No. It's a country.

Oh? Where?

Do you know Canada?

Oh, it’s in the Canada?

Just south of it.

I thought your accent sounded American.

Yeah, a lot of Oosans just call ourselves Americans. I don't. I think it's impolite to all the other countries.

Oosa is in South America?

No, just south of Canada.

Is it an island?

Only part of it. Havay-ee.

Havay-ee?

Yes. It’s in the Pacific.

Oosa is?

Only the part that is Havay-ee.

What else is there?

Forty-nine other states in it.

There are fifty states in Oosa?

I’m surprised the Eeyuh doesn’t educate people on it.

Eeyuh?

You know. This place.

You’re in Britian, sir.

Which is part of the Eeyuh.

Wait a minute. Are you just pronouncing the acronym for “U.S.A?”

No. That’s the pronunciation for “E.U.”

Firstly, don’t do that. You make it sound disgusting.

So sorry, but that's how you spell it.

Secondly, I’ve never heard anyone pronounce it like that before.

Do you go to Oosa often?

We get a lot of television. You talk about yourselves a lot on it.

Oh, you like Oosan tiv?

Stop that.

Bathroom Monologue: Max Cantor asks me to write a monologue with the title "Murder: The most important meal of the day."

Oh, you mean the cannikabals. The sect of Judaism that absorbed tradition digestively. Obviously there was some initial drama over the "thou shalt not kill" thing, but they bought people on the fair market. After that the mainstream Jews rejected them for being non-kosher, and the sect broke off to do its own thing. They were permitted to eat any learned person they liked six days a week, but on the sabbath to partake in at least part of a Rabbi. A very literal people with a personal connection to the indigestible Yahweh, they always set a place at their table for the Lord. The cannikabals never converted to secularism like other Jewish cultures because secularism isn't inheritable by diet, or at least not from a single, heavy meal. Today they run respectable lobbying firms in the U.S. and E.U., defending themselves against what they view as their greatest threats: anti-semitism and childhood obesity.

Bathroom Monologue: x6

I’m old. Older all the time. It’s a peculiar disability. You know how the Antichrist is supposed to have three 6’s on his scalp? Well I have ‘x6’ on my scalp. I’m so old that I get six times older for every day that passes. Aging backwards in time itself, so I may look in my twenties to you, but I stretch back. By age two I was twelve years old. By the time Mom was looking at Daycare, I was an assistant to Darwin – the one who covered up those letters from Gregor Mendel so he looked like more of a genius. When people ask me to tell them about the war, I ask, “Which one?” By the time I could drive, I helped invent the covered wagon. By the time my brother could drive, I was giving Romulus and Remus family counseling. I’m so old that on my deathbed, I’ll have given that God kid a loan for His “start-up venture.” I’ll hope it turns out good. I’ll be so old that by then, I’ll have seen all of it.

Quilted For Your Pleasure: Rabbi, Priest, Minister Joke

Quilted For Your Pleasure continues. Click on the above image to view this Sunday's cartoon.

It was composed in the bathroom by John Wiswell. He can't draw, which is to say, he was told in his teens that his drawings were not good enough to go up in a museum, and thus switched career paths to fiction. Seriously. What a queen.

It was drawn by Max Cantor. He can't draw either. OH WHAT'S THAT, MAX? YOU CAN'T EDIT TEXT ON THE BLOG? HOW UNFORTUNATE FOR YOU! OH DRAWING CAN'T FIX THIS FOR YOU? WHY DON'T YOU DRAW A BETTER BIO FOR YOURSELF WITH YOUR MAGICAL DRAWING POWERS?