Bathroom Monologue: How many of these sins are really deadly?

"I hate these sin-themed clubs. "The Deadly Sins." "The Seven Sins Inn." Give me a break. They're all lust-themed. If you go in there you won’t find any terminally slow people. The girls dancing on the tables won’t be deeply envying anything about you – except possibly that you aren’t embarrassing yourself for tips, and even that will be kept private. Wrath? The bouncers have a strict policy against unnecessary aggression to prevent getting sued. Gluttony? Please, they won’t even let fat people in the door. It’s all lust, and lust isn’t even that deadly a sin. Usually it costs a couple hundred bucks or a dinner. If you're unlucky, it costs a broken heart or syphilis. If lust is getting you killed you’re doing it wrong, and probably so wrong it’s good that you’re out of the dating pool."

Bathroom Monologue: G1 and G2

We stole this idea from Japanese cartoons. Reincarnation is huge over there, and they like to do series asking what it would be like if the Shinsengumi or some mythological characters were born again today. So we’re going to do that here, asking what it would be like if King Arthur’s court were all reincarnated today in the same state. I’m saying Montana, because that place is almost barren as it is, giving us plenty of spacious settings for giant-scale fight scenes. We’ll start off with it just being Arthur and his wingman, Lance. Natural birthing issues will intervene; use of forceps in Sir Galahad’s birth leave him clinically brain damaged, and Guinevere is divided into two monozygotic twins. The multiple Guinevere solves most of the Arthur/Lancelot love triangle, though I’m thinking G1 and G2 swap boys without telling them, just to mess with them. We can play it up if we’re optioned by one of the trashier channels.

Arthur and G2 wise up on the whole reincarnation thing and avoid disaster in future seasons by aborting Mordred.

The Holy Grail will be the trophy for the state football finals. The reincarnated Gawain will fulfill the legend of being the only one who reaches the grail by transferring to another school at the last minute and winning the thing. The last episode will focus on his retrospective, reading hard history on how Arthurian folklore was almost entirely bogus, leaving him to wonder how all these crazy stuff happened if they aren’t living an actual mythological cycle. He’s about to figure it out when he gets eaten by a dragon.

If it’s successful we’ll do a spinoff with the Founding Fathers. Ben Franklin will make an awesome cheerleader.

Bathroom Monologue: A Thmale’s Pace

Currently it is not legal for same sex couples to exercise the privileges of different sex couples in many states. The biggest issue for many couples is a same sex partner not being allowed to visit his or her spouse in the hospital or make decisions for him or her when he or she is incapacitated. This legal right is reserved for different sex couples and is the topic of some dispute. For those trapped in this dispute I recommend not moving to some crazy hippie state, but simply inventing a new sex.

Take me. I am male, heterosexual and some day might get married. However, being rational and having great experience with many women, I have no desire to let one do whatever the heck she wants with me if I’m in a coma. Thus I will happily cohabitate with her, but will instead partner with a man – preferably a Quaker ACLU lawyer will study me like I’m the Bible in order to carry out whatever I might want.

But you may say, “Hogarth, this QuaCLU lawyer may be a male!”

True enough, but I will not be male for the marriage. Instead I will add some tufts of hair to new parts of the body (I’m thinking along the hamstrings and my collarbone), and add some new genitalia I’ve designed using a scented candle and half a bottle of Mountain Dew. Henceforth I will be a “thmale.” I won’t share the design because you might then steal it and copyright my personal form of sexual liberation.

When one studies the human body and realizes that the external differences are little more than the differences between an innie and an outie, it shouldn’t be too hard to invent your own gender at home, in the deli, or at an arts and crafts class.

Reproduction with your new sexual identity may be more difficult. I recommend adoption, and sterilizing your new genitalia before application. All the penicillin in the world won’t take the embarrassment out of explaining thmales to your doctor.

Bathroom Monologue: Philociraptor

The scariest thing about them is that they can open doors. That means at 2:00 AM one of these bipedal creatures can come busting into your dorm and lecture you on Kierkegard, and if your eyes glaze for even a second she can gut you with her retractable toe claw. The retractable toe claw is not unique to philociraptors, though most other species of philosophy professors are subtler about it, having taken to wearing more expensive shoes. My worst experience was when I thought I was stealthily avoiding one in line at the dining hall – he was terrorizing some freshmen about his upcoming Immanuel Kant seminar – and just as I passed the lime jell-o, ba’am, his teaching assistant got me from the side. They spent the entire lunch hour chewing my ear off about cloning and bio-ethics.

Bathroom Monologue: Chlorophyll is Green

The yellow man tapped his cigar on the plate, letting the ashes mingle with the remains of the red cuisine as he lectured, “Money is not the root of all evil, but in every story of evil there is a bill. Money is a conduit of evils. It links one state to another. You being hungry on the street can be linked to you eating pork roast in here by a Chinese fingertrap made from a rolled-up twenty. But you eating pork isn’t necessarily evil, nor is you paying someone to prepare it for you. That’s where the evil really gets in, you see, because there’s no evil in owning a gun. There’s no evil in walking to streets of Baltimore at midnight. Sometimes a gun is purchased with evil intentions, and sometimes you go out at night with evil intentions, so sometimes evil exists before the action. Sometimes you get carried away while the action is going on, and suddenly her painting is ruined. Sometimes you carry out the action with a mistake at the end, and the wrong man sits in the electric chair. Evil can be an accident, and evil can creep up at any point in it. Money so expedites things and so attracts the attention that the moral sense is dulled. But money isn’t the root. Money is the chlorophyll in the evil plant. It’s necessary to keep it going, but it’s just one part.”

Bathroom Monologue: Obsessive Compulsive Order, OR, Love You, Deirdre

Husna Selznick suffers from many conflicts. She is a second-generation Pakistani immigrant that married a Russian Jew, a publishing agent that constantly tries to sell Literary novels to her contacts at big agencies, and a pork-lover that cooks Kosher for family. These conflicts, she says, are “arbitrary amusements” in the face of the one thing that has truly pursued her. Some call it Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, though if you mention the complex to her she will correct.

“It’s Obsessive Compulsive Order,” Husna says in her living room, minutes after vacuuming over the steps my socks made in her carpet. “I obsess. I am compelled. But I am obsessively compelled to order, and I know exactly what I’m doing.”

She has a series of hooks for brooms, moops, vacuums and steam devices on the back one of closet door to prove it.

Husna was diagnosed with OCD some twenty years ago. In her first series of treatments she realized much of her disorder was intentional.

“I liked things being clean. My compulsions were mostly conscious,” she explains. “Even when I was bitchy down on my knees re-grouting the kitchen, I was happier than I was thinking about fighting with Papa or figuring out credit bills. The funny thing was that afterwards all the stress was gone and I could react reasonably. Plus I actually felt happy. There’s a buzz to order.”

Aaron Selznick, Husna’s husband, adds, “Beats Zoloft.”

Aaron does not suffer from OCD or OCO, but claims to sympathize with it thanks to a life in Accounting. He likens her perfectly aligned series of clay doves on the living room windowsills (which she attended to twice during the interview) to the squeeze toy in his desk.

“When I get worked up over something, he tips something over,” she says, eyeing a part of the floor that looks as clean as any other part to the mortal eye.

During the interview Aaron, her husband, explained that she’d been very nervous to meet me and have a photo printed. When she got too nervous he simply squirted a little ketchup on the floor. When Husna was through yelling at him and scrubbing it, she didn’t feel any anxiety. They spent the rest of the night watching Monk.

Bathroom Monologue: Thirty-Three Wiswell Squats Next to the Shower

This is part of my exercise routine from last year, dropped when I realized a dozen doughnuts are much easier than a dozen laps. Thirty-three Wiswell Squats. I’m the only Wiswell that does them, so it’s actually a recessive feature of family, but names are important to me. Get the hand weights, squat bending the knees and pushing the chest out until your ass is parallel to the floor, then straighten back up to proper posture, moving your arms in semi-circles until the weights are high over your head. One makes you feel like an idiot. Thirty-two make you feel like you’re alive. Thirty-three, provided you stop on it, makes you feel like your body has fired you from the company. Legs turn to linguini, the arms ache, the back screams, and because you’re a Wiswell and never undertake exercise too far away from comfort, you flop onto bed. After a while you’ll catch your breath and be able to walk about decently, but if you doubt the Wiswell Squats took effect, take the stairs. The sudden feeling that gravity is auditing your records will give you faith in the exercise.

Thirty-three is my maximum before asthma kicks in, no matter how I pace myself. Last year I was doing three sets of thirty-three a day. Every other day. There are only so many audits a man can take.

Bathroom Monologue: Science Vs. Religion, Edition 3.5

The battle between science and religion raged until a freshman at Cal Tech pointed out that neither was actually a person with opinions nor a thing with physical properties, and that all of the conflicts happened between homo sapiens who were neither science nor religion. Thus far science and religion had been incredibly selfish, allowing third parties to do all the fighting for them.

One of the technical institute’s extracurricular clubs devised a proper competition between the two, writing “Science” on one index card and “Religion” on the other, giving them equal physical representation, then leaving the two on a table top outside the dorms. Whichever was left standing would be considered the victor.

Two hours into the combat a slight breeze flipped Religion upside down, viewed by part of the crowd as a sign of inferiority. However the act of flipping made it land on top of the “Science” card, suggesting its superiority via pinfall to another segment of the crowd. A third segment, composed primarily of people from the Gay/Straight Alliance, considered it kinky.

Fifteen minutes later a second breeze came by and blew both cards into the mud. The contest was ruled a draw by a visiting poetry lecturer. The few people who still cared by then went off to play table tennis. A similar form of conflict resolution will be applied to Star Trek and Star Wars next semester.

Bathroom Monologue: Diversity Two

Quinting stands as one of the most popular artistic film directors of his generation, with Wild Tulips Limited, Crossed Veins and Mr. Rogers: A Documentary each reaching blockbuster status almost despite their critical success. He had been nominated for four Academy Awards and heralded by the New York Times as “the most creative… and visionary director in our out of Hollywood.” However culture critic George Hausen dismisses Quinting’s work, saying that while his films are striking if you have only seen one or two, that he only makes two kinds of movies: pell-mell comedy about sexually frustrated, financially irresponsible idiots, and post-modern noir about love. When approached about the criticism, Quinting said he was relieved Hausen thinks so highly of himself, “as that’s two more kinds of movies than most directors make.”

Bathroom Monologue: Rob Vs. Rob (no relation)

Rob Roy (no relation) had a stalker. He had never seen him, except for fleeting glimpses in the mirror, but he knew well of his existence. This stalker even had a name: Rob of Tomorrow. To Rob this man was a parasite living off the efforts of his present, spending the money he now worked for and tapping the girls he now only chatted up. This “plan for your future” business didn’t interest him. It was raw propaganda in favor of some later self that would bask in your good work. He threw obstacles in Rob of Tomorrow’s path, like racking up a credit card bill that the son of a bitch would never be able to pay off. Whether or not he did wasn’t Rob’s problem. Not presently.

Bathroom Monologue: This one’s almost done

“Almost” counts in way more than just horseshoes and hand grenades. A nearly perfect holiday dinner with both your relatives and hers is pretty damned miraculous. The bomb destroying almost the entire city darned sure means a lot to the people in the buildings that were only almost destroyed. And trust me, if a bunch of monkeys chained to typewriters wrote up to:

“How does my project gather to a head:
My charms crack not; my spirits obey; and time
Goes upright with his carriage. How's the d32g45a54”

before their manuscript disintegrated into random keystrokes, you’d be impressed.

But if you recognized those lines as the opening of the last act in the last play William Shakespeare wrote independently, and connected it to the popular theory that an infinite number of monkeys hitting keys at random could write the entire works of that playwright, well, that’s almost unbelievable.

Bathroom Monologue: Bathroom Monologue Over the Phone

“You think being a psychic is all glamour and illusion? What do you know? You ever been up all night because of the chirping the birds are gonna make in the morning? You ever been on a date with a girl way out of your league but you rode into the spot on pity, only to have to blow it off because you foresee a murder and know being at the scene as a potential witness is the only way to stop it? Of course you haven’t. Keep your cynicism to yourself. It’s the only way you’ll ever get married. And if you want to know whether that’s a snap judgment or a prophecy, you’ll have to sign up for our Premium Service. It’s only 7.99 extra. Would you like it? Not that we both don’t already know the answer to that.”

Bathroom Monologue: Bathroom Break from the John Adams Miniseries

Doreen stopped before the procession of soldiers. She stared not at their crude uniforms nor homemade rifles, but at the flag flapping at the head.

It was a flag of seven red stripes and six white, with the snake that represents the thirteen states running across it. On the bottom-most white stripe read the demand of each young man in the militia: “DONT TREAD ON ME”

Her sons stopped behind her, clutching at her skirt. A hitch went up her throat and she put a hand to her mouth to stifle sob.

“Those boys… in such a hurry …” she muttered. Another sob came.

Her sons looked up at her and frowned. Was it that the older boys would die in battle? Did she simply hate war? Was it too futile an effort? Did she think of how other mothers would feel when news came of the fallen? Or fear for them, when they grew of age to serve?

“Hurrying so …” she gasped, “that they hadn’t the time to put an apostrophe in ‘Don’t.’ Their poor, poor English teacher…”

Bathroom Monologue: “hannah montana” –6th fastest rising search term on google.com in the United Arab Emirates

The pop star glanced around the arena. Clearly wearing this sort of skirt here made her nervous.

“Don’t these people demand all women wear the veil?”

Her agent shook his head, as well as a fistful of dollars.

“Sixth fastest rising search term, Hannah!”

“I still think the outfit could get me stoned… And do these people even speak English?”

“Doesn’t matter if they get the lyrics. Probably better they don’t. If they’re offended, we can afford security.”

“Couldn’t we at least research this first?”

Her agent shoved her through the door to the stage, yelling, “But google!”

Bathroom Monologue: Physicians do no harm. What do you do?

“I lived in this beautiful glass ignorance, that allowed in the shining light of humor, but kept comedians out. It was a cathedral of not getting the point. I think I was reading Terry Pratchett when the first crack ran down the first wall, but realization made them spread quickly, and in poured a torrent of bile and cynicism. All those years I’d never known the glass walls sheltered an Atlantis under a sea of hate. I treaded in realizations that Mark Twain and Douglas Adams had really hated a great deal of the things they’d mocked, and that hateless writers had hate filled in by others. I remember one splash in the face from a journalist explaining Garrison Keilor’s ‘all the children are above average’ was a criticism of child self-esteem propaganda. And I earnestly mean I was drowning. I could feel my psyche lose its breath – lose the very ability to inspire, as Jonathan Swift once pointed out in one of the few times he wasn’t hating anybody. For all those years the glass cathedral had protected me under an ocean of nastiness, of hate for my fellow man and his every occupation, from prayer to napalm to car commercials, inculcating a belief that everyone should be at ease with everything and ought to express it through general humor. At the center, on the top floor of this glass palace was a cherished table where all friends would sit, true friends amongst whom no difference created spite, and all was mediated by tolerance and the love found in laughter. I’d never thought these satirists hated half of what they lampooned, and that they could never sit at this table. Beyond the walls of the cathedral, they merely looked like they were easing the world to place of amiable tolerance in which real scorn was unnecessary. To realize that so many things in books and stand-up albums weren’t jokes between friends I’d taken them as, but were supposed to be coercive… I could barely bring myself to joke anymore. It gave laughter a pathetic dimension that I’d never wish on anyone, let alone my favorite pastime. However, the belief was not drowned. It merely became a little soggy.”

Bathroom Monologue: “The South will rise again!” –Bumper sticker

It was the most interesting Tuesday in a while. Residents of Texas woke up to find they bordered Canada, turned on the news and found someone had flipped the entire country. The cause was uncertain, but had something to do with now-banned rubix cubes.

Some states handled it better. South Dakota liked being above “the other” for once, while North Dakotans enjoyed amazing returns on real estate investments, as what was once frosty wilderness became beach-front property along the Gulf of Mexico.

People were surprisingly nonplussed by their geographic catastrophe, feeling the move was odd, but livable so long as the local Wal-Mart had come with them. When approached by the National Weather Service to prepare for the upcoming Nor-Easter season, the citizens of Louisiana laughed hysterically.

Despite having swapped positions, New York City and Atlanta report having almost identical terrible airport service. Ticket holders for all international flights have been informed to arrive an hour early, but to expect, “to board about as delayed as usual.”

Names that spam bots have used to e-mail me, OR, Names that may soon be used to populate a novel

-Agamemnon Castro
-Banham Mi
-Merlin C. Hardy
-Aginualdo Dean
-Kym Latarsha
-Mr. Johnson Tsvangrai
-me
-Abel Bowman (awesome, awesome, awesome)
-Alfonso McManus
-Natalia Fountain
-Phebe Chau
-Albrecht Cunningham
-Berry Livingston
-Afton Lilla
-Interpol John Brown (they’re onto me!)
-Florene Shawanda
-Aguie Cobb
-Albatros Bowen
-Anisa Un
-Aleksandr Black (supervillain if I’ve ever heard of one)
-Concepcion Dalila (his sidekick?)
-Alva Slaughter (a team of supervillains?)
-me
-Orville Rossi
-Kristy Pike
-Alisander Day
-Sage Jesusa (sadly, not selling Bibles)
-Alisia Giuseppina
-Dawn Becki
-Efren Boone
-me (I don’t recall signing up as a spammer service, but darn I got busy)
-Addison Atkins
-Tessa Dye
-Lacy Wu
-Brooks Crow
-Horace Kramer
-Mitzi Meade (a superheroine alter ego if I’ve ever heard one – Black’s nemesis?)
-Christian Timothy (but no Zoroastrian Timothy)
-Ava Maldonado
-Brandi Kilgore
-Roscoe Schneider
-Augusta Berry
-Ace Banks
-Terra Ali
-Fern Sellers (not sure if this is a store name or a person)
-Alf Delgado
-Chieko Gisele
-Yvette C. Sawyer
-me (this time it’s a “Failure Of Delivery Notice,” meaning this time I managed to fail hanging myself a dubious advertisement)
-Aldrich Diaz
-Thad Bolden
-Ade Butler
-Devorah Willodean (I believe she’ll be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts next year)
-Eve Cash

Bathroom Monologue: “Why are you a Democrat in 2008?” –Howard Dean, beginning a youtube challenge

Well, it began with a promise of mechs. I specifically remember Bill Clinton saying I’d get some sort of giant robot armor out of this, during one of the later visits to Camp David. And since they were promising robots of mass destruction, I punched that chad on my registration card. I continue to be one because it carries no requirement to vote for the party, because I can vote in state primaries for the party, and because that means I can throw my vote behind whatever candidate mentions Gundams.

Bathroom Monologue: Venn-Shades-of-Grey

“A monologue about Anthony Venn-Brown? Okay, but I don’t know if there’s anything funny I can say about a gay guy who tried so hard to be heterosexual that he wound up with kids. He lived the punch line, and any joke after that is much less funny. But I do admire Mr. Venn-Brown for being such an advocate of alternative lifestyles. The world could use more openly gay evangelists. There’s a missionary position joke there, but I won’t make it, out of my respect to this man. It’s people like him who have made me quit calling myself ‘straight,’ because is a lesbian really crooked? We both bend to get our work done.”

Bathroom Monologue: The ball is in your court, Hemingway

For sale: baby booties. Worn a bunch. Really like ‘em, but don’t fit anymore.

Bathroom Monologue: Chapter Ksvee, OR, Chapter 18

No, it is Rambo 2. It is Final Fantasy 12, not Final Fantasy XII (and really, twelve final things in a series?). I use numbers instead of numerals because when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and I live in New York. I do not write Mao Zedong in Simplified Chinese Characters or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Arabic alphabet. We already have a written language system with perfectly good letters and numbers. They work very nicely and take half the ink to write “18” instead of “XVIII.” In other cultures, I think something like Vatican II is just fine (even liberal and forward thinking), but here it’s going to be Saw 4.

Bathroom Monologue: The Best of Netflix Recommendations (all 100% true)

-Because you enjoyed Stand By Me: Lord of the Flies
-Because you enjoyed The Queen: March of the Penguins
-Because you enjoyed The Network: I, Claudius
-Because you enjoyed My Neighbor Totoro: Jackson Pollock - Love and Death
-Because you enjoyed The Host: Through Deaf Eyes (PBS Home Video)
-Because you enjoyed Godzilla Vs. Gigan: Spongebob for Hire
-Because you enjoyed Hotel Rwanda: Finding Neverland
-Because you enjoyed Gandhi: BBC Presents – The Life of Birds (3-Disc Series)
-Because you enjoyed Young Frankenstein: Legacy: The Origin of Civilizations (3-Disc Series)
-Because you enjoyed Seven Samurai: The Red Balloon
-Because you enjoyed 12 Angry Men: Hamlet – Special Edition
-Because you enjoyed Zatoichi – The Blind Swordsman: Abominable
-Because you enjoyed Rope: The King of Kong

To clarify for those people who don’t watch a lot of crap, the joke is that Netflix is using an algorithm to guess which movies I’d like to watch based on what movies I’ve told it I already like, and its suggestions are wildly inappropriate. For instance, I liked Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman, a quirky Japanese drama about a blind swordsman at the end of the period of the samurai, coming into conflict with a town mob that is alternately grave, such as his encounters with a mercenary who serves the mob only to pay for medicine for his dying lover, and hilarious, such as the closing dance scene. Based on whatever preferences other people had registered for the film, the algorithm decided the movie I’d most like next was Abominable, an American B-horror movie about a guy stuck in a wheelchair who watches in terror through his window as a bunch of bimbos next door get mauled by a guy in the single worst yeti costume I’ve ever seen. Similarly it saw that I liked The Network, a classic indictment of television news and media culture, and decided I would like the I, Claudius miniseries, about a hunchback who watches various ancient Roman politicians get assassinated. It saw that I liked Hotel Rwanda, the largely true story about a hotel runner who hid targeted minorities in his rooms during ethnic cleansing in the hopes of saving their lives, and decided I would like Finding Neverland, the largely embellished story about the guy who wrote Peter Pan falling in love.

Bathroom Monologue: Sometimes in the same monologue

“You find the short story unbelievable? Oh, good! I was afraid people would think it actually happened. What, you think unbelievable fiction is bad? I say thinking fiction happened is much worse. I want people to think I made it up. I’m the creator, not the reporter. I don’t write what happened or what could happen – if you want that head over to the Non-Fiction section, which routinely outsells Fiction, so I can’t imagine you’ve never heard of it. No, my fiction is there to let me write what I’d like to happen, or what I very much don’t want to happen. Sometimes at the same time. Sometimes in the same sentence. Why even bother having a creative drive in my head if all I’m just going to report what I think is plausible in made-up stories? That’s why the story opens with a woman knocking over a man and falling in love at first sight as he asks her to get off of him. It’s funny and it leads to a relationship that I’d like to exist, but that can’t if it never enters anybody’s head as acceptable, and an alien idea can’t be acceptable until somebody brings it up. Every story needs its own internal truth, a personal plausibility, but realistic stories are dreadful. I don’t want to write them. I’m not particularly compelled to read them, because I have the cheaper and richer alternative of going outside for all the reality I can eat. I passed Journalism in college, but passed it even more enthusiastically as a career choice. If it’s unbelievable, implausible and downright ludicrous, then let’s have a look at it. It might be funny, terrifying, or both, or neither but having some other quality worth examining, or at least experiencing. Experiencing what we don’t have – there’s a purpose for a creative drive. I don’t believe a prince of Denmark met his deceased father in the dead of night, and I most certainly don’t believe the two talked over the matter in English – but I still like Hamlet.”

Bathroom Monologue: “AIDS in America today is a black disease.” –Phill Wilson, Black AIDS Institute

A “black disease?” Look at how far it’s come. It used to be a gay disease. Maybe in twenty years it will become a hardworking Hispanic disease. And then, with its pension built up, it will retire to a nice house in the upscale neighborhoods and become a good, old-fashioned blue-collar white disease. Then we’ll figure out a treatment for it. Not a cure – no pharmaceutical sense in curing something you can control with twelve shots a month. It will be manageable, respectable, and contribute to the economy.

Bathroom Monologue: “Eight new wonders of the natural world announced.” –Press release

The backyard of 231 Ashdel Blvd. where the four (yes, four) children of the Brumsfeld family spend hours a day not fighting, not avoiding to sit inside and watch TV, but playing harmoniously, (yes, all four) creating games in which their youngest sister is important and receives attention, and suspending games whenever anyone is hurt to show them proper care, without ever once raising their voices to a pitch that annoys the neighbors (yes, all four). All toys are shared in the fashion of a socialist utopia. This breathtaking view includes a sandbox and a two-seat swing set (the Brumsfelds almost bought a four-seater, but the children said two would do since they enjoyed pushing each other).

Bathroom Monologue: “Pat Moran is a writer in Portland. He wishes he still believed in Santa.” –Pat Moran’s bio, Flashshot

“You can’t make someone believe,” the ringleader explained as they lowered the box down the chimney. “People just believe what they believe, you know?”

“I guess,” said the clown. “But what use is this?”

“Well, evidence for Santa Claus is difficult to produce. If the man is alive and active as described, he’s in an undisclosed location somewhere in the Arctic Ocean ice flows, where he chooses not to communicate with humans. If you view it from his perspective, it makes sense he’s struggled for anonymity bordering on question of his existence. The man runs a manufacturing industry without known electrical, phone or internet service, which is capable of producing hundreds of millions of toys in a year, and if he’s kept up with the standards of the market place, these are not merely hobby horses, but high-end PC’s and televisions he's turning out.”

They heard the package hit the bottom of the chimney, at which point the ringleader nodded to the clown. The clown crawled to the edge of the roof and nodded to the trained bear in Mr. Moran's yard, who nudged the first floor window open a crack. It then lifted an elongated hook, slid it through the window and pulled the present from the chimney, across the floor and under the Christmas tree. Then it nodded back up to the clown, while the ringleader continued.

“If the Middle East or Asia caught wind that such a manufacturing powerhouse was up there they would be clambering for him to assist in military projects, not to mention all the commercial industries that would move in once they realized there was a simultaneously magical and tax-free workforce available. The last thing an isolationist like Claus wants is to come home from delivering goods to the few decent children in the world on the 25th, kick up his feet and watch the sun rise over the Nike sweatshop next door. Even if we could discover his whereabouts we would do him a grave disservice by exposing him, even if only to Mr. Moran.”

The clown began descending the ladder. “So why are we delivering presents?”

“Because if he wants to believe then we’ll give him the ammunition. We’ll break into his house one way or another and hide an inexplicable gift every year until he either goes naughty or hires security.”

“And why are we doing this?”

The ringleader shrugged. “He wrote a really funny story once.”

Bathroom Monologue: Anonymoose

In the Berkshire Mountains there is a mysterious creature that has stalked the roads for about three decades. We can only say “for about three decades” because there is so little information about the creature that there may not be just one and pinpointing its first appearance is impossible. On many occasions it has obstructed traffic, sometimes headbutting motorists who did not see it coming. Based on the damage it has done to various motorcycles it is estimated at least at 1,200 pounds – quite a bulk for a beast no one has ever seen.

Several state troopers have attempted to track the alleged quadruped down, though copious feces and aimless hoof paths have yet to lead to the beast.

One trooper, Ronald Ernstein, swears he encountered it in February of 2005 after it struck his car.

“I swear I was looking straight at the thing. It’s tracks ended right there in the snow. There was nowhere it could have gone. I could feel hot air on my face, like it was breathing on me – I must have been looking it right in the eyeballs, but I couldn’t see it.”

The camera mounted on Ernstein’s dashboard reveals no backwoods monster. It registers a heavy impact rocking the car, and then Ernstein getting out, looking around, and finally staring into a specific location for several minutes with abject wonder. Some video specialists claim the vapor around his face indicates a second set of breaths from an unidentified source.

Ernstein is currently seeing a therapist.

For the interim the New York State Troopers have classified this creature as “unknowable.”

Bathroom Monologue: “…cats and dogs, living together…” –Bill Murray, Ghostbusters

We used to have a cat. Well, no. I had and still have horrible allergies, so really it was my sister that had the cat, Arthur. She also had a Springer Spaniel, Julie, which was five times Arthur’s size, and he liked to fight. He would claw her backside all day and she’d yawn, then go eat the turds from his litter box. Built a thick hide, that one. They were forced to live in the same (admittedly palatial) room for years, and before long they didn’t just cohabitate. They minded each other’s food and sniffed with long expressions when the other was ill. One night my mom had to pry the cat off the dog mid-hump. Julie lay in the corner of the room and sniffed idly around where Arthur used to sleep for weeks after he died. After seeing a dog so dumb it ate cat turds mourn a cat, it’s hard for me to believe two humans can’t get along just because one of them grew up chocolate and the other one’s vanilla.

Bathroom Monologue: Thou Shalt

The priest looked up from his suitcase of cash and noticed several members of his flock were in the doorway. He grinned sheepishly, and then tried to explain himself.

“Now children, you will think this is some grave sin, but it is merely a stumble. I am still a righteous man who believes all you do, and but for this indiscretion I have the perfect image. My image inspires. True, this makes me something of a hypocrite, but the hypocrite still does a valuable service to society if he is not exposed, by strongly advising moral behavior and being perceived an example. If he is not exposed, then he can continue to reinforce the lessons for all, even if he has actually transgressed. All you have to do is remain silent and--”

The man at the front of the group shot him between the eyes, and then glanced to the rest of them.

He said, “Don’t kill people.”

While washing someone else’s dishes Monologue

“Is anyone without guilt? A few people, but they’re all conceited assholes. Most of us do things at least partially to make up for past evils. I think if I wasn’t such a sadistic prick as a 9-year-old I wouldn’t go out of my way to hold doors and carry other people’s dishes now. It’s not 1-to-1 recompense, but that kind of motivation is in everyone. We’ve all done myriad things we feel poorly over for some reasons. All the do-gooders are like that. I mean, I guess Gandhi or Jesus might not be – but Gandhi was making up for his entire country, and Jesus was making up for the entire universe being kind of a bitch. If you’re really so nice that you haven’t done anything wrong you can always outsource your guilt. Volunteer at a blood bank, battered women’s shelter or soup kitchen; they’ve always got a surplus of other people’s evil. Make up for someone else today! And pass the grease cutter.”