Bathroom Monologue: Think he can still get a reference?

"Oh, you're firing me for a new black guy who you can pay less. Yeah, I understand completely. I've always wanted to lose my paycheck and health benefits so you can start a new guy at bottom salary and claim a tax credit. It's a lifelong dream. I'm just wondering, you know, since there are already so many African Americans on staff, if you're going to hire Latinos. I mean, it’s affirmative action, right? If your staff is half black and half white, you're ignoring Hispanics.

“And Asians.

“And Native Americans.

“Not to mention immigrants. I mean legal ones, of course, because you'd never hire illegal immigrants no matter how little they'd work for, or how many rights they'd give up for the privilege of serving you, right?

“Right. They can't type well.

“Yet.

“Yet how many immigrants, and how many colors of immigrants are you going to hire? Because come to think of it, we only speak English in here. Your little monochrome rainbow isn't exactly cutting intellectual xenophobia. Where are the French? The Russians? The Taiwanese? Or do you not consider them a country? You do want to act affirmatively, don’t you?

“Do you have a quota for the countries and backgrounds you like? A quota of Taoists? A quota of Jews? No, that's poor taste. They have a bad history with quotas. But since I'm losing my job, I guess I don't like quotas either."

Bathroom Monologue: The Great Ghost’s True Identity

Listen to this story streaming or download the MP3 here.

You will receive four stipends, one every fiscal quarter, each for a sum of $50,000. Each will be deposited in a new and different foreign bank account. Their access information will be mailed to you on seemingly random days within the first three weeks of the corresponding fiscal quarter. There will be no return address.

In addition, you will have a substantial life insurance policy to benefit your family, and the best health insurance in the world, both of which will be paid for by a dummy corporation. Attempting to trace the corporation will be seen as termination of this contract.

In return for this, you will live in a particular tenement of Penny Quarter. It sees the highest occurrences of armed robbery, vehicle theft and murder in the city. It is not pleasant.

You may have a job if you like, but it must end every night by 5:00 PM, at which point you are to return home. You must be home every night from dusk until dawn, and the curtains must be drawn until the end of that period. No one is to have any contact with you in the evenings; you may not answer e-mail or phone calls. You may have no company.

On rare occasions you will be sent orders to make public appearances. You may be asked to make these appearances in the evenings, at which point you may disregard the above instructions. These orders will come exclusively from a cell phone hidden under the floorboards of the bedroom closet in your apartment. Do not mind it until it rings. You will hear it if it rings no matter where you are in the apartment.

You have been selected because you lost your parents to gang violence in early childhood, because of your time in the marines, and because of your physical resemblance to the Great Ghost. Even your jaw line is vaguely reminiscent of his. You are never to suggest you are him. If inquiries are made, deny them. With your personal history and your residence being within a thirty-mile radius of 85% of his anti-criminal appearances, you will become a prime suspect.

Eventually a dummy costume and some of his utilities may be hidden in your apartment. You will not necessarily be notified of the placement of these items. If you come across them, do not touch them. They are highly dangerous and the Great Ghost will collect them shortly.

His enemies will eventually track you down, intending to kill their predator. The Great Ghost is watchful and will not allow harm to come to you or your loved ones. You are first and foremost a tool to draw out the unsavory but persistent elements, so that they can be captured.

Please do not think of yourself a decoy allowing the Great Ghost to lead some luxurious existence, unmolested by his enemies. I suspect he doesn’t have an alter ego life at all, spending all his energy on vigilantism. I don’t know that for certain, though. I’ve never met him directly.

Bathroom Monologue: An Eye, a Finger

Pa shook his head, holding the ice pack around Billy's face.

"It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye."

Rob stamped his feet and scowled at them all, holding the rag around his hand.

"Why doesn't anybody care about me? Losing a finger sucks, too! Everybody likes Billy better."

Their mother sighed and drove faster.

Bathroom Monologue: Heart of the Waterfall

Hey there, waterfall. Today I want to plunge my hands into your heart. There, beneath the froth where the crystalline fall hits the blue pool and turns into billions of white bubbles. Up on the trail I just wanted to kneel at your bank, sore knees on this stone, and wash dirty hands in you. The water’s cold and fingers are clean now, but I’m not baptized. I feel dirty everywhere, and something about the sight of you stirs in me the feeling that everything I dislike about me would wash off like grit, if only I plunged my hands where you explode. I’ll wade out there in shoes, socks and pants, and climb the trail back up to the car uncomfortably wet in penance for the privilege, if you’ll let me. May I violate your heart? It will not be like you piercing mine. Yours will be restored in a second, and as soon as I leave you will look as though I was never here. The exhilaration would mean everything to me. It would mean absolution.

But swimming is illegal here, and I can’t break that law. There are people who spend time and money to keep you. They don’t have ultimate right, and none are here to see it and be offended, but it would still wrong them. I cannot harm your keepers, even if only in idea.

Still I want more than my wrists in this pool. You’re so cold you sting. My fingernails are numb and I want more. So blue, so wrongly blue are your depths that I think if I submerged, if I went deep enough, I would find you warm. The downpour would dash against my scalp and my clothes would stick to me like shreds of skin. Everything I can’t forgive myself for would wash down your streams. Every time I broke the speed limit, lied to a lover or wished worse on a man who deserved better would trickle away. My sins would be your soil, and would even you notice a few grains more in your mud?

I’d like to swim in you afterwards, feel you wash over me. But I can’t break the laws of those that keep you.

I also don’t have to tell anyone if I do.

Bathroom Monologue: Spread it on Asphalt Toast

The giants bided the afternoon behind a couple of fast food billboards. At 4:55, Shean could barely contain herself, but Cyclo kept her honest. You couldn’t collect this stuff too quickly. Like honey or wine, it had to age. 5:00. 5:05. 5:10, and even Cyclo wavered, salivating at the smell of all the exhaust wafting off the highway. When horns started honking, they broke out and charged the interstate with their bottles. They caught hundreds of cars that day, enough traffic jam to last them all winter.

Bathroom Monologue: While Shaving Monologue

I’ve always said one in the hand is worth two in the bush, because you can take the one in your hand and beat the two in the bush to death with it. Then you’ve got one in the hand and two in your bag. On your way home you stop by the wet nurse’s place, chat her up about the day’s work, and give her one from her bag. Make sure it’s the nicest one of the three. Then you’ll have one in the hand, one in the bag, and one that might get you into her shrubbery. You’ve been looking for an “in” there, haven’t you? Then you head on home and elbow Cain in the side, asking him how that vegetarianism is going for him as you cook your two in the pot. Two in the pot, while your idiot brother eats the bush. Maybe you invite him over for supper, since you have two in the pot anyway, and he’s been glaring at you lately. But there you go: you’ve got one in the hand, another hand on the wet nurse’s thigh, and Cain won’t commit fratricide this week. That’s why you should be a hunter, not a gatherer, my friends.

Bathroom Monologue: legit lol

A proposal to the civilized people of the world:

Proposed: that anyone who types "legit lol" should have a man dispatched to his or her (hereafter, “the offender”) house. A magnum will be placed to the forehead of the offender’s dearest loved one, be it wife, sister, mother, mother superior, or pet goldfish.

Further Proposed: The offender will then be given the option of watching that loved one blown to kingdom come, or tracking down ten people who type "lol" without actually laughing, and once the offender tracks these individuals down, break their thumbs and forefingers with a foam-covered bat (hereafter, “the defender”).

Finally Proposed: The implement used must be a defender, or otherwise the task will go too quickly. Proper pacing is essential to learning a lesson.

Mowing

I love mowing the lawn. What was a chore to a child and a necessity to an adult is a pleasure as an old man. If I have to strap ice packs to my knees and can’t so much as walk to the fridge for a beer afterwards, then fine. Alcohol’s a poison anyway. That rusty old bastard of a mower can never been too heavy, because this is a testament that you, God and M.S. can’t stop me. For one hour a week, for the rest of my life, I will prove it all.

Inspired by Yoko Kanno’s “Call Me” and a Childhood with Elizabeth Wright

Listen to it streaming or download it here.
Dear Elizabeth,

I was three, you were six, and you were my first older woman.

Remember when you packed two suitcases and threatened your mom that you were moving to my house? I had to help you carry them over, though it was your dad that carried them back that night.

Remember excavating for dinosaur bones in my sandbox, you manning the wheelbarrow since I was too small?

Remember sitting at the bottom of the stairs, tying my shoes when I couldn’t figure out how? You must have felt some love to put up with all that, and though it’s been a long time since I’ve been in love with you, you defined what I feel for others today.

Thank you,
John

The Time I Met Captain Lou Albano

Apparently Captain Lou Albano lived in the condos down the hill from us. One day we kids went out with Dad for a picnic. He went into D’Agastino’s, the local grocery store, and left me, my brother and sister in the back of his Blazer. I was the oldest, barely seven or eight. We lounged with the rear window propped out for fresh air.

We saw this giant man walking down the parking lot towards us. We had no idea where he had materialized from but were immediately scared. He was not only a stranger, but a fat one with a bushy hair and an even bushier beard. There were rubber bands in his hair and he flailed his arms wildly when he walked.

I shrank to the middle of the truck, but he found us. He looked in through the rear window, taking up almost the entire opening with his body. He asked, without a smile, “Do you kids like Super Mario Bros?”

Now, did we? Yes. We played the games all the time and it was one of the dozen cartoons that, whenever it was on, was our favorite TV show for that half hour. The snarky Link character was my little brother’s hero.

But to my child brain, his question wasn’t really if we liked it. It was a threat. If I liked it, he would kill me.

So I responded, “No, but my brother does!”

And pointed at my six-year-old brother.

This giant man looked at him. In that moment the man’s head looked bigger than my little brother's entire body. He was petrified.

The man smiled and handed him a glossy black and white photograph. We recognized it immediately – it was Mario and Luigi, the actors who played the live action part of the cartoon show.

My brother said, “Thank you,” in an empty, confused sort of way.

The giant said some kind of affirmative, then walked away towards the grocery store, flailing his arms.

Both my brother and I sat in stunned silence, trying to figure out what that man’s connection was to this photograph of a fat plumber and his skinny brother.

It was my sister, a four-year-old who only put up with those cartoons to fit in with us, who realized it.

“That was Mario!”

That was the time I met Captain Lou Albano.

Bathroom Monologue: Evening Out, Evening In

Evening is called such because it is when the night gets even with the day. The day swelters, scouring the earth with light and heat. An honest shadow can barely make a living by midday. It’s towards dusk when full-bodied night stars rolling in and checking the accounts, making sure the sun settles up before it slinks off to wherever. It’ll be back, and it’ll cheat again. Only evening can keep it fair.

Bathroom Monologue: Night Kings

Werewolf threw his arm onto the table and yelled, “If you think you’re the toughest thing that goes bump in the night then prove it, pretty boy!”

“How about I arm wrestle you tomorrow night?” Vampire asked with a toothy smirk. The full moon would be gone then, and the whole bar knew it.

Werewolf tried to jump the table, but Boogeyman caught him around the waist and pulled him back.

“It’s not worth it, man!”

They kept squabbling, not realizing they’d all be helpless when the Martians landed the next morning.

Bathroom Monologue: Challenge to Write Six Sentences like an Author you Love – I’m not saying who this is

It's well known to those who know it that every six sentence story has seven sentences. How it got there, what it is about and if it made her point clear are matters entirely unknowable to the artist. Contemplating it is like contemplating God insofar as, as one micro-philosopher put it, "You can't do it." Not contemplating it is also ill-advised, though, as it leads to an excess of semi-colons. The Intergalactic Semantic Exchange recommends to those who cannot stop contemplating the seventh sentence that they write very brief six sentence stories in order to get to the seventh as soon as possible, declaring that even if the invisible sentence is unreadable, one ought to "just get to it already." To those who cannot stop not contemplating it, the Exchange recommends alcohol in excess.

Bathroom Monologue: Beats a Neon Sign

What punk it was that set the cross ablaze in their yard, none of them knew. There were guesses, with only so many people so low in Fleetwater, and fewer spotted fleeing neighborhood as the Cartwrights desperately tried to beat out the burning symbol of salvation. The old Cartwrights were studied Methodists, but the young were new to the game and didn’t quite grasp symbolism. The young Cartwrights went about with oil and wood, and that next morning every potential offender awoke to burning letters in his yard. A fiery ‘HE’ stood in Fords’ yard, and a minute later another ‘HE’ lit up in Kip Gotch’s. They all got at least one letter, and none of the Klan understood the message, but if you tried to read it, starting with the burning cross in the Cartwrights’ yard as a ‘t,’ you could read the message across the street: “tHE HEll Is WRoNG WITH YoU.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Feeling of Bobby James

He was looking on the floor of the Saab for his cigarettes when the front left of the car jerked up about a foot. It dropped back down with a crunch, like ice giving way. The car kept rolling forward and he felt the second decline, just an inch, as the wheel rolled off of what it'd caught. Even after the trial, that feeling was all he'd remember from when he killed Bobby James. It followed him longer than any scream could.

Seven Six-Sentences

It's Six Sentence Week: The Autumn Edition. It doesn't actually have anything to do with Fall. It's just the only one I'll running, and the last of 2009. This week we've got race crimes, sentences that can't be written or read, a bar brawl between vampires and werewolves, and a letter to my childhood sweetheart. A poll for your favorite should pop up around Wednesday. A new six-sentence story goes up every morning around 9:00 AM EST, and they'll keep coming until Saturday. This makes the first (and perhaps last) seven six-sentence story week.

Bathroom Monologue: Really lame pun that only works if you pronounce “guards” in an aristocratic British accent

He pulled the princess to his side, guiding her from the wolf cages.

"The guards will protect you from the king's wolves. Spare it no worry."

She eyed the guards at either side of the cages. They looked as mangy as the mutts.

"Yes, but who will protect us from the guards?"

"Don't worry. It's a secular society."

Bathroom Monologue: No Militaries in the Gay

Listen to the MP3 edition of our news report here.

In a radical reversal of roles, today the U.S. government banned the military from gays. War will no longer be allowed to be declared where there are any gay people, to avoid exposing soldiers to what one White House staffer called, “uncomfortable environments.”

The Prime Minister of Iran quickly explained that earlier speaking snafus were mistranslation and there are indeed homosexual people in his country. In fact, he added, “I may be gay, or may have a gay person near me at all times!”

In related news, the governments of North Korea, Sudan and Venezuela have begun importing people of alternative lifestyles in bulk. Massive tax credits, free upscale housing and ludicrously generous civil unions have been offered to lure these sexual expatriots, or "sexpatriots," as bloggers have begun to call them.

North Korea and China entered a bidding war this morning to attract the cast of the now-defunct Bravo television series “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” hoping to have them spruce up their capitols. Anonymous sources close to the bidding war say government heads hope to make their populations look more fabulous and thus render their countries even more immune from military action.

No officials would confirm these allegations.

“We’ve been planning this for a long time,” explained one North Korean insider. “Our tight borders have left us unfashionably stuffy. The glorious leader is a longtime fan of Queer Eye. This has absolutely nothing to do with avoiding being attacked by a major superpower.”

More as this story develops.

Bathroom Monologue: Easy as 2 + 2

Mathematics were shaken today with the discovery a new virtual particle. The "Duo" particles only exist in pairs, possessing one half-spin each and locked in orbit around each other. Unlike Quantum Theory's behavior of quarks, Duo Particles remain part of our physical world consistently until meeting another pair. When two Duo pairs collide, they undergo a plane shift that can cause one or both pairs to cease to exist. In some cases both pairs remain in existence and a third appears, making this a solid case of 2 + 2 = 6.

No Thanks, Biological Father, OR, Believe it or not, inspired more by Tokyo Godfathers than a decade of disappointment

That’s right. I’m giving her away at the wedding. Not you, Dad. Me. Her brother, who’s been a better father figure for years anyway. I saved her from the suicide attempt. I helped her on the term papers. I watched all those shitty movies with her while you got high with your new wife. I’ve protected her, listened to her, had dinner with her, bought dinner for her, and had her wish she could buy dinner for me. One day in the middle of a study session I showed up with malted milk balls just because I’d heard he was craving some. I watched the national spelling bee with her fiancé. I picked up her dog’s ashes from the vet. What have you done for her other than contribute the occasional panic attack during Sunday night phone calls? Oh, but I forgot. We enable her. She made up her psychological issues, because secretly she enjoyed crying, cutting and spending a thousand nights alone in her room. That’s fine. You get those irrational beliefs. I get God, and I get to walk her down the aisle. If you want to be close when your daughter says, “I do,” you’d better show up early and get good seats. I’ll see you from the altar.

Bathroom Monologue: Toilet Tissue Tears It

But when Andrew opened the bathroom door he heard an even stranger voice.

“Oh no!” squeaked something at about pelvis level. He instinctively shrank back, even though he had no idea what was talking or if it wanted to punch him in the gonads.

On the wall the toilet paper dispenser shook. The roll of toilet paper popped off and… well, rolled across the floor until it bumped into his foot.

“I’m not taking shit from you anymore!” it squeaked, then rotated and rolled between his legs. Andrew turned and watched it fall off the first step of the stairs, then bounce the rest of the way to the ground floor.

“What the Hell?” Andrew asked himself. He grabbed a box of tissues, and when it didn’t protest, entered the bathroom. This was weird, but he really had to go.

BM: “in some places the number of photons was actually less than zero” –from the March 5th Economist, OR, Really loud and breathless monologue

“When a particle and an antiparticle meet they might explode and nullify time. We’ve never encountered that explosion, or so they say. Yet what if reality is reversing time to flee from that explosion? And we didn’t evolve for that chronology, so we don’t notice that God’s rewinding all of this? It would explain our fascination with History – it’s what’s coming! Do you understand? The smallest particles of the fastest thing in the universe, that feed life on this planet and let us see anything, are actively fucking around! There might be less than none of these particles in some places! An infinitely small teapot could be orbiting the sun right now. Fuck that! A trillion infinitely small teapots could be orbiting an electron in your brain right now! Okay, that’s scientifically preposterous, but the principle of a universe that acts against our prescribed laws when we aren’t watching it is staggering. Science, understanding how this universe works by checking, could be life’s own in-joke on itself. The vast majority of the universe is not being observed the vast majority of the time, so the whole general mishmash could be giggling at us right now! Teapots! Maybe that’s where life came from: the cosmos was tripping balls from not being observed, and poof, created observers! Plus, since particles have to react to each others presence in an non-conscious way, are they not technically observing each other physically? And thus is our presence about some of its particles not similar to us actively observing, even if we aren’t looking? The stimulation can be there on a nanoscopic level. So maybe some photons react to Saturn like it’s watching. So maybe they’re in order for a second, and at the speed of light, not again! Do you understand? No, of course you don't. If you did, your hair would be on fire!”

Bathroom Monologue: Bumper Sticker Threat Level

0: Could have any range of opinions. How many 9/11 hijackers had bumper stickers? Could be a Philosophy professor, a soccer mom or an alcoholic who is about to back into your new car. Zero bumper stickers is the unannoying and unknowable zone.

1: One? This better be good. This better be the cleverest dig at Wal-Mart I’ve ever read. If it isn’t, why are you attracting my eyes to read when they otherwise could have been glazed over as I drove in a speed-limit fugue to the sweet tunes of the soft rock station? Just because it’s short doesn’t mean it wasn’t annoying while it lasted. Choose wisely.

2: Oh no. Maybe with 1 you were just really proud of your child going to college. At two bumper stickers, your bumper is yelling at me about something. The platform has expanded to denounce abortion and a president (who isn’t even in office anymore) at the same time. You will tell me nothing essential to my driving, nor anything that will change my mind about anything, but now you’re doing it in stereo. The slope is slippery from here.

3: The threshold at which the driver leaves merely seeming annoying and becomes decisively annoying. It does not matter if you want peace in the Middle East, are proud you work at a pet shelter and have a son in the seminary. If you’re advertising all three simultaneously, I resent you (possibly because those are never the three things your bumper stickers say). The owner of three bumper stickers crosses another threshold: I now give up hope of ever reasoning you out of anything, and conversations are incredibly likely to turn into debates when I’m not looking.

4: I can no longer hope to win the debate. By no means will I think I’ve lost, but the other person is so detached from anything that she doesn’t believe that the very nature of discourse is undermined by her having a driver’s license. At four stickers, I feel dread when even imagining talking to you about whatever your bumper advertises.

5: It was possible at three and likely at four, but now there is no way you have all those bumper stickers on your bumper. The back of your car has been colonized by the pithy and the trite. Even people who are bored behind you in traffic will not read all of your messages, nor should they. Look at that. At least one of them is faded and/or peeling. You’re not keeping up the maintenance of your messages anymore, just adding more to the pile. You are the textual equivalent of the white kid who rolls through my neighborhood with rap pulsating from his closed windows.

6 and Up: No one has ever seen a car with six bumper stickers. Five stickers is when people experience the “Wall of Text” effect and any hope of anything registering, even memory of how many stickers were on the back of the car, vanishes. Ninteen bumper stickers are the same as five in every way except that I will point at the nineteen-stickered vehicle so my family can laugh at it. Even then, no one in my car will read more than five of them.

Bathroom Monologue: Sampling Coleridge, if “sampling” was synonymous with “bastardizing” is the word

Water, water, everywhere,
And not a drop to drink.

Water, water, everywhere,
And I've begun to sink.

Water, water, everywhere,
I'd like not to drown this day,

Water, water, everywhere,
I'm floating... Flying... Hey!

Water below, Heavens above,
My arms replaced by wings,

Water below, Heavens above,
How’d I get these things?

Bathroom Monologue: Reliable Photographer

Handy eyes-free audio edition here.

None of the other detectives will listen to me, but if you’ve just got a minute, I have photo evidence that my neighbor is evil! Look at this picture. You can see the sound waves coming through the walls of his apartment. That’s unnatural.

Not enough? Look at this one. He’s stomping a kitten to death. Vile man.

In this one he’s going to the movies with Satan. You can tell it’s Satan because his jacket is on fire and his hair is pointy.

In this one he’s pushing his mother down the stairs of our apartment complex. There’s no handrail because the superintendent is a lazy bastard. You should arrest him, too.

Here he’s standing over his fallen mother, doing the cabbage patch. I’m not sure if the stole he’s wearing is made from the same cat I photographed him killing, but it’s definitely cat fur.

And here he and Satan are resurrecting Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon through a black portal to Hell. See the steam?

And here the four of them resurrect the cats he’s killed by the same dark ritual. That seems nice, right?

Until you see this photo, of the four stomping the cats to death with heavy, metal boots.

Now before you say anything, I know the other detectives said these aren’t photographs, but drawings I did with crayon. I swear to you they aren’t. His music really is that loud! Please, just follow me home!

Bathroom Monologue: Got to read to…

"You memorized the spells so you wouldn't have to carry around the book. Thought it would look cool to do it no-hands style, impress some girls. I did that when I was your age, too. So did all the boys in my class. I'm the only one alive now, though. Funny how it works. Or, funny how it doesn't. You see, spells don't work without the book. It's more than the mere words uttered. It’s about a pact expressed with the man and the world, his tongue and his book. The words are a bridge between the truth that is written and the will that is voiced. You can know the incantation for raising an undead army backwards and forwards, but if you don't have the script, you're liable to become another body in that army. It was a nice idea, punk. Nice idea for you, much as it was a nice idea for me when I was your age. I've smartened up since then, so that when I show up to a duel without my book, I carry a revolver. Like this one. Care to read its inscription before I cast the trigger's spell?"

Bathroom Monologue: Intellectual Middle Finger

After the sermon the pastor went to the door. As the flock proceeded out, he leaned to each and whispered something in their ears. Emil averted his eyes. He was only here to impress his Catholic girlfriend and felt awkward enough before looking into the eyes of a guy in a skullcap and dress.

The pastor leaned in, face full of aged freckles. Emil tilted his head to one side and the pastor whispered to him.

“God bless you.”

“I…” Emil began to respond, then lost his sentence. The pastor didn’t move, and suddenly he had to say something.

“I don’t actually believe in God.”

He could see the pastor’s body. He imagined the guy’s face contorting in disgust, but his shoulders didn’t so much as tense. The pastor whispered again.

“May an unusual number of good things happen to you for what appears to be no reason.”

The pastor patted him on the shoulder with one hand, and waved for the next person in the procession over. Line etiquette forced Emil to walk away, though he stared at the man as he descended the steps. Had that old man given him the intellectual middle finger?

Bathroom Monologue: Two Love, OR, Dedicated to Trevor McPherson

Pinocchio wanted to be a real boy. The little mermaid wanted to be a real girl. They met at a bar, and ever afterward were simply themselves.

Bathroom Monologue: Fundamentally

“I was thinking this morning about how I'd like to be gay. Not for the sex - that all sounds nasty. But as it is I have to deal with men because they're my gender, and I have to deal with women because I want to boink them. If I was gay, that's roughly 50% of people I wouldn’t have to talk to anymore. And I'm white, so I'm already cut off from blacks, Asians, Hispanics and so-on. It would really be less than 25%. I'm Methodist, so if I went hardcore gay, I could go hardcore Methodist too, and cut out all the other religions. And since my priest is a total homophobe, I could get excommunicated. Then I wouldn't have to deal with my neighbors anymore. I'd probably work from home and get TiVo, if only I was gay.”

Bathroom Monologue: "For thematic material and smoking." -Explanation for I’ve Loved You So Long’s PG-13 rating in its MPAA rating box

The following film is Rated G for uninteresting anthropomorphism, for teen heartthrobs that you can’t comprehend why your daughter finds attractive, and for dialogue so sugary it will test the kidneys of the strongest constitution. There’s a mature film that will engage your emotions and intellect without going all art-house or social-damnation on in Theatre 4. Run now and I promise the clerks won’t come by checking your tickets. I’ll watch the kids. Go on. You let the television play nanny over them from 3:00 to dinner every weekday, so why not me? Look how colorful I am. Listen to those nasal voice actors. That’s right. Just walk up that aisle and let me take care of the rest.