Bathroom Monologue: Expenses List for the Break-In

Expenses List
Day 1:
Ninjas (7x)
Black jumpsuits (6x)
Tye dye jumpsuit (1x)
Pressure-tested grapnel lines (400 meters)
Replica bank vault
High-tech infrared cameras (3x)

Day 2:
Higher-tech ultraviolet cameras (2x)

Day 3:
Plastic explosives (200 lbs.)

Day 4:
Ecological pamphlets (9x)

Day 5:
Hazardous materials disposal
Biodegradable natural explosives (200 lbs.)

Day 6:
Service truck rentals
Eco-friendly smoke bombs
Electromagnetic pulse generator

Day 8:
Bail (8x)
Legal representation (7x – screw the hippy ninja)

Bathroom Monologue: If knowledge is power, then someone define “power,” OR, I felt a lot less clever when I found Plato beat me to this

It’s Word Time again in my head. Today’s word is “know.” I don’t know what it means. Can I say that? It’s using the word to define itself (or to admit that I can’t define it). I know “think” and “believe” and “conclude” and “experience” and “remember.” Not “know.” I could say that I know there is a pair of scissors on my desk. I remember them being there, and when I look, they are there. So did I know? When did I know it? What if I looked and they weren’t there? I put them down ten minutes ago. I don’t know where they’d go if they weren’t there – but they wouldn’t be there. If I put them down on my desk ten minutes ago, then typed this, saying I knew there was a pair of scissors on my desk only to find they weren’t there, did I know? No. In that case I believed them to be there, but they weren’t. In the traditional case of knowledge, to “know” would mean I believed them to be there and they were there. But in both cases there was a point when I wasn’t directly observing and I said they were there – in one case they were, and in one case they weren’t. I was just as certain in both cases, before the fact was checked. So my mental state was identical; being wrong was a physical condition. Then knowledge might not be a physical state. Is “knowing” only believing something that happens to be true? What a weird bridge to build across subjectivity and objectivity.

You could memorize facts – memorize a whole manuscript, word for word, sentence for sentence, paragraph for paragraph. You could think you know the story. You could believe you knew it. And then the author could change it. If she added just one word, suddenly you wouldn’t know her book. Your information would be invalid. But you would think you knew. And this happens all the time.

Many teenage couples think they’ll be in love forever. Maybe one of them will be. Let’s say all the others don’t make it past fifteen years. They think they know they will, and then it turns out they didn’t. They didn’t really know. But what about that one couple? Did those two 14-year-olds know, even though there was no possible way of observing the ends of their claim until it happened? They believed it, and then it was true.

People claim to know things based on favorable probability all the time. If they’d had culture, the dinosaurs probably would have known that no meteor would take them all out – except if a meteor did, which we can’t be sure of, though some scientists say they know. Others say they know it was disease.

And what about all the things you’re supposed to know? You know you did your best. You know you love your kids more than anything in the world. Do you believe these things as they are said? Will you keep believing them? Are they true, will they be true, and how long will they remain true? Forever? I don’t know where my scissors went, so knowing about anything as long as “forever” seems rather silly to me. Maybe “to know” is a joke – something else’s idea of a joke. We make jokes to make each other laugh. What’s laughing at us for making us think we know?

Bathroom Monologues: Possible Headstone Inscriptions

-“Welcome.”
-“Cobras aren’t poisonous, right?”
-“Third base.”
-“Never buy your brakes and your headstone from the same person.”
-“Do Not Disturb.”
-“Best 2 out of 3?”
-“He will be missed (unfortunately too late; if only he’d been missed by that bus)”
-“Based on a True Story.”

Bathroom Monologue: Nobody Has Ever Had It Worse

Adina finally began to wind down her rant with, “So Michael dumped me for an Israeli girl. Maybe they’ll move off to the Promised Land together. Now that it’s out, I’ll never make branch manager. You can see it in the way the higher ups look at me. It’s like they’re punishing me for not being Jewish enough.”

The shade of her ancestor nodded and stroked his long beard.

“Yes, the life of a heretic is hard.”

“Did they mistreat you like this when you were alive, Eliyahu?”

“No, no.” The shade shook his head. “They flayed me and set me on fire in the town square, but nothing this bad, bubala.”

"Something died inside me that day." –Hundreds of people on TV at various times

How come something is never resurrected inside you "that day?" How come nothing ever sits up in the casket, scares the priest so bad that he wets himself, and does a jig when it realizes how many people came to the funeral? How come a radioactive meteor never reanimates that something which just as it’s died, causing it to forever roam your body and eat the flesh of its own kind? I'd much rather something turn into a zombie than die in me, if only for the variety.

Bathroom Monologue: Do they play for the same team as us, or are they competition?

Lesbianism astounds men in a way that can only be expressed by analogy. To them it is like seeing one of the electric outlets try to plug itself into another. Men wanted to plug an extension cord in there. It makes them feel that either the outlet is defective, or they are. The analogy falls apart, though, when thousands of men pay $19.95 for a softcore video of the two outlets.

Bathroom Monologue: Love, Loathing and Odds

“Fine!” exclaimed the God of Love. “We’ll settle this universe on fair chance. Do you want evens or odds?”

“I always want odds,” said the hunk of eyeballs that served at the God of Loathing’s avatar. It would have rubbed its hands together in evil glee if it had them in the first place.

The God of Love held the dice up in his glowing palm.

“Odds and you get to end this universe however you like. But if it’s even, it gets a fair chance. Agreed?”

The hunk of eyeballs nodded.

“Agreed. To chance!”

“To chance,” echoed the God of Love, and he rolled.

“We’ll see about that,” muttered the God of Dice.

Bathroom Monologues: Re: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD0uPiMeVA4&feature=dir

Laughed in pain's face. A lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD0uPiMeVA4&feature=dir

Bathroom Monologue: Did you get good marks?

At that point in the country’s history to be unscarred was to either be a child or of the royal class. Medicine and hygiene were so primitive that any injury, even the every day abrasions of work, left permanent marks. Only someone who never performed manual labor was scarless. It wasn’t until Prince Gungriel burned himself (he just had to light one of the fireworks at the festival) and went about a campaign of vanity that imperfection became an acceptable part of aesthetics. In a disturbing trend created by the royals, scarification became an art style, with specific designs like tattoos. This marked the first major break between royal fashion and commoner fashion, as commoners began to respect simpler scars, ones that looked like they came from labor, more than those of art. The royals scoffed at the shallowness of the commoners. Famous cultural critic Mardeiger said this couldn’t be shallow, as, “if it were too shallow, it wouldn’t have left much of a mark.”

Bathroom Monologue: I can’t think of a pun title for this one, and it needs one, Or, Sorry to George Michaels

Well I guess it would be iced
If I could make your coffee
I know not everybody
Makes coffee like you

But I’ve gotta think twice
Before I give the maker away
And I know all the beans you use
Because I brew them too

Oh but I need some time off
From the locomotion
Last cup left me twitching on the floor

And when the last drop comes
Without some creamer
Well it takes a strong man, baby
But I’m showing you the pourer

‘Cause I gotta have… tea.

Sorry for the Songs and Puns

I’m not sorry for anything I’ve written in the Bathroom Monologues about theology, technology, epistemology, politics, science or the grand religion of literary tradition, but I am sorry for the puns and song parodies. I can convince myself that most of what I’ve written was partially true or would be funny to someone, but that’s not the case with the puns and song parodies. These creep up on me, and like a dead mouse in the mouth of a house cat, I can’t help but wander around the premises and show it off. I believe it may be a neurosis.

Bathroom Monologue: You’re all dear to me

Tom had a way of calling his wife, "My dear" in a way that sounded much more like, "Medea." This strange accent tended to pop up when she criticized the groceries he bought or ordered him around when he was driving. She never got it, but their friends thought it was very funny.

Bathroom Monologue: May Noah and Pratchett Live Forever, not in their own memories, not in mine, but in the printed word

A friend just instant messaged with me, and after discussing some silly internet fads, she IM’d, “Noa rgument.” This is a run of the mill typo, but I have the irresistible urge to pun off of typos – both my own and those of others.

I responded, “The Noah Argument? I believe that goes, “Fine, don’t believe me. I’ll go build a boat.””

Fortunately, she laughed at that one.

I’m not sure why the ghost of Terry Pratchett hovered over that typo pun. Why is Mr. Pratchett a ghost when he isn’t even dead yet? I don’t know, but I’m sure he’s writing a novel about it.

Bathroom Monologue: New Program - Cutting Slack

I think people should be allowed to get away with things based on a certain amount of crap going on in their lives. For instance, if you look like you've had an awful and exhausting day, I won't curse at you for cutting me off at an intersection. If the bank is foreclosing on your house, you shouldn't be held liable for kicking in their window on the way out - or the windows of the bank manager's Mercedes, if it's parked reasonably close to the window.

In this scheme, there should be a deluxe package for people who get seriously boned by fate. If you have terminal cancer, or you will be in chronic, unmedicatable pain for the rest of your natural life, you don't have to pay attention to stop lights, you can gas and dash all you want, and if you feel like believing something, like maybe Marxism could work out or that Mormonism nailed it, you get to believe that stuff without contest for as long as you like, with no obligation to buy and unlimited opportunity to exchange. We actually encourage you to believe as many things as possible, and to switch whenever the whim strikes. We’ll even provide message boards accessible exclusively to people with the proper entitlement passcode, so your belief will not be challenged. Instead you’ll be allowed to converse with like-minded people, at least until one of you decides to change your mind from Jainism to Freakonomics. We’ll send you a brochure every month with all the newest ideas and paradigms that you can try on, so long as you promise not to force them onto anyone else. This is all you (and the other guys at http://www.solipsism.webboards.gov/).

Healthy people won’t be allowed into this service because their health makes them cocky and insecure in ways that prevent such mental plasticity. They need to be sure their one thing is right and never goes unchallenged so that they can go on living the model life that you’re incapable of sustaining. Somebody who doesn’t have to worry about how to afford chemo can afford to be a dick to Creationists. Meanwhile, you may find believing Creationism for a weekend to be refreshing. If not, there’s always evolutionary psychology on Monday, flat earth on Tuesday, and extraterrestrial conspiracies for your spare time. I figure if the universe fills your uterus with tumors, then we, your planetary roommates, can afford to give you belief-Netflix.

Bathroom Monologue: Oh, Venerable Masters

“Remember three things,” said the venerable master.

His disciple waited several moments, but the master said nothing.

“What are the three things, master?” The disciple asked. “My mind is open.”

“Uhm.” The venerable master stirred his tea nervously. “I was hoping you’d remember them.”

Bathroom Monologue: Really, really too proud of these puns

"John, could you hang this up for me?"
"Where did Robin Hood hide?"
"Huh?"
"Sure would."

Bathroom Monologues: The Virtue of Society

"Society is what the smarter animals use to get things done. If you're useful to other animals, you get to be part of the society. It doesn’t matter how you are useful. You can be physically useful, emotionally useful, economically, inspirationally, politically, and on and on. Family is one module. Businesses are another. Being a caring brother, having a job, owing a mortgage – these are all ways in which you are useful. But sometimes people are not useful enough. These people do not get to be as big a part of society. Society takes parts of them: their possessions, their values, their self-esteem. For instance, the mentally damaged are not useful enough. They are not emotionally useful to their families or physically useful to the workforce. They get put in little rooms where they get to live out their lives, in a filing cabinet in the back of society until they can be made useful enough to warrant letting them out. These animals still have values. Things are still important to them. They still want possessions and relationships to other animals. But they don’t get to, because they aren’t helping society get things done. This is the compassion of animals.”

Bathroom Monologue: “For the sun, even a million years is a blip in time.” –Narrator, History Channel’s The Universe

“A blip? You think a million years is little to me? Why is it that you humans think something with a longer period of existence cares less about time? A million years is a treasure trove to me. It is a million units of how far my radiance can reach. The measure of my grasp. Every microsecond my atoms collide and fuse. Millions, billions, trillions of reactions a minute, and I know every one of them better than you know what you behold with your eyes. My core is denser than solid lead and hotter than gaseous metal, down to the atoms, expanding broader than your planet, all the time. I am a miracle. A million years is not a blip. It is a kingdom of radiance. It is a very long time. It is only a blip in relation to the time I waited for you.”

Bathroom Monologue: This Lobe o’ Mine

"I've never tried to be logical. No, that's not true. I used to try very hard to be logical, and I was very good at it, but it was not very good at me. We had a bad break-up, and now we only cross paths when we date the same person. I wish that would stop happening."

Then Dr. Mento looked around, saw that no one was there, and primed the drill to penetrate the center of the earth. This would quiet those stupid voices.

Bathroom Monologue: Bathroom Couplet

With thy god, with thy country, ev’n with thy life,
But sir, ne’er trust a crusader with thy wife.

Bathroom Monologue:“The question for Democrats in 2008 is whether we want the first woman president or the first black president.” –Some pundit on CNN

First female president. First black president. First Latino president. First Asian-American president. First gay president. First transgender president. First incestual president. First hermaphroditic president. First cloned president (eight more years of Reagan?). First Native American president. First shaman president. First Mormon president. First Hindu president. First Scientologist president. First druidic president. First president who didn’t really exist, but was invented as part of a gag by some publicity agents that didn’t clue in the nation until the inauguration. First immigrant president. First extraterrestrial president. First robot president (Vote Dell – He’s Got Intel Inside). First president voted in purely because of her plans to help the country rather than her looks, sex, race, ethnicity or religion.

Bathroom Monologue: I’d make an awful lawyer

“Look at it this way: the jury won’t decide if you die or not. They’ll only decide if you die now. Mortality is the law. Morality? A game we play until the law shows up. Want a fishstick?”

Bathroom Monologue: Homeopathic Reasoning

I'm a different sort. I remember in high school when an English teacher asked, "What's the difference between a biography and an autobiography?"

The answer was obvious, and I gave it.

"An autobiography can never be complete."

It was not the answer he was looking for. He looked at me like a dog that's been asked to build a rocket ship.

As much as I try to sympathize with other people, I think this instance is a good example of why I’ll never be compatible with them. Another example, from age four, when I discovered that the circular peg was without edges and small enough such that it could fit through the square hole. For the rest of my life I saw no problem in putting it there. It gave the square peg some company in that pocket.

At age six I was auditioned around for kindergartens. I sat in the classroom of one while my mother and the teacher chatted; I built a skyscraper of blocks, taller than myself. The teacher said I might be an architect, just before I roared and knocked it over in grand Godzilla fashion.

Apparently I was one of the only kids that weren’t afraid to be seen with his parents. I’d hold their hands when we went everywhere, even in public and around my peers. On the playground I didn't like the feminist "mother ship," and so my pretend airplane or space fighter always returned to the "father ship." In game books, my little man always made it passed mazes the fastest, because I drew him walking around the outside and waiting by the exit rather than entering and traversing the labyrinth.

My earliest recollection of television is devising that Skeletor could kill He-Man if he'd only save up three or four of his apocalyptic plans and launch them at once, since the heroes barely overcame any individual plot. If only someone would recommend he spend a couple of episodes saving them up instead of blowing them every afternoon. (Though sometimes I have an earlier memory of thinking it was weird that Olympic volleyball and suicide bombings would be reported on the same news show, but it is insubstantial and may be a false memory. At best, it is a parenthetical memory, and I have written it as such.)

Back then I didn't notice this kind of alternative thinking from other kids, at least not applied to my areas of interest. But I think they had it in their own ways at one time or another, and they knew what this sort of thinking was about. There was a time when half of a classroom would immediately agree with my unorthodox babbling, or at least make the "Ohhhh" sound that so soothed the savage ego. Something happened along the way, happened to me and everyone else, which caused that "Ohhhh" to turn into a patronizing laugh, or maybe handful of grins. I don't know what happened. I'm not even sure if it happened to everyone else, but I hope it did. It would hurt beyond reason if it were just me.

Bathroom Monologues: Scavenger Hunt: Find examples of bigotry against the following groups

-Watchmakers
-Venusians
-Cube Earthers
-Seeing eye dogs
-Taco vendors
-Assistant producers
-Giant monsters
-Mailboxes
-Proctologists

Bathroom Monologue: Do Environmentalists Care About the Endangered Mermaid?

It's humorous that Atlanteans are so often depicted as advanced and loathing surface-dwellers. I guess it's more humorous that they're often depicted as alive, rather than crushed under rubble or drowning, but that's not the point. The point is that, in truth, the life of the Atlantean is most humble. Sure, back when the city sunk it was mystically and technologically advanced, but that was centuries ago. Most of the population died in the catastrophe, and those who became mermen were not particularly well-received by undersea society. Realize that human interaction with the oceans consisted largely of paddling over them or scooping out tasty critters with nets, and you'll come to understand how any even partially sentient creatures felt towards their new neighbors. The Squidkings were particularly catty at the welcome party. Atlanteans quickly became second-class citizens of the sea floor, doing hard manual labor. And they were humans, a species not exactly as equipped for strenuous sub-sea-level work as, say, sperm whales. Cheap manual labor that's bad at its job is never treated well. So when land-dwellers began diving and discovered Atlantis, they weren't treated with disdain, nor did they have war declared on them. They were greeted as liberators. By polluting, whaling and fishing earth's waters to the brink of total extinction, they'd given serious aid to the insurgency. The mermen now believed they could actually take over the oceans. After all, extinction of dominant life forms worked out pretty well for mammals on land.

Bathroom Monologue: Ways to Torture Your Girlfriend, Or, When is Valentine's Day?

-Hide her keys and when she asks, tell her the last time you saw them the dog was carrying them in her mouth.
-Listen to the kind of music you like in unusual places, like your apartment or your car.
-Drive at a speed with which you're comfortable, even if she happens to be in the vehicle.
-Hang out with your friends until you're tired of them, rather than when you *have* to go.
-Only exercise when you want to. Eat what you like. Get into a shape that makes you comfortable, even if it's unattractive.
-Take her to the sports store and try on jerseys for two hours while she holds your beer.
-Take her out on a romantic dinner and ask for separate checks at the end.
-Stop trying after you squirt.
-Enjoy yourself. At anything. It doesn't matter.

Bathroom Monologue: "The world’s oldest profession…” –Anonymous, The Baltimore Sun

Second oldest. The first would be necessary to generate the goods or revenue that would inspire the Neanderthal lass (or gigolo) to provide sex. In fact, if the master of the older profession had so much of his (or her) stock that he/she was willing to trade for a little geisha action, then he/she was probably providing to other customers for more practical returns. These customers, in turn, would need to have professions of their own – tiger hunters, berry gatherers, some nutcase raising investments for something called “the wheel” – rendering the prostitute not only not the oldest or second oldest, but likely a latter-day recreational profession. Unless you count mates and whatnot, in which case, please explain to my wife why you just called her a whore. She’s on her period, so I’m certainly not doing it. I’ll be out gathering Mydol. Not sure how old the pharmacist profession is, but I sure am grateful it’s there.

Bathroom Monologue: Loving Pennies

“I find that the mingled scents of flesh, sweat and copper form a smell similar to the taste of blood. I do not like the taste of blood (well done, please), but I do like that smell. It helps me relax after long days. But so does the smell of oranges while they are peeled. I generally go with the oranges, to save people the disturbance of the explanation.” –Hung Lo

Bathroom Monologue: You might be in the mob if...

-you know the names of fifty different kinds of pasta, and a guy who can get them for you cheap, because he owes you a favor.
-you need a house with a view, and a steep drop.
-you've bought fish that actually came wrapped in newspaper.
-you've never seen The Godfather because, "I already know all the details."
-you don't find Robert DeNiro impressions funny in the least, mostly because they don't remind you of Robert DeNiro.
-rather than checking under the hood when you have engine trouble, you wonder if you've done anything bad lately.

Folks, I'll be out of town for the rest of the week, so this is the last Bathroom Monologue for a few days. I request any readers who actually give a crap about these monologues leave their own humorous conclusion to this mob sentence in the Comments feature for this post. It's an experiment... in love.

Bathroom Monologue: The Greatest Humorist

To Whom it May Concern,
Recently I was accused of being the greatest humorist alive, and this needs addressing. Firstly, "humorist" is a clumsy and ugly word. Secondly, I am not a humorist. I am a human being with a below average lifespan, and making jokes along the way is par for the course. There is nothing about being funny that makes me anything other than human, and anyone of the human condition who indulges in humor less than I do ought to be checked daily - for they may have been cured of the condition altogether.

Humor is part of life. We're made up of 60% water, after all, and if you bother to look up the etymology of "humor," you'll see it comes from "to become moist" or "the fluids or juices of an animal or plant." So firstly, even plants are humorous, and secondly, humor is a fundamental part of life. If you're 60% water, then 3/5's of your person had to get the joke just to get here. I sure hope you laughed on the way.

Humor is literally the moisture that keeps us alive. You can't cross a desert without a bottle of water, any more than I can't cross a desert without making fun of its poor real estate development. That's humorous life, my friends.

And if you're not a humorist? Then, oh dry-witted soul, you're probably part of the reason that the Sahara is spreading.

Sincerely,
Someone who has never been called so much as a "good humorist"