Rejected Proposal Week

This week, from today to Saturday, I'll be posting monologues with the theme of Rejected Proposals. You'll see recommendations for the U.S. Mint, the Catholic Church and videogame companies looking to court our ever-increasing interest in the end of the world. Please vote for your favorite in the poll, which should show up in the next couple of days.

Bathroom Monologue: To Be Wrong

“My greatest unease is when I don’t hear any of the loons saying this stuff anymore. It’s not when all the men of reason disagree that I become worried. Einstein was the only one to believe certain things for a time, as was Newton’s lot, as was Galileo’s. People make reason say whatever they want it to say; it’s a puppet that can do any dance. It’s when all the crazies disagree with me that I worry. They are such a diverse lot, some with theories of UFO puppeteers, some of a violent blasphemous trinity, of fairies controlling gravity, and all of them so divorced from sense as I know it that if not one of them has any thoughts congruent with mine, I must be worse than mad. No, for a hundred geniuses are apt to agree with each other, but a hundred madmen have a hundred ideas, and if none of the hundred so much as echo mine, my theory must have gone wrong somewhere.”

Bathroom Monologue: Phoenix Baby, OR, Interpretations Are Not What They Seem

The phoenix appeared when Marina was born. They couldn’t have thought to time it, but it seemed the first attack came when she was spanked and cried her first breaths. Every ensuing time she cried the phoenix attacked anew, knocking over skyscrapers and ripping up the roads. The attacks grew more savage with time, ripping up more and more of the earth, and became especially worse when Marina grew old enough to throw tantrums. Her uncle began keeping a diary, a crude catalog of her misbehavior and the bird’s assaults. When she didn’t get what she wanted for her birthday and the phoenix ripped up the highway, he convinced himself there was only one way to stop it. He smothered her at 8:01 on a Monday morning. At 8:01 across town, the great dragon emerged in full rage from beneath the concrete and immolated a third of the city’s population. The phoenix’s head fell in shame; she had been too late to stop it.

Bathroom Monologue: Giant Dissection

Phenotypically they most resemble humans, though you will notice the spine is more curved providing a natural slouch, the hands and feet are disproportionately large, and there are sundry internal differences. They possess three lungs and five heart-like organs of amazing toughness and resilience. We have still yet to cut through one of the hearts, so it should be several more weeks before we can say anything about the cardiovascular system. For flourish’s sake, though, they have arteries that could reverse a small mountain stream, compensating for the sheer space they have to pump blood through. You will notice the fingernails are calcified to the point of being part of the skeletal system, and bones have integrated with all the major organs, providing structural support and a defense mechanism for each much as the human skull provides its brain. The giant skull is as thick as rumored, but shelters a brain much larger than anticipated. We find all the lobes in human physiology as well as two incomparable ones. Based on their proximity to what would be the reasoning centers in humans, we may be looking at the schematics for the next evolutionary leap – the housing of giant intelligence, if you will. It’s most unfortunate that science will not be able to chart further growth with their oncoming extinction, but then maybe it is fortunate, or else human science might vanish altogether.

Bathroom Monologue: “How many equal sides does a scalene triangle have?” –The author’s brother-in-law in Know-It-All

“One. Now I know what you’re going to say: that a triangle has to have at least two sides be equal to each other to have any that are equal at all. But you didn’t ask how many sides a specific scalene triangle had to itself. You asked how many equal sides it had, so I answered how many sides the triangle had that were equal to another triangle I was imagining. It may have three similar sides to an identical scalene triangle. However, it cannot have any identical sides to itself because it’s scalene – so you can only be asking about its relation to another triangle, so I picked one on my own. Booyah.”

Bathroom Monologue: When I was a kid, I thought Gandalf was Merlin on vacation from England

When I was a kid, I thought Gandalf was Merlin on vacation from England
As soon as the last grail meeting ended, Merlin slipped out the door and lit a cigarette.
One of the squires came over.

“Good boy. Is my horse ready?”

“Yes, sir. But are you certain you should go now? Their crusade could begin any month.”

“Listen, that hobbit isn’t going to pull this off by himself and Arthur knows what he’s doing. I’ve got two weeks vacation from Camelot and if anyone gets suspicious I’ll blame it on Morgana. You can blame anything on the old bitch. Two weeks is all I need to ride to Rivendell, from there around the cliffs and I make the necessary cameo to inspire and point him in the right direction again. I swear, if I didn’t show up regularly they’d wander into Las Vegas before they hit the Misty Mountains.”

He combed his beard with his fingers, changed his pointy blue hat for one with a rim and swapped his staff for that sword the elves dropped. Then he turned back to the squire.

“How do I look?”

“Exactly the same, sir.”

“Good, good. If Hogwartz calls again tell them I’m not playing phone tag anymore. If they want me to be head wizard, I want time and a half plus a pension that doesn’t rely on disgusting jellybeans. Playing two roles is hard enough.”

Then the wizard hustled to the stables, mumbling something about how having to make so many dramatic appearances had turned his hair white.

Bathroom Monologue: Fragrance of Success, OR, That is not how evolutionary biology works

Their evolutionary biologists suggest human digestive systems evolved to produce feces that smell repugnant so that we would shy away from them, as they contain unhealthy materials. Our evolutionary biologists are quickly processing a new GeneTech ™ pill to rewire your intestines to produce new feces in Rosewater, Fresh Pine and Sanitary Lemon scents. Each pill will run $50,000 and the treatment takes a few months, but GeneTech says it’s always cost a lot to think your shit doesn’t stink (TM).

Bathroom Monologue: Another tuna monologue, OR, I’m Feeling a Little Woody Allen Today

“I lost seven pounds this year without a gym membership. Does that please you, mistress?”

“Lick my boot.”

“I really don’t want to. You say those are your house stilettos, but even so, a lot drips onto the floor of this apartment, and I don’t think a swiffer can pick all of it up. Can’t a just compliment your shoe-shopping purchase? Can’t we just talk? You can dominate the conversation.”

(In case grandma reads this one: it's fiction, grandma. I'm a dom.)

Bathroom Monologue: New Archery Event Announced

“This is a bad event! I know a lot of things are called sports when they aren’t, but this is not a sport! Whoever said we should see who could stop the most arrows was clearly intending to be a spectator! I forfeit! Can I forfeit? I protest! I’m morally opposed to being shot to death!”

Bathroom Monologue: Sitting over an imaginary Ivan, who is in a permanent vegetative state in my tub

“I can’t pull the plug on Ivan. He used to be a dude. I can kind of dig abortion – that little thing was never a dude and isn’t a dude now. I can’t have a bratwurst with it. Ivan cooked me bratwurst. He made bratwurst on the weekends, pastime he picked up from his dad as a little kid. He was a dude, and his dudeness abides to the present. Having been a dude totally changes the equation.”

Bathroom Monologue: “I'd buy a hog and ride it to California.” –A random character in Kelly Link’s “Louise’s Ghost”

Clark Quelsy rides from coast to coast atop his massive pig. The hog drags a sack of tanned leather goods, which he distributes to any charitable children he can see from the road. His is a rare eye that can discern moral character for a mere glimpse at the back of a head. His is a rare hand that can hurl a homemade football to a second grader from eighty yards and through two panes of school glass window. His gifts will not be denied, nor will his passage. Tollbooth workers know the sound of his mighty pig’s hooves, and always leave their gates open out of fearful respect.

Bathroom Monologue: “What happens when an Orc goes underwear shopping?” –Me, trying to stump myself

Clear out Men’s Wear, because Orcs never go alone and they never give up the right of way to other shoppers (or drivers). Orcs never go alone in the way Valley Girls never go alone to the mall and American Football players never go alone out the tunnel of a stadium. Like Valley Girls they scorn all those in their path, and like American Football players their scorn probably means tackling. Remove any glassware or displays from the immediate area – destroying a store display is one of the few things Orcs can write off on their taxes. You are advised to get some young associates to the neighboring departments so that they may begin cleanup immediately, and to give them durable mops. For the actual shopping experience, only stock boxers, and only ones with skulls and crossbones, ironic phrases like, “If idiots could fly this would be an airport,” and anything with a sports logos on it. The helmet of a favorite team on the ass of his underwear will cause an Orc to spend his entire paycheck in your store.

Bathroom Monologue: Sitting over an imaginary court, OR, “You are as wise as you are gentle, my lord.” –A eunuch in George Martin’s Clash of Kings

"We are all only as wise as we are gentle. There is no intelligent violence. There is not a genius who cripples, no murderous brilliance. The strategy of war, planning to disable and maim, is only a compensation for failures of integrity. Wisdom comes in cooperation and compassion. The best indication of practical wisdom is how willing people are to do what you wish them to do; if they are willing without fear, then you are wise, and if they are willing without malice towards others, you are among the wisest. To be brash is to have not thought on something enough. To be harsh may be thought to set an example, but it is only thought so by the unwise – and that is why the death penalty has not outlived crime. All violence is some expression of ignorance or desperation. Sometimes these things extend into the supposedly higher faults, like greed. But greed is just ignorance of where resources will come from when you’ve used them all up, or harmed all the suppliers, or something of which I am ignorant."

Bathroom Monologue: Things for which a police officer has never pulled me over

-Speeding
-Slowing
-Driving under the influence of Methodism
-Breaking the speed of light
-Leaving my headlights on at the speed of light
-Being on fire
-Having my car flooded to the roof with water
-Punching an orangutan
-Underwear stuck in my butt (a seventh sense tells you everyone else knows it’s happened despite their inability to observe)
-Thwarting a snowplow
-Running over the last echidna
-Suspicion that my car is a robot in disguise (a lie – I would never fraternize with Bumblebee)
-Drving while wearing a zoot suit
-Pursuing Daffy Duck
-Pursuing Donald Duck
-Pursuing a flock of young mallards and screaming they lead me to their number one dime
-Driving while verbally composing a cogent and persuasive argument that Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow deserved the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (for which I deserved to be pulled over, as I hadn’t read it yet)
-Using a rainbow as an off-ramp
-Using the carpool lane with an imaginary stuffed tiger in the passenger seat
-Failing to deploy my air flaps
-Opening my doors, taking to the air and jetting over traffic to beat the yellow light

Bathroom Monologue: The Six

One of the popular religious groups in the jail worshipped entities called “the Six.” It was an ancient pantheon, one from the tribal regions. The worshippers didn’t even consider The Six to be gods until the imperial theologians explained the concept to them. To the tribes (and to the prisoners), The Six were merely thieves who carried off land, sea, sky and life from the oppressive creators of the universe. Two thieves carried off land, understandable as the religion was developed before sea-travel explained that oceans weren’t merely oblong lakes. A third thief carried off the sky (considered to be very light despite its size; hence why it floated up there), while a fourth carried all the water, and a fifth carried off life, which she then pumped into everything else. The imperial theologians were perplexed that the worshippers kept reverence for all six thieves despite none of them knowing what the sixth carried off. Theories that he stole the afterlife, stars or fire were all suggested by those same theologians; the tribes didn’t seem to bother about it. The shaman dismissed the sixth stolen item as something to be figured out later. It was only the prisoners who realized this was not a copout; the sixth stolen thing was actually what came later. It was the future. After centuries of scholarly tradition, it took people with nowhere to go and nothing to do to figure it out.

"Rorschark Attack" on Short Story Library

"Rorschark Attack," the monologue about a shark that no one sees as a shark, will be the story of the day on Short Story Library on April 5th. You can check out their site at the URL: http://shortstory.us.com/2009/04/rorschark-attack-by-john-wiswell/

If you like it, let them know with comments or e-mails!

Bathroom Monologue: “Ledger Oscar bittersweet” -Herald Sun headline

“We figured, why waste actual gold on a dead guy?” said Academy reprentative Ed Nygma. “Since his daughter was receiving it, we just made a chocolate mold and put a gold wrapper on it.”

The chocolate Oscar was supplied by the Kyle, Ivy & Quinzel Confectionary Agency. An anonymous confectioner within the group stated the Oscar was, “bittersweet, with a green mint undertone.”

Of course, Mr. Ledger will never know how the chocolate beneath the gold man-shaped wrapper will taste. He was posthumously awarded for his deeply affecting role as a green-haired sociopath that fights a man dressed up like a bat.

No nuts were included in the Oscar, but it was packaged in a production plant that also manufactures peanut goods.

Bathroom Monologue: F13 & V13 (Re-post for Six Sentences Week)

A power outage on Friday the 13th is ominous. Especially when you live in the woods. Especially when it hits an hour before the show time of that new Jason movie you were going to see, but capriciously chose against this morning.

So I went, disregarding that the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” was the first song on the radio, had a good time with two-hundred teenagers, and returned home to find the lights on and no one lurking behind the doors I’d left ajar. It reminded me that Friday the 13th wasn’t a holiday of massacre, but one of bad luck. Or maybe it wasn’t one of bad luck either, but like every day, merely a collection of hours with whatever meaning I let it have, which was an amiable lesson, as Valentine’s Day was tomorrow.

Bathroom Monologue: At Last, Atlas

He did not shrug. He watched their rockets ascend, laughed when they sent a monkey first, and gaped when they touched down on the moon. When the first man played golf on the moon, he dropped the sky. It fell with a thud none heard and everyone has been feeling ever since. It is not the weight of the world, but the weight of literally everything else. Retired, Atlas now teaches putting on Pluto with his wife and two hundred-handed sons.

Bathroom Monologue: One Man’s Ceiling

Roy’s apartment palpitated every night with the music from the next floor. They partied, danced and got that loud kind of drunk he simply couldn’t stand, all to an almost ethereal rock vibe to shook his couch. He could smell the booze from his dry and pious living room.

Like most people he didn’t go up and confront them, but kept a glaring eye out in the lobby, though he never ran into them. Sometimes he banged on the ceiling or turned up his own music, but that drew complaints from the people beneath him.

His superintendent was nonplussed when he finally called, saying after a long pause, “But Mr. Stander, you live on the top floor.”

Bathroom Monologue: Hunting Dreams

Papa hunts nightmares, but forbids his sons from following suit. In his youth he lost too many brothers to the shadowy figures spawned from Horror films watched before bed. Until they mature the young Folgians have been warned to stalk nothing bigger than a teen realizing she’s come to class naked. They move quietly, shoot soundlessly, harvest and cure the untainted meat, and mount the heads of the most fearsome game on their walls. The oldest boy has six heads of drunken fathers lining the space above his cot. Above all, they grant restful dreams, particularly to exhausted souls that have a meeting tomorrow morning.

Bathroom Monologue: Oh, Baby, OR, Heard a country song

Now they said not to throw it away with the bathwater, but Roseanne couldn't help noticing, as the baths went by, that there was little bathwater that didn’t require disposal out of smelling distance from the house that wasn't baby-related.

Its favorite time of day was 3:20 AM, which it christened with a song of shrieks. Its favorite games included getting its head stuck in the bars of its crib, pulling valuable things off of shelves and watching them fall to the ground, and looking innocent when strangers were in earshot. Friends said it was just hungry, but its bizarre insistence on testing its father’s tit lost its humor quickly.

To be fair, they built it a little house in a fenced in area, every bit as good as the one they'd made for the dog, and then stuck it out there to learn manners. Roseanne was progressive and declared that when the baby learned to wee on the newspaper, it wouldn't have to eat out of a bowl anymore.

Bathroom Monologue: Tectonic Psychology

Africa woke up first. It attacked Asia with a vigor that left them nostalgic for Toho monster films. French existentialists postulated its motivation, before their existences were ended by several tons of Morocco.

The continent searched the seven seas, and when depressed Cape Town dragged, and dug seven more. It followed the shadow of the sun for several time zone hours until pausing, sighing a million-year sigh and cuddling up against the American east coastline.

“There you are,” it murmured, before returning to sleep.

Six Sentence Week

Out of curiosity I’ve been doing six-sentence bathroom monologues for the community, Six Sentences. The one I actually submitted to their editorial board was rejected, but they’ve all received pretty warm comments from their reader community. This week all six of the ones I’ve come up with will go up, one a day until Saturday. Let me know how you think of what I’m doing with the length, and if you like any of the stories that emerged out of babbling for six sentences. Also, please vote for your favorite in the poll.

Crap, that was five sentences.

Bathroom Monologue: Sleeping Butterface

“My favorite story as a kid was Sleeping Beauty. Great movie by Disney, cool songs, gnarly dwarves, and the guy gets the girl at the end. It was my favorite story all the way until I tried it at home. Turns out? You kiss a princess and she wakes up, her guards beat you until your kidneys fail. It’s much better to kiss the princess without her waking up. I’ve tried it a couple of times and the beatings are much more tolerable. I’m not sure what fetish this road will lead me towards, but hi ho, hi ho.” -Anonymous

Bathroom Monologue: “Some say now is not the time to point fingers. We disagree.” –Anderson Cooper, CNN

"Now is not the time to point fingers. I know we settled on a bailout two weeks ago, but it is not yet time for blame-assignment. Now is the time for me to run away, as my fellow board members are. Now is the time for you to continue being shocked things went this badly, and to hug the life savings you once had. Perhaps cry a little. But not to point fingers! When I am out of the room, a safe distance away from U.S. jurisdiction, then will be the time to point fingers. When I am on a beach with a 15-year-old wearing a grass skirt and edible body paint, then will be the time to point fingers. When I can no longer hear you being angry."

Bathroom Monologue: The F.o.S.P.

Friends of Sexual Predators is a controversial lobbyist group. They want to change the name by which individuals who commit sex crimes are called, claiming the group has created “true” sexual predators.

“Some guy messing with kids at a bus stop isn’t a sexual predator,” says Dr. Samual Shelby, an MIT graduate with a focus on theoretical biology. “He’s a deviant. A monster. The true sexual predator is a life form that can subsist off of sex, like the people we’re trying to grow in these test tubes.”

Shelby and his fellow researchers claim to be working on a new system of digestion that runs the body entirely on sexual intercourse.

One of his assistants explains, “The orgasm is a heck of an emotional kick. It produces a lot of energy. The sex drive is already almost as strong as hunger, so why not tie them together? It’ll trump veganism before long.”

Dr. Shelby nods. “No more senseless murder of soy plants. Just because it didn’t scream doesn’t mean you didn’t kill it.”

Dr. Shelby is a happy omnivore, but claims to look forward to “a more moral future for dining.”

Bathroom Monologue: Utters and Cans

[GARY sits on one side of the booth in a lime green tuxedo, minus the bowtie. SAMID sits to his right in a banana yellow tuxedo, wearing two bowties, one banana yellow, one lime green. ARYANA sits on the opposite side of the booth in a chainmail tuxedo. A miniature version of the planetoid PLUTO floats in an ambient purple light between ARYANA and SAMID. GRANDPA sits at the head of the booth in a chair he stole from the bar, wearing overalls and lobster bib.]

Samid: It can’t have been that bad.
Gary: Her orgasm couldn’t have been faker if it had come out of a can.
Aryana: You should hold off for some good religious sex. Nothing like a bar next to a Catholic church the day after Lent. Nobody fakes anything when they’re that desperate.
Samid: You go to church? I thought you were a polytheist.
Aryana: I made out with a preacher and caught mono. His tongue was very convincing.
Pluto: There you go, Gary. Make out with a preacher.
Gary: I don’t want to be converted that way.
Grandpa: Back in my day if you had a cowgirl fetish you banged a girl in chaps and a hat. These days if you’ve got a cowgirl fetish she’s probably got utters and only exists on deviantart.
Samid: What would we do without you, grandpa?
Grandpa: Burn in a Hell of centaur fetishes and estimations of celestial mass!
Pluto: I miss being a planet…

Bathroom Monologue: Elite, oft-conflated in anger with something else

The government of elites was very successful. They had the elite-level speechwriters compose the most motivating things, and they had much to write about. They wrote praise of elite-level foreign policy experts that kept peace on the borders. They wrote praise of elite economists that helped money flow more freely and always paid attention to raising the lower class wages and general job growth. Elite governors delegated funds deftly, keeping necessary programs open. Natural disasters kept happening, and there were crises – unemployment hit 3% one year. But elite decision makers minimized casualties when the earth quaked, and got support to the unemployed before the economy could employ them again. Mostly, the elites got out of the way and let the market do what it needed, but elite judges and legislatures kept very strict laws to keep them from doing anything too selfish, and publicly punished those who transgressed. There were times when the populace got fed up with the slickness of the elite, or how removed they seemed to be from common sense, but they kept re-electing them.

Bathroom Monologue: Elitist, oft-defended in comfort as though it was something else

The government of elitists was very unpopular, no matter which of the two major elitist parties was elected. They weren’t the smartest but they were amazingly connected and wealthy, and with resources came media dominance and the shunting of radical thought. Somebody’s friend ran a national bureau, and so it didn’t respond in time to a hurricane and many people died. Elitist businessmen and elitist politicians worked hand-in-hand, legislating and delegating until the only surprise about a market crash or rampant unemployment was that they’d let it happen again. And all along they turned up their noses at third parties, and ignored polls when the populace disagreed with their choices. After all, this was a government by the wise. The self-established wise said so. The populace, seeing wages shrink, medicine in disarray, and unable even to comprehend issues thanks to wise news organizations, would have loved to kick them all out, or pretended to themselves that the next well-connected candidate wasn’t like all the other cronies. And the elitists kept getting re-elected, because there wasn’t anybody else.