Bathroom Monologue: The iBelieve

"Your religion needs an update, Father. This crucifix. Yes, it's a cross, and the image of Christ suffering for mortal sins, but those are just two functions, and most consumers see them as one. Single-use devices are unfashionable. Can't it be a keychain, too? 

"Put a bottle opener at your Savior's feet. Can't this thing play music? I've seen MP3 players and flash drives smaller than this. You could fit a terabyte in Jesus's chest. 

"It needs WiFi; pray with the rosary beads, fine, but get some Facebook integration so God can Like your best prayers on your Wall. Twitter integration, for short requests and pithy spiritual thoughts. Boundless functionality. Auto-updates. The Vatican authorizes new canon and bang, streamed straight to your personal iconography. 

"Launch it next month. A new model next year. Make people feel like they've got outdated faithware. If you can't make Steve Jobs convert, you can at least convert his methods. You're not going to Hell because you don't have one; life is Hell because you don't have one. The iChrist. The iBelieve. Think about it."

Bathroom Monologue: 7 Ways Writing a Book is Not Like Raising a Child

1. Mine inspires the movie. Yours won’t shut up during it.

2. Mine falls on the floor in the mall and flops open. Yours falls on the floor in the mall and screams so loud security runs in.

3. People are more favorable about my Used market.

4. If mine breaks someone’s heart, it’s amazing. If yours break someone’s heart, he/she’s a douche bag.

5. I don’t send holiday cards with photos of my hideous rough draft.

6. They can both get banned from the library for bad words, but only yours gets banned for defecating in the Science section.

7. I can make sure mine turns out well.

Bathroom Monologue: Leave the Silver Bullets

"Don't bother with the silver bullets. That can't be true."

"You don't believe in the curse of the werewolf?"

"I don't know, but I've never seen a monster that shrugged off having its heart blown up just because the pellets were tungsten. And leave your Bible. "

"Oh, you don't believe in Christ now?"

"I believe in not pissing him off because you dropped his book in the swamp because you were fumbling for your gun."

"Fine. But I'm taking the wolfsbane and the silver bullets."

“Well, good luck.”

“You believe in luck?”

“I believe in a lot of things. Luck helps keep some of them away.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Worthy

"This will sound self-serving, but I don't think you've paid enough attention to the god you're trying to feed me to. This is an ancient god of five islands in a patch of frozen sea, who only appears in blistering weather, and whose only favored worshippers are giant raiders. He's demanded revenge killings for at least six centuries and decreed the blood of the "minor" be poured into his icy sea to thaw it. If local history is anything, he favors huge, cruel killers.

"I'd love to be walk across the cursed ice to the first for you, I really would. Then we'd have something to bond over and you'd stop considering me so dispensable. I understand why people from my culture would see this challenge of ice, beckoning the worthy to walk it, and you'd elect me. In my culture, the educated and the well-dressed are worthy of perhaps too much. I'm unscarred, I'm unsullied (thank you for that), and still probably electable for office if I get back home.

"Now if you'll look at these documents, you'll see none of the god' favorite heroes are even blond. Certainly none of these are unsullied city-folk; they're swathed in animal or human hide and scarred to the verge illegibility. So when he's talking about the worthy, he's not talking about lawyers.

"There's a perfectly good prison three days from here, full of perfectly good murderers and thieves. Some of them are probably his people. Half of them have to be some kind of descendents. The five island raiders got around, you know. I don't mean to be racist, just practical, when I say to buy a few of them and toss them at the ice.

"If none of them can walk the icy reef, then you should send a lawyer. For now, aren't I better used finagling prisoners for you?"

Lit Corner: Hemingway, Terminator, and Why I Love Twitter

Twitter is my favorite social network. It gets people the chattiest, the most conversations spring up there, and at its best, humor rolls out of exchanges rather than in somebody's polemic Facebook status. I saved this image a couple years ago to always remind me what Twitter is about.

This exchange started with Randall Nichols and I jawjacking about optimism and Ernest Hemingway. Then it became this:

Bathroom Monologue: And now, The News

If everyone believes it, it's the truth.

If enough people believe, it's history.

If too many people believe it, it's a lie.

If the minority believes it, it's a myth.

If nobody believes it... well, there's no such thing.

BM: Was Lincoln's Depression the Fuel for Greatness?

Joshua Shenk wrote a book called Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. I read an article by him about it, not the book itself, but the title spurred something in me. The following is what it spurred.

The gnome was puzzled as soon as he departed the esophagus. His fellow gnomes were shoveling what looked like solid sadness into great ovens that burned around the president's stomach.

A slightly taller than average gnome approached him with a clipboard.

"You one of the new men?"

"Sir, yes, sir." The new gnome straightened his posture. "Reporting for duty in service of my country, sir."

"Good, good," said the superior gnome. "Fetch a shovel and get to burning that depression."

"Sir, is it constitutional to damage the emotions of the commander in chief, sir?"

The superior gnome frowned over his clipboard.

"That's why we're here, private."

"Sir, I read that depression was the cause of his greatness, sir."

"No, no. The fuel." The superior gnome came closer. "It's the fuel of his greatness. And what do you do with fuel?"

The new gnome kept his eyes forward.

"Sir, store it in something safe, sir?"

"You're a cute one. What do you do with gasoline? Burn it. What do you do with coal? Burn it."

"Sir, so what you're saying is..."

"What I'm saying is that if we want this president to get anything done we've got to find all his depression and set it on fire. Now come on. He's got to emancipate the slaves and win the biggest war this country's ever seen! It's going to take a lot of depression."

"And cause it, I'd assume.” And then he remembered to add, “Sir!"

The superior gnome pointed to the nearest oven, which billowed with a smoky melancholy.

"That is not our problem! Now fetch a shovel or start cleaning the stoves. The grease that builds up in there is figuratively and literally bad for morale."

Bathroom Monologue: A Narrative in Skin

Hers is a narrative in skin. There are castles at her ankles, drawbridges moored to the dimples on the inner junction to feet. The castle is burning, flames swaying mid-shin, and they sway whenever she jogs, cascading inked smoke to offend the clouds at her knees.

It's where tattoos of smoke ebb into tattoos of clouds that the narrative lives. Here, in the ridges and contours of inked air, the outlines of weeping and howling human faces emerge. There are no tricks; they do not murmur or tear at their hair when she does a little dance. They are remarkably still faces, frozen in mourning, caught in the cloud banks, no matter what she does. All their moist eyes peer up upon her thighs, to portraits of catastrophes that brought down the castle below. Their memories have been wrought across her midriff in sequential art that sags and wrinkles with time, and yet never loses its poignancy. Perhaps that's because she shows so few people the memories. Not all body art is public, after all.

All that is public is her face – colorless, you might call it, undrawn, never wearing make-up. All that is public are all the times she casts her eyes down upon the artifice climbing up her legs. Her expressions are a more living art. How do they look to you?

Bathroom Monologue: At Our Best

He set aside his entire evening. He spent half a month's salary on bribes to get them a table at the city's most exclusive restaurant. He bought her the best chocolates. He found her favorite wine, in its best year.

Nervous, he showered three times and used that cologne he couldn't stand, but that she said reminded her of the ocean. She loved the ocean. So he made sure that their table overlooked it.

He had his best suit dry-cleaned and held off wearing it for a month, saving it just for that night. He wore the tie she'd gotten him last year. He got a dozen black roses, and put them in a bouquet with a dozen white ones. In the very center, he placed a single, brilliant red rose. That bouquet sat on the middle of their table for two hours as he waited for her. She never came. At the stroke of ten, he looked out at the night city skyline. His jaw fell as he realized. He'd forgotten to invite her.

Bathroom Monologue: You shouldn't watch those kinds of movies.

You shouldn't watch those kinds of movies. They promote violence. 87% of viewers were found more likely to commit a misdemeanor. 35% were found to have committed a felony within ten days of watching one. 11% of viewers disappear. Someone somewhere high up puts you on a list.

I've heard that when you leave the movie theatre, you never leave alone. A man nine inches taller than you, wearing a coat a shade of black seen nowhere else on earth, follows you back to your car. He lurks in your shadow for three days. Then you lurk in his for the rest of your days.

Really, you shouldn't watch those movies because they're haunted. I've heard about viewers getting obscene phone calls and being dragged into mirrors and television sets. Dark-haired little girls manifest and maul them.

Viewers keep dozing off and then waking up on the sun, with no stars out to guide them home. I hear they're touching movies, but surely you can find a more terrestrial way to enjoy yourself.

They eat your soul.

They don't eat your soul. They chew until they are bored.

You shouldn't watch those kinds of movies.

True Stories of John: The Devil Interrupts a Horror Movie

College felt like this to me, too.

So on Sunday my mother asked to go see The Conjuring. Apparently both the Catholic Church and CNBC had endorsed the movie, and they're who she listens to for Horror movie picks. I jump at the chance to watch any Horror movie with my mother because she is the only person I've ever seen jump out of a chair in fright (thank you, Wait Until Dark). I chose wisely because, recent viewings of Lawrence of Arabia and Pacific Rim notwithstanding, I had the most amazing cinema experience in years.

The Conjuring is an exoricism movie full of exorcisim movie tropes. Things are moving, the kids are hearing and smelling things, and the family finds a basement they didn't know was there even though it houses their boiler. Sure, whatever, why was it amazing?

So in the middle of one night scene, one of the daughters is woken by an invisible force tugging on her leg. Even though the weather is clear through her windows, I can make out heavy rain in the background. It's odd, eerier than anything the movie is suggesting to the girl as she gradually wakes and realizes this isn't one of her sisters. No one is around, but the presence is still looming over her in the dark. Face contorted in fear, she moves the edge of her mattress and does what only the bravest real kids and all fictional kids do: she looks under her bed.

We get a shot from under the bed, the wall pale against the darkness of the mattress and floor. The girl's head creeps down from above, millimeter by millimeter, and just as we prepare to see her eyes and read her reaction to whatever is under here, the walls of the cinema rumble with thunder and the screen goes blank. The dim lights in the cinema, which we normally tune out, all shut off, and the screen is a natural emptiness, not a projected black. The entire room is cast into darkness, as though the devil had seized our space as well as the girl's, except for one yellow light bulb that flicks on behind us.

The hurtz hum of the speakers has also died, but the sounds of pelting rain continue – from outside the cinema. A thunderstorm had crept up on us during The Conjuring and knocked out the power. I believe I mortified my mother by laughing so hard. It's things like this that make it impossible for me to be a deist. Thanks, exorcism films.

Perhaps the best part was the unease of everyone else in the cinema. They were looking around, murmuring, and for whatever reason I felt the need to editorialize, "It was the weather." Everyone gave off this short, nervous laugh.

After a minute, I ventured into the hallway and got a disgruntled apology from a booth worker who clearly didn't want to have to deal with the generator. And after a few minutes, the house lights returned and the film came back, just seconds away from a cheap jump scare. The movie actually ended very well, having more to do in its exorcism sequence than the traditional "you're tied to a chair, we yell back and forth while things move" routine. I downright admired how the movie juggled so many characters and entities bebopping around its script. But nothing they could have directed would have been as good as a jump scare caused by barometric pressure.

Lit Corner: My Contribution to the Tree of Life/Branching Out Story and a Contest!

This summer Samantha Geary is running a big writing experiment. She's organized and hosted 26 writers to assemble a short story, each composing 150 words, one after another. Each entry is to be inspired both what was written before and by Audiomachine's new album, Tree of Life. Each writer gets a spot in the batting order and a musical track to inspire where their bit of the story goes.

Huh. When I put it that way, it sounds grotesquely commercial. I promise it was a friendly artistic endeavor when I joined. Old college buddy of mine Beverly Fox is also contributing. It's taken on quite a life.

I wrote the second entry. I had to go early because this summer is a brutally busy time for me, and Sam was good enough to let me sneak in. I tried to earn my spot by contributing some unusual plot elements for the next writers to play with. I hope you'll enjoy what I did to the horse. 

My entry was inspired by this lovely song:

Also, every comment you leave on any of the chapters enters you to win a copy of Tree of Life as well as works by several of my co-authors.

You can read the first entry here, and my follow-up right here. Then it gets nutty.

Bathroom Monologue: Character Sheet for Nigel Poshington

Name: Nigel Poshington

Character portrait: "I'm not consenting to this photograph, I'll sue you if it shows up on the web."

Occupation: C.E.O.

Religion: DOWism

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Gender: "Do you have anything bolder than 'Male'? Something that pops?"

Hit Points: "Touch me and I'll sue for every farthing in that stupid dragon hoard."

STATS
Str: 2
Con: 2
Dex: 2
Int: 4
Wis: 3
Char: 14

Inventory: Cane, briefcase, Blackberry (can summon Short Stocks three times per day), bills for commodities x5.

Class Perks: Plausible Deniability, Golden Parachute, Insider Trading (always has Initiative).

Special Abilities: Inspirational speech that none of the employees actually find inspirational; once per day can call his "friends" in the government to bail him out.

Bathroom Monologue: The Problem with Free Speech

This is free speech.

"the holocost never happend! you culdnt hid that mny bodies. not possibl to kill tht many peepl DUH! gurmany would nevr do it. jews mad it up."

This is also free speech.

"You're a fucking idiot and a disgrace to the human race. There were millions of witnesses, the most famous trial in the history of the world, and thousands survivor stories. It's the most evil thing mankind has ever done. You should be kicked off the internet."

This is more free speech.

"Fuck off, kike. He can have whatever opinion he wants. You think you can just tell people what to believe? He's got the same internet you do."

This is still more free speech.

"where did the comments go? there was a whole thread of fighting here an hour ago"

This statement against free speech is free speech.

"This is my blog and you do not have the right to say whatever you want here. Trolls will be shot on sight."

So this is free speech --

"Feminazi deleted all their comments? You think you're God? You can just erase when someone says something you don't like? Big Brother much? I'm boycotting this site from now on."

--and so is this.

"Boycotts are censorship! You're what's ruining America."

We sometimes think of this as free speech.

"People have got to stop harassing her. So she deleted your comments. That means you should send her death threats?"

But lawyers would defend his right to post this in public.

"FIRST AMENDMENT BITCHES. I DIDN'T SEND HER ANY SHIT BUT SHE DESERVED ANY SHE GOT. DELETE THIS COMMENT IF YOU WANT. I'LL JUST POST AGAIN. LMAO"

This is liberty.

"I am so sorry that this ever happened."

Fundraiser in Memorial of Amanda

So today's post was supposed to be asking you to donate to the fundraiser for Amanda. She was a lovely young woman, cousin to my friend Lillie Webb, who struggled with Takayasu's Vasculitis, a rare and vicious auto-immune disease. She had to be put into an induced coma and had insanely unfair bills coming her way if she ever woke up. Lillie set up a fundraiser to help with those outrageous bills.

 

And then, on Monday, Amanda passed away. I'm deeply sorry for her entire family.

Before the news broke, I posted to Twitter and Facebook with messages like, "If this young woman wakes up, she'll wake up unbelievable hospital bills." It felt wrong, if not downright evil, to include phrases like "If she wakes up." It wasn't so much jinxing – my belief in jinxes is sporadic and less canny – as it was feeling that speaking of such an outcome was unfeeling towards Amanda and her family. It's wretched such an outcome came true and befell this family.

The hospital will still charge Amanda's family for her treatment and the procedures, and now they have funerary expenses stacking up on top of that. It's a morbid part of our economic system and a burden we can help them with. If you have anything you can spare, Lillie has kept her fundraiser open right here.

It would mean the world to Amanda's family to know that there were people who cared. Please spread the message and donate if you can. Thank you.

Bathroom Monologue: For Seven August Heavens

"No matter what disease you think they're carrying, no matter how contagious you say it is, I am not pouring fire into the valley and wiping an entire tribe from this world. I am not. We are not. Our little posse of four ends today if you think we are, and it ends with the three of you killing me, for otherwise, I will stop you. There is no world in which the slaughter of the innocent is protection, and any that pretends to be such will lose me to any of the Seven August Heavens that will have me.

"If you want to impale me and then unleash the torrents of fire, then pray proceed, for there are three of you and one of me so the deed is at least plausible. I will ascend to any of the seven heavens that will receive me.

"I will bask in the shadow of the sun with my most pious ancestors, or I will descend the eternal stair in the company of my quietest ancestors and into the well of the world, or I will drift eternal in the Purgatorial Sea, alone as each cloud must be or in the company of a billion other rays of color that fly from the humble earth. I am at peace with every possible August Heaven, and do not waste breath questioning them, for I already have.

"If hereafters are false places, as three souls who think burning a tribe alive for the crime of being infected must believe, then I shall simply cease to be. If my only options are to exist in a world of genocide or to not exist at all, then falling and decomposing and losing myself to the myriad of unknown and unthought carrion is better. Run me through and know you've left me to die so you can live wringing abomination."

BM: Who would win: Superman or Batman?

If the writer likes Batman more: Batman wins.

If the writer likes Superman more: it's a tie or they're distracted and work together against a common third opponent. Superman fans are less awful.

If it's a fight to the death: neither of them kill people. Superman eventually wins by having a longer lifespan. Alternatively, Batman wins because Superman's died before and thus he outlived him.

If it's a race for who gets to the kitchen first: Superman, as he is much faster.

If it's a race for who gets to the kitchen first and Batman gets prep time: Batman builds the kitchen, starts in the kitchen, and wins.

If it's a race around the planet: Batman uses his superpower of money to hire The Flash, and wins.

If it's a competition of tragic origins: Batman's parents are dead, while Superman's planet is dead and in most versions so is his earth-dad. Superman wins, but since Batman is taking this worse, lets Batman think he wins.

If it's mortal combat and Batman has a kryptonite ring: Superman smothers him in lead at speeds faster than his eyes can follow.

If it's mortal combat and Batman has a kryptonite ring and infinite prep time: Superman likely also had such prep time and probably does okay with his laser eyes and ability to fight from space.

If it's mortal combat and Batman has a kryptonite ring and infinite prep time and Superman was screwing around for that infinity: the writer likes Batman.

If Batman has a really cool mech he suspiciously never uses for all the other cases it'd be useful: Superman probably rips it apart and leaves him alive.

If Batman needs to establish a mythos: Superman takes a dive in front of a cameraman.

If Superman needs to establish a mythos: he does something else impressive and lets Bruce abuse some children or whatever he does with his time.

If they're on hallucinogenics, brainwashed, in an alternate universe, and think each other are figments and villains and whatever other nonsense your message board requires to justify two non-lethal characters murdering people they love and respect: Superman throws the earth into the sun, are you happy now?

Bathroom Monologue: Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy

"It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. You're not even a nice person – you're nice relative to other social climbers in the company, but you've stepped on my forehead at least three times climbing the ladder. Nicer guys are rungs in a ladder that you are ascending effortlessly, and I might say, often callously. An even remotely nicer could not cut pensions that way. The stuff you've put on the company expense account? These charges suggest an absence of moral compass that, if possessed, would make your series of promotions wholly implausible. I can only hope that you are a nice enough guy to not destroy the blue collar level of the company now that you've escaped it. The workforce is worried. Many have been jilted before. It's happened to nicer guys."

Nine Times I Got an Author's Gender Wrong

I revel in human fallibility, and even love my own failures when they're taken out of judgmental spheres. You can shame someone for their failures, but this is usually the result of forgetting all of your own. It's better to recognize them, share them and learn.

It's for this noble end that I here expose some of my most boneheaded mistakes: nine times when I blatantly got an author's gender wrong. There's one writer, and I won't say who, but I met him without knowing he was a man. None of these nine entries are quite that bad, but I'm hoping to open a dialogue and find out if others have been so silly. If not, I hope to at least make you laugh.

1. Kim Stanley Robinson – That's Heteronormative Thinking with Names 101, which may be the most pedantic class in all of academia. But I have to take a certain ownership over the Kim-possibility given that I'd read the bio on the inside cover and still made it fifty pages before feeling like I had something wrong about her. In my defense: there was no author photo.

2. C.S. Lewis – This came less from the ambiguity of his shortened name, and more that everyone who tried to foist The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe on me as a kid was a woman. I was so young, and so into that Boys Vs. Girls mentality, that I just assumed the book girls kept telling me to read was by one of them. I hope I've outgrown that.

3. J.K. Rowling – I think she got reverse-Lewised. And then, as though to level the playing field for all the big male authors I'd mistaken as female, I mistook the bestselling female author of the decade for a guy. I've actually gone back and checked, and the copies of the first three books I read had no author-information on them whatsoever. I was reading "him" in some ignorant vacuum, possibly assigning gender because Dumbledore always felt like a stand-in for the author. Actually, much like the paternal figure the kids in Lewis's first book lived with.

4. Terry Pratchett – I thought she was so darned funny.

Bathroom Monologue: Playing Pool

"I have a headache. Go without me."

"No, come down to the pool with us. Francis invented a new game. It's amazing."

"I don't know. What game?"

"We take ten Nerf balls. They're foam and full of air, so they float. And you make a triangle out of them, floating in the middle of the pool."

"Ugh, and Francis gets drunk and jumps on them?"

"No, it's way more measured. Everyone takes turns aiming the pool skimmer and knocking an eleventh ball at the triangle of ten. They scatter and bob all over the pool, usually towards the filters."

"So, it's like billiards? I like billiards."

"Exactly like billiards. You get a point for every time one goes into the filter. It's really fun to see if you can aim with the way the water sloshes around. Kind of zen. I bet you'd be good at it."

"I might try it. What's it called?"

"Oh, Pool Ball."

"Get away from me."

Bathroom Monologue: The Catch

The breath caught in Ade Akingbola's throat for the last time as the doctor explained his heart condition. Well, the second to the last time, and as he looked at x-rays and listened to possible surgeries, he calculated to not permit the true last catching of breath for a damned long time.

He explained to the others that they'd be losing their second-best shortstop. How he loved softball, and he'd still come, and still bring the home-made limeade, though he'd add less sugar from now on. That, too, was a loss.

More doctors, these cardiovascular elites called "specialists," explained that the condition was spreading to his lungs. Except "spreading" here meant "atrophy" or "corrosion." In a month, it was in his bones too. How did your heart rob your bones? By being too weak.

In a month the softball season started up again, too. By then he needed a wheelchair. A second wheelchair, actually, a motorized one after he could no longer safely move him. The effort, you know, was often hard on people.

The spring was too hard on too many people. Ade only had to visit the hospital three times a week; his friends had to lose at softball on four. He couldn't play shortstop, he couldn't even yell to support them. He could dump vodka in the limeade, though, and by Week Five, he strongly suspected it was helping more than their coach. They still lost – he'd been their second best shortstop because all but Nelson and Idrissa lacked reflexes – but they were cheerier about it an hour later. Sometimes they played morning games hung over, and no hangover changed how badly they lost. Sometimes they came closer to winning, sliding into first while trying not to throw up on the opposing team.

Ade watched every game from his mechanical chair, a sippy cup of water to keep himself hydrated and an iPhone full of cardio stats he had to monitor. There was, it appeared, an app for your heart turning against you. An app for it taking your lungs and bones with it.

He used the phone to count the unhappy winners. Team after team waddled off the field as softball season grew deep, complaining about their backs, frowning at their bats, squinting at their cars as though they hadn't played a game for several hours, as though softball had been a square traffic jam and the dugouts a miserable off-ramp preventing them from hitting their cars. God, Ade hoped he'd enjoyed playing more than all these winners did. He remembered himself having loved it, but also remembered complaining more than he liked, the mere memory making his breathing speed up, which he couldn't abide. Not if he wanted to postpone the last time his breath would catch in his throat.

Ade Akingbola found his lips smiling – had to raise his hand and feel his mouth to be sure of it, and moving his hands idly like that was no easy task anymore. He was fondling his own smile as a winning relief pitcher, who'd shut out Ade's friends for the last three innings, grimaced, spat chaw in the red dust, and walked for his Volvo. Ade pushed the switch to wheel backward, to get out of the miserable winner's way. The miserable winner wouldn't look him in the face; looked him in the chair, sure, briefly, before ticking his head away. Winning must have been so hard on some people.

Why I tried writing a Wonder Woman movie no one will make.

TV series cancelled because a DC main character smiled.

So yesterday I posted the synopsis for a Wonder Woman movie that I tried to write in thirty minutes. It's rough as heck, but seemed worth trying when many people have spent years on adapting the character to film and came out of it saying she's an impossible character. At Comic-Con last weekend they announced a Flash and a Batman/Superman movie, and Twitter rightly got upset about the lack of such a famous character getting her screen time.

I wasn't offended until the old arguments that she's uninteresting or not fit for motion pictures resurfaced. These arguments are nonsense, and given that she is the most iconic female superhero, and the current glut of superhero movies are already decidedly light on ladies, it reads gross.

First and foremost: there is an excellent Wonder Woman movie. It's animated, free to stream if you have Amazon Prime and cheap on DVD, and could be remade live action shot-for-shot into a splendid blockbuster. And it'd be an empowering, fun action flick that happened to star an iconic woman. Please don't tell me that's the reason why you can't make it.

Second and possibly foremoster: Wonder Woman is a sexy warrior from a familiar but different culture who engages critically with ours and gets to fight anything from the Grecko-Roman bestiary or pantheon you want. She has a history of punching Nazis, robots, aliens and dragons - the untouchable holy quartet of ass-kicking. From a writing and promotional perspective, there is no reason she's not a franchise. Probably a really explodey dumb one that grosses embarrassingly well.

And my synopsis was for that kind of blockbuster. It's honestly not the Wonder Woman I'd like to make, rather the kind that seems like every producer deems unfeasible, a message I deem harmful.

If Smallville adapts the costume well as a gag,
then costume design isn't a valid excuse anymore.

The Wonder Woman movie I'd rather make is of a superhero who bridged to our culture in World War II against the worst of all possible enemies, then grew up with us for decades, with the moral decay of wars in Korea and Vietnam and Iraq, who is a crucible for our shortcomings and an agent against them. If it's too much like the Superman I'd write, well, tough. We deserve heroes we can’t relate to when we suck.

Also, the superhero movie I really want to make is actually Daredevil & She-Hulk: Attorneys at Law, but that's another story and another company.

There's a Wired column I won't waste your clicks linking to that asserts a Wonder Woman movie has to be uncomfortably feminist and bondage-themed. That's needless clickbait writing, something encroaching more and more of Wired. The truth is that a WW film can be about uncomfortable feminist issues and bondage, or about other facets of her character. The bondage baggage, in particular, is something I couldn't think to incorporate in my half hour and probably wouldn't in my final draft. It ain't essential, but it's out there and a valid interpretation.

My guess is that the real pitfalls of a Wonder Woman movie aren't that no one has an idea. As many annoying things as Joss Whedon has said about the character, he had a decent idea before Warner Bros shot him down. It's more likely money-backers who don't believe in female leads, testy focus groups, the decreasingly tenable profits blockbusters must bring in turning studios even more conservative. It's enough to make you wonder what we'd get if copyright laws were different and anyone could make a movie about her.

Enough to make you wonder. Get it?

Wonder Woman Movie Outline - Written in 30 minutes.

Yesterday: I ran my mouth about people saying there can't be a good Wonder Woman movie. They've taken years to produce nothing. I have myself half an hour to write how one might go and had to stop when the alarm clock rang.

Today: I'm sharing what I wrote, no editing, exposing my typos, my stream of consciousness, and some hackneyed writing. At worst, I'm showing the earliest thing in any of my creative processes I've ever put out there. I'm a little scared.

Tomorrow: I'm going to unpack my reasons for trying this, the offense of being told there's no chance of a good Wonder Woman movie when they're trying to reboot Green Lantern and Flash, and perhaps field some comments/hatemail.

We start with two points of view. Our first is Steve Trevor, grounding us in the present United States, post-Man of Steel. Our government is paranoid about what else is out there. The Fortress of Solitude was just hiding in ice? So drones and stealth pilots are sweeping as much space as possible. Trevor is piloting the most advanced human machine out there scanning for suspicious signs and jaw-jacking with friend Hal Jordan.

Our second (and main) point of view is through the island of Themyscira, removed from modern culture. Their sky shimmers with the magical barriers that keep the world ignorant to their presence; the Amazons have been hiding for a long time, and there's mention that they've refused reconciliation even with the king of Atlantis. Something awful and unspoken once happened here, but Queen Hippolyta has decreed silence and progress. She sometimes watches the modern world through a pool, ala the original Clash of the Titans, but forbids others to view of it. The Amazons do not speak of the prison of Hades that exists beneath their palace. The Amazons want to be alone, all except one. Guess who.

Happy Urban Legend 5: The Call is Coming From Inside the House

We all pretend we were that teenager. Down on her luck, no cash from the parents, desperate to make ends meet, and then she gets the call. A wealthy family with a big house who just need her to watch the kids overnight. They'll sleep through all of it.

This lucky girl tucks the kids in at 7, and because it's a fiction, they don't make a peep. She's wandering the mansion and pocketing their candy bars when her cell rings. In older versions of the story it's the house phone, but who has one of those anymore?

"Hello?" she asks.

The response is heavy breathing, like the caller has been sprinting. It goes on for a few seconds before he hangs up.

She thinks that's weird, and Caller ID says it's an unknown number. Maybe a friend from school butt-dialed her. She's walking into the next room when her cell rings again.

"Hello?"

Heavier breathing this time, labored like it's coming through a cloth. She's about to threaten the call-troll when he hangs up again.

She goes to the foyer, looking out the windows, because if you've even heard of Horror movies, you look out the God-damned windows when this happens to you. There's no one there. She's convincing herself it was a dumb prank when her cell rings again. This time the shock is so great she almost throws it at the wall.

"Who the hell is this?"

There's more muffled breathing, and what sounds eerily close to a child's giggle. Then a muffled voice asks, "Have you checked the children?"

Like any smart young woman, she calls the police while fleeing the property. She isn't checking on crap until men with guns show up, and they do, with guns and radios and flashing lights. She gets several more calls while the police sweep the premises, begging her to send them away. By the second call, she sees movement in an upstairs window and realizes who's been trolling her. Every brat has a cell phone these days. She lets the sheriff be the one to catch the kids, and sticks around to see their parents have their own freak-out. The kids are grounded for life, and the parents pay her triple, so it's a happy ending. She doesn't spend the money on a new phone.

Bathroom Monologue: War Reporter with a Night Light

"It was only after people started shooting at me that I started using a nightlight. I didn't grow up with one; we didn't have reliable electricity in my home town. Back then, if you saw a light, it was a fire and you had to haul ass out of the house. That probably prepared me for a life of covering Sri Lanka and Iraq. And Chicago and Oakland, before you start thinking the foreigners are so violent. I took two bullets to the shoulder in Oakland on a police ride-along. The bullets went right through, like I wasn't even there. I was.

"Whoever had my hospital had owned a nightlight. It was orange, a jack o'lantern, way out of season. It had to have been a kid's. There was something about the orange glow amid the nurses saying it could have been way worse a few inches over here, and the doctor with all his eye contact, and the pain pills. I was profoundly lucky to be alive with that little light.

"I left it, hoped its kid owner would retrieve it. I bought my own on the way home, and plugged it into the bathroom with the door ajar. They made me stay home for two weeks while I became a bigger story than the beat I'd been trying to cover. It was a fog of frustration, of phony friends asking for quotes, of barely being able to leave the apartment. By the time I was clear, I just loved my nightlight. This one was jade.

"It stays home. When I went to cover Egypt last month, it shone on an empty apartment. No nightlights at work, no privilege of safety. Not until I got home. Then I slept with it on. Jade. Green light, go home."

Lit Corner: What J.K. Rowling's Pen Name Means

By now you've heard that J.K. Rowling published Cuckoo's Calling, a pulpy crime novel, under the pen name "Robert Galbraith". It was a fascinating experiment that I can't blame her for trying after how her A Casual Vacancy was received. There were unreasonable hopes that the novel would be like Harry Potter, and a clear critical glee whenever it was weak. There was a feeling of a ripe target, of somebody so widely beloved who was now vulnerable and could be sniped at.

 

The Cuckoo's Calling experiment is interesting to most because she wowed critics. Reviewers who thought she was Robert Galbraith likened her novel to the bestsellers of the field. It's only now that she's been outed that critics are putting the knuckles to it.

It's more interesting to me because of its mediocre sales. Released by Little Brown, the New York Times reported it moved barely 1,500 copies. Rowling has since taken to the web claiming sales were a little higher, but like the depressing reports about how Pulitzer Prize nominees sold, this again reveals how little critical praise can mean to the book-buying public. It feels like someone in the law firm or publishing house outed her to sell more copies, and indeed, they're now printing 140,000 copies to catch up with sudden demand. 

That it sold so meekly makes some immediate sense: this is another crime story, not a revolutionary YA phenomenon. And the author could only promote it so much while hiding her identity. But it's still a sales performance many self-published authors have trumped from the woman who has unparalleled experience in the publishing industry. She's been privy to information from publishers, distributors, and even transmedia corporations. While the success of Harry Potter got much bigger than her grasp, she likely knows how to get books into the hands of critics and mavens (or knows the people who know how to).

There are two comforts in this story. One is that Rowling's writing is at least a little vindicated by hoodwinking critics into giving her a fresh analysis. Her trick reveals, once again, that expectations can rig the game, and that that our baggage distorts.

It's also comforting to know that one of the richest authors in human history can fall on her face when only quality of the work determines its place in the market. Cuckoo's Calling has been a critical success in crime fiction, but as a commercial mid-lister, it reminds that all those struggling debut and self-publishing authors are up against high adversity. It's easy to be chilled thinking our best work will be ignored, but if you've spent any time in the industry, you already knew there were severe odds. This affirms that every new face has to roll with those. You're not alone.

When the current wave of joke and back-patting articles subside, I imagine another wave of hindsighted visionaries explaining how Rowling could have done this all better. What I'm really looking forward to, though, is someone to write under a pen name and prove a theory of how a beginning author can win. Rowling did it once, though it took quite a long time for the spell to work.

Bathroom Monologue: Go to Hell

"Choooo!"

"Oh, God bless you."

"Ah. Ah, go to Hell."

"What?"

"Go to Hell. What's wrong with that? Hell's the absence of God, and God's not real, so we're already there. It's a meaningless saying, like 'God bless you.'"

"Oh, go fuck yourself."

"Now that's rude."

"Not really. You clearly enjoy masturbatory nonsense, so I'm pretty much telling you to do what you're already doing. Peace be with you."

Bathroom Monologue: Death Becomes They

People have died for as long as imagination has existed. Death is a franchise that services every religion and spirituality, but it's more of a commerce thing. When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died, he became a set of box seats at an undisclosed opera house. When Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup died, he became a song – I can't tell you which because of afterlife copyright issues, but it's a good one. Underrated, actually.

Many artists become works. Ella Fitzgerald became a tune that homeless children in Hudson, New York used to entertain each other, while Rodney Dangerfield became a Yo Mama joke. It's hard to become your own eulogy, and thus it's a prized afterlife.

But it's not the only option. William Penn became a doorstop, which seems blasphemous to some, unless you were privy to some of the conversations he let drafts into.

Albert Einstein became an equation, and not the one you'd expect. He became "2 + 2 = ?" on the first test that a young boy was taking. That boy is a physicist now. There's a bureau looking into whether that's permissible.

Lao Tzu became a road, but one that cannot be walked.

You don't have to be famous for your death to mean something. I'm fairly certain the telegraph, electric battery and iPad were built out of people you've never heard of. A funny kid who never did more than sketch clouds became the kite Benjamin Franklin flew to test his theory of lightning – or he turned into the folk tale about it. I'll have to look that up.

Often the living do the dead wrong. A river of starvation victims became an ocean of grain – though because there is no reincarnation, live people must harvest and deliver that grain in this life. They must or they dishonor what the dead become.

Many people die angry or hurt, which is why there are so many bullets in the world. Every modern war has been a thunderstorm of the deceased yelling about their unfair shake. Anyone would rather become vengeance, but you can't become an intangible. That's just not possible. Your physicality begets a physicality, and it's your lot to become a bullet fired at the wrong person. The living don't even know how unhappy murder makes the world.

You can make the dead sing in sowing a better world from their contributions, or you can make them regret they ever existed. It is all in how you use their memory.

Bathroom Monologue: Rescuing Pacific Rim

Dear Stacker Pentecost,

I notice that you are devoting your life to fighting the giant enemies of civilization. As a mechanical being that has not only spent its entire existence in this service, but was actually built for it, I am deeply sympathetic to your cause and wish your organization the best of luck.

I actually wish you more than luck for, as someone built to help in this struggle, it's often been an issue that I was not built larger. Like my creators, you seem to have constructed robot armors at approximately the same height and mass as the monsters you face. Unlike my creators, though, you seem to have at least four times the resources, given that you have four machines, where there is only one of me. I know, also, that you have several outdated machines of similar dimensions, and all of these are also similar to the titanic crabs, pterodactyls and whatever the glowing squidy thing was.

Have you ever considered taking all the material for several machines and making one that was much bigger than the giant monsters you face? Given that your plan of attack is always fisticuffs (my favorite professional approach, as well), punching the things to death would be considerably easier if they were much smaller than you. Many have been the days on which I wished I hadn't been built to the specifications, down to the meter, of the monster I had to pursue. If only I was as much bigger than him as he was than my creators, then the fight would have been over very quickly, perhaps leaving you time to get that nice Asian lady some psychotherapy.

Best,

Mechagodzilla