Bathroom Monologue: “Politics is for the moment, but an equation is for eternity.” –Albert Einstein

OR, ‘Lest We Forget that NPR would be Knee-Deep in Crap Without a Plumber

I cannot appropriately express my disgust with this in a single visit to the bathroom. I think this is the third month this notion has followed me in here. I know that we’re all insecure in our occupations and pursuits, and that we’ll constantly try to build ours up at the expense of others. Perhaps I just didn’t notice it when I was young, but it appears that self-validation increasingly comes at the expense of others in our world culture. Wasn’t there an age when we fingerpainted just for the heck of it and not because it was more virtuous than playing on monkey bars?

Rebelling to prove yourself damages someone else. We beat you in that war. You beat us in that space race. Hoo and hah, it sucked to live in Strasbourg. Now yes, a really strong scientific theory will outlast this year’s farm subsidies. But seriously: the prevention of war? Ending poverty? Directing rescue workers in the middle of natural disasters? These things are inferior to your lab time?

I just read Stephen Hawking say the human spirit will shrivel if we find all the answers, but lucky us, we’ll probably never find all of them. I’m not Hawking. I’m a fan of Hawking, and a fan of science. But if you think you’ve found all the answers and feel your soul withering up, then Jesus, Mary and Darwin, go help people! Either use your amazing knowledge to design the next energy efficient building or weather-resistant crop, or get out of the library and carry medicine into war zones. You’re momentary too, and people are suffering this moment. There are myriad ways to help the human body and spirit – I had my will to live restored at 13 by novelists I’ll never meet, and there were other thirteen-year-olds rescued by school councilors, police officers and antibiotics. If directly helping ever appears meaningless to you, your world doesn’t deserve algorithms anymore.

This is big hurdle our generation has to get over, and one no generation has cleared to date. You do what you love and let others pursue what they love. If it’s a hobby and your job merely sustains it, then fine. But some people love pulling the numbers together in long equations. Some people want to build roads in broken nations. Some people tell stories. Importance in these matters is arbitrary, and arbitrary matters are downright painful to compare. Are we going to climb into an MRI, and whosever pleasure center glows the brightest wins? I refuse to put a decimal point on my soul. More, my novel does not need to be more important than your race for the Senate. We desperately need good storytellers, good journalists, good scientists, good politicians and a good many other people who are good at a good many other things. More, we need to stop measuring each other by paychecks, notoriety, and this idiotic idea that a pastor or philosopher is more important than a biology teacher or a branch manager. It’s not a matter of being more important. It’s a matter of importance.

“Utopian bullshit,” you say? I say the feces in Utopias smells sweeter than the flowers of a world of dueling roses and orchids.

Bathroom Monologue: Acronyms for “Acronym”

-Anonymous Carriers Resting Outside New York Motels
-All Credited Returns Of N Yugoslavian Medicine
-Always Creep ‘Round Our Neighbors’ Yard Moss
-Any Creature Resembling Our New Youth Marchers
-Assistant Corporal Requires Other Naked Yacht Monsters
-Assholes Cry Relentlessly Over… Never You Mind
-Alternating Current Resides On Network Y Motherboards
-Aggressive Criminals Rowing Onto Nefarious Yellow Moats
-Attention Collecting Robots Overtake Networks (and) Your Mind

Bathroom Monologue: Some Say It Was a Fig

There were a lot of gods in that Garden, though only one got much press. Admittedly the One was an impressive example, but there are rumors He had something to do with the writing of the ensuing book, so other gods get a little testy when you bring it up. There was, for instance, the god of apples. No, not Apollo – this god wasn’t a franchise whore. He only did apples. He imbued them with a sense of balance, the capacities for friendship and love, for reason and compassion, for sympathy and softness. All those miracles and more he put into the rind of that famous apple. And then those ungrateful kids didn’t even finish it. Pity for them, for if Eve had eaten just one seed, his spell would have cleared up that ill-evolved menstruation cycle of hers. Oh well. He could always try something on the herbivores.

BM: “"The Graysons" will follow the world of Dick "DJ" Grayson before he takes on the iconic Robin identity and aligns himself with Batman.” –Variety

Okay, fine. I’m doing a show about little Eddie Nygma, an aspiring crossword puzzle writer. Great grades in Math, so-so in English until he’s turned on to mystery novels. His younger brother is a stand-up comedian, and his older brother nobody talks about – lives in an insane asylum due to some kind of bipolar disorder. We’ll save the reveal for a season finale. The show will be chock full of unattainable romances. Essentially every episode or season should have Eddie falling in love with, being denied by, and vengefully discovering the hurtful secret of some other lady. Cast the females straight off of Suicide Girls. The more unattainable the better, especially as Eddie begins to unravel their personal mysteries, like Selina not really hitting a growth spurt over summer vacation, if you know what I mean. And oh, the ass-kickings. I’m figuring every girl who utterly denies him and is then dissected by his vengeful analysis (what’s better than outing the girl who scorned you as a bulimic?) will thoroughly wreck him. Eventually he starts falling in love just for the secrets he’ll attain. Instead of covering his notebook with hearts, he covers them with question marks, and then we can sell them on the site shop!

Bathroom Monologue: Mini-Respons-alogues, OR, I’m Serious, Five Minutes

Sometimes my response to a stray comment, line or road sign is very short. I’ll take it to the bathroom and finish my response in a sentence or two. Probably more than a thousand of these have been discarded over the years. George Carlin inspired me to write some of them down.

Position: “I like to play in other people’s danger zones.” –George Carlin, The Aristocrats
Response: That’s fine so long as you’re the one who gets hurt and you don’t sue.

Position: "What is a stranger doing in a strange land?" -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Response: Being a stranger. It's the only place he can be such a thing. If he wasn't here, he might be familiar.

Position: “Ultimately, there may be a single equation (perhaps no more than an inch long) that will unify the entire theory.” -Michio Kaku, Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory
Response: How small a font can I get away with?

Position: “Ultimately, there may be a single equation (perhaps no more than an inch long) that will unify the entire theory.” -Michio Kaku, Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory
Response: Solved! What? You didn’t say anything about legible handwriting.

Position: “Ultimately, there may be a single equation (perhaps no more than an inch long) that will unify the entire theory.” -Michio Kaku, Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory
Response: 2 + 2 = ?, interpreted abstractly.

Position: "I hold truth like a torch." -Akira Yamaoka’s “Rain of Brass Petals” on the Silent Hill 2 Soundtrack
Response: On fire, held as far away from the face as possible.

Position: “Physicist Stephen Hawking and his daughter are to write a science book for children which will be "a bit like Harry Potter", but without the magic.” -BBC
Response: Oh, a soap opera?

Position: “I could care less about ____.” –Various
Response: If you could care less than you do right now, then you care. That’s the opposite of saying you don’t care. I could care less about people not paying attention to the words they use.

Position: “Abortion hurts women.” –Bumper sticker, Volkswagon
Response: Ow!

Position: “Germans are the laziest country.” –One of the thousands of bleeding idiots who just have to participate in debates via Youtube comments
Response: Any country that has so much as one person who will argue politics, religion or culture via Youtube comments is automatically disqualified from being the best country in the world. The bombing will begin in five minutes.

Bathroom Monologue: Next, Giant Scorpions

Stu: Get up.
Spider: I was just chased for twelve miles by giant wolves. I never want to get up again.
Stu: You have to. Giant snakes are attacking the house.
Spider: What are the odds?
Stu: It happened, so 100%.
Spider: Is that how it works?
Stu: Well, there are two ways of looking at probability. You could form an algorithm out of all the cases of people being chased by giant wolves and then by giant snakes, and take into account habitats and how the two problems might be linked such that you have a probability quotient of something like zero point one three to the negative thousandth power percent. Or you can take into account that something does or does not happen, and thus has a zero or one hundred percent chance of happening.
Spider: Interesting. But now my hair is on fire.
Stu: We should go.

Bathroom Monologue: A Satyr

“Satyr” is Redcliff’s most ham-handed and metafictional play, a satire of satirists. It follows four popular playwrights and authors in their stormy friendship, and exposes the unimpressive inspirations and petty observations that begat their great works. The more moral two of the writers, Tmir and Ymir, begin in the arts with great optimism, but see all their attempts at originality and hope dashed by the capitalist and soulless arts industry.

They meet their grade school friends, Satyr and Samid, for drinks one night. Satyr and Samid have also entered the arts and are experience great success in satire and polemics. The two are completely jaded against society and mock Tmir’s idealism.

“You can barely pay the rent with your ideas, while I could buy your entire building tearing them down,” laughs Satyr. Ymir stands up for him, but Tmir becomes despondent. That night, drunk and disillusioned, Tmir writes a furious play about the unfairness of society and mails it before he sobers up. He is stunned to find it is accepted for production.

The rest of the play follows Tmir, Satyr and Samid’s rise in popularity. Act 3 opens with Tmir and Samid receiving literary prizes, and we overhear the end of the host’s introduction, lauding them as the luminaries of their generation. Tmir is so wealthy that he supports Ymir, who has still yet to publish anything or compromise his ideals. Satyr frequently browbeats the idealist poet, and does it again at the celebration, saying, “Because the world is hard and a few good writers have already gone to the trouble of telling a few good stories, we can riff off of for the rest of our lives. The groundwork for complaining has already been done. We’ve only to drop some bricks.”

Unfortunately this is said within earshot of the press, and combined with some of Satyr’s other public indiscretions, damages his reputation. He is forced to move in with Tmir, with whom he has several arguments over over the purpose of social criticism: Tmir reveals that underneath everything, he still wants to reform the world (hence why he took Satyr in), but Satyr exposes that it doesn’t matter what lies beneath the critique because nothing has changed as a result of their work, other than “the clothes we can afford and the phrases some angry sheep use to disparage a thing – they never change the thing itself.” The argument goes from political to sociological to psychological, with the two increasingly suggesting (and later simply stating) that the other is bitter because of his own worthlessness, not the defects of the world. Tmir nearly jumps off the balcony, and minutes after Satyr talks him down, tries to throw Satyr off (since, “Saving me was the first selfless thing you’ve ever done, and if you’ll never do another, you may as well go now!”).

Ymir watches the entire exchange, drunk at his writing desk in the corner.

Tmir spends the rest of the night writing a scathing play that will roast all of Satyr’s values. He is going to mail it the next morning when he encounters Samid, who says Satyr spent the entire past evening writing the same thing about Tmir and has already mailed it. Tmir breaks into the post office at the lunch hour to find and destroy the manuscript, but is stopped by Satyr, who came to do the same thing to him. The two spar verbally one last time, quoting from their own one-night plays as they wrestle, until both realize their plays were quite bad. Each man takes his own manuscript back home, deflated and disheveled.

Tmir and Satyr return home to the surprise that Ymir has finally sold something – not a poem, but a play. The final act sees Satyr, Samid and Tmir attend the opening night, with Tmir and Satyr sitting on opposite sides of the room. The writers quietly watch the play, which sounds very familiar. It quickly turns out that Ymir adapted Tmir and Satyr’s argument on the balcony verbatim. Tmir and Satyr slowly realize this, perking up in their chairs, then sinking down to hide in them before the curtain comes down.

Critics were kind to the play largely out of respect for Redcliff’s reputation, but Bartholme Gorsky has asked, “If the point of the play is as straight-forward as we think, then why did Satyr have all the good lines?”

Bathroom Monologue: I swear, no more sidewalk sermons from Ashenti

“Friends. Friends, friends and countrymen. We need nothing more than friendship, though a lover and southerly tug will help the day go by. We need to make our neighbors friends, and our enemies friends. We need to make everyone who might draw a knife do so only to cut the bread and spread the cheese. They must laugh at our table. They must think we're funny, and smart in our own ways, and enviable in other ways, and helpful above all, and below nothing. They must have this slight sense of liking us, this little amiability that will shame them should they ever think of pulling the knife for anything else. I've heard a prayer going around, about everyone falling in love with their rivals. I say rising into friendship is better than falling into love for the sake of peace and harmony, for there's more politics in love. Friendship removes the contract from a handshake and the target from a joke. It disarms even as it defines and fulfills – defines you, fulfills the terms that define you, creating a big, black outline around what you ought to be and think you are. Friends, friends and countrymen, make your countrymen friends, and make friends of your friends. Take stock of those you eat with and remind yourself of why they are at the lunch table, and strengthen this fraternal adoration. Keep them close even as you strive to make more of them. And make many more of them, friends. Make nationality irrelevant. Share bread, share butter, share their bizarre delicacies until they’re no longer bizarre. Make the aliens friends. Be the stranger upon whose kindness all can rely and only two things can result: either all the good people will be abused, die out and the world will get what it deserves; or we'll give the world what we think it deserves. Justice will be done, by just us.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Changesaw

Made from the spare quarters of Barack Obama’s sofa, it will slice through anything. Trees instantly metamorphose into paper. Fossil fuels harden into dinosaur bones. Which way will things change? Just made sure the entropy-bit ™ is set the right way. But buyer beware: if this saw cuts you, you will never be the same.

Well, unless the entropy-bit ™ is in the rear position, in which case you’ll instantly go back to what you were like before you were cut.

But we hear that causes some nausea.

Bathroom Monologue: Pejoratives and Profane Exclamations

My language is too vulgar. Too much television and fatigue has worn my vocabulary to a nub, and a particularly tiny nub when I'm angry. I say "fuck" way too often. There are "fuck" situations, but hitting the wrong button on the remote, stubbing my toe and forgetting where I parked in a six-row lot just don't qualify. Further, "fuck" is bland even when it's appropriate. Anybody can yell it in any situation, and these days they do. It's played out. So's "fucker" and "motherfucker." They're lame insults, especially the last, which could technically synonymous with "dad." Imagine screaming "Dad! You dad! You God damned dad!" at someone for cutting you off in traffic. It's poor semantics.

If an undead serial killer comes through my campsite, I don't want to be the lame villain that exclaims, "Fuck!" before he's beheaded. No. I want to look up into his hockey mask, and in total terror of his machete, bellow, "What in the blue blazes?"

That would be class. I'm bringing back the blue blazes. I used it this afternoon when the delivery men didn't show up until 2:00. It was satisfying. If I ever back into the garage door, I'm totally using it again.

The next one I'm looking to work into my routine is, "Good God and His all-girl orchestra!" Admittedly more syllables than, "Holy shit," but more worthwhile, don't you think? Somebody's grandma falls skating, breaks a hip, and out comes "Good God and His all-girl orchestra!"

Personal pejoratives, like the dad-synonym, will also get packed up in favor of new stock. The next guy who cuts me off in traffic is getting the middle finger and a resounding, "Buffoon! Sunday driver!" Sunday driver, even if it's not Sunday. In fact, especially if it's not Sunday.

"Galoot," "hooligan," and "tinkerbell" will follow "buffoon" in rotation. I'm working on a particularly condescending "tinkerbell" that should cut those hooligans to the quick.

"Crap fire and save matches!" is also coming back, if I can just find the right opportunity.

It doesn't have to be original. It has to be fresh. I need to feel like I'm exercising a little know-how and intellect in my cussing. There's an aesthetic to it, don't you think? If you sat down to breakfast and a car blew up across the street, you'd be very shaken. But if you sat down to that same breakfast, heard the same car blow up, and had your buddy jump up from the table screaming, "Jesus Crispies and the Sugar-Frosted Apostles!" it might just be the highlight of your day.

Bathroom Monologue: One of Ashenti’s sermons

“The point is to make fun of everything. Not just pop culture, not just those who disagree with you – especially not just those who disagree with you. That inclination leads to self-righteousness and brittle personalities. You need to be able to laugh at everything you love. Your homosexuality, your mess-ups in the lab, your politics – if joking about any of it makes you uncomfortable, then something is wrong and needs fixing. Just because it’s sacred to you doesn’t mean it can’t be funny or shouldn’t be taken with levity for a moment. That’s like pretending nobody’s ever farted in church. I know they have. That’s why I lecture out here in the open.”

Bathroom Monologue: 10 points if you know what Price, Heston and Smith have in common

There was nothing peculiar about the staff. It wasn’t specially balanced, magnetic or mechanical. If you asked Ashenti to stand atop another, he would. The only special thing about the staff was its owner, who could stand atop staves. He could balance them anywhere, including soft or oily surfaces, and occasionally on top of puddles. Mostly he balanced them on sidewalks.

He stood with one foot on the upright end, and the other leg bent across his knee. It gave him more visible attraction than most of the acts in the corner of preachers. Sometimes he would perform other minor miracles, like curing your hiccups and making c-section scars disappear. But he was not here for miracles.

He was here to spread the word. The word often went, “Vincent Price, Charlton Heston and Will Smith walk into a bar…”

He was an unorthodox preacher, and his primary message was not finding God or enlightenment, but friendship. Friendship, Ashenti preached, was the universal solvent in the universe of emotion. A philosopher could make a good argument, but it would always produce conflict so long as he was a philosopher. "Hearing the opinion of a friend always goes down smoother."

So, too, would any good novel be great in your eyes if it were the work of a friend, rather than the product of an important stranger.

“We would be more forgiving if the man who backed over our cat was a friend,” he said from atop his staff. “So we should make everyone our friend. Then the staves will balance on their own.”

World of Peacecraft

World of Peacecraft was a failed followup MMO. You leveled up by not fighting each other. Everyone hit the level cap in about three days. You discovered awesome powers like splitting open the earth and setting the sky on fire, but couldn't use them. It was then that everyone realized why Gandalf only visited the Shire rather than moving in.

Bathroom Monologue: Thirteen Danger Zones - Instructions to be Posted in Dormitory Showers

Begin at the scalp…

1. Wash your hair. Dreadlocks are not an excuse to smell like your scalp farted.
2. Beard (optional). Just because you washed you put your face under the nozzle doesn’t mean your beard is okay. Chances are there is lint, food crumbs, and possibly an entire nest of insects somewhere in there. To make things easier, both soap and shampoo are acceptable cleansers, so you can hit this spot while in either the hair-washing or body-washing phases.
3. Behind your ears. This is a common trouble spot for pubescent and post-pubescent men, collecting much of the sweat and grime that trickles out of your hair. Be sure to scrub this independently of your hair unless you wear really nice aftershave.

Moving away from the head, we reach…

4. Left armpit.
5. Right armpit. We list these as two separate danger zones for a reason. You may be busy. Maybe you’re thinking about quadratic theorems, or maybe you’re thinking about the recently single freshman at the end of the hall. We don’t care. Remember the golden rule: wash one, wash the other, and do a sniff check. In case of confusion, follow the silver rule: when in doubt, wash both again.
6. Navel. This is not a public service, but will prevent mood-ruining odor and/or taste during possible tongue foreplay. Remember boys: God gave men a belly button so they’d know what a yeast infection was like.
7. Your general plumbing. Doubtless you’ve already been introduced. Be thorough, especially if you’re uncircumcised.
8. Left crotch pocket. Much bigger trouble area on overweight shower-goers, the bit of flesh territory between the pelvis and thigh is a notorious stench-zone and requires as much attention as your general plumbing.
9. Right crotch pocket. Gold and silver rules, people. Especially during Spring “shorts weather.”
10. Grundle. If you are uncertain on what a grundle is, go ask other dorm room members. It’ll be fun.
11. Butt crack. Often overlooked, over looked over, but if ignored can become the most hazardous of “scorched earth” zones.

Many attentive shower-goers will end service here. Don’t be like them. Head further south for the final zones.

12. Spaces in-between the toes of your left foot.
13. Spaces in-between the toes of your right foot. Perhaps the sweatiest zone of the body, and according to unscientific surveys, the least washed. Nothing short of a nuclear holocaust is worse than some asshole in Berkenstocks kicking his fungus-infested feet up on the desk during a lecture. Have some human decency, bend over for thirty seconds and do something down there. We recommend at least two back-and-forth motions of soapy fingers in each crevice.

This concludes the thirteen emergency zones. Any face, neck, torso or leg washing is generally extracurricular but appreciated. Similarly, acne treatments and make-up are optional. Post-shower deodorant, however, is not optional.

ATTENTION: Invisible utahraptors have been stationed outside the bathroom in case you miss any of the above spots. They have been bred and conditioned to feast solely on unwashed flesh, so if you don’t want your ass chewed off by a dinosaur, wash it.

Bathroom Monologue: Do You?, OR, I’m accepting proposals

"The advantage of a wife is not in tax breaks. It's not in someone else cooking dinner or doing the laundry. It's not in the sex (that rose loses it's bloom disconcertingly fast). The real advantage of a wife is knowing for certain that someone far better than you, far too good for you, far above you in every way that matters, would still say, 'I do.'"

Bathroom Monologue: Birthed Lucky, OR, Only Casino in Town

Yahweh sat at the Bang slot machine all day. They had to kick him out at closing. He was back the next day, and stayed to closing. He returned every day of the week.

"Cherry. Cherry. Bar."

"Protein. Lipid. Protein."

"Gas. Gas. Gas. Jupiter? I don't need another of these."

He tried until the Manager took pity on him. He pulled him aside at 1:00 A.M. on Sunday and offered him a tiny white, blue and green planet.

"The white bits are gaseous water. It's essential to the integrity of the bauble. You have no idea how many quarters you'd have to sink into that thing to get one, and even the meanest waitresses don’t want to see you try. We kind of pity you."

"I don't need your pity."

"You're down on your luck. The best you got were your quarters back on Tuesday."

"Most of them," he muttered.

"So take this. Please. On the house. It comes with a moon on the key chain."

"Just one moon?"

"Just the one. If you don't want it, though..."

"No, I'll take it." Yahweh snatched it from the Manager's hand and grumbled, "I'll make it work. It's a start."

"I'm sure you'll try. Have a good weekend," said the Manager, before He showed Yahweh to the door.

Bathroom Monologue: “Republicans will be meeting with experts this morning to review alternative energy policies…” Announcer on C-SPAN

Hamsters on wheels – Biothermy from burning corpses, children with lower than a D+ average and Senators who spend over twenty years in office - Hamsters on steroids on wheels –Dimmer switch on the sun Windmills - The hopes and dreams of impoverished children – Mess with the moon until gravity relaxes – Corn – Collect pig and cow farts in massive over-farm domes, then funnel them into tankers and use them like propane – Nuclear reactors a safe distance from any dinosaur fossils – Drill for oil somewhere else – Turn around, drill in the same area again and see if the hiding oil came out

Bathroom Monologue: Cultural Analysis of the Pseudo-Homophobic High Five Ritual

There is a relatively recent ritual in some parts of the United States of America to “high-five,” or slap palms with another person, after an activity to prove one’s heterosexuality. This ritual verifies your chosen sexual identity, or, “proves you’re not gay.” This is largely performed by males, though there are isolated reports of females engaging in the ritual. The ritual is necessitated (or at least, requested to be performed) immediately following an act that might bring one’s sexuality or gender into question, such as watching a cooking show on TV or putting on a pink t-shirt. It may be initiated by the offender, though normally a second party will intervene and offer, “It’s not gay if you high-five afterwards!” In many cases the activity has no logical connection to one’s sexuality or gender, such as a heterosexual male purchasing menstrual pads for his female lover. Indeed, data shows that during the lifespan of this “high five so you won’t be gay” ritual, it has become used less and less often on actual events relating to homosexuality. Connected (and most interesting to social scientists) is that while some segments of the male population exhibit some degree of serious homophobia, many (and perhaps the majority) of those who indulge in the ritual are not in any noticeable degree homophobic. It seems to channel both a latent homophobia and a humorous mockery of other people’s homophobia, suggesting homophilia, or at least disapproval for bigotry that is expressed in a quizzically supportive manner, as opposed to the cultural norm of expressing disapproval of such matters with negativity. Anthropologists have been dispatched throughout bars and sports stadiums across America to further examine the meanings of this ritual, though it almost seems like such people aren’t actually bashing gays. Clinically speaking.

Bathroom Monologue: Start. Hunt.

Rise. Hit snooze bar. Rise. Hit snooze bar. Rise. Set coffee maker while hitting the shower. Drink coffee while making breakfast. Eat breakfast while jawing with co-workers. Draw up work crew. Suit up (don't forget the teflon gloves). Pray. Hit on Marie at the fuel depot. Head to caverns. Solar-battery flashlights for the biters. Silver axe for the furries. Flash, stab. Flash, stab. Flash, stab. Break (God bless unions). Coffee if you're lucky, conversation if you're cheap. Rent asbestos gear. Head to Fallen Houses. Fire is your friend, smoke is a traitor. Leave big daemons for the guys in armor. Go for the imps (collect heads!). Exit. Trade heads for cash. Dinner at Marie's Diner (six heads in a bag and you eat free). Drink. Return equipment. Drink. Drink. Crank call Marie. Drink. Crash. Sleep.

Bathroom Monologue: Un-Life

In some cases “Pro-Life” and “Pro-Choice” simply do not cover all the ideological ground on the abortion issue. Take for instance “Un-Life,” an ideology diametrically opposed to the Pro-Life stand that demands all children be aborted as soon as possible. They have garnered a small degree of press on major news networks for staging protests at hospital nurseries.

“We’re in a global overpopulation crisis,” says Samuel Lenshner, spokesman of the Connecticut chapter of Couples For Un-Life. “There isn’t enough food to eat in Africa. India’s population is exploding. Taking the subway to work yesterday I had the little rats crawling all over me. One soiled himself. The mother was exhausted and unable to contain them all, and all I could do was look at her with pity and think – abortion could have prevented this.”

Lenshner and fellow Un-Lifers blast Pro-Choice for being too liberal.

“Just the option of abortion for women is not enough. That still gives them the option to keep their womb-infection.” said a woman who requested to go unnamed, perhaps because of a bulging belly. “Pregnancy is hazardous a woman’s health, ruins her figure, and results in a little tax exemption that doesn’t even begin to cover how much the little bastard will eat.”

Another anonymous woman added, “Does life begin at conception or birth? We don’t know, but we do know that nuisance begins at crying.”

Lenshner weighs in further, saying the existence of adoption disproves the need for choice. “I like to think of myself as Pro-Choice. Pick any kid out of this brochure. But why make a new one? That just adds to the problem. If one of these whining, running, constantly demanding beasts has to exist, use one we have in stock. But keep it out of public.”

Links to and addresses for various orphanages are available at www.un-life.net, a non-for-profit website devoted to “preventing you from making the worst mistake of your life.”

The Un-Lifers consider China’s one-child policy to be too liberal, but are open to select “breeders.” Under the policy espoused in a 44,000-word essay on their website, the Un-Lifers explain that people living ten miles or more from anyone else and who are willing to sign contracts promising not to bring their “young” into public before “the age at which they can tie their own shoes, walk in orderly fashion in supermarkets and will shut up in a movie theatre,” may be permitted one child.

The Un-Lifers are actively pursuing mandatory sterilization as a “kinder, more sanitary alternative” to enforced abortion. A vote on the policy will be brought before the Vermont state legislature in March.

Bathroom Monologue: “One of my many flaws is perpetually confusing H.G. Wells, Orson Welles and George Orwell.” -Me

His masterwork is something of a mess. It starts out with this pig that turns himself transparent. You see, the pig has been studying theoretical sciences since he is the only species that can read - I mean, aside from the farmers. Being invisible makes the porker go a little nuts with moral ambivalence and empowerment, leading him to think some animals are more equal than others, but he'd still like to run for office. Thus begins his Citizen Pig campaign. Something leaks to the tabloids about "Rosebud," who might be his pig-lover, or worse, an interspecies affair with a known anti-government agent. Citizen Pig ultimately redeems himself by fighting the invading aliens (though no one else knows he didn't really beat them; he just sneezed on them and watched them die of the common cold). The alien invasion is really a front by the oppressive government who wind up throwing him in prison and brainwashing him. A particularly chilling scene sees a jaded actor, whose spirit was broken by having to do really lame capitalist commercials, telling him he's holding up five hooves when he only has four and whatnot. The government does all this just to find out who Rosebud was. He never gives in, though in the epilogue, as the Fascist swine are burning his stuff, we find out Rosebud was his time machine.

A Vision, with a View, OR, Funny thing is she didn’t think she was better or worse than he; “better” never occurred to her while holding his hand

She lived in a town called Should Be, and the angel loved her. He visited her every chance he got, which still wasn’t enough. Every time, she had to show him the way. He didn’t quite get it and he’d never quite do it, but boy did he like the way it made her into someone like her. The angel was rough and imperfect beneath her frail perfection, her implausibly beautiful brain, and he aspired to it, but just couldn’t live in Should Be. It didn’t work in his world. He tried, and he fought, and he sang, and he wrote, and ultimately he politicked with the ultimate one, but even with a permission slip from on high, he just couldn’t pay the rent in Should Be. For lack of idealism, but not for lack of trying, the angel surprised her one day by waving from his new apartment, on the top floor of a high rise in Want, a little burg on the outskirts of Should Be, with a view right into her room. They had great fun running a clothesline between their windows. He couldn’t live in her city or her morals, but for love of a better person, he could make the commute.

Bathroom Monologue: I need to lay off the M*A*S*H marathons

“Hey there. You’re my last patient for the day. How’s it feel to be the healthiest man to lay on my table today? You see, by triage the most gravely injured patients come in first. My first was a kid missing his legs. Stepped on a land mine. The second was his sister. Shouldn’t have tagged along so close behind him. Your bullet wound in the shoulder looks pretty nice in comparison, and by virtue of being the last patient you’re the luckiest unlucky man in the war. How does that feel? I mean the needle, not the emotion. I have enough of the latter to last me until my next Amazon order arrives. I’m getting some new psycho-theory stuff. Do-it-yourself psychology. They say the easiest way to go nuts is… and we’re done.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Wine

One of the Golden Emperor’s displays of his own grandeur was the annual court wine ceremony. A bottle of the empire’s best was carted from lordship to lordship, left in the charge of one of his fifty lords for a week each. For the last two weeks of the year the bottle was left with his wife, the Jade Empress, and his oldest son, a man of little reputation. Any of the fifty-two culprits could have poisoned the bottle in any number of ways without the chance of being caught; with each lord in the position to grab more land and his family was in line to grab the throne. Then at the ceremony the emperor would take the bottle from his son and drink the entire thing, without a food tester. It displayed the amity of his reign.

Cynics say the bottle is switched the day before the ceremony. Cynics, as the Jade Empress is immortally quoted, “are short-sighted and will be tried in a court of law.” The bottle is actually switched several hundred times. If the Golden Emperor only switched it once someone, quite probably his wife, would pay off the single switcher and he’d die disgracing his throne. No, a staff larger than that which runs most of his wars is in charge of replacing, destroying, disinfecting, sanitizing, unpoisoning, fact-finding, blackmailing, threatening, extorting and kidnapping until every possible conspirator had either given up his plot or executed it thinking he’d finally shown that blasted Golden Emperor. His highness would never allow all plots to simply be pre-empted; in fact, he wished as many to be implemented as possible, and then quietly thwarted. He was a ruler who understood the virtue of embarrassment. It was why he always has his loving wife uncork the bottle at the ceremony.

Bathroom Monologue: Where it comes from

"You see, grandma, when a typewriter loves a TV very much, they elope to the back of the electronics section. They wait until everyone has gone home. That’s why when you drive past them at night the lights are still on. It’s electricity of their sin. Some months later the stork brings their horrible bastard child, which has the face of its father and the keyboard of its mother. Due to its show-business face it would go into the television’s line of work, but the typewriter was very free-spirited. It had once belonged to Norman Mailer, and needless to say, was kind of full of itself. So the typewriter raised the bastard creature to have its own original ideas, creating a great rift of enmity between the little beast and its HD paternal figure. But out of that enmity came new job opportunities for the child: word processing, spreadsheets, copious streaming stupid videos, new forms of political propaganda, and porn. Oh, the rolling hills of porn their bastard child would facilitate. Straddling that mountain of obscenity, the bastard child’s kind rose to prominence. And that’s where your computer came from."

Bathroom Monologue: God’s Iron Jack O’Lantern Brigade

They never rot. They never rust. They always march towards what’s right. They’re a magnetized moral compass, unreliable and unstoppable, mechanized and grinning. Cannons for arms, treads for legs. Silicon replaces synapses, fuel replaces fatigue, and their only shellshock is crushing a tortoise. The fire that illuminates their teeth and eyes is nuclear. They leave no weeping widows, for no matter how trying or bitter the war, they’re always back on the porch by the 31st.

Bathroom Monologue: Phobias and Irrational Fears

-Neurobiology scares me because some day somebody’s going to say she got 3.7 units of enjoyment from the newest James Bond movie.
-Poetry scares me because it’s the height of expression in the English language and yet follows almost none of the rules or conventions.
-Astronomy scares me because one day we’ll have colonies on the moon and Mars, and I get lost on the way to Target. GPS doesn’t work when you’re not on the G anymore.
-Blue jeans scare me because they have tiny white spots everywhere that aren’t advertised in the name, and if they’re willing to deceive in colors, who knows what other secrets they may be hiding?
-Nonsense scares me because I can understand it.
-Reason scares me because people so often mistake theirs for the true one.
-Tomorrow scares me because it’s coming but I can’t see it from here.
-Telepathy scares me because my friends may secretly have it and eavesdrop on my brain, and discover all of the totally inane things that occupy my silent periods when I’m looking serious.
-Fear itself scares me because it scared the generation that beat up Nazis, Fascists, suicide pilots and the sun god’s empire.

Bathroom Monologue: Yes. A perverted waterslide.

The publishers wanted the photo on Mr. Condry’s dust jacket to look dignified, but he refused to even take off the clown hat. “The shit comes out three feet away from where the food goes in, Mr. Photographer,” he said to the photographer’s female assistant, “and there’s a perverted waterslide connecting them. Nothing is going to make me look dignified. Man is built to look humble.”

Bathroom Monologue: Less Than Three

Part of the doctor’s written instructions was to, “ WALK – 3 MILES PER DAY.” Now how the Hell was Karl supposed to walk negative three miles? That had to violate some law of nature. Like all serious questions, Karl turned to Michael Jackson for answers. That crazy black/white boy had wisdom for any occasion, and this was no different. Karl has been moon walking three miles a day for the last two months. His wife really wishes the doctor would return her calls and clarify the instructions.

Bathroom Monologue: Show me Your I.D., OR, I’ll need two forms of I.D. with that, OR, Get Over This Pun, John

Amin Tech was way ahead of the curve on genetic engineering, producing the first self-sustaining waves of biological nanomachines. These weren’t metal and they didn’t have silicon processors – they were too small for such clunky stuff. Instead, Olivia and Micah Amin lovingly spliced DNA and turned bacteria to good use. They spliced so much DNA that they had ligases named for them (even if nobody in the press knew what ligases were).

Olivia and Micah programmed behavior patterns to the bio-nanos, so that they swarmed and could deal with complex problems in the human body. One booster shot of the buggers could clear out a blocked heart valve in minutes.

Through careful mapping of bio-nano DNA, they could even stimulate the production of healthy proteins in the human body, so that any ligament or muscle could be repaired. Once the job was underway, the bio-nanos would break down and become part of the protein in the healthy new tissue.

But the final development was accidental.

Late one night, Micah thought she noticed strange wave patterns moving in a dish of bio-nanos. Sharing of the wave patterns seemed to correlate between unprogrammed changes in their behavior, specifically making them swarm. Since bio-nanos could only do their jobs if they followed the programs, this innovation was worrisome. Were they self-organizing? Were they talking to each other?

Micah worked to dawn developing a device to decode the mysterious waves. She was stunned over what she read. She paged Olivia, who grumpily drove over to the lab.

Olivia thought Micah was nuts, but mid-argument the two noticed another series of inexplicable wave patterns. Micah switched the device on in time to decode only the last wave, which formed one last sentence: “All that aside, I don’t believe in intelligent design.”