Bathroom Monologue: Better ways Macbeth could have ended

-Captain Crunch sails in and beheads the jerk. Macbeth doesn’t even get the chance to lament in unbearably stilted verse at him over it. No, Crunch just sails right in and swings. As the audience mills out of the Globe Theatre, he can explain that as a cartoon mascot he was invented by a marketing firm, and thus was not of woman born.

-Eowyn rides in disguised as a Northumberland soldier and stabs Macbeth to death. She then collapses, infected by his evil, but is later restored to health by Gandalf’s knowledge of herbs.

-Lady Macbeth fucking kills him because they’re the only two developed characters in the fucking play and thus should probably interact in the fucking conclusion.

-The witches show back up and turn out to be realtors on the side who set this whole thing up to get the forests trimmed back. Those removed, their holdings suddenly have a great view of sunsets, the final selling point necessary to begin a timeshare community there, just a stone’s throw away from the new king’s home.

-In Act I, Scene III, when the title fucking character finally shows up, Macbeth and Banquo enter, Macbeth says, “So foul and fair a day I have not seen, it’s too much to bear, so I guess I’ll drink this battery acid.” He then chugs a bucket full of noxious chemicals, collapses, and attendants show the audience to their cars.

Bathroom Monologue: The Thirteenth Floor

Those floors are there. They were purchased in bulk by a misanthropic entrepreneur in 1834, who foresaw a time of high rises. Having to cross the country so often that he never knew what building he’d stay at, he gave a massive loan to the Federal Treasury and related companies, in return for an exclusive opportunity to purchase the thirteenth floor of every building that would ever be built. Loathing his fellow man, he made certain all elevators would skip his floor so that no children would come by to touch his rare art, or in the mid-20th century, his arcade machines. Whenever an arcade goes out of business, he buys every machine and has them shipped to one of his thousands of private floors. The quarter slots are ripped out to be played in his lonely and unlucky rooms, only occasionally heard by people on their way up to 14.

10,000 Hits!

This week I reached 10,000 hits on the Bathroom Monologues. The counter was established a long time after the site opened, but it's still a cool milestone.



Thanks to all the visitors! I hope I've made it worth your while.

Also, don't forget the R.A.Q.!

Bathroom Monologue: Breaking Reel Ground

“I’m an innovative director. I break new ground. You know those dark, melancholy comedies that are too preoccupied to be funny? Well I make action movies too intense for fight scenes, and romances too deep to have relationships. I was going to do a bio-pic too real to be factually accurate, but someone beat me to it, and now the market is glutted with them. Take my word for it – in twenty years it will be avant garde to do what your audience expects you to do.”

Bathroom Monologue: Lance Armstrong, first man on the moon?

Yes, Lance Armstrong was the first man on the moon. He rode his Apollo Schwinn up a moon beam, something that was not thought possible previously, but only French cyclists and astronauts and tried it before. While beloved in America for this achievement, he is loathed in the French quarter of the Lake of Tranquility. Tragedy nearly struck on his return journey as he came down with cancer of the appendix, which is why all astronauts have to have that removed now. He inspired us to continue visiting space with his famous phrase, “It’s one small step for man, but you never forget how.”

Bathroom Monologue: With that Fish

"Terrifying incident today as both the Jesus Fish and the Darwin Fish were eaten by the Ursa Minor constellation. Onlookers said it was a case of annoying symbolism gone too far. Hindus upgrade to the Gandhi Whale for safety purposes."

R.A.Q. 2

It's that time of year when I have the excuse to ask,

"Have you seen my rack?"

It's actually "RAQ." I pronounce it that way because people make amusing faces.

Rarely Asked Questions is my birthday tradition at the Bathroom Monologues. Until September 2nd, I'm requesting all readers leave questions they dont normally ask anyone. Particle physics? 17th century politics? Why your mom snores? Why I write so many things about the end of the world? What your questions are, and whether they have anything to do with me, is up to you. I'll compile them and answer them all on September 4th - my birthday. That's how I celebrate. With my big RAQ.

Please leave your mysteries and queries in the Comments section of this post.

Bathroom Monologue: The Fox’s Dilemma

"I just heard of a famous essay about how everyone is either a hedgehog or a fox. It turned out the hedgehog is the creature with one all-consuming idea, while the fox has many little ideas. It was disappointing, as I thought hedgehogs were those folk whose needles drive everyone away, and foxes were those who sought out people every day to kill and eat. I longed to read this academic argument that the world consisted of shut-ins and serial killers. I longed for a theatrical adaptation, or better, a sports adaptation where each would wear team jerseys. You know, for the Foxes and the Hedgehogs. At the Superbowl of misanthropy, those who want everyone to go away and those who want everyone to die would line up and compete for yardage. A Buddhist monk emerges from his cave after seven weeks of meditation, and is promptly tackled by Fox linebacker Ed Gein. Though I guess hermits would really be more of a AA-league where you went to train for the Hedgehogs’ starting roster. If only that essay had been by a sports fan."

Bathroom Monologue: “What's your gay fantasy?” –Somebody on the TV as I was walking out of the room

I sit back on my vibrating chair.

Eventually a guy comes in and hands me a Coke. Is he gay? I don’t know. He doesn’t say, and this fantasy society is so ambivalent about it that neither of us know the ticks or “tells” that would suggest an answer. Being my fantasy, regardless of whether or not he is gay, he leaves. That’s the duration of his existence in the fantasy, beyond possibly leaving some flattering comments about those Bathroom Monologues I wasn’t sure were good. He’s a great guy.

I set the vibrating chair up to MEDIUM and sip the Coke. The kinkiest details of the fantasy have to do with a short glass of shaved ice and the beverage never losing its carbonation.

Eventually a couple of centerfold-worthy lesbians wander in and make out in front of me for a while. Because even my fantasies are a little rational, I get bored a couple of minutes in and send them away. I tip well. They did it for free, and so there is some humor to do with the tip. My fantasies tend to have jokes in them.

On the way out, the pink-haired one asks what my straight fantasy is like.

I sip the Coke and reply, “Pretty similar to this, honestly."

Bathroom Monologue: This Was How He Said Goodbye

Grandfather wanted him to be a Baptist, but the boy was one of experiences and emotions, not study, and certainly not pews. Grandfather threw the book at him, he ran from reading, and the two didn’t speak until the old man only had a few months left.

Their only conversation ran short, even though the boy said he’d recently started reading and liked Huck Finn. The dying old man barked that he needed a Bible, and Shakespeare, and Hemingway, and more and more until the boy simply walked out in tears.

Upon returning home, Grandfather disappeared into his basement, hunched over in pain, hunched over a plane, to produce an inheritance. It arrived at the boy’s apartment without explanation, a bookshelf with no books on it.

Bathroom Monologue: Six Sentence Haiku

She flees. He follows.
Hook swings, snags her neck. He yanks.
She falls. Roll credits.

Bathroom Monologue: Earth Squared

Planets are square. Spaceships take photos of them with round lenses, so of course they look spherical, but if you notice there's black space around the edges of any picture, forming a square, or at least a rectangle. Even the round lens can't suppress angular planets. It's black there because that's where it's night on Mars. Even the sun is a cube. Our circular pupils can’t handle it, and deceive us to compensate.

Handy eyes-free MP3 edition: http://www.sendspace.com/file/6e5651

Bathroom Monologue: 6 Questions Again (challenge to write six cohesive questions)

Why?

Why not?

Wait, what were we talking about?

Are you trying to change the subject?

Are we the same speaker?

Why not?

Bathroom Monologue: Edward Brownie

Edward had earned many brownie points in his life, but never learned where to exchange them. Inquiring about prizes or monetary equivalence earned him nothing more than quizzical stares. When he attempted to redeem them at the school cafeteria he was sent to the dean’s office for “shoplifting.” As though redeeming three brownie points for three brownies were theft! But by fifth grade he learned about exchange rates, and came to understand that perhaps many brownie points were necessary for one brownie. That had to be the way of it, because applying for honorary merit badges from his sister’s Brownies troop certainly wasn’t working.

Bathroom Monologue: WILL SHOOT YOU IN THE HEAD, 2 FOR $1

I took a year off from college to open a business. It was a social experiment in capitalism with no actual store name, just a sign reading: “WILL SHOOT YOU IN THE HEAD, 2 FOR $1.”

The whole point was to see who would walk in. Didn’t matter if they needed the bathroom or wanted to know if we were open on Sundays, because that’s usually a front for curiosity.

So, I soon concluded, are protests, and we got a lot of those, even after we let them inside to show we didn’t have any guns. I swore I’d close if anyone ever came in actually demanding our services, and that’s why I’m back at CalTech now, with two photographs, a Better Business Bureau complaint, and a dollar to put towards my student loans.

Handy eyes-free audio edition on free MP3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/mpbith

Six Sentence Week 5

You guessed it. Six Sentence Week returns with an August Edition. This week I've got a store that will shoot two people in the head for a dollar, a boy who doesn't know where to redeem his brownie points, a six sentence haiku, and more. A poll should pop up around Tuesday asking for your favorite. Please vote on it, and leave comments for what's stupid and what's interesting. I'm still curious what people think of my work in this particular constraint, particularly since I can't seem to stop writing in it.

#classicsontwitter 2

Once again, a bonus post with classics adapted to Twitter.

Don Quixote: Demented romantic goes on adventures that are all delusion. Twice. Sidekick becomes a governor.

The Crucible: Some girls accuse another of being a witch. Adults are also accused, and all their lives are ruined.

Arabian Nights: Girl tells a new story each night to keep her husband from killing her. He is hooked. She lives.

Canterbury Tales: Pilgrims have a storytelling contest to entertain themselves and bother each other. No one wins.

Three Musketeers: Four men with no muskets foil a plot against France.

Gone with the Wind: Privileged Southerner lives out the civil war in surprising comfort. Everybody but her leaves or dies.

Tale of Genji: The son of the emperor has lots of sex. Slowly, his friends and family die. He is sad.

Les Miserables: Jean leaves prison, steals silverware, and runs for mayor under a fake identity. He dies of old age.

Gilgamesh: The king was too cool, so the gods sent a wildman to humble him. They hang out. Wildman dies. King is sad.

Catch-22: Guy can’t stop fighting in the war unless he’s crazy, and isn’t crazy if he wants to stop. He runs away.

Lord of the Rings: Little guy has to destroy a magic ring. Everyone else fights the bad guys. Little guy destroys ring.

The Odyssey: Hero fights monsters on his long voyage home. Once home, he kills his guests.

Pride and Prejudice: Attractive people like other attractive people but don’t marry them fast enough. Hijinx ensue.

Frankenstein: Doctor sews together bodies to make a new guy. Body-Guy kills people. Body-Guy and Doctor die in the Arctic.

Lord of the Flies: Some boys are shipwrecked and become increasingly tribal and violent. Adults show up. The end.

Things Fall Apart: Europeans slowly take over an African village. Town leader hangs himself in defeat.

One Hundred Years of Solitude: Several generations struggle with the history of their town. Naturally, most die.

To Kill a Mockingbird: Children grow up with a quiet father who defends a black man against racist judiciary. He wins.

Bathroom Monologue: What would I do…?, OR, Recently unearthed, one of the original Bathroom Monologues was a mental comic strip

[Panel 1]
-Jesus walks up to the edge of the land. Beyond him is lava, completely blocking his passage.

[Panel 2]
-Jesus looks down to his WWJD charm bracelet.
Jesus: What would I do…?

[Panel 3]
-Jesus looks happy.
Jesus: Oh, right!

[Panel 4]
-Jesus looks up at the sky, shouting.
Jesus: Daaaad!

Bathroom Monologue: Ms. Logic

“Don’t bring logic into this! She was doing fine minding her own business outdoors. Now she’s going to tango in and start cleaning. You know, she never lets me leave anything where I put it down, even though that’s exactly where I wanted my points and suppositions! And let me tell you, when it turns out everything I want is irrational and I kick your ass, she isn’t going to lift a finger to help you. I will put a severe ass-whipping on you, too. I’m bigger and get mad when people talk smartly down to me. Here comes logic now, through the door – you better tell her we didn’t really need her in this conversation if you know what’s good for… Hi, logic! How are you today? That’s a nice dress. Very mathematical.”

Bathroom Monologue: Magic Carpet Dried

“All the attention goes to the jackass who sells magic carpets at the bazaar. None goes to the industry that produces those carpets! Do you know how difficult it is to sheer a flying sheep? To embroider a decent pattern on a rug that’s flying fifty miles an hour underneath you, often heading straight at brick walls? How about just dyeing anti-gravity cotton? Normal cotton is easily dipped into dye. Lose your grip on anti-gravity cotton and suddenly there’s a bright red splotch on your wife’s ceiling, and she’s already pissed at you because you haven’t made the rent on account of the slow sales in flying furniture.”

Bathroom Monologue: “Uh, I dropped your piano.” a non-teacher to a teacher in Chalk

The music teacher perked. The two gym teachers were immediately ready to bark, but she raised her hands like the conductor she’d wanted to be as a child, and silenced them.

She fixed her eyes on the husky piano dropper. “You know why you dropped my piano?”

“Well, we were horsing around…”

“You dropped it because it wasn’t built to be lifted. It was built to be played delicately and passionately. To be tuned and polished. Actually it was built far more with polish in mind than lifting in mind.”

The gym teachers looked as baffled as the boy piano dropper.

“Yes ma’am,” he said, unable to look her in the eyes. “Are you going to kill me over this?”

She rose and swept the triscuit crumbs from her skirt. “No, I’m not going to kill you. You are a teenager, and a big one, but not big enough to lift a piano by yourself. You came here alone. That means you’re the only one who’s responsible who came to fess up, and before we even knew something was wrong. Now, come on. Show me where you dropped it.”

Bathroom Monologue: Misreading Abbreviations in the Bathroom, OR, “Wall St. Fraud Leaves Charities Reeling” –Stephanie Strom, New York Times

The Wall Saint shrugged.

“Not my fault.”

The nuns rang their hands.

“But we donated bricks for a hospital!”

“You didn’t read the fine print. The contract clearly expressed that I would build hospital walls. These are clearly walls fit for a hospital. I even put a chart on that one. But nowhere in the contract does it say the hospital walls have to be in a hospital. In this case I’ve made a very nice house for myself out of hospital walls. And you’re trespassing. Shoo.”

Bathroom Monologue: "Drop 47 pounds!" -Some magazine at the checkout counter

First you pick up two twenty-pound dumb bells. Take one in each hand, that gets you up to forty. Then you get one five-pounder, and put these two little one-pounders to top it all off. Now walk to the edge of the apartment building. Wait for it... Wait for it... See that guy who just came out? Yeah, that's my ex. Cheated on me with my sister. That pip. Anyway, hold out your weights and release! Phew, listen to him scream. Who knew losing weight could be so satisfying?

Bathroom Monologue: C.C.C.

Charles Cameron Cullen was a rogue. He was a rogue political surveyor, which was not in vogue in his day. Indeed, even today to claim to be a rogue political surveyor means men ignoring you and women closing their legs to you. But in his time Cullen was an inspired political warrior, traveling the budding country to re-survey the property of wealthy landed elite and disqualify them from voting in a particular district. If you crossed a man like Cullen you were likely to find the government auditing you for extra real estate tax.

His greatest feat was in Rhode Island, where he so thoroughly redistricted it that even today people mistake it for the smallest state in the union. Cullen knew better; even now it actually contains more land than the entire Louisiana Purchase, but only Cullen could show you the math to understand it. Small minds and political liberation have since eradicated his craft, and he has taken his geomancy to the grave.

#classicsontwitter

A Sunday bonus, the transcript of last night's #classicsontwitter from www.twitter.com/Wiswell. The game was to adapt classics of literature onto Twitter. It's very similar to a project I did in college, "ObLiteration," which may have to come back.

Tonight we remake classics of literature for Twitter!

Moby Dick: Crew and crazy captain look for a white whale. And look. And look. And look. Then it kills them.

Grapes of Wrath: Family is poor, needs work. Travels west. Everybody is poor. No jobs in the west.

Great Gatsby: Rich guy is sad his girlfriend married another. Misses her. Hooks up with her and is shot by her husband.

The Iliad: Greeks can't get into Troy. Achilles won't help. His buddy dies. He helps. Greeks still outside.

Huckleberry Finn: Boy flees father, slave flees master. Hijinx ensue until dad is dead and slave is emancipated. Whoops!

Catcher in the Rye: Boy leaves school to whine at hookers and family. Winds up crazy, apparently.

Hamlet: Prince feigns insanity to cover up king's ghost told him to kill people. Everyone dies.

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest: Sane man in an insane asylum. Hates nurse. Hijinx ensue. Gets lobotomized.

The Metamorphosis: Man turns into a giant bug. He dies.

The Scarlet Letter: Hester has a child out of wedlock. She is ostracized. She dies.

Crime and Pushiment: Poor guy kills rich woman. Gets sick, gets caught, goes to jail in Siberia.

War and Peace: Several aristocratic families rise and fall during the Napoleanic conquest. Most fall.

Gulliver's Travels: Man visits and island of tiny people, then giants, then talking horses, then goes crazy.

1984: A man has sex with an insurgent. The government brainwashes him.

Romeo & Juliet: Two teens are in love. The parents disapprove. She fakes dying. He kills himself. She kills herself.

Cyrano de Bergerac: An ugly but brilliant man uses another guy as a puppet to tell a pretty girl how he feels. He dies.

The Aeneid: A soldier without a country woos a queen, ditches her, fights monsters and founds Rome.

Bathroom Monologue: Missed the deadline for Field & Stream's six-word story contest

Webbed foot cocks rifle, preparing revenge.

Spotlight on Me?

Angel Zapata wrote an article spotlighting my stories over on his blog, A Rage of Angel. He took excerpts from a few of the Bathroom Monologues that circled the internet to illustrate that I'm apparently a versatile writer. That is a relief, given I just wrote a week of the same stuff. You can check out his blog and the spotlight article here: http://arageofangel.blogspot.com/2009/08/john-wiswell-writer-spotlight.html

Bathroom Monologue: Acedia

Come, shrug off the smoke of that place. Let’s be off to the last sight to see. Nicer in this house. No one smokes. The father fought hard to quit, but we’re not here for him. We’re here for what’s melting over him, and his boy.

Every big economy needs its waste adjustors. The ones who come in and turn useless assets lucrative. Acedia really should be on par with busty Luxuria and pot-bellied Gula, but he doesn’t care for reputation. Too much work. She doesn’t do work, allowing clients to come to her. They always will. They cannot help it. They can diet and exercise, keep their energy up, meditate to focus, but eventually everyone becomes tired. How easy is it for Gula to goad you into eating another a bite or a little dessert? How hard is it to fight Superbia’s fingers around your heart when you’ve done something you know as good? Now triple that feeling, and know how hard it is not to lie a little longer when your muscles ache and your dreams are so much more pleasant than the work that waits in the world of the standing.

Alas, it’s Sunday morning and the vices are melting from our eyes. Their bodies, that is. I cannot show you Acedia: The Woman Incarnate. Already she melts into two. Soon she will be all. What is she this second? Look closer.

See that. A father’s brown eye through a crack in the white-painted door, and the fraction of his smile visible over a boy asleep at noon. How could this be vile? How could this be vice? The old one deeply proud, the young one indulging in long slumber. It’s sweet. It’s love incarnate, which we did not plan her to be a part of the tour. Love could not be a vice. Not one of the seven, at least.

And with the sun, here melts the truth of all vices, dear tourist. That none are pure evil. The boy is earnestly tired from last night’s high school football. That game where adrenaline, colorful sports drinks, the budding chests of cheerleaders and vicarious parents made every vice rich again. Was any of it pure evil? Not a drop of it, for that which is pure evil rots and crumbles from the whole. The vices abandon such investments.

They are humanitarians. You can say they write off some of their crueler work like this. Superbia can invest in parents proud of their children, and Acedia here rewards a child after long work. What romantic story does not dip its brush in Luxuria’s wells? You can say they write off their worst work in accenting the best of yours. You could also say they justify their accounts this way. Perhaps they began as good. Perhaps, frightening as it may be, they are always good, in a little way, somewhere. Humanitarians, insofar as vegetarians love vegetables.

But now Acedia has melted from the father and the son. The boy stirs, face rubbing in his pillow. Somewhere, someone sleeps. Look as we like, though, we cannot see Acedia in any of them. Gone are Luxuria in the low and Gula in the high. Gone are Avaritia, Ira and Superbia. Is that Invidia still in the corner? No, it is a doll with a dumb expression. Art imitates them all, and fools us so often. My mistake, not ours. I apologize. It’s Sunday morning, and a tour guide makes mistakes. But do you still see them? Our eyes diverge, but yours are surely still open.

Bathroom Monologue: Invidia

In the corner. When bored, she always drifts into a corner. She’s the one with the flat, amorphous features. Luxuria purposefully switches genders, changing them to hurt. Not this one. Invidia has not the features necessary to attain a gender, and resents all those that do. The more you have, the more she wants them. A flower is more of a woman than she. Her hair can never be too short or long, always cutting it to match someone else’s style, chasing originality by imitation.

The corner is the safe place to find her. When she moves into the room, she’ll disappear into another vice. Can’t actually have anything, that pauper sin. We don’t know why, but the room always seems a little smokier when you notice she’s an occupant. Even now, who has a cigarette lit? Despite No Smoking signs, she touches one man on the shoulder and there’s a haze that burns the nostrils.

A turn of the head later, and she has invested herself in them. That’s why she’s a pauper – she wants not only to be other vices, but to be full people, and she can never be either. She’s constantly watching or giving in – she can be no more. When she gets what she wants, her mortals no longer recognize what they have. When they can no longer recognize it, they search the horizon for another to resent. That toe-headed boy who returns her gaze right now? He’ll leave with nothing, unless…

Oh, she’s ostentatious tonight. Climbing into his lap and blowing on his dice? How cute, already turning her account over to Luxuria. She’s invited a few people to her room tonight, and he’ll think he’ll be the only one to accept. Tomorrow, he’ll stare like she does, staring at everyone who declined.

Bathroom Monologue: Superbia

Ira’s fight in the alley was not his idea. Up there, just one flight of stairs instead of a hundred. Near the window and the mirror. Such an immaculate man you would think he was Luxuria. Hair combed, suit pressed, muscles refined. Yet Luxuria doesn’t need so many reflective surfaces around. Even now, as Ira commits violence in this vice’s name, Superbia is watching himself.

That’s him. A little above, always near enough to see the thing done, always readily bored by that which does not reflect himself. You need to be good to be that disinterested and last in their business.

You rut and there’s a baby that grows up to rut. You murder and there will be grievance. Easy turnovers. Yet Superbia? The soundest portfolio, constantly refining self-image. Those who enroll in his plan feel him more and more. When that sense is challenged? Bare-chested Ira is there. A history with Luxuria will validate him. Or he will sidestep, let them blame it all on grubby Avaritia, and in giving up some possessions? In seeming selfless they invest in another of Superbia’s stocks. Righteousness and Avaritia alike can serve the vice in love with his own mirror.

Sunday is nearing, dear tourist. Come quickly. It will banish them from our sight, and we would not have you lose out on the last visions.