The Bathroom Monologues

Bathroom Monologue: Ghost Rant

2012-01-28T13:09:00.001-05:00

“What, you think I want you to be at peace? I want you to mourn. I want you to rake your skin, and thrash on the floor, and weep that I’m dead! Why in the hell would I want you to be okay with me dying? ‘Oh, his suffering is over.’ Bullshit. That’s my concern! You? I want you to miss me. I want you to selfishly desire that my chemo went on for eternity so I could still be around. I want you to want more me. Tons more me. You’re feeling closure? Then your ass is getting haunted.”

Bathroom Monologue: A Priest

2012-01-27T00:38:00.001-05:00

To hear his parable, click here.

There’s one last lesson that every priest from my school must learn. We teach it through a parable because parables have been better to us than life.

Imagine: it’s the cusp of winter, when the grass can’t help but stiffen, and rivers don’t freeze enough. The priest knows not to test the ice and preaches thus, but not everyone goes to his services. A poor mother and son slide to the center of the river, trying to catch one more autumn trout. They fall in with their trout.

Now our priest happens along. He knows to lose his robes. He knows how to tie a rope between a tree and his waist. He knows how to swim. He knows what he’s supposed to do, and with a great deal of sputtering, he drags the mother and son to shore.

But it’s the cusp of winter. The boy is paler than the river. The priest knows how to check for fever and hypothermia. He knows how to first dry himself, then strip and cover them. He knows how to build a fire whose heat will assist here and attract attention from on far. The priest knows all this because he was a very good student. He’s read very many parables.

He doesn’t have to be learned, however, to know the mother’s gone blind. He knows how to stall her as he tries to keep her son breathing. When she asks him to pray for her boy rather than her own sight, he is burdened with knowing that the gods don’t work that way. Like all priests, he knows to pray anyway.

And she calls for her boy. She calls, and calls, and her voice is plainly getting weaker. Soon she sounds not ten feet away from her boy, but ten worlds away.

The priest looks up the road. No one is coming; no one has seen the smoke soon enough. Now the mother looks at him with useless eyes and a purposeful face. Now she calls to him, asking. Is he alright? Is he alright? Is he alright? Every time softer, farther toward the veil.

Put yourself in his moment, as this naked servant of the gods looking into a blind plea on the cusp of winter. You’ve learned the medicines, and the physics, and the scriptures, and very plainly the boy is dead and his mother is following. This is why every priest I teach must learn how to lie.

Bathroom Monologue: Best Car Ever

2012-01-26T07:00:00.004-05:00

It’s got infinite-inch rims so perfect that if you calculate their metrics, pi comes out an even number. The black chrome exterior has a polish so fine it reflects even the lightless void, and makes distant stars weep little novas at the beauty of what they no longer are. Your spaceship may get light years to the gallon, but this puppy is the only ride in creation that gets gallons to the mile – it makes fuel from action. You bet your ass the windows are tinted, because inside is nothing. No atoms, no axes, not even time itself. Only one person can drive it. It’s been in the garage for eons, but you know whenever the plot necessitates He give it a spin, the Ex Machina will deliver.

Eating My Prejudices

2012-01-25T02:30:00.003-05:00

One of the best things an artist can do is make me eat my prejudices. This doesn’t mean writing tolerance-propaganda; art designed to coerce usually puts me on guard and actually turns me against the thesis. Rather, I adore things of a type I usually dislike that are done so well that I am forced to concede. By rendering me a happy hypocrite, my whole stand softens.

I’ve never liked poetry. For the two halves of my life it’s either looked gimmicky or simply like poorly paragraphed prose. I lack the ability to scan, which deadens some of the effect, and even in Shakespeare’s sonnets I never saw much enviable application of language. Intellectually, striving for rhythm only gets in the way of clear description and establishing atmosphere. It forces patterns where my storytelling instincts never needed them. Where there were great storytellers, like Homer and Dante, I was mostly putting up with secondhand meters to get to the meaty stories – and most poetry was not trying to deliver a Homeric narrative. So much of what I consumed was vague and interpretable, hiding in the safety of audience projection. As Christopher Miller used to tell my classes, “Poetry is the only art form that muddies its waters for the illusion of depth.”

You can tell this guy loved what he did.

Reading Alexander Pope was an acrid pleasure. He used sonnets to turn phrases like wild. He made points far more concisely than any prose about his work did. And even if I couldn’t read the iambic pentameter like I was supposed to, a definite voice rose from the lines. Once I reached his Essay On Man, in which this crippled genius used beautiful language to tell the rest of the world to suck it up, I was entirely won over. His stiltedness was elegant, at once erudite and plain, quotable and reasonable. No Homeric narrative, total indulgence, and total quality. Stanza by stanza, he made me grateful to have my nose rubbed in the things I disliked.

I call this feeling “selfenfreude.” If schadenfreude is the joy at someone else’s failure, selfenfreude is the joy at my own. There’s a pinch in my diaphragm as I recognize I ought to resist, and summon dogmas to swat down what I’m feeling. Every other organ is hums with amusement. I’m uncertain exactly how to activate selfenfreude, but it encourages humility and correcting my errors. I’m trying to keep it around.

I'm just saying: this is a lot like The Panther and the Lash.

Alexander Pope, Langston Hughes and Samuel Coleridge’s poetry did it to me. F.E.A.R. was that first-person-shooter that made me think (and jump in my seat, tearing a surgical stitch). As someone who cannot stand musicals, it’s a particular pleasure that my favorite Futurama is “The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings.” In all these cases my defenses were already down; these weren’t like arguments where I could dig in my heels. I’ve enjoyed your poem, your game, your increasingly ludicrous opera. You’ve convinced me, not through your demonstration, but by getting me to demonstrate it for you. You made me eat my own prejudices.

It’s difficult evidence to refute, and it’s why I keep going back to niches I’ve disliked. Whether it’s time travel fiction or vegan lasagna, if I can find something that works on me it, it enters the remix of possibilities. So what if I hated Pride & Prejudice? It’s a small fee to pay in order to discover new territory of feeling.

Bathroom Monologue: Childese

2012-01-24T03:46:00.000-05:00

Patter. Patter, patter. Spatter.

He opens the door and darts inside before much rain gets inside, then closes the door as quietly as he can. He doesn’t want to wake her.

Squilp. Squilp. Squilp. Groan.

He takes off his shoes and hangs them to dry.

Shiver. Pad. Pad. Pad. Pad. Preek.

Oh, the darned stairs. How many times has he put off fixing those?

Preek. Preeeeeeeeek. Preeeek.

He waves a fist to threaten the steps.

Prek. Prek. Prek. Preeeeeeeek.

On the verge of swearing, he notices a light. The door’s ajar, and a lamp’s on in his room.

Preeeek. Creep, creep, creep.

“Maya?”

He pauses in the doorway. He smiles.

Snoooooore.

She’d fallen asleep waiting. There’s a Danielle Steel open across her chest.

Pad. Pad, pad pad. Click.

Out goes the light as he slides under the covers next to her.

“Good night, Maya.”

Snore.

And so he joins her snoring.

Spoiled #1 - David Fincher's The Game

2012-01-23T05:45:00.000-05:00

A new Consumed has appeared, but it’s not what you expected.

Consumed: Spoiled #1 is an in-depth conversation about David Fincher’s The Game. Unlike normal Consumed Podcasts, there is only one topic and we spoil the heck out of it. In this case the movie is 15 years old and hinges on so many twists that it can only really be appreciated when speaking without holding back.

My favorite Fincher flick, The Game stars Michael Douglas as a tycoon who is targeted by CRS, an all-consuming corporation that manipulates his business, television, home, family and personal life until even his sanity is fleeting. Allegedly it’s a game, but he can’t get it to stop. It all leads to what is quite possibly my favorite twist ending of all time.

You can hear Spoiled #1 by clicking here.

Let us know if you enjoy it. All feedback is welcome.

Bathroom Monologue: Motion Control

2012-01-22T07:00:00.003-05:00

See, the motion of his arm there is registered by everything. The X-Box 360 Kinect, which plays videogames, but is also his DVD player, but is also an internet streaming device, turns on at the same time as his Samsung television, which is also an internet streaming device. They both switch on at the same time.

There’s no audio on this, so you can’t tell, but he’s trying voice command here. The Kinect and the TV are both voice-commanded, though, so it switches… there. To a channel with nothing on it. His vacuum is also voice-commanded. You’ll see it coming into frame from the left in a minute.

Here he is trying to manually shut off the X-Box.

Here’s the disc tray opening and hitting him in the eye. And there! See, there’s the vacuum chugging into frame.

There’s him stepping onto the robot vacuum.

And there’s him falling into the TV. And through the TV. Did not know those shattered like that.

And there’s the vacuum cleaner trying to clean his blood off the carpet. Now I know it looks gross the first time, but eventually, everyone in this office finds it hilarious. You just have to see it enough times.

Bathroom Monologue: Unbeatable Government

2012-01-21T11:00:00.000-05:00

“They built the first new homes after the last apocalypse. They built the first city and the first shipyard. They sorted out who was alive out on the islands, and connected them back to us. They don’t only print the money. They control the minerals, farming, and the pepper trade. They’re the only ones in the hemisphere constructing printing presses. Insulting as it is, they can get away with turning three islands into prison camps and jailing people without cause. They pretty much re-invented right and wrong. The Contiguities didn’t save our culture; they built it. We can’t just rebel, not against the institution that made everyone’s clothes and breakfast possible. We can’t just rebel. We have to compete.”

Bathroom Monologue: Edgar Seterra

2012-01-20T00:01:00.004-05:00

One of the unsung heroes of the day the Uranians came for us. He was at the crater on Third Street when it happened. Well, it wasn’t a crater at the time. It was a Recruitment Station, and he was getting his physical when the ship landed on all of them.

Now Edgar Seterra was not your new-fangled superhero with an I.Q. of one-point-five-billion or radioactive biceps. He had what you’d call a “less desirable power set,” and survived the UFO crash by turning into a pool of slightly tepid water.

By the time he gathered his pool-self up, the Uranians had disembarked from the craft with one of those hydrogen bombs that you really don’t want in a heartland city. All the greater heroes were skyward, preoccupied with the proper invasion force. Stopping these specific cosmic hooligans was up to him, but how was Edgar Seterra to know which way the Uranians had gone with their bomb? A feral sense of smell? A spiderific sense?

No, for you see those powers were taken, and Edgar Seterra did not possess any abilities patented to American icons. Instead he used the less-popular ability to recall what all the elderly women in the vicinity had smelled recently. You might call this a useless ability, and his fiancé had done just that on multiple occasions, yet Uranian B.O. is quite distinctive and led him to a warehouse on John Calvin Klein Drive.

Please mind that Edgar Seterra was not the sort of superhero who breaks the sound barrier on foot or could bean three Nazis with one bouncing shield. The dear boy arrived at the warehouse on John Calvin Klein Drive with little more than a rifle and some plus-sized fatigues, up against three suicidal extraterrestrials. People in the neighborhood called it quite a sight.

He managed to empty his entire rifle magazine into the brick wall to their left while they trained sights on his forehead. The anxiety simultaneously activated three useless superpowers: one that caused all dogwoods in the area to thicken their sap slightly, one causing all cesium to decay by drastically greater half-life, and the last causing him to sprout a second heart. This last would have come in very handy if they had not aimed for his head; each and all of these he would gladly have traded to turn laserproof for just a few seconds, as I reckon just about anyone would.

Well it turns out that a person’s powers do not only have to be of use to him. They can be of disuse to evildoers. For instance, did you know Uranian laser pistols use mildly depleted cesium cartridges? Well they didn’t either, which is why the Uranians were so confused with Edgar Seterra continuing to have a head. For a moment, he thought continuing to have that head was a superpower.

But that head was a good one. By the time the Uranians realized their cesium cartridges were duds, Edgar stormed their position and subdued them through some good old-fashion American pugilism.

Not five minutes later, his left hand turned into a psychic dove and he chased its intuition across town to stop another Uranian incursion – this one tampering with the water supply. He curtailed no less than seven heinous plots that day.

You still don’t hear much about him. U-Day was all about our burly men of steel, and our lightning lasses zapping rockets out of the sky. They deserve press for their heroism, yet Uranians did get by them, and when it came to chasing aliens across our sidewalks, through our warehouses and broadcast towers? That was Ed Seterra.

Bathroom Monologue: On Writer’s Block

2012-01-19T07:00:00.004-05:00

It besets a perfectly well-meaning, perfectly well-read, perfectly talented and motivated writer, who had no intention of dicking around on Twitter and Reddit for hours. As soon as this bold thinker’s hands approach the keyboard, it strikes. For one out of every three cases, the writer’s fingers are broken by the strike, but regardless the writer’s block remains hovering in the air, obstructing the keyboard. Its onset is harrowing. No wedging or cajoling of the keyboard will loose it from beneath a writer’s block; the block will simply move to continue interference regardless of position. It haunted typewriters, and before it, blocked inkwells and Greek slates. Anthropologists posit that it is what necessitated oral storytelling among otherwise literate tribes. It is a persistent issue of the human condition. Those Great American Novelists among us will take drills, hammers and chisels to the block, to liberate their means of expression. Let it be known that writer’s block can be broken, but beware its insidious side-effect: for the writer is left so agitated by the inexplicable black blockage, and so exhausted from the labor of destroying it, that he or she is typically left without the energy to write afterward. In at least a third of cases, the keyboard is also destroyed.

Bathroom Haiku: Richard Simmons, for Mike Houlding

2012-01-18T07:00:00.008-05:00

beast of energy

will explode if smiling stops;

he sups on your sweat

Bathroom Dialogue: Orange Juice and House Fires, OR, How John Talks to a Girlfriend

2012-01-17T07:00:00.005-05:00

“Fresh squeezed orange juice! That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“It only took us… thirty-three minutes? To fill two glasses? Yeah, this is fulfilling work."

“Do you have a problem with my juicer?”

“No, I love it. I’m a novelist. I’m used to things taking longer to make than they do to consume.”

“What? Doesn’t it take you a weekend to write a novel? I know Amanda Hocking does, like, four in a year.”

“You know, a house fire would only take me seconds to start.”

“Not funny! That’s not funny!”

“Odd. It took so little time to think up.”

“Give me your juice. I don’t trust you with this.”

Checking in for #NaNoReMo

2012-01-16T07:00:00.005-05:00

We're halfway through January. How is everyone doing with their classics? I figured at least few folks would have torn through theirs already. Mine's about 3/4's done. My reading was a little delayed by cracking through the beta critiques on my own novel last week, which turned into a series of ten-hour days that left little energy for Ms. Austen.

My book wound up being Pride and Prejudice. I was dumb enough to take everyone telling me I'd hate it as a dare, and my attempt at open-mindedness has been grating so far. There are spurts of quotability, and I was pretty fond of her notion that women have to express more love for men than they feel in order for men to know they have feelings at all. At Chapter 50 we've seen a few true perils of this time period, and I felt the littlest bit for Lydia's family when she runs off with Mr. Whomever.

They're all Mr. Whomever to me. I've got a sheet with names and reference points to help me, because little in action or dialogue lends them individuality. Mr. Collins I can identify since he's the male Mrs. Bennet, the self-unaware selfish character who won't shut up. But all the other guys have the same dialogue patterns and some amount of money. The women aren't much better.

I'm not a Romance genre reader, not of the old-age get-married variety or the modern smut variety. At my core, I think I enjoy my romances as part of a greater context, just like every great relationship I've ever experienced or encountered. Loves during war time, or at a videogame tournament, or between two people at the terminal ward, where one's too devoted to her brokerage firm, or where he keeps putting up with her infatuation for riding trains. The life which loves enters and springs from. The absence of almost any substance to Austen's world has put more onus on her cast, and there's not nearly enough internal life to make that an enviable task. Much less enviable when internal life keeps getting turned into canned monologues and dialogues.

There are at least three people who've witnessed me getting suckered by pure sap and a hail-mary of a romantic ending. I'm holding out hope that I get suckered by the final stretch of Pride and Prejudice. I believe it to still be possible. And if I hate it, then her fans can comfort themselves that Mr. Wiswell lacks breeding and prospects. After all, his favorite fictional couple is The Joker and Harley Quinn.

There's one thing that will make me glad to have read this regardless of how the ending pans out, though I'll save that for another day. How are your classics treating you?

Bathroom Monologue: The Senator’s Daughter

2012-01-15T07:00:00.005-05:00

To hear this short, simply click here.

"That’s worse. If they wanted to kill me? Okay. That happens to senators, especially ones who do things in office. I knew it when I ran, and I certainly knew it the first time I hired someone to open my mail. But my daughter? Guys, I know where I am. That’s comforting, comforting even when I’m afraid for my life. I can decide where I’ll go hide when a gunman arrives, and I’ll see the bodyguards, and I’ll do the running. I don’t know where my daughter is at any given time because we senators made the terrible error to let them have rights. When the gunman comes, I don’t know where she is, or if she’s hiding, or if anyone’s around to help. There is no comfort in her having a number to dial or a routine to follow. All I know is at fourteen she used to steal my cigarettes and smoke them behind the house, and no matter how much I told her not to she’d keep doing it, and I’ll know it incessantly loud the second you tell me she’s been compromised. If I don’t do what you tell me? At least I know I did that. She’s my daughter. I can only worry about her. I’d rather have two people pointing guns at me than one in the same state as her."

"Shameless" at Karen Berner's Blog

2012-01-14T11:00:00.013-05:00

Today I'm lending one of my darlings from 2011 to Karen Berner's Bibliophilic blog. "Shameless" was one of my favorite things to write all last year for Cheryl and her outlook on apartment life. She gets some unwanted neighbors, who are either newlyweds or axe murderers. I'll leave it up to you to decide.

You can read the story by clicking here.

Bathroom Monologue: Renegade Sons and Gatorade Moms, Redux Drabble

2012-01-13T00:53:00.001-05:00

Dear Son,

Firstly, the state of West Virginia abolished the death penalty decades ago. No hangman is coming for you.

You’ve been like this ever since I was elected. You’re in your twenties now! I'll never forget the August you attacked that nice police officer for pulling you over.

Were you speeding again? Lord, if your grandfather could see you.

By the time you read this you’ll be a free man. Please remember, little renegade, that I worked very hard so you could have it made. I'd appreciate some gratitude. At least stop getting arrested in verse.

Love,
Mama

Alpha Reactions to Beta Readers

2012-01-12T09:39:00.000-05:00

Four of my six beta readers have turned in their notes on The House That Nobody Built. A fifth also had, but withdrew hers to do a more detailed reading. The sixth is by far the busiest of an already busy group, and for at least two weeks of the reading period I was hanging out with him, so really I have to shoulder some of the delay. He intends to deliver his by mid-January.

This week I began earnestly analyzing my critiqued copies. I’ve managed to pound one 470-page manuscript per day, which feels mildly satisfying. Despite taking two solid months away from the manuscript, anything they ask causes some paternal part of me to sit up and answer. I know my baby’s cry.

The knowledge feels mildly satisfying, but also a little freakish. They question the spelling of a name, or an awkward sentence, or what constitutes personhood to an astral being, and I know exactly what they mean. Dozens of times I’ve seen the merit and changed it immediately; dozens more I’ve made a note to examine specific context after I finish aggregating the responses. Even when the beta readers dislike something, I enjoy it.

Their dislikes can still be kicks in the gut. I take them personally. I don’t pretend otherwise; I’m a marshmallow, of course I take this personally. But in addition to pangs of personal pride, I’m personally grateful that they called me out on vague plot points and failed jokes. They strove to make this a better novel. My goal is to make this the best thing I’ve ever written. They are helping me toward that which I worked the hardest in 2011. This is personal.

Sitting down to pizza with one beta reader, he recounted how I underdescribed settings for his taste. After three minutes, he broke off to say how unnerving it was that I’d been smiling through all his criticism. I wondered if I hadn’t offended him by not appearing offended. Maybe for him the critique felt like delivering a beating, but I was in a frame of mind to reflect and reform. This made me eager.

It may just be that I’m weird. I know I vary in some ways. I’m at peace with this god. Frankly, if I succeed as a novelist, my work is only going to get weirder. The House That Nobody Built is as conventional as I get; I am not coming any further along the bridge to my culture. I don’t get anymore comprehensible than my sentient ball of snakes, my unconfident confidence man, and my Succubae Hit Squad.

That’s why I’m so grateful to these beta readers, some anonymous and some public, some personal friends and some professional acquaintances. They put unreckoned amounts of time into honing what is essentially me.

Bathroom Math: Where Opinions Come From

2012-01-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

I'm typically an opponent of oversimplification, but I kept doodling this during a recent literary debate. Eventually it made me wonder about some of my own opinions.

'Gates of Eden' Review up at A Reader's Heaven

2012-01-10T07:00:00.032-05:00

Today one of my book reviews is appearing in two ways over at A Reader's Heaven. It's on Ethan Coen's Gates of Eden, a short story collection and one of my favorite things I read all last year. It royally roasts many pulp conventions through humiliation and humility. I couldn't recommend it more unless you clicked the link over to the review.

I said "two ways." The site corresponds to a book store in Australia. In addition to e-publication, a physical copy is on display in their storefront as a recommendation to buyers. Yeah. One of my reviews is hanging in a book store in Australia. That's humbling.

One of the store's proprietors is Paul Phillips, an old internet acquaintance of mine from back in the days when I was addicted 6S. He was also one of the first people to stump for my fundraiser when I couldn’t afford surgery. I’m pretty darned happy to have a review hanging in his store.

Bathroom Monologue: The Ascent of Man, Over Trashcan

2012-01-09T07:00:00.012-05:00

Man starts out disliking the automatic trashcan. The sensor seems unreliable, and the lid closes too soon. On Uses 1-5, he waves his hand like an impotent magician, and for both Uses 3 and 5, the automatic lid closes while he’s still spooning expired pasta into it. On Use 5, the dangling strings of pasta form a distinct and mocking tongue sticking out of the can.

Uses 6-15 are largely resigned. He can’t argue his roommates into returning the thing, and he can’t can it to recognize a wave of his hand. Uses 7-9 and 12 require him to pry the lid open manually. Use 14 is accidental, as his hip brushes too close as he passes the can and it opens for no greater reason than to share its odors.

For uses 16-18, he makes the sign of the cross over the lid. The trashcan is stolidly secular and refuses to open. It does not laugh at his exorcism jokes.

Uses 19-23 are all accidental openings when he walks to close to it. Use 24-26 feature him trying to dangle his arm over the sensor in the lid as he would while walking, hoping this will open it. This never works.

Use 27 is when he walks too close to it and, again, it opens for no reason other than to taunt him.

During Use 28, it closes on his fingers. He is chastised for punching the automatic trash can “in its smug face.”

Uses 29-31 are the worst, as his roommates explicitly show him how to move your hand to make it open. Use 32 takes him ten minutes of hand-waving. He is not catching on.

Use 33 features him walking too close and it opening automatically. He tosses in a half-eaten banana on principle. Herein, he derives an idea.

Uses 34-400 feature him walking with his hip jutting out near the trashcan. The stupid thing opens every time.

Consumed 3, Featuring SciFi TV and Zombies

2012-01-08T10:15:00.002-05:00

This Sunday I'm proud to present to you Consumed Episode 3. It features what I'd conservatively peg as one of the top five worst intros of all time. We spent most of the episode discussing Science Fiction television with a focus on Eureka, Futurama and Steins;Gate. Then we swapped over to zombie media with the recent PC game Dead Island, and Max Brooks's follow-up to World War Z, Recorded Attacks. At a certain point I rattle of my wishlist of unused premises for zombie stories.

Allegedly this episode will kick off regular bi-weekly recordings. It took far too long to produce, but with Garage Band and some regular work schedules, Max Cantor, Nat Sylva and I are pretty confident Episode 4 is coming sooner than 3 did.

You can listen to Consumed Episode 3 here.

And yes: "Steins;Gate" is spelled that way.

Bathroom Monologue: Dead Strangers

2012-01-07T11:00:00.000-05:00

"It’s interesting that we view people snapping as revealing their true selves. A politician makes one racist comment, and especially if you’re opposite his party, you declare this is his true personality. It’s mostly interesting because it runs explicitly contrary to evidence. The majority of a person’s actions are apparently false; it’s only this outlier event that defines them. And who does it define them for? Not themselves. They can explain they’d just had back surgery and were on pills, or hadn’t slept in three days, or were quoted out of context, and strangers will judge them anyway as secretly base and awful. The cynic supports the hypothesis saying it’s impossible to be perpetually kind, but easy to be selfish and base. The notion of a basic human, stripped of civility and society, semantics and sympathy, exposing their private selves, the celebrity would be one long indiscretion all the time. That rancid self is allegedly sustainable. With minimal evidence for their case, the strangers judge the celebrity’s sustainable persona. That’s most interesting because there’s only one thing anybody can sustainably be forever: dead."

Bathroom Monologue: The Ring of the Lord

2012-01-06T00:44:00.001-05:00

The Red King seemed permanent. He had so many waterways, and his army was so vast, so motivated by fear and malice. Some skirmishes, it seemed like the sky obeyed him, raining down hill on his foes. He was even gifted a ring by the very Devil himself that granted immortality, an everlasting contract to walk the earth and do his damnations.

It took all the High Houses, all the fleets of the world, and quite a few bribes just to turn it into a fair fight. All those war machines, and all those regimens, and the biggest port city in the world in flames. It’s funny, devilishly funny, that it only took one man to cut off the Red King’s hand. Brave Hixon, the foot soldier who would become a commander and a prime minister, lopped it off with a bayonet. I watched it fall into the surf. It looked like a diving blackbird and the ring was its eye.

His hand plummeted between sailors treading water and sharks tasting men. It made a gory morsel, and was swallowed by a thirteen-foot great white. All the maelstrom had attracted all manner of predators, and a giant squid soon snagged the shark. She remained on the upper levels of sea for all the fresh hunting, and so the squid was harpooned and netted by the victors of the Red War. In the belly of a shark, in the belly of a squid, in the hold of a privateer vessel, the ring came back to land.

The squid’s guts were sold to the High Houses that now ruled. It was part of a buffet celebrating great commanders, and one bit found its way to the plate of the most notorious defector. Without his opening the westerly gates, the High Houses never would have had their second front. He was gloating when the ring passed through his colon. It managed to pass through him entirely before he realized his bowels were not merely straining from the feast, but bleeding.

The ring travelled through the sewers as he travelled to his family crypt. There were state honors. There were rumors, too, that the Red King had cursed his betrayers. Silly talk. His remains were rotting in a second-grade tomb in a tourist backwater.

You may not know it, but sewer runoff was one of the sources of water used to mix cement for all the new High House buildings. By high misfortune, the ring was sucked into the foundations of the first free court house in the region. In its annals law was handed over to the juries, and populist justice would overturn all the evils of the Red King’s reign. For twenty-two years lawyers and summoned free peoples debated our rights, and signed quite a few dubious concessions.

Then, in the twenty-second year, anarchists bombed the city. They hit the magistrate’s mansion, two postal offices, and the court house. The memory is acrid, for that was the day Brave Hixon spoke on the steps. He was very inspirational until everything exploded. It was only part of a civil war.

Rescue workers shuttled in from around the region. Brave men and women were coughing up the dust for months afterward. Bits of the rubble got everywhere, including in-between the treads of boots. The ring travelled halfway across the continent before its shine was spotted on the bottom of one such boot. The rescue worker was trying to pry it out when his shuttle derailed. Awful mess. Probably the anarchists again.

The boot was pulled from the wreckage ten hours before its owner. Brigands showed up before aid, and they pillaged the luggage and bodies. One particular brigand absconded with four sets of boots and a designer rucksack. He didn’t even notice the embedded jewelry; he actually wore that pair of boots when he went grave robbing that night.

Grave robbing was endemic back then. With the High Houses building up the world, old and superstitious things like crypts went untended. And with all these attacks around the continent, the High Houses couldn’t be asked to care. They might even have been happy to see the Red King’s hole desecrated.

They might have been happy to see this grave robber prying open the lid of the largest sarcophagus. It was stacked on top of three other boxes. They jostled as he worried the lid. They creaked, and slumped, and one of his feet slipped. The sarcophagus came down on top of him. Crushed his skull just as the ring popped loose from his boot. It rolled up the slate floor, wobbled around his knee, then down through the broken lid. It came to rest in the Red King’s palm, for he still had one hand.

Bathroom Monologue: I Am Not a Chauvinist

2012-01-05T06:48:00.000-05:00

My career in politics began in ninth grade Health Class. Every Thursday we got a visitor, and our third visitor was very important to me. She was a specialist. This specialist asked our class a question to gauge how sexist we were. The premise alone had most of us stiff in our chairs.

I clutched my little fingers into a fist as she asked, “How do you prevent rape?”

The distressing answers, more from girls than boys, flew up with every hand.

“Stay away from alleys.”

“Don’t dress like a slut.”

“My mom keeps a knife in her purse.”

These answers disgusted me; how dare they put the onus on the victims? And these answers disgusted our specialist, who frowned with increasing severity. Hands fell pre-emptively, leaving me with hope that maybe I did have a good idea. It was the most reliable way to stop such crimes. I held up my arm at the same time as Ashley Harding. Ashley got called on first.

“Don’t rape anybody,” she said.

The specialist nodded a sanitary nod. This was what she wanted, and she launched into an explanation of why. As she began explaining the differences between a patriarchal and a feminist point of view, I sank in my chair. I was crushed. My idea didn’t fit either of these categories.

In retrospect, it was a blessing she didn't call on me. She would have quashed a revolution politics. If called upon, I'd have told the class: “Put cameras everywhere. Shoot people as necessary.”

Listening to her lecture, I realized while I wasn’t a feminist, I also wasn’t a chauvinist: I was a totalitarian.

John is a Versatile Blogger Once More

2012-01-04T05:19:00.005-05:00

Marianne Su has become the most recent person to grant me The Versatile Blogger Award. This is still one of the most flattering things that happens to the Bathroom Monologues, since versatility is one of the things in prose that I value the most. Marianne also decided that her “seven admissions” would be seven wishes. For this edition of John Wiswell: Versatile Blogger, I’m following her variation. Time to rub the lamp.

1. I wish to write and edit faster. Right now at least eight of my professional friends are cursing me because they think I’m some paragon of productivity, but there wasn't a day writing my novel that I didn’t think this was taking me too long. This desire will never abate.

2. Neither will my wish to be able to simultaneously read and write at high volumes abate. At present I am a wretchedly close-minded writer, obsessing over my own manuscript for most of the waking hours of the day, and so am unable to enjoy almost anything with a cover while in such throes. This is an awful habit for a novelist. We need to consume lots of prose to keep our minds nimble and our attentions acute to what’s going on in the market.

3. I wish some of my readers would buy me stuff off my wish list linked to the right. Eh? No? Nobody? Yeah, that's probably fair.

4. I often wish I liked everything that was popular. Life would just be easier, and society significantly easier, if I could just enjoy the works of William Shakespeare, The Beatles, Radiohead, Watchmen, Mark Wahlberg, Rockstar Games, cell phones, and all the other overblown nonsense my fellow primates seem to gorge their life-hours upon. There’s an honest relief when I consume something hugely popular and find I actually like it, and it's not the relief of a satisfying work. At these times I feel like I've made a little in-road with my culture. And I do like some very popular works and artists (I adore Pixar, worship at the altar of Stephen King, and was as hooked on Lost as anybody); just not enough of them to feel like I'm doing it right.

5. Like every time I get the power of wishes, I wish to be able to solve all my problems with blunt, unthinking violence. I would gladly trade any intelligence I had for Hulk powers (not that Hulk’s powers ever solve his problems).

6. An equally neurotic and equally frequent wish is to be able to suffer for others. My syndrome has made me very accustomed to pain and strife, and often I see friends not handling their physical problems and earnestly desire that I could take it for them. It’s a sort of whipping-boy effect. Now, if I was smart I’d just wish to get rid of their suffering, but I traded my intelligence for Hulk powers in the previous wish.

7. This one is another everyday wish: that my works entertain people the way great writers entertained me when I needed them most. There were very dark nights in my bedridden teens when getting to the next page of a Mark Twain or Michael Crichton novel was as close as I got to the will to live. This is the sort of goal I think a person can work towards, and strive and struggle to be worthy of, but isn’t something you can actually achieve. The author wishes it. The reader achieves it.

Thanks to Marianne, and here's to another year of posting daily for everyone's amusement.

Bathroom Monologue: The Carnivore of Crime

2012-01-03T07:00:00.000-05:00

One of the most dangerous masterminds in the world, with a rap sheet over sixty five million years long. The Carnivore’s villainy has withstood all of evolution’s attempts to wipe him out; though his fellow dinosaurs are fossils, this lizard is the tyrant of the underworld. His underlings, the Filet Minions, are as highly-trained a themed gang as could be found in the civilized world. He was the only major villain in America with no lasting arch-nemesis, on account of his penchant for devouring them. These days his prime targets are vegans, whom he calls the “modern day herbivores.” He has only one exploitable weakness: his peanut-sized brain cannot resist any form of word play.

True Stories of John 18: Suicide Jumper

2012-01-02T03:40:00.001-05:00

This isn’t a true story about me. I was just party to one awful night for this man. He’s a fast friend of mine and wishes to remain anonymous, so we’ll call him Quan.

Quan was driving back from the Chinese restaurant when the man stepped into the road. It was just after dusk, leaving the winding road very dim. He was driving ten miles under the speed limit, but still too fast to see the man as he jumped. Before he knew it the hood crumpled and his windshield shattered. It’s a minor miracle that the jumper didn’t pass all the way through and kill Quan. Blood splashed his clothes.

Whatever it says about me, after he got home, I was the first person Quan contacted. I actually thought he was joking when he said he was shaken up and needed to talk. We sat there for hours as I tried to ask the most polite questions possible and ease his jangled mind.

A minivan had been coming in the opposing lane, he told me. It screeched to a stop. Quan and the other driver called 911 almost simultaneously, and they were only minutes from a police station. Flashing lights arrived shortly.

Quan’s car was impounded as evidence. He was kept at the station for hours trying to prove his innocence to people who was too shaken to read. It turned out the man had been suicidal and chose that method to end it. Without a car, Quan’s parents had to pick him up. What a call that must have been to make.

When his Asperger’s flared up under the stress, Quan preferred to type instead of talk. Most of our conversation was in instant messages. After half an hour his spelling and punctuation evened out, and his details grew. You could almost watch him calm down through syntax. I latched onto any mildly promising details, like his estimated speed and the lack of a crosswalk, swearing he had a defense if this went to court, and Quan seemed to register that I cared. I think that’s why he said what he did, something that in almost a decade I never would have thought could come from inside him.

He said he was glad he hit the jumper.

I asked why.

Quan remembered the minivan. That driver hadn’t been alone: he had a little kid in the front passenger seat. If Quan hadn’t hit him, then the jumper would have crossed the double yellow line, and that kid would have seen a man go through his windshield. In all his turmoil and shock, part of him was glad he’d suffered this instead of that father and son.

It was hearsay, but nothing stuck out to me last year like that. At no time this year have I been sadder for a friend, but in my perverse way, at no time have I been prouder. Whatever that says about me.

Bathroom Monologue: Town of Voice

2012-01-01T07:00:00.003-05:00

The continent chastised her young islet, "Don't you take that town with me!"

Bathroom Monologue: Artistic House Cleaning

2011-12-31T11:00:00.000-05:00

It was her artistic statement. She was young enough to be able to work all day, and young enough to still want to, which was rare in the house cleaning industry. But she came from a long line of people who did damned fine work or they didn’t eat, and the better half of that lineage stuck with her. She vacuumed every crack in the floor, eradicated every spot on every wall, plucked every stray fiber from every overpriced carpet, and left thirty-year-old windows looking freshly installed. In the clergy they sanctified people who did her level of work. Every time, she thought, she’d leave just one scrap of paper behind by the door: a beauty mark on the house she’d face-lifted. It was always in the same place, always easy to dispose of, typically put somewhere near the worst stain had been. It depressed her, then, to find no one saw this as artistic cleaning. They trampled right over her errant trash and complained the drapes looked dusty, or the sink had a grime ring, or that the bathroom smelled funny. They were all false charges, low thoughts from people who didn’t know what lilies smelled like. It just about ruined cleaning other people’s houses for her. Some day, she might not have the strength of will to leave behind a beauty mark of trash. All the other cleaners said so.

Bathroom Monologue: Peggy

2011-12-30T00:16:00.000-05:00

In the rear of the taxi, his fingers kept breaking and cleaning an imaginary M4. At the hospital, as his half-senile mother explained how it had happened, all he could think of were all the unsecured rooms. Even walking to hers, he imagined Bull Ridge. Its stink, and its birds that sounded like rocket screeches, and its casualty rate. Bull Fucking Ridge, which he’d been praying to leave for three months.

He stood at first. It felt right, to remain standing if Peggy couldn’t sit up. His sister looked so thin in that big bed. They didn’t have mattresses like that in Afghanistan. Nor did his unit have anyone who’d know how to stick tubes up your nose like that, or any of all the blinking, beeping and line-charting machines that kept her bed company. On Bull Ridge, all they really had was glorified tourniquet training.

Suddenly he had to sit. He only knew it when the chair creaked under him. They had chairs that bowed and creaked like this in Afghanistan. That felt too much like home. He leaned over her, as though to prostrate in apology. Her sheets were thin enough that he could feel her warmth through them.

They didn’t have kitty pajamas in Afghanistan. He was a little surprised they’d changed her into them, surprised enough that he reached out and pinched the terrycloth to convince himself it was there. Either Mom had put them on her, or the aneurism had hit while she was in bed. He guessed they could hit you while you were asleep. A lot of things could, which was why he slept with his back to walls now.

As he pinched the pajamas, her wrist rolled and bumped into his knuckles. It sent sparks through him; they didn’t have women in Afghanistan, or family. Well, a lot of people had family there. Afghanis, certainly. Just not him.

He ran his fingertips over her hand in the misplaced hope that she’d react. She didn’t. He wrapped his right hand around hers, then brought up his other hand and added it for good measure. It was a sort of wishful thinking he hadn’t felt in months.

Peggy’s face had never looked so narrow. She was a moon-faced woman, thanks to Dad’s genes. Here and now, something about the aneurism had robbed her of that shape. Her face’s curvature was stolen by sallow flatness. The closed eyes, the smoothness where there should have been feature: these they had in Afghanistan. In O’Hara, and Menendez, and Jesus Christ, the raw pink and the little blood around her nostrils could have been Windham’s as he’d slipped away. But Peggy here had not taken three to the chest at the wheel of a Humvee that should have been armor-plated.

They had armor-plated Humvees in the United States.

He couldn’t stop his eyes from following her tubes, climbing up to the sighing apparatus that helped her breathe. His breathing hitched. Still folding her one miniscule hand in both of his, he apologized. He apologized for thinking about what the Bull Ridge guys didn’t have, and for not being a neurosurgeon right now, and not knowing what aneurisms were, and for still envying everything she had, and for these tears, and for a moment, he apologized for fearing that his unit would materialize and kick his ass for showing those tears. He leaned so far forward that his forehead pressed into her sheets, and he couldn’t help but loathe himself for thinking those sheets felt nicer than anything they got on Bull Ridge. He mouthed this all to the woman who had once been a girl who had laced him wreathes of flowers.

He was so occupied mouthing apologies that he couldn’t see her lips moving, too.

National Novel Reading Month is January

2011-12-29T09:47:00.002-05:00

January will be National Novel Reading Month. We’ve all got at least one classic book we think we ought to read and have put off too long. I have more than a dozen of them, and the literary guilt may actually be killing me. Check your shelf. Check your conscience. Isn’t there something long removed from the Bestseller’s List you think you ought to read? Be it for craft, for history, or some gap in your personal English canon. #NaNoReMo is about catching up with the classics.

One thing that bothers me about National Novel Writing Month is it isn’t located in a country. “National” is a poor word choice for a program that’s clearly international. Yet it’s popular, so #NaNoReMo will double the dubiousness. Not only can you read it in any nation of your choice, but your classic doesn’t have to be a novel. Want to brush up on Virgil or Ovid? Go for it. The rule is to read a classic.

We’re using a personal sliding scale for "classics." Some people don’t think Jules Verne is a classic author. I don’t like to talk to those people, but they exist, and so they can read someone else. But if you do think he’s a classic writer who deserves your time, then it’s your choice.

Hop on Twitter in the next couple of days to chat about your potential choices using the hashtag #NaNoReMo. Then join us throughout the month of January as we discuss our progress through our chosen classics. If it works the cross-pollination of encouragement will increase our reading lists as well as encourage us to finish reading great works.

Right now mine is a toss-up between Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (a heavyweight contender with five failed starts in my lifetime) and Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita (a rookie challenger to my shelf with a siren song of a premise: Satan in Soviet Russia). Which do you think I should open in 2012?

#bestreads2011 Blog Hop

2011-12-27T23:48:00.024-05:00

Welcome to #bestreads2011! This blog hop invites anyone to play along by making their own lists of the books they've enjoyed most this year. Not what was written, not what was published, but what you specifically read that struck you the hardest. You can write them up however you like, and list as many as you like. Just post about them on your blog, and then share the URL of your post in the Linky below.

My reading schedule was terrible in 2011. I spent nine months writing my own novel almost every day, often for between 6-10 hours, and so my literary desires were meek. It's something I've got to work on. Yet as soon as I finished up the rough draft, I began pounding books, and by December I'd read some amazing works of fiction. It took some effort to trim it down to just four books, though these have stuck with me the most this year. I'm giving each book a paragraph, but you can click below them for my full reviews over at Goodreads.

Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49

My first exposure to Pynchon, and before finishing I was already looking up prices and library availability on Gravity’s Rainbow. This reads like the work of a cosmopolitan Garrison Keillor, able to tug on any loose string of culture rather than those that dangle into Wisconsin. Presenting anarchism and Freudianism as failed religions, treating the Postal Service as a sinister agency, or simply the idea of Strip Botticelli were all hilarious and fascinating. Pynchon seemed able to write unique sentences, paragraphs, chapters, characters and ideas without ever requiring pause. I’m eager to see what else Pynchon came up with given he remarks this book was the one “in which I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I'd learned up until” he wrote it.
Full Review of The Crying of Lot 49.

Ethan Coen's The Gates of Eden

This wound up as a Christmas present for the two Coen fans in my life. It’s an obscene and obscenely funny collection of short stories, evidencing that the Coens’ talent for voice doesn’t only come from great actors. Ethan Coen delivered story after story that thrived on earthy narration, be it a twice-baked parody of Mafiosos, or a racist detective, or a Jewish boy utterly uncomprehending of the cultures he’s being raised into. Coen seemed to get off by embarrassing his characters, particularly the proud, in ways you wouldn’t imagine fitting into their respective worlds. But for those already under the heel, the humor turns against those who are empowered, or evaporates into worries about how we humans function at all. The collection is in search of equilibrium, humiliation hammering down and humility elevating us a little. The circumstances are raw for everyone, but the way the players emerge, with quirks and concerns and shortcomings, validates the entire exercise.

Full Review of Gates of Eden.

Jeff Smith's Bone

It’s not that I don’t like any YA works – it’s that what is marketed as YA is clearly not for me. And despite being called “a grump,” “an old man” and “a YA Nazi,” this MG comic book was as involving a read as I had all year. It takes a special book to keep you up to midnight when you have no electricity, it’s ten degrees and you’re going on candlelight. Part was Smith’s masterful art style, blending Charles Schultz, Walt Disney, classic illustrations and more esoteric art styles into the same panels without making a single character appear out of place. But part of it was the irreverent humor, always willing to snap at the heels of the drama, and characters that mingled cuteness and motivation in infinitely consumable concoctions. Smith knew how to make things goofy, but also dire (one character loses an arm and is left to die in the wilderness), and surreal (the Moby Dick allusions go mental by the end). Unlike all the MG or YA prose I’ve consumed, I continuously wanted more of everything Smith was selling, be it cow races or the hierarchies of shadow assassins. Certainly that he created a world where those sorts of things coexist helped, and I wondered if I wasn’t getting into the spirits of this the way others got into Harry Potter. The Complete Bone is a doorstop, but upon completion I would have happily forked over cash for another bludgeon-sized volume.

Full Review of Bone.

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

Of everything, this is the item I’m most ashamed of having put off for thirty years. What a play. It’s quotable and tragic, but so is most of theatre. It’s the way Miller damningly captured certain human behaviors, including a few of my own less desirable traits. Consider how Willie will be working out a divisive issue, and then his wife or another character will pipe up with a separate topic, and he’ll explode out of proportion, because the conflict of both topics suddenly swallows him with the interruption. I’ve done this far too many times in the last year, and to read exactly how it functions stings. The meta-theatrical elements are inspiring even without seeing them acted, though since reading I’ve begun seeking out productions to watch.
Full Review of Death of a Salesman.

Bathroom Monologue: The New Anti-Science

2011-12-27T07:00:00.001-05:00

It was the new anti-science, worse than the old anti-science because it knew a little and used the perch of knowledge to condescend. It was meaner than the jokes about teaching apes Math instead of building flying cars. Now they ragged on the role science played in so many old wars, and in every new one.

These folks got into every community, and so both legitimate and conspiracy theories abounded on where HIV and the mammal-ready super-flus came from. If someone designed meth and cocaine, where did he learn it? Suddenly everyone who defended Global Warming’s existence was met on the other side of the argument with a hipster blaming chemists and engineers for the problem occurring in the first place.

An index of such things showed jokes about Marie Curie’s demise quadrupled in one year. At some point a generation grew up swearing, “We’re empirical, not scientific.” There was a righteous demand for the separation of Lab and State, on both funding and less comprehensible levels.

“GO TO THE MOON,” protest signs instructed, “NOBODY WANTS YOU HERE.”

It was not a good time for science, but then the contrarian mind never thinks it’s a good day until everyone else thinks it isn’t.

John Interviewed at Webfiction World

2011-12-26T07:00:00.000-05:00

I was a guest on Anna Harte's Webfiction World podcast this past week. We discussed the origins of The Bathroom Monologues, the strengths and weaknesses of flash fiction, and I interviewed Angie Capozello on one minute's notice for both of us. It was very fun; I somehow managed to ramble about both Eudora Welty and F. Scott Fitzgerald in a conversation about flash fiction. Please drop by and give it a listen and a comment.

You can listen to John on Webfiction World by clicking here.

The Answers to the Christmas Book Contest

2011-12-25T11:00:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I posted the clues to deciphering my brother's annual book gift. Today I'm going to give the answer away. If you want to puzzle it out yourself, skip to yesterday's post and try your hand.

For the first year nobody guessed the entire thing, leaving me a little proud and a little sad. Our game was to extract ten letters from the clues to spell the author's name, and figure out which letter was a ruse.

1. According to Groucho Marx, this kind of person is a critic. The letter that occurs three times in this kind of person might be the first letter in his name.Attributed to Marx and many others, the famous line goes, "Everyone's a critic." Marx even showed up on magazine covers with the quote as a tag line. 'E' shows up three times in "Everyone."

2. Three Stooges. Marx Brothers. Beatles. Such different acts, yet when we talk about them, their names all begin with the same letter. If Clue #1 is a fake, then this letter is the first in his name. If not, it’s the second.Rarely do you call them "Beatles," right? It's "The Beatles." "The Three Stooges." "The Marx Brothers." That leaves this number a 'T.'

3. According to Norm MacDonald, this organ only understands violence. One day, he says, it will attack and kill you. Today, its first letter is probably the third letter in our mystery.Cassie Nichols correctly pegged this as "heart." That'd mean our letter is "H.'

4. What’s the difference between “then” and “than”? One of them has a letter to share with us.Naturally, it's either an 'E' or an 'A.' On Twitter @tokidokizenzen got the vowel correctly as 'A.'

5. This famous comedian refused to receive the Mark Twain Prize for several years because of the kind of language that was used at the event. He eventually accepted. The third letter in his last name might go here.Bill Cosby is the comedian who spent an infuriatingly long time not taking the honors. That'd leave us with 'S,' except this one was the bogus unclue. In fact, @tokidokizenzen figured that out in piecing together the next letter to form the author's first name.

6. The seventh element on the Periodic Table, and something you’re inhaling right now, might be helpful here.Nitrogen is the seventh element, with the symbol 'N.' Excluding Mr. Cosby, our author is "Ethan."

7. If we’re not talking about Bob Dylan’s Modern Times, then we must be talking about this man’s movie. His first and last names match, making this clue so obvious it seems like it must be the unclue.How do they match? The same first letter: Charlie Chaplin. So it's a C-man.

8. Your mouth can speak any letter, but this is the only one your lips can spell. Enjoy not snickering over this joke in front of Grandpa.By the way, both my brother and sister failed to not snicker over #8 in front of Grandpa. The letter any pair of lips can form is 'O.' As my brother struggled over this clue I actually managed to say "Oh" and make the shape right in front of him three times. It felt a little too good.

9. This letter is redundant. It’s occurred somewhere in the name already, and occurs for the second time here. Is it the last letter?This could have been any letter that already showed up. It's actually an 'E.' That might seem obtuse, but not if you know who directed #10.

10. If this is the last letter in his name, then it’s the first in the title of the movie that beat your beloved There Will Be Blood for Best Picture at the Oscars in February, 2008.No Country For Old Men was the winner that year, directed by the Coen Brothers. The first letter 'N,' which coincidentally spells out "Ethan Coen." He wrote the excellent short story collection, The Gates of Eden, which I gave to two people this holiday season, including my brother.

Merry Christmas, everyone, and thanks to everyone who played!

Can You Guess The Author Before David?

2011-12-24T10:00:00.003-05:00

Every Christmas I get my brother a book and give him clues to guess what it is.
And for the past few Christmas Eves I've invited my readers to decipher the clues along with him.
Know the answer to #3? Then post it in the Comments!
Together perhaps you'll figure out what's in his present before David does.
The rules are no Googling, rather only offering the answers you know and pooling mental resources with other readers.
Below is the text of his card:

There is no way you can guess this year’s book title. However, you definitely know its author. The following are nine clues as to the letters in his name, and one unclue which will only throw you off. You’ll have to figure out which isn’t actually a clue.

1. According to Groucho Marx, this kind of person is a critic. The letter that occurs three times in this kind of person might be the first letter in his name.

2. Three Stooges. Marx Brothers. Beatles. Such different acts, yet when we talk about them, their names all begin with the same letter. If Clue #1 is a fake, then this letter is the first in his name. If not, it’s the second.

3. According to Norm MacDonald, this organ only understands violence. One day, he says, it will attack and kill you. Today, its first letter is probably the third letter in our mystery.

4. What’s the difference between “then” and “than”? One of them has a letter to share with us.

5. This famous comedian refused to receive the Mark Twain Prize for several years because of the kind of language that was used at the event. He eventually accepted. The third letter in his last name might go here.

6. The seventh element on the Periodic Table, and something you’re inhaling right now, might be helpful here.

7. If we’re not talking about Bob Dylan’s Modern Times, then we must be talking about this man’s movie. His first and last names match, making this clue so obvious it seems like it must be the unclue.

8. Your mouth can speak any letter, but this is the only one your lips can spell. Enjoy not snickering over this joke in front of Grandpa.

9. This letter is redundant. It’s occurred somewhere in the name already, and occurs for the second time here. Is it the last letter?

10. If this is the last letter in his name, then it’s the first in the title of the movie that beat your beloved There Will Be Blood for Best Picture at the Oscars in February, 2008.

Figure any of them out? Or the author's name? Feel free to guess below!

Bathroom Monologue: Santa Drops the Truth Bomb

2011-12-23T00:17:00.008-05:00

Timmy balled his hands into fists, then bawled his face into them. When the jolly fat man tried to console him, the boy wriggled from his lap and fell to the candy-cane-colored floor.

“Why?” Timmy hollered so loud all the department store elves scuttled away. They formed a wall of placation around the other kids standing in line, waiting to tell Santa their wishes.

Santa leaned from his red felt throne, extending a white glove in peace. “Here, here, Timothy. It’s not that bad.”

“You lied to me! You hate liars!”

“Well, I never give myself presents this time of year,” Santa said with a laugh, though mid-ho-ho the boy punched him in the crotch. He reeled his body, eyes pleading with his parents to tell him this wasn’t the real Santa. Yet both Mom and Dad stood stock still, eyes glazed over, expressions of adoration rigid.

“They’re robots,” said Santa, remaining on the elevated throne for now, safely out of further yam-punching range. “Your bed time is seven o’clock every night because their battery life is low.”

“They love me!”

“They look like they do. My elves are industry leaders. Whenever Mrs. Claus goes out of town, I have as robot of her to keep me from getting lonely.”

When his parents didn’t hitch to life at this absurdity, Timmy turned to face the rosy-cheeked monster.

“And Nana?”

Santa clasped his hands together. “She didn’t really die, Timothy. Your robot grandma is actually in a box in your attic. You can take her out and play with her whenever you want.”

“What about King Snuffles?”

Santa hissed and drew back as though burning his fingers on the truth. “Unfortunately, the dog was real…”

Timmy burst into a new bout of hysterics. He thrashed, the flashing lights in his sneakers kicking at Santa’s shins. The irony that Santa had brought him those sneakers last year was entirely lost on him.

“I don’t believe you!”

Santa took him by the collar, tugging him away from the more impressionable crowd. The kids beyond the helper-elves were all much younger than him.

“You’re getting older,” said Santa. “It’s time you knew that pretty much everyone you’ll ever meet is fake in one way or another. If you’re good, next year I’m giving you the complete works of Carl Jung.”

“But evolution!”

“Timothy, don’t be naughty. Which makes more sense: a bacteria becomes a fish becomes a monkey, or I built your parents? Think about it.”

“I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about anything.”

“You don’t even want to think about a Playstation 3?”

Timmy’s fists parted as gradually as the Red Sea, revealing the dawn of his puffy face. He hiccuped out a question.

“The slim?”

Santa’s jowls jiggled in his nod. “The three-hundred-and-twenty gigabyte model, bundled with Uncharted 3.”

“But Mom and Dad couldn’t afford that.”

“But they aren’t real, Timothy.”

Timmy’s fists fell away from his face entirely. His tears detoured around his gaping mouth. The anxiety wasn’t over, but it was the first step towards realizing that, all things considered, this was the grown-up he wanted - just like every other child.

Notice: #bestreads2011 Next Week

2011-12-22T07:00:00.029-05:00

Next week we'll be doing a little community chat between The Bathroom Monologues and Twitter. #bestreads2011 will be all about your favorite books from the last year.

The blog hop will start here on Wednesday, December 28th. The same day at a time we'll arrange by community, anyone on Twitter is invited to an open chat about their favorite books of the year using the hashtag #bestreads2011. For those without blogs or Twitter, you're still welcome to mention your favorites in the Comments section. Everyone is invited, readers and authors alike.

So think on it. What are your favorite books that you read this year? Not what was written or published in 2011, but that you personally read and loved. Fiction, non-fiction, prose, poetry and sequential art is all welcome. I guarantee you a comic book will show up on my list. It's a middlegrade comic, too. My list will be about 4-5 books long, with a paragraph a-piece on what I got out of them. You can handle the number and format as you like.

Feel free to launch questions below. We'll field them together.

Bathroom Monologue: Vampires are Addicts

2011-12-21T07:00:00.002-05:00

“I can’t help thinking of him as an addict. There are, what? A hundred people in Snowberg? And he’s eaten fifteen in a week. If a human’s a blood pack to him, then that’s a two-pack-a-day habit. That can’t be normal, even for the really old vampires. Definitely not normal for a guy that haunts this valley, who’d run out of snacks entirely soon enough. Either he’s betting he’ll eat CIA and X-Files detectives for the rest of his life, or he’s got an irrational craving. My dad was an alcoholic. Some nights, when he couldn’t find the remote and was heavy on the belt, I guess it would have felt nice to pound a stake through his heart and leave him to dawn. But the more you know addicts, the harder it is to hate them. I pity this guy. Get him into a twelve step program. One not held in church basements, I guess.”

Bathroom Monologue: Fate Worse Than Death

2011-12-20T07:00:00.002-05:00

“This one I call the 'Afterlife Spell.' A lot of people can threaten you with death. A knife, a gun, slathering you in gravy and tossing you to wolves. But death doesn’t last long enough.

“What the Afterlife Spell does is sustains your consciousness after your body quits. After your neurons cease firing, you’ll keep feeling everything. The maggots pushing into you. The skin drying and tearing. The ligaments rotting. You’ll feel the aching decay of your entire body over the course of months. The truly special part is that your selfishness remains; you’ll want to not end, and so desperately hold onto your consciousness as that physical real estate dries up. Eventually you’ll be one flickering microbe, begging to hurt a little longer.

“I save this spell for people who hurt my daughter. I hear you’re taking her to Arby’s?”

Bathroom Monologue: Mother-in-Law Versus Mother of her Granddaughter, OR, Fresh out of Bed Monologue

2011-12-19T09:23:00.000-05:00

“Oh God, can we just leave? I can’t take the stares. It's like I'm meat.”

"You look great, honey."

"You think?”

“For a human wheelbarrow? Yes! You should be proud.”

“…for a what?”

“It’s your body. You should be proud of your decisions, like the one to put on more pounds here and there.”

“I’m carrying a child!”

“Not in your thighs, deary. But don’t make excuses. Own it.”

“I haven’t even gained that much weight. My doctor says I’m at the dead-on average for seven months.”

“Dead-on average for the McDonalds generation, sure. But when I was carrying your husband? I was tight as a deer. Almost sinewy.”

“You have that look in your eyes sometimes.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Can we go?”

“We need to get dinner for Christmas, don’t we? Got to feed that fetus. And the rest of you.”

“Oh my God, you’re making more people stare.”

“If you can’t take the stares, then maybe you should take the stairs more often.”

“What the hell? That’s bad for the baby.”

“According to whom? When I was carrying Tim I lived on the seventh floor of a tenement with no elevator. The super always said I was very tight. When she stared, it was out of admiration. Those stares would have been grounds for divorce in six states.”

“This explains so much about Tim.”

“What was that? I can’t hear a thing in here. You'd think shoppers would use their in-door voices.”

“I said you’re not going to see this baby until she’s got her Masters degree.”

“Goodness, it’s noisy in here. Maybe we should leave. Want me to push the cart? We know how you feel about exercise.”

“…That’d be great. That’d be great.”

Eulogy for Irene Sabo Corcoran

2011-12-18T07:00:00.014-05:00

This is how I eulogize, folks. Many people approached after the funeral, asking for a copy. I actually never wrote it down; I performed it from my head. It didn't feel proper to write it down for the first year. Since this weekend is about Rene, it's felt more natural to put it on screen and share it. She'd approve, of course, of something that glamorized her. So here's saying farewell.

Here's an audio edition for everyone who requested one.

I want to tell you something about my grandmother.

On August 23rd an Allstate Agency appeared in Ireland. No one thought it was odd because only one lady saw it, and she was quite used to Allstate Agencies. That woman was Irene Corcoran.

She walked inside. There was Roland Maynard, Joe Richardson, and a host of people who absolutely did not work at Allstate anymore. They buzzed about the office, trying to sell insurance.

Rene asked them, "What's going on here?"

One muffled the phone to his shoulder and said, "You put a lot of yourself into this place. Work has to be done. Money to be made."

"Yes,” she said, “but I don't want to do it now."

He said, "You don't have to. We just thought you should remember. In fact, you can’t stay here."

He directed her to her office. She walked down the hall, past all her awards and certificates, and through the familiar door frame. Except it wasn't her office.

Inside was the cramped Sabo family living room. Her father stood by the wall, admiring a framed photograph. It was her graduation picture from Sarah Lawrence, just a couple years ago, decades after he’d passed. Her mother came to his side.

"I can't believe you did that," her father said, shaking his head.

Rene came over to them. They touched hands and admired it.

She remarked, as she often did, "I look better in the other photos."

"I like this one," said her mother. "By the way, your room is taken tonight. I’m afraid you can’t stay here. "

It had been decades since she'd had to give up her bed for immigrants, but she remembered the drill. Families came across the Atlantic and needed a break. In such cases, the Sabo family’s daughter broke. She nodded.

Her mother asked, "Can you get something from the kitchen for me?"

"What?"

"Just something we thought you should remember."

So Rene went into the kitchen, looking around for the parcel. Except it wasn't a kitchen. It was a ballroom, full of noisy people. Across the floor she saw a familiar man. A decorated World War II hero, captain of the football team, and a scholar. She put a hand to her cheek.

“Damn, I did well.”

When her once and future husband stepped out through the double doors, she followed. She found herself in the corridor of a hospital. She looked through each door. In the first, she saw herself delivering her first daughter, Mary. In the next she was cradling the newborn Christine. Then their son, Jodi, and then littlest Deirdre. Through further doors she saw all her grandchildren, a parade of babies. She sped up, loving them all, but not that enamored with reliving childbirth.

She left the corridor for another kitchen. Jodi's kitchen, now all grown up. Her daughter in law Bean was busy cooking, cleaning fruit and piling dishes in the sink. There were so many people: Doug, Bernie and Susan, and friends from the local church. Outside were still more familiar voices, including her husband’s laughter. Her grandchildren were everywhere. Christine’s daughter, another Deirdre, carried a cake, a stream of Rene’s friends following behind and offering to cut it. Her oldest grandson, John, was there too. He almost never visited, but there he was, talking to Jodi about stocks.

She felt tired, so she sat in a corner, listening to her husband and friends chatting outside, and stared at John. Eventually he noticed and looked back, still chatting with family. Gradually, Rene smiled. It was more sincere a smile than he'd seen in a decade of holiday visits, and it left him guilty, wishing he'd come much more often, to see that expression, if not to cause it.

Rene didn't talk to anyone. Instead she watched this loving family buzz around the house for a while. Then she stood up and walked through the glass door, outside. It was bright out there.

Anyway, that’s what I wanted to tell you about my grandmother. Thank you.

True Stories of John 17: Fairy Tales from Grandma Rene

2011-12-17T11:00:00.008-05:00

It’s one of my earliest memories of being away from home. Rene, my maternal grandmother, was ecstatic to be in possession of a grandchild for the first time. I was the first of the grandkids, though from reports of my cousins, she was as good to each of us in our time. Some folks are simply best with babies and kids.

Her bed sat in the center of her room, which struck me as odd, coming from a home where beds sat in corners. Corners were good. Monsters could not get behind you if there was a wall in the way.

Rene knew every monster. Her mother came from Europe, which is where all the monsters came from. Well, they lived in Europe and Russia, but, “you’ll understand the difference when you’re older.”

Not only did she know about giants, but she knew how the mean ones had died. Huddled under her blankets, with an old hand stroking my shoulder, she explained how Jack had tricked one into falling off his cloud.

Mom and Dad had never told me that one. I asked if she knew any others. When she mentioned a candy house in the woods, I got a little less sleepy.

After Hansel and Gretel baked the evil witch, I said the woods were scary. She said they were fine, and told me about Little Red Riding Hood, the Boy Who Cried Wolf, and the Three Little Pigs. You see, the woods and wolves weren’t so scary. The bad ones had been taken care of.

She was incredible. How was she making all of these stories up so quickly? I couldn’t even manufacture an explanation for cookies missing in the kitchen. And she was good at it, both at making up neat things and in telling them in this soothing, loving voice, like she adored all the carnivores of folklore. She was surprised when the heroes were surprised, and proud when they survived or were victorious. I couldn’t figure out if these things really happened, or if she was making them up now. And in truth to the way children experience faith, I didn’t care either. I just wanted more stories from this endless mind.

I’d never manipulated an adult like this, or so I recall. Every time she finished a story, I only had to ask her to tell me another. This being her first shot with her first grandson, she never said ‘No.’ Somewhere around Cinderella meeting her Fairy Godmother, I faded out.

I was disappointed the next morning to find her more interested in the newspaper than telling more fairy tales. Even more disappointed with discovering what a “grape nuts” was. But those things were trivial. The old lady with an entire culture in her head and at her command has stuck with me for the archetype of the storyteller.

"Wolf Slayer" at Enchanted Conversation, dedicated to Grandma Rene

2011-12-16T00:35:00.001-05:00

I'm proud to announce that "Wolf Slayer" was bought and published by Enchanted Conversation this week. While it's sad to see the zine close, I'm happy to have contributed to a strong line-up. Their final theme is Little Red Riding Hood. My story was inspired by her woodsman, who has a crossover with another figure from folklore. I don't want to spoil it for you, but she requires his special skills. It's a bit of Noir and a bit of Comedy, and so it takes a pretty special place to publish it. You can read it here.

This story is dedicated to Irene "Rene" Corcoran, my maternal grandmother. She passed away from cancer last year. It's her that I remember introducing me to fairy tales, and she did so in a way that's stuck with me as a writer. I first composed "Wolf Slayer" to amuse her, and when she was diagnosed, set about finishing it. On Saturday I'll post about her knack for fairy tales, and on Sunday I'm going to share something that's been much requested but that I didn't feel like sharing until now. These three days are for Rene.

Click here to read "Wolf Slayer."

People Haunt Homes

2011-12-15T07:00:00.002-05:00

Sweeping, vacuuming and spraying. Scooping used needles and scrubbing vomit. Ripping up the red-stained carpet to lay down hardwood. Rolling paint over the graffiti and gang signs. Paying thousands for a new roof so rain won’t dribble inside anymore. Gingerly picking out splinters of glass, setting in new windows before the exterminators arrive. It’ll need to be airtight before it’s bug-free, and bug-free before it’s occupied, and occupied well if it’s ever going to be a home.

Bathroom Monologue: Consensual Sexual Harassment

2011-12-14T09:13:00.001-05:00

"Flirting. How I tire of other people's flirting.

"Definition? Flirting: consensual sexual harassment.

"Ah, now you tell me that, no, harassment can’t be consensual. Flirting is more delicate than that.

"And now I tell you that no, I’ve seen flirting aplenty and there was little delicate about it. If it was delicate, it would have shattered from the sheer barometric pressure of lust.

"Yes, I’ve seen consensual sexual harassment. She teases him, so he teases her, and now they mutually harass with decreasing subtlety until I wish I could sue. It’s the softest of softcore bondage.

"No, I haven’t committed it. I’m ugly; I can’t find anyone to consent, and I tire of restraining orders. That’s just how it looks from the cubicle next to the hottest guy in Accounting."

Bathroom Monologue: Tim is Dead

2011-12-13T07:00:00.002-05:00

Tim is dead. His fingers dab the cologne that gives her hives across his collar. His hands ruffle that collar in the way she always fixes when he’s in front of people. His wallet, usually home to a few token twenties, bulges with deceptive singles. Timothy observes Tim’s corpse: dressed a little too crisp, hair a little too mussed, wearing a seven-o’clock shadow that he really ought to shave off before the party. Not a thing about the dearly departed would meet his mother-in-law’s approval. If his mother-in-law would always use his full name to oppress him, then he will give it to her with a smile calculated to be just phony enough to bother her without being able to call him on. It took four of her Christmas Eve Bashes to kill Tim. This Yule, Timothy reigns supreme.

This piece popped into my head reading the first line of Michael Tate's story, "Darkness Surrounding."

Bathroom Monologue: First World Problems

2011-12-12T07:00:00.003-05:00

Our problems are different? How can they be different? Our circumstances are the same. I am broke. You are broke. I know you are because you drive the same cab as I do. I make, maybe a little more money, because you frown at everyone. And you are broke, so you have to live with your sisters and parents. And I am rich, so my sisters, brothers, cousins, nephews, uncles and parents will live with me. The same.

You have an apartment with three rooms. You say it has three rooms. You say, “How can five people live in this place? It will be terrible.”

I have an apartment with two rooms, counting the bathroom. I count the bathroom. You do not. You could say, “Mommy dearest, here is a room of your own. It has a sink and a shower.” But you don’t say that.

I have an apartment with two rooms and eleven beloved roommates. I am overjoyed all eleven of my family can live here. Nobody has a room of their own. Nobody has a bowel movement of his own, and we’re grateful. Is it because we’re from elsewhere? Is it because we have crazy primitive values? Is it because we have not watched enough television, used enough Sprint minutes and eaten enough food from wrappers? They are all happy to be there and eat this fast food. Well, except my mother and one of my uncles, but they have had hard lives. They do not know happiness so well anymore.

They do not know happiness so well because they saw children come home without arms. I mean they ate mud to fill their stomachs and never met their father. You are unhappy because your mother and father might have to share the same room in your three-room apartment. Is this what legal divorce does? I don’t understand.

Where we come from, people are divorced by slave trade. Hands are divorced from you for stealing fruit. Here, in one day, I work? And everybody in my two-room apartment eats fruit. No one steals.

I don’t understand you. It must be your realism. Americans are much more realistic than we are. I make some cabby-money and I think, “Oh my nephew can come live on my floor now, and not in that country, and not get sick, or join rebels, or get killed in civil war.” My family is like that. We are unrealistic.

You and your mommy assess how things really are. She thinks, “Oh I have to go live with my son now, and I will not sleep on park benches, but I will have to wait for bathroom, and talk to them when I am tired, and smell their unwiped selves late at night.” A very realistic family you have, concerned on what will be, while we are so happy with what won’t. Funny, though. Unrealistic as we are, we live in the same reality you do. In fewer rooms, too, with fewer complaints.

“THESE DOORS MUST REMAIN CLOSED” –Sign at a hospital

2011-12-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

“These doors must remained closed?” Then why didn’t you build a wall? A door that can’t open is scarcely a door at all. This is unfair. Am I not allowed through, but hospital staff are? Because if so, you should have written, “Only medical professionals allowed beyond this point.” As it is, any surgeon is breaking the code every time he goes in there. What if I see a surgeon coming from the other side, and hold it shut so the sign remains honored? Will I get kicked out for enforcing your rules? Is it just a preference, or is there something sinister going on with those doors? Is there radiation and hazardous material back there, which endangers anyone who enters? Is it dangerous to open the doors, or dangerous just to be near them? I mean, if we’re dealing with radiation, that door’s not going to save anybody from cancer. You’d build a wall, with concrete and stuff. Certainly not with plexiglass windows. I can see through there! How did everybody in there get in if these doors must remain closed? Medical heathens.

Bathroom Haiku: Living Cities

2011-12-10T11:00:00.002-05:00

take arable land

sprinkle people across it

and watch buildings grow

Bathroom Monologue: Petra’s Ghost

2011-12-09T00:01:00.003-05:00

Petra’s ghost? I hate when living people talk like that. I am not Petra’s ghost. My parents were never around for weekends. I was a virgin until twenty-seven. I went into Marine Biology because sharks are awesome, and I was on my way to the interview of a lifetime when a semi jumped the divider and plowed into my cab, killing me 'instantly.' That’s what the doctor said to my parents. “She died instantly. She never felt a thing.” He was wrong.

This is all mine. My doctors, my parents, my wrongs. I am not Petra’s ghost. I am Petra.

I’m your ghost, I’m this highway’s ghost, I’m the ghost of curiosity for the ocean. But I will never be Petra’s possession. I will possess concrete and sea breeze. I’ll be their ghosts, and that’ll be fine, because it’s what I decide to do. It’s what Petra Nebrich does. I’m all I ever was, and I am all Petra Nebrich ever will be. And if that’s a tragedy, then it’s my tragedy.

Zelda: King of Limbo Synopsis, Part 6 - The Finale

2011-12-08T07:00:00.006-05:00

The end of our game lies in this border realm between Hyrule and Limbo. Many people have spilled out from Limbo, though there’s no sign of Link. The castle-goers are alive again, including the King and Queen. Yet everyone is weak and pale, as though Limbo is drinking life from them. Navi is too afraid to venture inside Limbo itself. Before Navi or the King can say anything, Zelda is off to finish this.

The powerless Ganon accompanies her as the guide, because nobody knows this place as well as he does. The only way to sever the ties to Limbo, he claims, is to bring something as powerful as the Triforce into the heart of this place. He explains that he was infested with Limbo’s energies and it corrupted him, though when Zelda turns her back he still looks like a schemer.

With the Master Sword weakened, we’re back to sneaking and relying on the bow. Instead of real landscapes, we’re roaming in abstract monochrome mountains with bits of color denoting enemies, and even these landscapes seem to be alive. We’re attacked by Zanath, now corrupted by Limbo energy. Ganon gradually absorbs some himself to cast offensive magic in support of Zelda. The further we go, the wilder the versions of Zanath manifest. We get brief glimpses of a ghostly Link, ala the Shadow Link fight. It’s as though he’s guiding us.

We journey to the Final Temple, which lies beneath a pit where, if this were our world, Castle Hyrule would stand. Here the ghostly Link appears more frequently, showing us hints on how to progress. Here, also, an octopus-like Zanath bars every possible way, and Zelda and Ganon must find alternate paths down. This is our big dungeon-long boss battle, until driving the Master Sword into Zanath causes him to wither. Ganon winds up tackling the weakened Zanath, trying to steal all the energy he’s absorbed, to get his power back.

You remember this guy, right?

Zelda takes the opportunity to pass to the end of the dungeon where she can set all this to rest. There is an altar, not unlike the one we found the Master Sword upon, but with three triangular imprints. Link is also here, in the flesh and unconscious, hands reaching to the altar. She lays the Triforce to rest here, using its power to close the gap. The world trembles, and Zelda has to carry Link to safety before the portal to home closes. When the world trembles, she tosses Link through the narrowing portal. It’s as though she’s going to perish when Link’s arm comes through and pulls her to safety. So I guess he always saves the princess, at least a little bit.

The two watch from Castle Hyrule as the portal closes. Ganon and Zanath chase along behind them, though they don’t make it. Ganon glares at Zelda through the vanishing space, swearing he’ll be back.

If Nintendo would let me, I’d have Link get his first speaking role here since he’s not the main character, asking what the heck happened. I’d be almost as happy, though, if Zelda and Link shared a mute exchange. Regardless, Zelda helps him to his feet and we watch them exit the damaged castle. They descend the steps in the gilded light of sunset, a reminder of The Golden Realm. They’ve arrived outside just in time for nightfall. The sky’s black, but there are stars in that blackness. Roll the credits over the stars.

Zelda: King of Limbo Synopsis, Part 5 - Versus Ganon!

2011-12-07T07:00:00.014-05:00

Jump back to Part 4.

Ganon’s armies wait in Hyrule for the princess’s return. Zelda appears, now dressed as Sheik, storming the fields before Castle Hyrule. Or, so it looks. She’s clearly overmatched. The fiends rip her to shreds – at which point fairies pop out of her clothes. There’s no flesh. Navi’s family provided a decoy. They tricked Ganon.

Surprisingly, Hyruleans would now call this "the good old days."

Zelda’s not foolish. She knows more ways into Castle Hyrule than the front door. She sneaks in through the sewers, not having to fight through an army. The castle serves as our final dungeon once she enters it, with puzzles and victims frozen in obsidian forms, including Zelda’s mom and dad. Once she reaches the throne room we get out big showdown with the Limbo-powered Ganon. Her pieces of the Triforce prevent him from squashing her, but he scoffs that he’s invincible. Link was the Chosen One, the only one who could kill him.

But if that’s so, why was he hiding in this castle? Zelda finds the Master Sword can cut him, and his body bother shrinks and lightens when hit by her enchanted arrows, leeching some of his Limbo energies. After a few forms, he’s reduced to an elf-like creature, almost a homely version of Link. By whooping him, she actually drained all his stolen power and reduced him to a normal person. He bristles and refuses to show fear before she kills him. He won’t cry, “like Link did.”

Zelda won’t kill him, though. Not even now. That’s the way the cycle used to go. She’ll spare him, let him live out his natural life and not give him the path of vengeance he’s been pursuing for eons. Maybe in a jail cell.

Taking the Triforce, she opens the way to Limbo to free Link and the other children. Ganon freaks out and tries to stop her. We think it’s because he fears Link. Then nightmares come pouring out from that realm. Hyrule becomes a warped portal into this bleak landscape where even the Master Sword can’t glow. So much for Castle Hyrule being our “final dungeon.”

Come back tomorrow for the final installment, where we dive into Limbo. Not everyone's coming back.

Zelda: King of Limbo Synopsis, Part 4 - The Golden Realm

2011-12-06T07:00:00.026-05:00

Jump back to Part 3.

Yet I want my Graveyard Temple, with its spooky theme of undead warriors and supernatural vapors. Reality ripples down here. It would be great for Zelda to have a showdown with the Shadow Link inside. After dispatching the doppelganger, a ghost resembling Link appears rises from its remains. For a moment he touches hands with Zelda, before dispersing into the mist. Maybe a sign that Link’s not gone entirely?

Shadow Link is a classic Legend of Zelda enemy.
Now that Link's been supplanted as the series's hero,
how symbolic is Zelda fighting against it?

Stranger things wait deeper in the Graveyard Temple. Some tiles aren’t grey stone, but rather gold like the Triforce. Go deeper still, and she finds rifts in reality. The Master Sword allows her to wedge her way through them, and to pass into a shining alternate reality version of the Graveyard Temple. Here it’s a gilded Pyramid Temple. The basement is locked, but if Zelda ascends and exits, she’ll be in The Golden Realm, an appropriately shiny version of Hyrule.

This realm is also at war. Limbo’s familiar dark army is evenly matched with a heroic Golden Army, largely comprised of incredibly idealized versions of the knights from Zelda’s camp. They’re led by someone else, someone who looks a lot like Sheik. Sheik seems to be our guide through this, knowing way more than she should about Zelda and Link.

But in Ocarina of Time, Sheik was...

Our androgynous guide explains about the Legend-cycle. For reasons we don’t understand (but might know about if we played Skyward Sword), from age to age the Kingdom of Hyrule comes into being on the lower plane, always preceding the birth of a great evil that calls itself Ganon. As though connected, a version of Link is also always born into the realms and stops Ganon’s ambitions. Once slain, Ganon’s spirit returns to an infernal prison called “Limbo.” Apparently the wizard Zanath is from here, and helped Ganon escape from Limbo and into The Golden Realm, where he studied the cycles in order to pre-empt them and conquer the realms permanently. He’s already drawn so much power from Limbo that it’s driven him mad. It’s a wonder that realm hasn’t ruptured open. He intends to undo everything, which included getting rid of Link, gathering the Triforce and Golden Power himself, and inhabiting all the places that were traditionally safe.

The Golden Realm’s Castle Hyrule and dungeons should all have retro-feels, and tableaus with reference to the events of all the major Zelda games. Stained glass depictions, mosaics, etc. This is also where Zelda finds the Goddess Bow and silver arrows, the enchanted things that have slain Ganon before, and that feel incredibly familiar to her. We know why.

At the heads of the dark army in the Golden Realm are three of Ganon’s former forms, all raised from the dead as his slaves. So we get a Zombie Pig-Nose Gannon, Zombie Wind Waker Wizard Ganon, and finally Zombie Agahnim. Zelda, Sheik and Navi fend them off at the Temples, and Zelda extracts their darkness into her arrows, until they are nearly powerful enough to harm the real Ganon.

Agahnim, from promotional art for Link to the Past.

Yet Zombie Agahnim reveals he’s only the second to last; Sheik is actually the last. Sheik was going to be Ganon’s next incarnation, before he broke out of Limbo and disturbed the Legend-cycle. She can feel parts of his spirit inside her, but has suppressed him while he was in Hyrule, and disguised herself to keep out of his attention. Now he knows, and tries to take her over. Rather than giving in and attacking Zelda, she sacrifices herself to yield the energy necessary to stop him.

There's nothing else for Zelda in The Golden Realm. The remaining Army of Limbo is scattering. After she mourns, Zelda has to return to Hyrule to stop this.

Jump to Part 5!

Zelda: King of Limbo Synopsis, Part 3 - The Master Sword, Without Link?

2011-12-05T07:00:00.020-05:00

Jump back to Part 2.

At camp, Zelda confers with Navi and the captain of her guard. They believe the Master Sword can harm even the King of Limbo. It’s the simplest reason for why he’d pursue it. Since he mentioned it’s somewhere in Link’s home woods, we’re off.

It's been so long since anyone's seen the Master Sword
that Navi can't remember what it looks like.

Now there’s only one major army on the map, which is conveniently in that same woods. Zelda is now strong enough to travel deeper in than before. But as she gets deeper, things get a little greener and brighter. The sword’s magic is repelling the darkness, and preventing Zanath from finding it. The forest becomes a nightmarish version of itself, a sort of mini-dungeon maze you have to fight your way through until you reach the classic grove. Zelda tries to take the sword from the stone but can’t lift it. Navi wonders if only the Chosen One can. God, it’d be annoying if we had to go on a quest to find that singular special person.

Of course, Zanath was following them and now he strikes. He tries to retrieve the sword, and fails. He isn’t too upset; he believes only one person can wield this thing, and his master has already killed that boy. Zelda knocks him away from the block and brushes against the handle. It glows. You guessed it: this time she’s able to release the Master Sword, based on the courage she’s displayed. Zanath serves as a mini-bossfight that shows off the power of the sword, and will hopefully make a suitably awesome debut for Zelda wielding the famous weapon.

"Zant," from Twilight Princess. Zanath's got the same fashion sense.

After falling to Zelda, Zanath begins to fade away into Limbo. He says it doesn’t matter: the Legend-cycle is already broken with the Chosen One’s death, and soon Ganon will control Hyrule, Limbo and the Golden Realm. A whole lot of names we don’t have context for yet, but recognize as bad. Zanath believes his master will simply set him free from Limbo at the end of the war.

Navi doubts Link is really dead, just trapped in Limbo. We don’t get Zelda’s side because, since she’s the protagonist, she can’t talk in this game. The burdens of a Nintendo hero.

In addition to allowing Zelda to kick ass, the Master Sword has a hefty warding range against the Limbo-darkness. If she visits the appropriate key points and uses the sword, she can permanently remove some of the blight in Hyrule, ala Okami. This becomes necessary to find the next set of temples, since the Army of Limbo’s blight has rendered them inaccessible. These armies are only able to locate the relative regions of the temples, not the entrances to their Temples. Zelda has to scour the landscape, like archaeologists messing around Egypt for buried tombs. The Master Sword “healing” specific areas permits you entry into multiple Temples. I’d let the game designers come up with these Temple themes (and/or change the earlier Temple themes) as they pleased, since they clearly know what they’re doing. Nintendo’s shop does fantastic dungeon design.

After passing through a couple of Temples, enough of the land is safe enough that you can access the special Graveyard Temple. This one’s in reference to the original game’s Graveyard that couldn’t be reached by a logical spatial approach. No map can guide you through the mire and fog. Navi is positively baffled. She knows the fairies came to Hyrule from this place, but nothing more.

Jump to Part 4!

Zelda: King of Limbo Synopsis, Part 2 - Now With Fairies

2011-12-04T08:00:00.033-05:00

Jump back to Part 1.

The Fairy Eater’s demise sets free her snacks: the surviving fairies. The eldest fairy is named Navi, and she seems to recognize Zelda, even though the princess has never met fairies before. Navi expresses gratitude and promises to help rescue Link. She promptly swirls around Zelda’s wooden sword, replacing the fire with a magical light that improves its attack power and extends the warding range against the darkness. Navi explains that the darkness engulfing the land is something The King of Limbo brought with him from his home world. It’s somewhat vulnerable to fairy magic, but clearly not vulnerable enough. She thinks the only way to seal it off entirely is to assemble the Triforce, a powerful artifact from a higher plane, from which all modern fairies draw their life force. Unfortunately, the King of Limbo has already found one third of this artifact.

Navi?

Zelda guides the surviving kids and fairies back to the lighted rampart. With the help of our fairies, we hope this camp will be safe from being swallowed for now. This begins the development of the camp. I figure every time you finish a significant story bit or dungeon, they’ll have built up the camp’s defenses or its living quarters a bit more. I’d like it if a couple of the changes were cute, like you’re expecting them to all have armor when you get back and instead the kids made wreathes of flowers for everybody. But the point would be that this is the safe zone where you keep returning to, though it’s clearly threatened by the encroaching tide of darkness. This is what you’re working for, beyond rescuing Link and her royal family.

The weather gets wilder as you return to the darkened Hyrule. Old mires are completely flooded and require a boat to navigate, letting us play with some Wind Waker mechanics. The northernmost part of the swamp is frozen over as though by magic, leading to the Ice Temple. The shard of Triforce it houses is acting up.

So we have a hidden Water Temple and an Ice Temple. Of course at the northernmost edge of the map is Death Mountain and our Volcano Temple. Rather than having to go to one place first, though, Zelda is forced to explore the darkened world. Wherever there is an army, that’s got to be where The King of Limbo suspects lies a shard of the Triforce. Zelda (or the player) can enter the temples at will: you can do the Water, Ice and Volcano Temples in whatever order you want, or whatever order you find them in. There’d also be a fourth temple, a series of hollow caverns carved to resemble rooms, but this place is swarming with bad guys and there are rumors that whatever is down there is too tough for them. Entry into the Cavern Temple isn’t possible just yet.

Of course, upon clearing the Water, Ice and Volcano Temples, you get to go into the fourth temple. Most of the army has been savaged by what is inside. I’d like it to be a tiered boss battle against a great dragon, and as its stages pass it seems to manifest more and more of the boiling blackness we associate with the Army of Limbo, though this thing is clearly not on their side. The fight gets increasingly unfair. You literally can’t kill this thing’s final form if you survive that far; it seems invincible to your Limbo-powered bow, fairy-powered sword and the tools you’ve found along the way.

Either as you are about to die in game, or after an internal timer elapses for skilled players who manage to stay alive long enough, The King of Limbo arrives and becomes a third party in the battle. Half-physical, half composed of Limbo energies, he resembles the classic villain Ganon. He wears his third of the Triforce, a complete and golden triangle, around his neck. He dispatches the dragon and steals its shard of the Triforce, as well as absorbing the darkness from its carcass.

So Ganon's in this game?

The King of Limbo seems to recognize Zelda as more than just the runaway princess. Before she can fight him he shatters “the Chosen One’s” wooden sword, and alludes to the Master Sword, an artifact that Zanath has almost found in the forest. He might do more if not for the dragon’s death throes, which bring the cavern collapsing down. The King of Limbo bursts through the ceiling, while Zelda has to escape on foot, carrying the injured Navi.

On to Part 3!

Zelda: King of Limbo Synopsis, Part 1

2011-12-03T11:00:00.029-05:00

Today I'm beginning serialization of a synopsis I wrote for some Legend of Zelda fans. It's what my Zelda game would be like. It's reference-heavy and in a passive sort of writing style I enjoy more than most people do. Let me know what you think, and particularly if you're interested in continuing. The plan is to keep it running daily into next week.

I’m a literalist. Following the title of the series, my Legend of Zelda game would actually be about Princess Zelda. The game opens on a Hyrule that is largely obscured under a boiling black sky, with sunlight only shining through on the west-most portion, like a fingernail moon. Someone called The King of Limbo has conquered Castle Hyrule. It looms in the distance as knights and survivors flee to the only region that still has sunlight. The darkened world is beset by an army of classic darknuts, giant hands, and moblin-type creatures that are coated in a similar blackness to the sky. Zanath, a wizard resembling Zant from Twilight Princess, pursues the escapees into the lit region, leading part of the King of Limbo’s army.

The player will quickly realize that Link is absent. We know the woods he typically resides in is overtaken by the King of Limbo’s darkness. Hyrulean soldiers set up a rampart to defend against the pursuing monsters, and reference that the invasion seemed come from nowhere. Princess Zelda, our player-character, is forced to take up a bow and help fend them off. After some moblins are temporarily incapacitated she steals one of their quivers, affording her arrows the same powers of darkness that they wield, and so allowing her to harm and dispatch the baddies. This temporarily scares Zanath off.

After getting kidnapped for her entire series,
it's about time she kicked some ass.

The bow is Zelda’s (and your) primary weapon for the first act. Once her bodyguards are all safe and preoccupied tending to the wounded, she sneaks into the dark region to see if she can’t save Link and his fellow elves. We know she was buddies with the elf-boy. For a bit you’ll be playing through stealth, with no way to fight monsters in melee. You’re entering the dark lands and the whole mood should be foreboding. It gets creepier as you enter the forest and have to keep aware of which trees are infested and hungry. There are equal amounts ranged combat and running for your life.

The elf village has been razed, and you find only the elders are left. They claim their kids were all abducted by the Army of Limbo. You enter Link’s house hoping he’s in his hiding spot, a cave under the floorboards that is reminiscent of the first cave in the first NES Legend of Zelda game. Instead his grandpa is hiding down there. Link fought to save him and was taken. Before you leave, he says it’s dangerous to go alone and gives you Link’s wooden sword.

Because I like nostalgia references.

But Zelda’s not foolish. She isn’t fighting shadow-beasts with a wooden sword. She gets lamp oil and sets the blade on fire. The flaming sword emits heat and light, which can harm the Army of Limbo, and wards off most of the dangerous critters. This is your melee weapon for the rest of the act. Its light-warding is especially handy since the black sky begins to rain, and blighted rat-monsters spawn from the ground as it softens. Zelda needs to get the heck out of here, but first she's going after the kids.

Our first proper Dungeon is a real dungeon, at the bottom of which the kidnapped children are held. Our boss is the Fairy Eater, a giant evil fairy that’s been good at rounding up both the kids and fairies. Defeating her frees many of the children, though it’s revealed some were sent to another world called Limbo. That’s where all this blackness came from. Link was among those sent there.

Jump to Part 2.

Maybe Santa Will Rescind

2011-12-02T00:07:00.004-05:00

Three aunts, two uncles, two grandparents, and two parents who have been fighting all week reside over a flock of children. It’s a crepe paper massacre on Christmas Eve, starring villains Ages 3-14. The tree is ten feet tall and is guarded by a barracks of boxes. My siblings, younger and unaware how little of the haul is for them, huddle with our cousins. I retreat for the computer, letting everyone else have their night. Neither children nor Christmas are my thing, and at the height of teenaged cynicism, the family is about as unappealing.

The oldest cousin, let's call her Cedar, trots up to me. Cedar holds a green and blue box in her hands, and for a moment I think she’s going to hand it to me. It’s stirring, since she’d be the only non-grandparent who remembered me this year. It almost hurts that I’m a broke invalid teen with nothing to offer her in return. Our family stretched the bank to get as many gifts for them as we could.

Then I see CEDAR on the FOR label. She is toting one of her own trophies.

She asks, “Where’s your present?”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Maybe Santa will bring me something tomorrow.”

“No.” Her face contorts. “What did you get me?”

Like magic, the guilt dissipates. Her father’s loaded. I look aside the box she’s clutching, recognizing both an overflowing stocking and six packages for her by the coffee table. I point to her stack.

“Isn’t it in there?”

Cedar waddles off to investigate. I’m about to get a drink when she returns.

She reports, “It wasn’t in there.”

“Did you check under the tree?”

I’m in the kitchen when she re-returns. Now she carries fists instead of a box. Her head cranes around the entrance, as though losing sight of the Christmas tree will cause her trove to evaporate. Maybe Santa will rescind.

She asks, “It wasn’t there, either.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, hoping that a return to the tree will get her caught up in her other gifts and she’ll forget about me.

I slosh my plastic cup of tap water and lag behind her to the living room. Cedar actually elbows her sister on her way under the tree skirt. By now the skirt is lonely. Only discarded bows keep it company; the goods have been dragged to the four corners of the room for rummaging.

Near the fireplace, my little brother talks with concern to our dad. The poor little guy is close to tears with incomprehension over why the others have so many more boxes. Dad is doing his typical bad job of hiding outrage. The in-laws got him the perfect gift: another reason to be angry at someone.

Cedar purses her lips up at me. This is not at all her fault, but teenaged cynicism doesn’t care about fair.

“It’s not there,” she repeats.

“That’s funny,” I say. I wave my palm at the tree’s twinkling lights. “I put it next to the present you got for me.”

The look on her face sticks with me for years. It’s like I’ve gotten a Math problem wrong. Even the tone of her response suggests I’m the dumb kid.

She says, “I didn’t get you anything.”

And I say, “How about that?”

I remember going to check on my sister, but not much else. Christmas isn’t really my holiday.

Bathroom Monologue: Not Santa

2011-12-01T06:00:00.003-05:00

Dad sees no footprints in the snow, though you know something was out there. You hear its hoofs on the roof. The chortling sounds nearly human. It waits in the chimney, or behind the tree with its eyes blinking like bulbs, carrying a sack full of children who seek out Santa. It has adapted to hunt this time of year.

Bathroom Monologue: Lord, Hear Our Vegetarian Prayer

2011-11-30T07:00:00.002-05:00

John: I'm going vegetarian once a week. Meatless Mondays! It's good for my heart, and my great grandma used to do that praying for my health. Maybe I can count it as a sacrifice in prayer for a friend's health.

God: NOPE. RESISTING MEAT IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH, AND THUS SELFISH. YOU CAN'T PRETEND IT'S A SACRIFICE.

John: But my great grandma did!

God: TOUGH.

John: ...What if I promise to eat really delicious fat-heavy meat once a week? Could you cure somebody's cancer then?

God: I'M LISTENING.

Seven Ciphers in Classic Speculative Fiction, OR, Why Ciphers Are Bad

2011-11-29T07:00:00.055-05:00

The cipher is the character in fiction whose experiences let us learn about the world and plot. They’re the new guys in town, the teenagers coming of age and, as Steven Erikson devastatingly put it, “the people who need their own world explained to them.” There’s a strong bias against ciphers in Speculative Fiction because they’re a cheap mechanic. We live casually around things that to every previous generation would seem unbelievable. The cipher generally causes us to sacrifice the casual nature of actually using and working with things, and thus the immersion in the concocted world, for the sake of holding hands with our audience. Generally these ciphers do insult the audience, hedging that they can’t figure things out on their own, or don’t have they don’t have the attention span and intellect necessary to do so.

Early in my writing life I set out to avoid ciphers. I wanted to be fresher, more original, to challenge my readers in exciting ways. I was convinced that anyone with talent would avoid using such a low device. In retrospect of that opinion, let’s review a few of the ciphers from Speculative Fiction’s history.

Want to drive a nerd insane? Sneak up behind them
and say, "I heard those Harry Potters are based
on a book or something."

Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling)

Arguably the most brilliant and blatant cipher of all time. He's a kid, so he’ll learn just by virtue of inexperience. He travels to an unknown part of our world, so he's out of his element and has to interact with everyone for the first time. And he goes to school, a building that exists so people can tell you things. He is buddies with a hardcore nerd, a wildlife enthusiast, and the ancient head of the school, all of whom vomit knowledge at him. This seven-book series could have fit in a single marble composition book if you excised all the Harry-learns-things (give or take a second composition book for redundant-events).

Alan Grant (Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton)

He knows everything about dinosaurs except that they’re alive. He also doesn’t know much math. Many of Crichton’s novels are secretly about scientific education. Congo is about primate cognition, Prey is about nanotechnology, Terminal Man is about the nervous system, and Jurassic Park is cloning. Cloning dinosaurs, and so Alan also has the park explained to him, and the cloning process, and Chaos Theory. But Alan Grant stands out as an admirably complicated cipher, introducing us to both the fun plot stuff and real theoretical science.

Bilbo and Frodo Baggins (The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien)

You bet your ass someone tells him what this is.

These two hobbits are the classic fish-out-of-water ciphers. They come from one specific place and have limited handiness at the outset of their stories. Their journeys force them to learn about Middle Earth, though this education causes them to grow more sufficient until the learning processes are not as explicit. Better, they’re increasingly able to deal with the strange things they run into, while not exploding into wish-fulfillment bad asses. By the end, they are winging it without learning, and the writing is implying rather than preaching. Ironically the two share one mentor, Gandalf, who at many points exists to tell us what Tolkien was building in his world today.

Richard Cypher (The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind)

Richard Cypher. Richard Ding-Dong Cypher. Goodkind knew what he was doing to sphincter-tightening degrees. The special kid of Sword of Truth is just one of many special kid ciphers following an established publishing trope. Harry Potter was another. Following the success of Tolkien's Bilbo and Frodo, many Fantasy authors created their own rags-to-heroism ciphers, packing them with even more wish fulfillment. Richard doesn’t stay a little guy suffering to toss a ring into a volcano; he’s going to grow up, get hot girlfriends, own magic swords and slay villains. Unlike Tolkien, the new Fantasy tradition was to introduce awesome stuff so that the cipher could become awesome at that awesome stuff, or at least always witness awesome results from it. The Epic Fantasy sub-genre positively strains under the weight of these wish-fulfillment ciphers today.

Ender Wiggin (Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card)

A cipher so deliberate he even has to be told he won the war. God help us all.

Also the poster for "Fuck Yeah: The Movie"

Luke Skywalker (Star Wars)

As formative as Frodo Baggins, Luke starts at the bottom of the totem poll on a backwater planet. He fixes R2D2 to learn about the rebellion and plot of A New Hope. He pursues Obi Wan Kenobi to learn about his family, and in turn, we watch him studying and revealing the ways of the Jedi. In terms of ciphers, he gets some of the best emotion. One particular bit of information he uncovers is the most famous reveal in all of Science Fiction, but it resonates because it was as much of a shock to audiences as it was to the boy. His ascent fits both the Hero’s Journey and the model of the cipher’s journey. We want to learn more about the Jedi. We want to learn if there’s anything left in his father’s heart. The best way a cipher can succeed is when we want to learn what they’re going to teach us about their fictions.

Upon learning what the cipher is, you gradually realize that they were integral to droves of the Speculative Fiction you enjoyed. Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Peter Parker? Kvothe? John Crichton? Chell? David Bowman and friends? This is Commander Shepard’s favorite cipher on the Citadel? Speculative Fiction will be a richer landscape when more of it is about people casually living with the fantastic, but the cipher will probably never go away. Not so long as there are more generations growing up and learning things for the first time.

True Stories of John 16: Skyrim

2011-11-28T07:00:00.004-05:00

The first blue rays of dawn are scarcely enough to differentiate the plains from the sky. I sprint under a sheet of fading stars, seeking openings in the grey cliff face. One opens like a black mouth. I am swallowed, and creep on my knees through shadows toward their fireplace. Their dog sniffs. It smells me. My bow-arm isn’t swift enough, and soon its masters follow. Two humans and an orc. That orc, the Bandit Captain, wears so much iron that I have to dance behind him for a hope of harm. He kills me six times before succumbing to a combination of lightning and mace blows.

Then came nine o’clock. The town dump was open. I rose from my padded chair and strained with my back. It was three minutes before I could bend to pick up the recycling bin. I’d spend the whole drive thinking what you could do with three minutes in that zany videogame.

Bathroom Monologue: Editing 1996

2011-11-27T07:00:00.000-05:00

“And you, Des?” Wesley leaned up from the time capsule, extending his left hand for her offering. “What are you sending back to old 1996?”

She folded her arms under her breasts. “You mean, if any of this works at all?”

She was the skeptic of the group, but she was here. He frowned at her.

“Yeah, Des. If.”

Des mirrored his frown for so long that he grew suspicious. Eventually he realized she was really watching the others shuffle out of the backyard, beyond the blast shield. Only when they were out of earshot did she open her purse.

“Des. You’re sending yourself your own book? Want teen-Desdemona Restlake to rest assured that it all works out?”

“If I knew what I know now, I’d be an immeasurably better writer.”

As she extended it, the jacket fluttered open. Wesley caught sight of a red inscription. Was she sending herself an autograph? That was just like her. Or maybe stock tips. Which was fair. Wes was ordering his past self to get on top of Google.

Wesley made the show of placing it into the capsule, watching her eyes more than her hardcover. The instant she turned to leave, his fingers curled in the pages.

He looked down into the capsule and was surprised to find every page had signatures on it. Wait, not signatures. Sentences were scratched out. Her awful chicken scratches filled the margins. He could only make out a few of the red notes.

“obv.”

“Verbose”

“So original. You’ve never read Hamlet?”

“infodump”

“Was this innuendo? We forget”

He jerked his head up. Des was already behind the blast shield with the rest of their friends. Perfect posture, eyes condescending over all the dumbasses. The brains of the group. If Wes had been standing over there, he never would have imagined the one thing she’d change in time was her bestseller.

Bathroom Monologue: The Happier Genre

2011-11-26T11:00:00.003-05:00

“There are thoughts. We have the Slasher sub-genre. There is an entire class of film devoted to a person murdering his way through a slew of people. Dozens have been made every year since the eighties, and yet I can’t name a single movie that’s about happiness all the time. One single Florist sub-genre film, where some guy with a burlap sack over his head stalks a slew of people, corners each of them and hands over a carefully-selected bouquet. Somebody will tell me that conflict is essential to stories, and I’ll say how do you know if you’ve never seen one without it? And somebody will tell me that real life is suffering and angst and taxes and waiting in line, and I’ll say, I’m only sure that’s true when I’m stuck listening to you. We’ve got umpteen movies about hardship during a World War. We’ve got umpteen movies about unhappy people who only glimpse happiness before the credits roll. These movies cheat. I dare you to make one movie about a good time.”

Bathroom Monologue: Dawn Defines

2011-11-25T00:07:00.000-05:00

She defined love for me every morning at 5:00 AM. My parents couldn't afford an alarm clock, so we rose on hers. I knew at least three other families - one in our tenement, two in hers - that did the same. While my brothers fought for the hot water, I scurried over to the window. I called her Dawn.

She was appropriately blonde, the downiest stuff you ever saw. Nostalgia’s probably colored my memory. It does that without asking. If you asked my little self, she was incomparable, an angel in threadbare linens. Most mornings I didn't catch sight of her before she got out of bed and into the bathroom, but I tried. I was at that age.

Six days a week I did catch her exiting the bathroom, though. She might look out their window, but never up for a Peeping Thomas a story above and across the alley. In those early rays of yellow and orange, her skin was raw and pinkened from the freezing shower. And then she'd put bobbies in her hair, pinning and hiding it all up.

I'd take my breakfast at the windowsill and consume her ritual. Guess observance was my ritual. Dawn’s was to wrap her breasts, mashing them into her ribs so as even I got uncomfortable. They had to fit into her husband's old uniform. She'd lace the boots snug, pull on the too-fat gloves, and button things up to her chin. The tools waited for her by the door as she made sure he had his bedpan and a glass of water.

Don’t remember a morning where he got up. She'd kiss him on the forehead, then squat under the weight of his pack and embark for the mine. Someone had to, to ensure he'd have food and medicine tomorrow. Some nights she'd come back so coal-stricken you couldn't tell her apart from the dusk. All that radiant beauty, scrubbed pink and strapped down. Tomorrow after tomorrow.

Nowadays, that's what I think love is. It's what you'll do to yourself for someone else. I've had four women tell me I'm wrong, and all four walked out on me eventually. But you know, I drove into hurricanes and stayed through cancer-scares when they needed somebody most. So I don't regret. I did my part getting us to dawn.

Practicing Gratitude

2011-11-24T07:00:00.006-05:00

Last week T.S. Bazelli posted about Practicing Gratefulness on her blog. A Canadian, her post had no apparent connection to our U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving, but the confluence is a good enough reason to practice it. Here are a few of the things for which I practice gratitude.

-I can walk. I can't exaggerate how nice it is to travel to the bathroom without thinking about it. As someone who has been on crutches, in wheelchairs, and bedridden at separate points in his life, free movement is one of my unabashed pleasures. If this bothers any anti-ableist folks, I'd like to hear from you.

-I live in a house with light and heat whenever I want it, and frequently some fulfilling food is available. Again, can't exaggerate this privilege.

-I'm thankful for my family, both those blood relatives and dear friends who have been worth investing emotion in. They make the social aspect of life worthwhile. I’m correspondingly grateful that I can ignore and eject people who aren’t worth having in my life.

-To God. He knows why.

-To people who catch wordplay jokes.

-The internet in my country has not yet been gravely censored or broken down into bandwidth throttling price structures.

-Readers who visit daily or semi-daily and find this work of mine worthwhile. Your comments, Likes, Loves and retweets make my days better. I’m grateful to every reader here, and every listener for Consumed. It’s why we do what we’re doing.

-Speaking of readers, how can’t I be grateful to my beta readers? And those who have agreed to jump in as theta readers after the next round of edits. I’ve worked damn hard to make The House That Nobody Built the best thing I’ve ever written, and these are folks who’ve consented their considerable intellects to help me. I’ll remain forever in gratitude to them until one of the bastards says he doesn’t like the book. Then all bets are off.

-Multiple times this year I've been struck by gratitude for being able to play so many new videogames. I think I've hit five this year, with Portal 2 and Bastion leading the pack. There were years when I couldn't afford a single one. It's one of my favorite hobbies, especially on the nights when the syndrome acts up too badly for me to sleep.

-And you better believe I’m grateful for when sleep comes easily. Have a nice day, all, and an easy night after that.

Bathroom Monologue: Fight Night

2011-11-23T07:00:00.002-05:00

Finally, fourteen billion years since the dawn of the universe, the immovable object stood at the epicenter and awaited the oncoming irresistible force. It was a media event like no other, and everyone had a theory about how the collision would go down, or at least some kind of documentary or related feature film due out in the Fall.

The scientists proposed that one body possessed greater inertia than the other.

The politicians, as they are like to do, only made passing reference to it on talk shows until three weeks before impact, when they said it was about time their countries took up serious legislation.

The philosophers, as they are like to do, cut at each other’s words and wound up agreeing that neither body could exist.

The internet, as it is like to do, complained about plot holes.

On the day of the magnificent event, every tabloid had a crew out. Unfortunately, the paparazzi climbed over each other with such vigor that none got a good shot, and all were left with photos of each other’s hands or feet. The explosion from the collision was so great that almost no one in the star system survived. The only remaining cameraman didn’t see the actual impact, but swears to this day he saw the immovable object flinch.

Regardless, the irresistible force can still be seen touring the universe, knocking over everything in its path, and the immovable object can still be seen sucking in everything, including matter-free light, with its usual resolve. Tickets for the return bout should be on sale any eon now.

Bathroom Monologue: Pitiful Lex

2011-11-22T07:00:00.002-05:00

"I always suspected it, Lex. The Flash’s nemeses control ice and light. The Green Lantern clashes with alien gods. So why does he have you? If he’s almighty, why not feud with a clone of himself? Or a robot? Why a pathetic stock broker? He could punch clean through your head and not even leave a frame of evidence on the surveillance cameras. You’re not even a fight. There were two options. Option One: the big man was on the take, and you were secretly funding him. But his powers are tried and tested. He has a summer home on the moon. He doesn’t need your money, and he routinely destroys your military inventions. You couldn’t help him if you wanted to. That leaves Option Two: he pities you. He lets you think you’re smart and powerful and that for the sixteenth time he’s been fooled by a kryptonite ring. He’s diagnosed you like I have, as a petty waste of intellect, an obsessive parasite who desperately needs him. He’s your hero. Lucky you."

Should John Post About The Legend of Zelda?

2011-11-21T22:12:00.001-05:00

For a few years I've had the plot for a Legend of Zelda game. It's a shame that the eponymous princess's legend is apparently to be kidnapped over and over. I'd like to see just one entry in which you played as her saving the land. Periodically I'd return to this idea of a Hyrule under siege, in need of an absent savior, and in that absence would step up our lady. I called it The King of Limbo. It's not a Chosen One story, or a Girl Vs. Tradition story. It'd be about overcoming vulnerability. Also, swords.

Last week I typed up the grand synopsis for how such a plot could unfold, and the wrinkles it could have on Nintendo's formula. It was a gift to a hardcore Zelda fan and dear friend of mine. She adored it, and got me wondering if I shouldn't share here.

What do you think, my beloved readers? Would you like to see how I'd frame a princess saving the day? Let me know your thoughts, and drop your votes into the poll above.

True Stories of John 15: How John Talks to His Grandmother

2011-11-21T07:00:00.003-05:00

John: So I’ll call you on Thanksgiving, in the afternoon so I’ll be sure you’ll be in.

Grandma: With your brother and sister?

John: I’ll call two guest stars.

Grandma: With a what?

John: Two guest stars. Celebrities, but I can’t tell you who they are.

Grandma: Who are they?

John: I’ll give you a hint.

Grandma: Give me a hint.

John: They’re two generations younger than you.

Grandma: What? That’s your age.

John: They’re a little younger than me. One may or may not have red hair.

Grandma: That’s your sister. Is it your brother and sister?

John: I can’t tell you, but one is a boy and one is a girl.

Grandma: Who are they?

John: I don’t know. One more hint, though: they are related to you.

Grandma: What are you doing?

John: I don’t know, but I can’t stop. Talk to you on Thanksgiving?

Grandma: Sure.

John: With my two guest stars.

Grandma: Gah!

John: Love you!

Bathroom Monologue: The Manliness of Gay Men

2011-11-20T07:00:00.010-05:00

To listen click the triangle to begin streaming or click this text for the MP3.

One notion I don't get is the effeminate gay guy. Gay men are the manliest men of all time. A straight guy can nail the most attractive woman you've ever seen. Hell, he can coerce the most attractive woman, and the smartest woman, and the most unattainable woman to jump into his bed simultaneously. But there's little manliness about that foursome. There's a 3:1 femininity ratio about that.

Meanwhile, a gay guy is consuming more man. At any given time he is giving you at least double the man for your money. He can date the laziest waif in America, and still be manlier than Don Juan because he's doing manly things. In fact, he's doing the manliest thing: men.

He is transcending manhood by way of someone else's manhood. That is a severe degree of masculinity that intimidates lesser men like me. In fact, given how gross I find naked men, the enthusiasm my gay friends have for them strikes me as decidedly bad ass. It’s no different than your ability to wrestle an alligator or fix a carburetor. I can’t do it, I won’t do it, and concede that you are the manlier man for the wrestling that phallic car-part. Gay guys are looking into the eyes of my darkest fear and seeing a turn-on. They are the best, the greatest, and last line of defense against something that I don’t want to do. That's because I'm not very manly. You could call me a girly-man.

I'm More Versatile Than You Are

2011-11-19T11:00:00.005-05:00

Stacey Turner recently sent me the Versatile Writer Award. Previously it was handed to me by Larry Kollar, Mari Juniper and Helen Howell, so at this point I’m going to believe consensus and be flattered. While the rules of the game have warped over time, it remains that you’re supposed to share seven things about yourself. Let’s see if I can keep this entertaining.

1. When I grow my facial hair, my mustache comes in blonde and my beard is red, while my hair is brown. I'm a human sampler pack.

2. Not only did playing Dynasty Warriors get me to read Luo Guanzhong's classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but sharing the game also spurred five friends to try it as well. Only one of us finished it.

3. In middle school I took a general intelligence test that put me at a genius level. I then attempted to exit the building by pushing through a door labeled PULL.

4. In my early teens my passion for writing was equaled by my aspirations to be a comic book artist. It was only after I was rejected from an art show and took stock of several years of drawings that I realized I utterly lacked talent at one of these passions. I might not have become a versatile writer at all if I’d just figured out how to draw hands.

5. As a child I watched Disney's Peter Pan seven times before giving up hope that Captain Hook could win this once. I still rooted for him afterwards, but only in a primitive fan fiction context.

6. I have run naked from the shower or bath tub to my computer to type out ideas multiple times. Conservatively, it's in double digits.

7. On the way back from a midnight screening of Spider-Man 2, I took a shortcut through the woods. A deer leaped in front of my car. I stopped in time, but the critter froze. I rolled down my window and hollered for it move. It refused. Flashing my high beams did no better. I wound up leaning out the window and pitching my idea of Spider-Man 3 to it until it got bored and left. I still think my plot had some heart.

Thanks again, Stacey. I hope I’ve entertained you all.

Bathroom Monologue: Helping the Nice Guy

2011-11-18T00:01:00.000-05:00

Inning waited in the booth, looking out the window while hunched so that others might not see him through it. His Christian name was Inigo, but everyone had called him Inning on account of a childhood aspiration to play pro ball. Apparently he lacked the hand-eye coordination for it and three years of failed tryouts broke his spirit, but the nickname lingered.

Inning only relaxed when he saw Aldo’s red Mercedes pull up. Aldo emerged, all three hundred pounds of potential cardiac arrest stuffed into a tweed winter coat.

Aldo didn’t look at him through the window. He didn’t even look for him as he entered the restaurant, choosing instead to order his midday steak sandwich at the counter. After a minute of small talk with the pretty teen waitress who showed more interest in her cell phone, he waddled down the row of booths until he found Inning.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “Thank you for inviting me to lunch. It’s been a while.”

“They set my car on fi—”

Aldo thumped his hand on the table to stop him.

“Good afternoon,” he said again, then wedged his girth into the booth. His belly caught in the table and rose like bread dough.

“Good afternoon,” Inning said.

The waitress finished texting and brought over a house beer. Aldo thanked her and she scampered to the back to make his order. The restaurant was suddenly vacant.

Aldo said, “I presume this is about the nice guy.”

"They set my car on fire, Aldo. I didn't even know Families did that this century. They burned up my ride all over some pick pocketing. You can make this go away, right?"

"You don't understand. You picked on the nice guy."

"So what if I steal a wise guy's wallet? They're loaded. They can swallow the loss."

Aldo held up a finger. "Firstly, a wise guy kills people who steal his wallet precisely because he's a wise guy. Families don’t respect a lazy wise guy."

Before Inning could complain, he held up a second finger. His middle finger.

"Secondly, I said 'nice guy.' An innocent in this scum hole. They are the few people who get invited to Family weddings that never realize the deals being made around them. They always go to dinner and they never pay. They don't steal. They don't sell merchandise. They don't do hits. Their worst activity is unwittingly carrying something in their luggage once or twice in their lives. They do it unwittingly because they'd never agree to do it consciously."

Inning shook his head. "So I pick pocketed a dumb ass?"

"You pick pocketed a guy so friendly that hardened criminals pay for his dinner. And to do it while he was Christmas shopping for his kids? Come on."

"So they burned my…”

The door behind the counter opened. The waitress trotted out with Aldo’s food. An instant of assuring her tip later, she was gone.

Aldo bit in, taking a fifth of his long sandwich in one bite. Inning had ordered the same sandwich an hour ago and more of it still sat on his plate than Aldo had left in his hands.

“They can't possibly go after me over that. It’s just a wallet. How did they even figure out I was the one who took it?"

“Using his credit card was a bad idea,” Aldo replied around a mouthful. “You think just because it’s shipped to Sherry’s loft that they’re not going to figure it out?”

“But he’s just some dumb ass.”

"You're not listening, Inning. When your first baby is born, the first person you call is a guy at the hospital. The Family has connections and he'll make sure everything God didn't make rough Himself goes smoothly. The second person you call is your Ma, because she'd never forgive you otherwise. The third person you call is a nice guy, because he's the first person who comes to mind. That is who you stole from. You are lucky you did not steal his cell phone. The numbers on there?" Aldo's eyes lolled around in his head and he mopped his brow with the remains of the sandwich, as though the idea had given him a sudden fever. "Oof."

"I still wouldn't light a car on fire over that."

"That's because you're a greasefingers. You're not in a Family business. If some moron wronged one of my good friends, I would shoot him straight in the chest."

Aldo gestured at Inning’s chest with his sandwich. A bit of steak fell out of the tip, plopping onto his plate. It dribbled brown juice.

Inning grumbled. "Well I appreciate having you on my side."

"That brings us to this."

Aldo shifted. One hand secured the sandwich so he could continue feeding, while the other reached into his coat. He produced a black Beretta, placing it flat on the table. His fingers spread over its side, index away from the trigger, but near enough.

“You see, I know this dumb ass.”

Inning tensed, hands moving to his sides. He didn’t bolt from the booth, but looked ready.

"Don't be stupid, Inning," warned Aldo. "You know his name and address because they were in the wallet. So was a week's pay, cashed just an hour before you lifted it. Since you already know where he lives, you're going to go give it back and apologize."

The pickpocket remained tense. He looked like a deer immediately after hearing a rifle shot, trapped in that instant before leaping. Since he didn’t speak, Aldo elaborated.

"If you do that, no one else will put a gun on a table near you and the next car you lease will be less flammable. I make you this offer because you are my friend. Now are you going to give him his wallet back?"

Inning pressed his lips together.

"Yes."

"With two weeks pay in it?"

"I thought it was one weeks pay."

"Two weeks pay, plus what you spent on his cards. You hand it all to him and say you found it under a bench in that mall.”

Inning looked at the black gun, then to his old friend.

"Aldo, why?”

“Why did I beg them to wait until you left the car to torch it? Or why am I giving you such stellar advice when I could be bored at home?”

Inning didn’t answer. Aldo finished the sandwich, licked his fingers and took a long pull on the beer.

“I am doing this because when Aldo Junior was born, this dumb ass was the third person I called.”

Inning wiped the sweat from his palms, then put them together like he was praying at the fat man.

“I’ll go today. I’ll go to the bank first, then to his house. I’ll tell him I found it in the mall bathroom, next to the toilet. Things fall out of pockets in there all the time. I only opened it to find the owner. I hope everything’s in there.”

"Thank you, Inning.” Aldo gathered the gun into his coat. As though answering either the prayer or the departure of the gun, the front door jingled with the first true lunch hour patrons.

“You can go now if you want. It’s a long walk. I'll pick up the check."

(Helping the Nice Guy original appeared at short-story.me)

Bathroom Monologue: Lesson from The Great Ghost

2011-11-17T07:00:00.003-05:00

“Never before six-thirty. Never before dusk. Never under anything but the moon. No investigations, no public appearance, and not one square inch of spandex. It’s something I learned from The Great Ghost. He said there was no difference between an alcoholic and a twenty-four/seven superhero. You don’t drink at lunch, and you don’t go lunch in costume. It’s got to be professional. It’s got to be ritualized. They catch onto rituals and fear them, and rituals catch on to you and keep you straight. We work at night because I work at night. You work during the day, then there isn’t any ‘we.’ Simple as that.”

Interviewed About Possible Origins for Him

2011-11-16T07:00:00.018-05:00

We're on Day 3 of unintentional non-Bathroom Monologue Bathroom Monologues here at The Bathroom Monologues. I swear there'll be fiction tomorrow.

But today I was interview by reader, writer and physicist Michael Tate about the Possible Origins for Him series. Michael enjoyed chapter 18 so much he gave me his Friday Flash of the Month award, then had me over to chat about the series, comics and writing in general. If you want some Easter eggs uncovered, to see how The Joker got me compared to John Updike, or just to know how the series came about, pop over there. We'll both appreciate it.

Confessions of the Unread

2011-11-15T07:00:00.018-05:00

I had a copy of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens for a decade before I read it. I owned it by accident, and owned it for two years before I learned that "Terry Pratchett" was a man, not a woman. There must have been at least a hundred books that came into my possession and were somehow read before it, with no intentionality or purpose against Mr. Gaiman and Mr. Pratchett.

According to Goodreads, I present possess 141 books that I haven’t read. The desire to read everything I hear about is so strong that even if I only borrow, buy or steal a small fraction of it, I wind up with boxes of books. And among those books are a few that I feel particularly ashamed for not yet reading. Most of these are hard classics. Some are so long that I argued myself into reading long works from my industry instead. Such excuses work in the short term. In the long term, literary guilt is powerful. I'm publishing this list to further pressure myself to get some culture.

-Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

-Roots by Alex Haley

-Middlemarch by George Eliot (only just learned on Sunday that George was a woman)

-Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

-Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

-Master and Margarita by Mihael Bulgakov

-War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (sent to me as a Christmas gift and embarrassing number of Decembers ago)

-Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
-The Quitter by Harvey Pekar

-The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

-Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

-God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut

-Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

-The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

-Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Mallory

-The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson

-The World According to Garp by John Irving

-Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

-The Voice of the Poet by Langston Hughes

I most recently scratched Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale off my list. I think Solaris is next. Please feel free to check off which books you've read, or add your own list of shame. Commiseration can be good. What we really need is a National Novel Reading Month.

Making Ideas

2011-11-14T01:30:00.001-05:00

Writers get asked about imagination a lot. Where do you get your ideas? I believe that most good fiction comes from the same place, be it humor or Horror, scientifically plausible or downright impossible. You have to experience, read and study enough to get the raw materials that compose a novel story. But the genesis of good fiction is simple: it results from giving something in a different way than the way you got it.

When I look at my childhood, there was always some Fantasy: Smurfs on TV, Land Before Time in movie theatres, Hercules in books and Robin Hood games in the backyard. These deviated from my life in fantastic ways. The fantastic deviation was attractive.

I recognized more kinds of attractive deviation in my teens. In M*A*S*H you had lighthearted banter while stitching up dying tween soldiers. The novels of Douglas Adams were wildly imaginative, on one page disproving God by demonstrating His existence, then disproving the usefulness of logic in the next. These cases went against convention in amusing ways. Their deviations weren’t that different from Stephen King making a wind-up monkey scary, though turning the positive into the negative like he did was overwhelmingly more popular than the reverse (and it still is).

There was this whole other realm of reactions that everyday people simply didn’t exercise, particularly the options of amusement. You could react differently than everyone else if you just stopped giving in to cultural peer pressure. I needed to do that in my everyday life, but I also needed to pursue it in my fiction. This was how I could write different things.

I remember watching The Matrix and thinking that sea of black leather jackets desperately needed somebody to show up in a Hawaiian shirt. And I actually wore one to the midnight premiere of the second movie. But that wasn’t my moment of emergence. Neither was rewriting Macbeth as a short story starring a magic detective.

Those were petty rebellions; I needed to write original stuff that was about what I wanted out of fiction, not what I hated in it. Instead of looking at a story and thinking how I’d change it, I could get the idea for my own story from just one scene or detail of someone else’s. A favorite hobby at college movie screenings was to anticipate how I wanted the plot to go, and if it didn’t go that way, to write an outline based on my guess that night. That imaginary plot was mine.

Soon it wasn’t that difficult to look at life and think that I hadn’t read a story about X lately. And by X, I don’t mean a fight with the driving instructor. I mean the driving instructor purposefully giving you wrong directions and kidnapping you.

Fortunately he never gave me wrong directions, and the plot was mine. It’s yours, too, if you want it. Let me know how it turns out in the Comments section.

Instead of asking about plausibility or good stories, ask yourself what you want to read. What would make the best escapism for you? What’s funniest to you? What would you most want readers to experience? Sometimes you want to share a personal tragedy about racism, but sometimes what you really want is a dragon running for mayor so she can order the knights to stop coming after her. I hope to finish one of those two stories soon.

Some people are inhibited from writing Fantasy and its related genres because these aren’t realistic. Never mind that they don’t watch realistic stuff on TV (C.S.I. and Dexter are about as likely to happen as The Chronicles of Narnia). But the real question is what you want out of your compositions. If you want something way out of your experience, you can write that. Research it if it’s real or think it through if it’s not. J.R.R. Tolkien put decades into Middle Earth, and it was worth it. If you don’t want something so exhaustive, there are simpler, far shorter ideas. Today I wrote a first person monologue defending snake oil salesmen because, in their opinion, snakes need oiling. Taking things too literally, or not literally enough, or connecting things that aren't normally connected gets easier the more you do it and the less you follow the convention of writing everything based on personal experience.

Much like the barriers of realism and keeping your prose cynical or morose, grounding everything in your personal experience can prevent take-off. Everything you write will be the result of your life anyway – your nature, nurture and decisions make up what you want. But what you write doesn’t have to conform to what you’ve seen and done. Ben Hur was written by a guy in Indiana in 1880. Shakespeare wrote about fairies and nobles of previous centuries in countries he never visited. Douglas Adams was never on a spaceship powered by improbability.

Let me close with a recent example to show you exactly where some of my ideas come from.

I sat in a waiting room of Westchester Medical Center waiting for my mother’s cancer screening to end. It took over an hour and eventually I got the urge to write. I looked at the door and asked myself, “What is the creepiest thing that could walk through the door right now?”

There’s your deviation.

I wrote for a few lines about something morbid and disgusting. It didn’t take and the inspiration faded.

So I closed my eyes and reclined. I was on a row of chairs, though the waiting room was almost empty.

Okay. If this seat could be anywhere, not just in a hospital, who would be funny if they sat down next to me?

That one worked, and I wound up with micro-fiction about an Islamic gorgon (she likes the veil) on an Amtrak train. In the course of writing, I was replaced by a dryad boy. I let it shift third person, changed settings and swapped myself out without questioning it, because that’s what I felt like experiencing. All I had to do was cross things out and make notes of what to rewrite later so it would make sense.

You may stop and say, “Okay, you can imagine things anywhere. But how do I get an Islamic gorgon? I don’t imagine that kind of stuff.”

The point isn’t to get an Islamic gorgon in a hospital or Ben Hur in Indiana. The point is to imagine whatever interests you no matter how far removed from your life it is. It doesn’t matter if it seems absurd. If it amuses, entertain the thought. If it goes away in a few sentences? There are other things to write about. If it’s too embarrassing for you to share? You can keep it in your desk and never show it to another soul. But if you’re too intimidated to write about what actually entertains you, or are too scared to admit what you enjoy to other people, perhaps you should reevaluate more than just your fiction.

Bathroom Monologue: Thoughtful Bear

2011-11-13T10:41:00.001-05:00

My teddy bear is acting funny. He used to need me to pull his chair out for him. Before Wednesday, he definitely needed me to hold the cup to his muzzle so he could drink his tea. Now he makes the tea. He also makes my bed. He likes the corners tucked snug. I dug his box out of the trash, and it doesn’t say he’s supposed to do that. Plus I keep waking up and he’ll be gone from the bed. Usually he’s by my closet door, his paws against it like he’s holding it shut. My closet’s haunted my demons, so it’s not surprising he’d want to hold it shut, but he never used to do that. My parents don’t believe about my closet. Neither does Tim. For the longest time it was just me; now it’s me and the teddy bear. Does this make me crazy? And if so, is it okay that I kind of like it? He’s growing into such a thoughtful bear.

Bathroom Haiku: Answer

2011-11-12T11:00:00.003-05:00

He answered prayers;

unfortunately for us

the answer was, "No."

Bathroom Monologue: It’s Not Easy Being

2011-11-11T00:01:00.011-05:00

“Easy, it never was. But easier, it can be.”

For the first time all hour, the support group goes quiet. They mull Yoda’s words. Yoda mulls his own words, standing on his folding chair. Hulk’s squeaks under him as he scratches his green stubble in contemplation. The Grinch sneers out the window, slouching towards Hooville; he’s only here on a court order. The rest see possible community. Minorities with a strength in numbers.

“You don’t understand,” says Kermit. Morally reluctant to the last. “My girlfriend isn’t just going to let me go. She’s possessive.”

A long green arm stretches out a long green hand, which in turn stretches out a long green fingernail. Its owner isn’t sitting on a folding chair; she only ever sits astride her levitating broom. They know it as certain as they know to never call her ‘Elphaba.’ The fingernail strokes under Kermit’s chin.

“We have ways of getting rid of undesirables, my pretty frog.”

The deal is sealed. Starting tomorrow it’s going to be easier being green.

Bathroom Monologue: We are the 99% of your daydreams

2011-11-10T07:00:00.003-05:00

We are the 99%. The footmen. The footwomen. The cowboys and centaurs. The winged. The serpentine and the tentacled.

The believers. The knowers. The thinkers, the drinkers, the stupors and stumblers. The nearsighted, farsighted, the foresighted, and those shot on sight.

The carnivores. The omnivores. The steam-powered, the diesel-powered, the gas-guzzling guys and gals. The fusion-powered patriots. The stardrinkers on high.

The stars and celebrities. The gods and titans. The abominations and ethereal beauties. Lockstep lovelies and things so hideous reality renders them invisible: a protest in your closet after the lights go out.

The light. The dark. The unknown and the scientific method. Anthropomorphism anthropomorphized into an old wizard who understands you. He brings a glass of water, which is sentient, but willing to martyr itself to the cause.

The nightstand. The bed. The bent elbow resting on a middle school desk. The long, lonely commute. The repetitive day out and the slow night in. The flickering instances on a date when threads of conversation wither, not yet deceased. These are the battlegrounds of the 99%.

Consumed Episode 2 Actually Exists

2011-11-09T07:00:00.008-05:00

The long-awaited Consumed Episode 2 is online. We actually recorded it back in September, along with a third episode, so I think the third one should materialize soon. The short of it is that everything is Max's fault.

The time it took us to do this makes this my favorite episode. I got to see the U.S. premiere of Sacred Star of Milos in August, which I thought would make a great feature for the podcast. It took us until September to record, and until the end of October to release it. Now I'm alerting you in November. At this point, the whole movie is probably on bit torrent somewhere. But, I think you'll enjoy my incredibly vague review anyway, especially for the bit where our film hosts were compared Nazis. Tasteful fans, us nerds.

Also discussed:
-Captain America: The First Avenger
-Symbionic Titan
-Archer
-Ostrov
-I Saw the Devil
-Winter's Bone
-Bastion

You can listen to the episode here.

True Stories of John 14: The Vampire Food Chain

2011-11-08T07:00:00.001-05:00

I remember my seventh grade science class. I was absorbed in the unit on life forms. It was just so neat: nothing outside history had as many opportunities for stories. I filled out all homework during study hall and even doodled an imaginary food chain at the bottom of the last work sheet. It went:

Sunlight

Grass

Cow

Human

Vampire

I thought I was exceedingly clever. I turned it in before the weekend, and actually hit the library to read more about biology.

The teacher returned the sheets on Tuesday. "Vampire" was crossed out. "Bacteria" was written in its place, along with a "-1." My optional food chain had lost me a point.

I think I've always liked science more than it's liked me.

No Country For Old Men, OR, Have You Read That Movie?

2011-11-07T01:19:00.000-05:00

Sometimes feelings are best expressed through charts. Click the below to view it in glorious, pixelated widescreen.

Bathroom Monologue: Credit Card Trail of the Dead

2011-11-06T07:00:00.003-05:00

Her credit card records tell the tale. At noon on the last day we saw her, Antoinette used her Visa to purchase fresh produce at the local grocery, including three pounds of garlic.

Fifteen minutes later, it is used to purchase several antiques from the pawn shop on the same street. The items include a rosary, two crucifixes and a squirt gun.

Apparently she doesn’t drive home. An hour later she is eighty miles north, gassing up her car.

Her next purchase is at 8:15. She dined through dusk at Re-Church & Development, a trendy restaurant located in a former church. One wonders if she filled the squirt gun in their sink, hoping the tap was holy. There’s no telling how long she stayed on holy ground, though she does order two desserts and a lot of coffee.

She had to leave at some time, though the credit card trail gives us nothing all night. It’s not until 5:30 in the morning when she uses the card at a 24-hour Wal-Mart. It’s four hundred miles from Re-Church & Development. There, she buys sun block.

“Men treat childbirth as though it’s something icky.” –Someone who wishes to remain anonymous

2011-11-05T11:00:00.011-04:00

"It is something icky. Nobody tells you to boil water and find towels for a sanitary event. This is a woman screaming at the top of her lungs as her vagina is ripped asunder by a pinkened lump of potential humanity. There’s the possibility she’ll break his hand if he holds hers. There’s the possibility she’ll lose control of her bowels. She will spill fluids he’s never seen in his life. Then there’s the umbilicus and placenta, which frankly look like a giant tapeworm eating a tumor. Beyond all of the revolting things that may exit this beautiful woman, it is also the only time when the goal is to make a baby cry. It’s gross and it’s scary and even if she gets an epidural, you’re still going to have to figure out how to pay its college tuition. God have mercy on your souls."

Bathroom Monologue: Demake

2011-11-04T00:01:00.001-04:00

Come 2013, demakes are going to be the thing in Hollywood. It’s empirical fact that uncreativity is much easier than creativity. Sequels, series, spinoffs, prequels and remakes were all bold ideas. Demakes will take the cycle of uncreativity into the future by way of the past with STANLEY’S KUBRICK’S TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN.

We can all agree that the second Transformers movie sucked. But imagine if the male lead wasn’t onscreen so much, and he wasn’t played by SHIA LABEOUF. Instead, he was a brooding JAMES DEAN. His lady love? A freshly-minted blonde MARILYN MONROE. Onscreen chemistry unlike anything you’ve ever seen, built from what you’ve already seen.

Using cutting edge computer synthetics, the thousands of words dead actors spoke in dozens of moods will be recycled into millions of possible performances. And using both stock footage and CGI modeling, their likenesses can be pasted into new scenarios. How far can we take it? I’ll give you the future in one sentence.

MARLON BRANDO is OPTIMUS PRIME.

Our favorite part is that simulating the low-definition stock of old film will cover all CGI. BluRay has taught us that the better the picture, the faker-looking the Autobot. In black and white, you won’t be able to tell the real INGRID BERGMAN from the purely green-screened MEGATRON.

That’s our favorite part. But your favorite part? Demakes are guaranteed to not suck. With the hindsight of which contemporary movies are shoddily written, and a love of classic film, demade movies will not only strip away bad acting and shiny CG: they’ll apply actually solid scripts written deliberately for people who are proven to be able to act. LUCILLE BALL and JACK LEMMON will turn in performances literally designed for their roles, which in turn will be literally designed for them based on scientific breakdowns and focus tests of their strengths. If the technology pulls through, AI recreations of FRITZ LANG and ALFRED HITCHCOCK will soon direct demakes of GREEN LANTERN and DADDY DAY CAMP. It’s foolproof.

We’re opening up conservatively, demaking the second movie in a series. That packages it with a guaranteed prequel (TRANSFORMERS) and sequel (TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON). Just fathom it, Hollywood: a sequel demake, likely directed by an artificial intelligence of STANLEY KUBRICK himself.

If that doesn’t get you wet, we’ll toss this in: HUMPHREY BOGART will cameo to provide BUMBLEBEE’s one spoken line.

Bathroom Monologue: Dog Thoughts

2011-11-03T02:48:00.000-04:00

Oh my God give it to me please give it to me I know I've chased the ball like six hundred times and my teeth marks are all over it but if you just throw the ball one more time I'll be happy for the rest of my life you don't even have to throw it directly to me you don't even have to throw it in my direction you can throw it in the river you can throw it into the pitbull's yard I don't care just please throw the ball so I can taste it one more time I know how it tastes I've tasted it six hundred times but I know if I taste it just one more time right now it'll be awesome and I know you're going to throw but the eternal question is when but the eternal question is will I catch it this time but the eternal question is for God's sakes why haven't you thrown the ball?

Bathroom Haiku: Nanomachines in Autumn

2011-11-02T02:38:00.000-04:00

the nanomachines

showed sentience by stopping

to watch the leaves turn

Bathroom Monologue: Nothing Happened to My Marriage

2011-11-01T02:20:00.000-04:00

Nothing happened. Stop. Please, stop. I’m telling you, Mom: nothing happened. Lisa wanted babies, and then it turned out I’m shooting blanks. So nothing happened. And my lot got pulled and I went over to Iraq for two years. I bought her three separate plane tickets. She never used one of them. So nothing happened. My time came up, and I got home, and waited for her to pick me up on the curb. Nothing happened and I had to catch a cab. We fought about nothing. We argued in fine circles of inconsequence. One night I got so angry I almost threw a lamp at her. I didn’t pick it up, instead walking out of the apartment so nothing would happen. Half the mornings I’d wake up and find her half of the bed empty. We went to a therapist, and she wouldn’t open up about what I’d done wrong, and was very aggressive about me not opening up about things that weren’t there, and so we paid for six weeks of nothing happening until I just didn’t bother driving up there anymore. We don’t have a kid. We don’t own a house. She doesn’t have a career, and I’ll be damned if I’m to blame. So when I say “Nothing happened,” please stop asking.

Bathroom Monologue: Halloween Exposition

2011-10-31T01:00:00.001-04:00

"Are you still pouting about the costume? Because I'm not going as a sexy vampiress. My nipples will freeze off."

"It's not that."

"Then what? Reese's doesn't make vegan peanut butter cups."

"It's not that either."

"Move over. You've been getting grumpier every day all month. I thought you were going to turn into a pumpkin for a while."

"I haven't been entirely honest about Halloween."

"You don't say."

"I have a sister."

"I met your whole family. You don't have a sister. Or is this Halloween roleplaying?"

"You met almost my whole family."

"So you haven't been entirely honest about Halloween or your family."

"We don't talk about her much."

"Mark, that is messed up."

"Well, she's got issues."

"You look down on her for some psychological problems? I thought you were better than that."

"Every Halloween she tries to kill me."

"I might look down on her for that."

"It started when she turned thirteen. She got her period on Halloween night, and put on this mask, and-- please stop laughing."

"I'm sorry, just, really? Do you have a hidden camera in here? Am I being punked?"

"She killed my two best friends."

"Oh, Mark."

"We only found them two days later. I think she was coming after me, and they just got in the way. Her fingerprints were everywhere. All over the bodies. She used a machete, where she didn't use her hands."

"Honey. Come here."

"I'm not saying it for sympathy. Randi disappeared the next morning. We didn't find a trace of her until the next year. I was at a party, at a friend's house. I wanted to be around as many people as possible. There were so many that nobody noticed that Zach was gone."

"No."

"I went down to the basement for more wine. He was propped up against the racks. She was waiting down there for me."

"Where is she now?"

"This house doesn't have a basement, does it?"

"I'm not kidding, Mark."

"I killed her the next Halloween. That was nineteen-ninety-nine. Slept with a gun under my bed every night for the next year, never really thinking what I'd do with it. She came in through my window at midnight, and it just seemed... apparent. It was too obvious, what to do. And then she came back the next year."

"You said you killed her."

"Three in the chest, one in her green witch mask. The next year, she wore the same mask so I could see the holes. That year I just got in the car and drove. I didn't stop going until November second. Cops found me asleep on the wheel. She doesn't come after me on the first, though. She only comes on this day. And she's never stopped coming, no matter what I do. I've slept in churches, gotten locked up in police stations, even rented a fallout shelter. The only thing that's ever worked is to keep moving. To keep driving. She keeps chasing me; I've seen her in the woods, or just standing out in the dessert, her head following my car. In two-thousand-six, I lingered too long in a rest stop up. I saw her around the side of the pumps."

"You could have told me sooner."

"I wanted to. I mean it. I was just afraid, you know. That you'd think I was crazy."

"You should have told me sooner. Then I could have gassed up this morning."

"What?"

"Maybe you are crazy, Mark. But you're paying for drive-thru either way. This'll beat dressing up like a sexy vampiress."

Bathroom Monologue: “I’ve always wanted to die. Always.” –Natalie Cortez, The Seventh Victim (1943)

2011-10-30T07:00:00.006-04:00

Click the triangle to hear it. Click this text to download it.

I’ve always wanted to die. What could be grander than to pull away the veil? There are other grand things. Earning your first dollar, getting married, fighting on the side that wins the war – but those all pale in personal comparison to the end. You can’t top the end. Nothing gets to follow it.

It wouldn’t be a noose for me, though. No sitting the garage with the motor running. It’d be a waste of my only demise.

I took one of those tours of the Empire State Building. Went up near the top, to the wide room with all the windows. My plan was to find a door outside and leap into the world’s most famous skyline.

The skyline was my undoing. Or, my death’s undoing. Because you know what you see from the top of the Empire State Building? Story upon story of people’s work. Cement, brick and steel laid so men could deal, sell and swindle. The sheer quantity of life that goes on in just one adjacent building is intimidating. And I realized that no matter how many feet I fell per second, my impact would be negligible. All those active lives would keep marching towards much bigger deaths than mine. All mine would have over theirs was flash. I hate flash.

No, suicide simply wouldn’t do for me. It was too closed a circuit. Too petty for a grand thing. Nor could I hire someone to kill me. Then it’d be a two-person affair, still too closed a circuit. No, I wanted to die a real death, and since death is the end of life, I had to live a full one in order to receive a grand demise.

So I earned my first dollar. It’s still in my wallet, and will remain there when I hit the floor. I got married to a wonderful woman. We got divorced, which is understandable because Unitarians have always been too much for me, but being too much for me was the same reason I married her. And I got married a second time. I worked at the steel plant that supplied our military in three wars that we won. You can say we didn’t, but the privilege of being American is we always doing enough damage to feel like we couldn’t have lost.

And I bought a piece of the Berlin Wall on eBay. I was in Ohio when gay marriage was legalized, and actually held the camera for one of the first couples that proposed. I watched the last NASA space shuttle launch with my granddaughter.

She probably won’t be there when it comes. I don’t want to be surrounded by mourners who’ll leach the emotion. My death is going to be all mine. But it’s going to be amazing, not because of how many feet per second I fall, but because of how high I lived. How I cannot wait for it.

Bathroom Monologue: A Big Hand

2011-10-29T11:00:00.001-04:00

The giant protested. He wasn't at fault for the president's broken ribs: the host had asked to give him a big hand.

Bathroom Monologue: The Children of Cinema Lane

2011-10-28T01:00:00.066-04:00

Frank was a giant child. Given a bucket of candy and a DVR, he settled in for a night of movies. It was up to Lenore to hand out the treats this year. She adjusted the feathered skirt of her raven costume and paced the hall, excited to see what the kids of Cinema Lane were up to this year.

The first ring came at 7:00 sharp, the doorbell chiming along with the seventh ring of their grandfather clock. She hustled to the door, smoothed her feathers, pulled it wide with a smile.

"Trick or treat!" came a little girl's voice.

Lenore had to look down to see her. At her feet, on top of the WELCOME mat, sat a Samsonite briefcase. She quirked her head at it until the double-locks trembled with anticipation.

She asked, "What are you?"

It haunted its latches open, babbling, "I'm top-of-the-line luggage!"

"Yes, you are," she told the ghost-child, dropping two Reese's inside her vessel. It rotated its sliders in greeting bobbled off to the sidewalk.

Lenore closed the door and affixed the candy basket to the wall. Yet no sooner did she move to return to the den and Frank's zombie marathon, then the doorbell rang a second time.

She put on a smile and pulled open the door. A sapling waited on her stoop. All its limbs were curled inward, save two, which extended straight out to its right. A hat hung from the upper one. A suit jacket hung from the lower one.

She pursed her lips. Probably the evil tree's kids. She could make out its parents hiding conspicuously in the forest across the street.

"Trick or treat," said the sapling.

She asked, "And what are you?"

"I'm a coat rack."

Its limbs rustled, revealing a candy bag hidden under the suit jacket. When Lenore leaned in to hand over the Reese's, she noticed the fine tailoring. Not the sort of thing a family of trees typically had around for costume games.

"Very inventive," she praised, and off the sapling swayed. She closed the door and frowned into it. Behind her, some shellshocked blonde screamed about how 'they' had eaten her brother. Frank and his incessant love of the undead.

The doorbell rang. She fixed herself and answered. She recognized the little bastard immediately; the teen wolf from up the street, the one who was howling at his own music too often. He was well-mannered tonight, his fur stuffed into a trousers and a dress shirt. There was a red tie around his neck. Since his paws couldn't manage a Windsor, it was left in a loose shoelace knot.

"Good evening, Michael."

"Trick or treat!" he announced, paws thrusting a pillow case into the threshold.

"Aren't you a little old for this?"

"Never too old for free candy!"

Wolves always looked like they were smiling, so she couldn't read much into his expression. She narrowed her eyes at his attire instead.

"And what are you this year?"

"Huh?" He said. His muzzle dipped over his dress shirt like he was making something up. "Me? I'm, uh. I'm the one percent!"

"Michael."

"It's topical!" He nodded to assure her and re-presented the pillow case. She gave him one Reese's. When he hesitated for more, she gave him a gorgonic glare. Away the boy trotted for the next decorated doorstep. She waddled down behind him, peering first down the street, then up.

She made out a lone car parked half a block up. One door was open, all the windows lit. There was no driver.

She sighed before trotting up to her house. Inside, she shouted to the television room.

"Frank."

Her answer was the sound of panicked survivors boarding up a farm house against droves of the undead.

"Franklin Einstein, I know you can hear me."

The volume muted. In the stillness, his deep timbre responded, "Yes, dear?"

"Go check up the street for me. I think the neighbor kids ate another stock broker."

Bathroom Monologue: The Dark Lord's Rayment

2011-10-27T02:00:00.020-04:00

The fibres were harvested from wildebeests and werewolves. It was dyed in the blood of warlocks, each slain because he was born on this day, so that whosoever wears it will inherit their power. The tinted lenses in the mask enable the owner to peer into other realms of reality, protecting him from astral predators. In his case, wielding a whip fashioned from the Devil's own tail, such vision will allow him to ensnare the invisible predators to his will. For a mere $13.99, he will become the dark lord of this town.

That is how it seems to John Wiswell, age eleven, standing in the costume aisle of the local department store.

Bathroom Haiku: Baba Yaga's House

2011-10-26T07:00:00.007-04:00

living witch abode.

in search of ideal victims:

Home Depot workers.

Bathroom Monologue: Anatomical Model of a Mind

2011-10-25T04:23:00.000-04:00

Every day she took her lunch to the lab and ate with the anatomical model. He had crap bone structure, was plastic and afforded no conversation, but there was a sense of solidarity with him. He didn't stare. He didn't graffiti her office door. He didn't go behind her back to argue that her presence debased the very neuroscience she taught here. The anatomical model didn't know that she had feelings, but neither did her fellow professors. They thought without grey matter in her head that Ms. Skeleton was just some calcium-based robot, an illusion of a person. Many lunch hours she cried over it. Tearlessly, of course, since skeletons didn't have tear ducts. Tearing down academia's prejudices against non-fleshy human beings was so hard.

Bathroom Monologue: Clothes Make the Man

2011-10-24T03:23:00.000-04:00

His pants split at the crotch. In the middle of a firefight with the Motley Brothers, crouched behind what was a surveillance vehicle, the cotton gives way and ruptures from belt buckle to ass cheeks. In a moment, his tighty-whities are exposed to his superiors.

For the first time in four months he reflects. Those pants cost more than what he made in a year at the old job. You could sell all the ties his father ever wore and not come up with half of what his current one costs. No one in his family can even spell the material his vest is made out of. It saves his life twice before he falls over.

The shoulder-holster strains against his pectorals. Its that too-tight model that had reminded him for four months that he has two man-killers strapped to him at all times. Reaching for the steering wheel. Reaching for his wallet to pay for coffee. Even reaching to take a piss abrades the bicep, reminds the arm and alerts the hand that it has stopping power at its call.

He feels that memory course through his muscles. It's so thick that he has the second gun drawn before he has finished bouncing off the pavement. He rises, sweat evaporating through an imported porous button-down so that he can only smell a hint of himself as he draws a bead on Frank Motley. In a twitch, he will become the funniest story their outfit has ever heard. The man who slew a drug lord with his ass showing into the wind. As the bullet travels, he can only think that the clothes really have made him this man.

Bathroom Monologue: High Tech Problem. Low Tech Protest.

2011-10-23T10:00:00.001-04:00

You made me buy the toothbrush I can’t run through the dish washer

You made me want to take my phone to places it won’t work.

You made my kid sit inside on a sunny day, complaining that there’s nothing on.

So I’m writing this in a marble composition book. It doesn’t matter if all composition books are digital illusions I pay monthly fees to experience. This is a low tech protest.

Bathroom Monologue: Unwanted Lovers

2011-10-22T11:00:00.000-04:00

"I'd like to start a not-for-profit to prevent romance. Not all romance, but all romance-proper. I'm sologamous; I've been faithful to my right hand for years and have never been swayed to cheat on her. But most of my friends enjoy the company of others, and at first they're very cute about it. They make eyes after each other, give rides, buy little gifts, cover dinner when somebody's short, help out after a long day. All good stuff. Most of the adorable human behavior I've observed as people fell in love. It's once they got into the dirty work that it fell apart. Some time after the first date, the complications of moving your stuff here, and meeting your mom on Wednesday, and helping out after so many long days adds up. What does it add up to? To at least two of my friends sniping at each other and whining to me. Love stinks. What I want is to systematically keep all lovers apart - to keep them precisely just outside the grasp of completion, where absence makes the heart grow fonder and chemicals from the loins make the brain downright stupid. It would save me dozens of hours per month of unwanted-complaint-hours."