The nanny state is here.  When I went to use the bathroom this morning I noticed a sign on the stall.  “Please do not use and flush paper towels down the toilet!!!! Dumbass!”

I added the exclamation points and the word “dumbass” but otherwise this is the truth.  Anyway, the paper towel bandit(s) have brought custodial martial law down upon all of us.  Will these rebel(s) against plumbing follow this mandate?  That remains to be seen.  Given past life experience, I would say it is unlikely.  The rules are for those who would follow the rules.  Besides, it is a crime literally carried out behind a closed door.  It would be difficult, if not impossible, to flush these bastard(s) out.

However, the entire episode has sparked my imagination.  Solitude and a funny sign will do that to a person.  Anyway, I imagine a one man play inspired by those who would flush paper towels down perfectly good pipes.

Scene 1:  The Dilemma

Paper Towel Bandit:  (sings- did I mention this play was a musical?  I thought it appropriate as the acoustics in a toilet stall are amazing.)  Why I am trapped in this white, white world?  Can no one see what it is doing to me…eeeeee?  If I just add a bit of beige, would that be so wrong?

After that, the scene goes along and basically it is a look into the way that conformity rules our lives and one man’s desire to resist this conformity while performing a basic, but universal, personal act.

Scene 2:  The Sign

In this scene, the Bandit realizes that the “man” has erected a sign on the door of every bathroom stall in the building.  With the lights low, except for a lone, blue spotlight, our here gives a passionate monologue.

“Dirty bastards.  Do they think their sign matters to me?  What is their sign but an expression of their desire to control me, to mitigate even my bowel movements with their white, sterilized world?  Their sign has no meaning.  It is an abstraction, a nothing, a monkey’s strong arm.”  (Our hero pulls angrily at the paper towel dispenser and liberates a long piece of toweling.  He drapes the paper toweling over his shoulders like a flag)  “I will never succumb to their control again!!!

Scene 3:  Plumber’s Dilemma

Paper Towel Bandit (singing again):  The plumber got here fast, I can his crack-ed ass, leaning over as he works against me.  But I have news for him, the conclusion will be grim, because he cannot work those towels free.

Chorus

It is my greatest rush, to stopper up the flush (sung four times with background singers dressed as colorful toilet snakes)

 

Anyway, my play is still in the rough draft stage.  But I believe it will be a fine piece of work when complete.

If nothing else, its success will guarantee the outing of the paper towel perpetrator.  This is America.  And the only thing worse than being exposed as somebody too dumb to follow toilet protocol is to miss out on royalties from the one act play inspired by your story.

Of course, I am assuming there is only one person flushing paper towels down the toilet.  That’s the problem with being an optimist.  You’re always undershooting the magnitude of the issue.

 

Astronomer Royal, Baron Martin Rees of Ludlow, says that ET’s will be nothing more than body-less, powerful electric brains.  That’s right.  They will be so far along from an evolutionary sense that they will have evolved themselves right out of a body.  I wonder if that will affect the bathroom policies on QX-238 LP zzllsupsypz.  Hard to say without knowing the politics of disembodied, electric brain aliens.  Let’s say “no” for now and we can change our minds later if we get more information.  Anyway, this is what Baron Martin Rees of Ludlow thinks of our potential alien visitors.  Who are we to argue?

Well, I don’t know who you are, but I am the all-powerful, all-seeing, all county Muffet’s Orange.  To Baron Martin Rees of Ludlow I say quit being a pretentious ass and drop some of your names.  I further say that we shouldn’t be contemplating aliens at all.  We should be hiding from them.  Very quietly.  If there are aliens so technologically advanced, why would we want them around?  After all, you just said they don’t have bodies.  Thus, they probably need somebody to do all of their crap jobs for them.  How do you vacuum or unplug toilets without a body?

And do you know who is a likely candidate for these jobs?  Some mental midget with a body, that’s who.  Much like yourself.  It is hard to believe an astronomer could be so obtuse.  Didn’t he watch the miniseries V?  Or Independence Day?  The Day the Earth Stood Still?  Hasn’t he heard any Trump speeches?  Stupid English.  Nice teeth.

It doesn’t make sense.  Unless the Baron has something up his sleeve.  Maybe he is an alien with a fake body and an electric brain.  Baron Martin Rees is probably one of those sneaky aliens like in that Rowdy Roddy Piper movie or the one where the teachers are aliens.  It gives me shivers to think about it.  And it does explain his mathematical abilities.  Examine the evidence:

There is no way that is somebody’s real face.  It’s just a skin mask with an electric brain inside.  An electric brain bent on the subjugation of the entire human race.

Either that or he is really Gandalf, but has shaved his beard in order to go into witness protection after informing on a Hobbit organized crime ring.  Clearly, he is trying to cast a spell on whomever is taking the picture.  Unless aliens have anticipated this interpretation and have intentionally put on a meat suit that appears to be Gandalf in witness protection from the Hobbitfini crime syndicate.

If this is the case I can only say well played, my alien Master.

The first sheriff of Billings, Montana (or at least of the town that became Billings) was a guy by the name of John “Liver Eating” Johnson.  Now that is a cool name.  I’ll bet you don’t have a cool name like that.  You are probably Steve or Francis or Todd.  Something stupid like that.  Of course, if you had the right nickname you could mitigate your pedestrian moniker.  Maybe you want to be Todd “Liver Eating” Smith.  But you can’t just name yourself that.  You aren’t a rapper.  You have to earn your nickname.

You know how John Johnson became the “Liver Eater?”  He carved out and consumed the livers of his enemies, the Crow Indians.  They were his enemies because they killed “Liver Eating” Johnson’s wife.  Bad move.  Though his name wasn’t “Liver Eating” Johnson then.  It was John “Potentially Cannibal If You Piss Him Off” Johnson.  If there is one that that is true, it is that John Johnson’s nicknames were always appropriate.

Yes, he was the inspiration for the movie Jeremiah Johnson.  Nice catch, trivia geek.  I really like your Yoda t-shirt.  The green of his skin brings out the color of your eyes.

Anyway, the old days weren’t that good.  This is a lie people make up so other people vote Republican.  There was dysentery and polio and slavery.  Mothers died in childbirth all the time and people lived in sod huts.  If you got gangrene or a venereal disease you wished you wouldn’t have.  But, the nicknames were good, maybe even so good as to mitigate some of the downsides to being ignorant of hygiene and modern science.

Say you suddenly contracted syphilis.  You could be Ben “No Nose” Jones.  Dysentery?  Paul “Shit House” Schmidt.  What if you got scarlet fever?  Jennifer “Hot Body” Vanderhook.  From the South?  Emmett “Sister Loving” Davis.  The possibilities were endless.  It almost makes me want to be transported back to those days.  Think about the stupid nicknames we would have now.

“I-Phone” Sally.  Mitchell “Selfie Takin'” Reynolds.  Brad “World of Warcraft Ass Kicker” Templeton.  Scott “I Kneel to Kochs” Walker.

See, they all suck.

Katie “I’m Lookin’ to Dump My Husband by Reconnecting with My Old Boyfriend from College” Newton.  A little better, but a bit elongated.  Maybe if she killed her husband and ate some of his organs we would have more to work with.

Disclaimer:  If anyone decides to kill their spouse and eat his/her organs, Muffet’s Orange disavows any and all liability for said murder and subsequent cannibalism.  Muffet’s Orange does not condone cannibalism unless your wife is murdered by Crow Indians, you are trapped for the winter on Donner Pass, or if you are cast adrift in the South Pacific.

There is also a caveat for gaining the power of your enemy, though that is already loosely covered under the Crow Indian Wife Murder Exception.  Other than that, no cannibalism, regardless of the circumstance.

Reportedly people taste like pig.  But I can’t confirm that.

 

 

This is Jesus speaking.  Baby Jesus.  Though it doesn’t really matter what Jesus I am.  It’s really all an illusion to enable you simpletons to relate to me.  I’m kind of like the clown in Stephen King’s It.  Anyway, enough metaphysical chitchat.  I’ve things to do, you know.  You have a lot to live up to when you are the Son of God.  I mean, I have to be perfect.  No missed layups or failed tests for me.  I never get things wrong.  Ever.

Since this is true, I want to settle a few issues for you people on Earth.  The first thing is that I am a socialist.  Because I hear some of you saying I condone capitalism.  Did you even read the book?  I think some people need to work on their reading comprehension.  What part of my story don’t you understand?  I gave up working to preach the word.  How do you think I lived with no job?  By the charity of others, that’s how.  Welfare, by any other name.  Do you think I would be so hypocritical as to cut Social Security?  I’m perfect.  I can’t be hypocritical.  Also, why would I make gay people and then condemn them to hell for being as I made them?  Does that make any sense to you?  I am a logical god.  This isn’t some willy-nilly half-assed operation we are running here.

I also hear some of you are worshipping false gods.  Flying Spaghetti Monster ring a bell?  Muffet’s Orange is a false prophet.  Sorry to burst your bubble.  I mean, the next thing you know he will be talking about golden plates and the lost tribe of Israel.  I’ve been around for 2500 years- minimum.  Somebody made up the Flying Spaghetti Monster twenty five years ago as a joke.  Not funny.  Blaspheming bitches.

A Note from Thor

You should talk, you little panty waist.  I’m perfect.  I’m not a hypocrite.  You ever hear of the flood?  Lot’s wife turning to a pillar of salt?  Also, if you were only going to throw Lucifer into the Pit, why in the hell let him think he was going to take over heaven?  Fail.  All-powerful.  The One god.  Why don’t you pick up a hammer like a man?  Thooooorrrrrrrrr!!

A  Response from Zeus

I predate both of you clowns.  Thor, you even stole my thunderbolt idea.  Viking punk.  Get a haircut.  You look like a girl.

An Edict from Ra

Ra, the Sun God, here.  I changed all of your dirty diapers.  Sun God.  You ever see the pyramids?  That’s what I’m talking about.  What have you guys gotten the humans to do?  They made the pyramids without computers or the wheel.  That took some serious inspiration.  Sun God power, yell it louder.

Interruption from Baby Jesus

I can see this train has run off the rails.  You know, there’s a reason you guys are considered mythology now.  No vision.  And who let these guys in here?  Was that you, Muffet’s Orange?  You know, sometimes you really piss me off.  Don’t be surprised if you get Lyme’s disease this spring.  Just sayin’.

Aside from the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Free meatballs.

Yes, there are tofu ones as well.  The last thing I’d want to do is to offend anyone.

Hey, baby Jesus, wipe your face off.  Good Me.

If you have ever read Douglas Adams (as you should have if you have any sort of personal ethics- which you probably don’t) you know that the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42.  Of course, know one knows what the question is, but don’t concern yourself with details all of the time.  Details are debilitating.  Unless the details are relative to bomb defusing.  All rules have exceptions.

Did you also know that Lewis Carroll was fascinated by the number 42?  Alice in Wonderland has 42 illustrations, for example.  Conversely, the Japanese think that 42 is an unlucky number.  Wet blankets.  Maybe the Japanese don’t like Carroll’s work.  No Jabberwocky for them.  Which is probably okay as they already have Godzilla.  Go, go, Godzilla.

Anyway, I read the other day that 42 percent of Americans do not believe in evolution and think the world is less than 10,000 years old.  No trilobites for them.  Or dinosaurs.  No, no, Godzilla.  Interestingly, when I was ten years old my Sunday school teacher told me that the world was 6,000 years old.  Apparently, you start with Adam and Eve and then work your way through all the Methusaleh’s and sayeths and Abrahams’s many children and you end up with a world slightly older than a Joshua tree.  When I heard this claim from my Sunday school teacher, I was immediately taken aback.

“What about the dinosaurs !?” I exclaimed.

The teacher looked at me with pursed lips and a straight face.  “Those are the bones of the giants they talk about in the Bible.”

WTF, I thought.

From that day on I realized that adults were often full of shit, all the way up to their eyeballs and squeezing out the sides.

This revelation (pardon the pun) has not reached everyone, however.  Forty two percent for sure.  “I ain’t no kin of no monkey,” they say, while scratching rapidly at their testicles.

I watched a show the other night about math.  It seems that monkeys have a concept of math, in this case specifically the concept of more and less.  Scientists set up a test where they show their monkeys two screens with dots.  One screen has more dots than the other.  The object of the test is to touch the screen with more dots as quickly as possible.  Anyway, it turns out that the average college student and the average lemur perform this test at a similar rate.  As you might imagine, there are some people who easily best the monkeys.  However, as you may not imagine, some percentage of people get their asses kicked by the monkeys.  The monkey ass-kicked number is not forty two percent.

But it ought to be.

Also, quit picking on monkeys.  They didn’t do anything to you.  Well, they might have given us the AIDS.  But whose fault it that?

In Alice in Wonderland, the White Queen’s age is 37,044 days- which also means the Red Queen is 37,044 days old.  This adds up to 74,088 days.  Significance?  The number 74,088 can also be rendered as 42 x 42 x 42.  Pow.  Lewis Carroll.  This equals a bit more than 202 years.  If you multiply this number of years by 42 you come up with 8,525 years.  By my newest calculations, this is the age of the Earth.

As reported to the White Queen.  According to Lewis Carroll.  As revealed to him by the caterpillar whilst sharing a hookah.

On a Tuesday evening in March.

Jabberwocky.