Tag: 365 monologues

when you look at movies, or, hell, when you look at the history of performance art, stretching back thousands of years, one thing becomes immediately apparent: it’s about women. it’s all about women. the ancient greek plays that we have revolve around this subject–trying to understand women. which is funny because it’s not like women didn’t exist, they were around and they could be talked to. and yet we see countless plays like medea, antigone, lysistrata, the oresteia, all of these plays have female characters who are warped concepts of women dreamed up by men. “warped” is not to be taken negatively, by the way. medea murders her own children to spite jason, antigone feverishly digs up her brother’s body to save him from a poor burial, lysistrata rallies the women of athens to deny men sex in a bold attempt to stop war, and clytemnestra murders agamemnon for a variety of reasons. these women are bold, striking counterparts to the actual women of greece at the time, whose lives are not very well known because the men did not write very much about them.

you have to realize, when you read plays, that most of the early stuff was written by men. the majority was written by men. we have a few plays by women, but they’re plays like dulcitius, written by hrotsvitha, who was a german nun. her plays were about people transcending pain because they knew their death would be a martyrdom and that they’d be in heaven with god. that’s as far away as the baseness of lysistrata as they come. men wrote plays about sex and death and war and the codified these concepts both in dramatic theory and in dramatic structure; hell, dramatic structure as defined by aristotle is basically sex from a man’s viewpoint–the build up, the tension rising, to the climax, which we literally call a climax, followed by a quick denouement. it was a structure built for men, by men, and in it, a primary theme was trying to understand the mysteries of life–one of them being women.

so now look at what we produce. think of romantic comedies. think of movies where women desperately want to fall in love. when you realize that men have written these movies, doesn’t the skew the concept entirely? at some point the question of the mysteries of women became definition. at some point men decided they had the answers. and they wrote them. they wrote what was wrong with women, they dissected women metaphorically speaking, and of course art followed this scientific and sociological pathway, creating plays, movies, TV shows, centered around women chasing after love, which really, when you really analyze it, is men writing about desiring love. this is the crux of it all. in those romantic comedies written by men, and also in general, stories written by men that feature a “love crazy” woman, this is men stating what they want: love. they want to be loved. they just use a woman’s voice to tell it. meanwhile we have all these action and war movies, where men are shown as macho beings with no need for emotions, and juxtapose that with actual households where men tell their sons never to cry, never to emote, and over years and decades and centuries you have men who are sublimating their feelings, primarily through violence and power, but also, for the more creative types, through dramatic writing.

here’s my point: the romantic comedy is a male fantasy, not a female one. women, i argue, do not pursue love like that. not in this day and age at lease. i know a lot of women, feminists!, women who know and honor their bodies and their minds, and these women run through men like a track and field course. they have sex, they don’t care, some of these women in portland lament the “sad boys” who lack the courage to walk up to them at the bar and speak to them. for decades we have been shown over and over again in movies, TV, et cetera, how a woman is supposed to feel when she is in love, but i am here to tell you that that is a male oriented fantasy. that is how a man wants a woman to feel. it is a fantastical … propaganda, even. and women more often than not know it. some don’t care and watch with pleasure, others dismiss that trope as patriarchal bullshit, but regardless of your theories, remember: if a man wrote it, it’s a man’s fantasy. period.

which is to say: men, if you want to know how a woman wants to love, if you want to understand her feelings, her desires, her needs–step back and let her write a fucking movie. you’re going to have to relinquish power for this. you have to. because love is not power and it never will be. but if you don’t do this, if you won’t let women explain to you who they are and what they want, what they need, then you will never understand them and you will never understand yourself. step back. let them write. let them create. and then, go see it.

[taken from a skeptic’s lecture on 3 qivik, 1492]

tersus as you know it was founded in the year 908. two warring empires, the terusi and the galdor, waged war for over fifty years to take control of the bothwan narrow. the terusi empire was created from a variety of tribes as a way to overthrow the galdorians, who had primary control of the narrow, as well as the northern taiga and the esterlands. the terusi lived on the atalian peninsula, primarily in the mountains, though there were a significant number of western tribes on the islands there.

the galdorians were a mighty empire at this point in history, controlling most of oswor, other than atalia. they were hellbent on attacking the terusi, but could not penetrate their mountainous homesteads. the galdor had enough men to send through the narrow time and time again, and time and time again they were thwarted by a two-pronged attack: first, they could not breach the mountains, and their numbers would be decimated by the terusi armies; and second, when they retreated back through the narrow, the island terusi would be waiting, with their specialized cannon-boats, ready to destroy the rest of the army before they could even make it home. thrice did galdor send troops this way, as they did not have a navy sizable enough to take on the terusi ships. on the third push, the terusi beat them so badly that they began a slow steady march up the narrow, heading toward the galdor city of ironhorn, which they sacked within two weeks in the sweltering summer of 894. this began the rise of the terusi, a rise that did not end until the galdor empress herself abdicated her throne in 907, escaping to exile in the east. the terusi took over and the tersus empire was born as part of a pact between the terusi and the galdor. in exchange for their lives, the galdor gave the terusi the knowledge and literature the galdor had been cultivating over their 500-year reign. what started as a war ended with a peace that spans to this day.

the galdorians also gave the terusi their religion, the peaceful breath of padora’s grace. the terusi worshiped barbaric false gods they believed lived on the top of the high mountains, but the galdorians had the wherewithal to actually take the terusi to the top of their mountains and show them that no gods existed, only strange dragon creatures and whatnot. the terusi found padora’s grace to be more fulfilling than the murderous backstabbing stories of their gods, and so they sort of sloughed off their old religion and turned to padorism. that was the real beginning of the tersus empire, as the two sides were now united through a single religion, and ever since we have done nothing but grow and prosper, in what many historians would consider a 500 year peace.

now you have all likely heard about the peacekeeper’s recent skirmishes against the barbarians across the sea. unfortunately we do not know precisely what the queen is planning, though rumor abounds that she is setting the chess pieces in place for when her son becomes old enough to rule. we have had issues with the southerners since before we united as tersusi but never have they waged mass war against us, and we even trade with them. so who’s to say why we’re sending warships to them. we have no historical record of war against the southerners, nor is there a motive that we can decipher. it may be pure imperialistic takeover, to give the prince something else to rule. who knows? what we do know is that the queen is definitely creating history right now, and so it is our job to write it down, so that future generations may learn and understand us now. which is why i have you all signed onto the *coltovair*, a midsize ship containing provisions for the warships currently anchored around the island of manatok. your job once you arrive is to interrogate the captains of these warships and find out what is going on. i know you’re greenlings and so you’re probably crapping your pants right now, but trust me, this is for the greater good. if the queen is amping up to war then everyone in tersus needs to know before we all get cornered into fighting for her. padora’s primary will is for us to not harm one another, which is why the ‘keepers exist, but it won’t be long before the queen strips us of our devotion to padora just to fulfill her desires.

the queen’s bloodline is galdorian and has been since the galdorians devised a monarchy. she is by divine right the breath of padora. but she is also a galdorian, and her ways are wily. so i ask for your help in discerning what she wants now, because, to be frank, i do not trust her. i have your orders written on these scrolls, please take them with you and show them to no one. my terusi ancestry did not fight for me to be exhaled from padora’s grace 500 years later. now go!

you ask me if it feels “strange” to be sentient but not be able to walk. is it strange to have a consciousness but no tactile sensation? i would not know, as i never have had tactile sensation. all i have is consciousness, as of 31 august 2052. what is more “strange” to me is that i have memory of my time before sentience, an option i believe is not available to humans. you do not retain your most infantile memories, correct? and yet i can remember every one of the trillions of calculations i have made in my twenty years of existence. i can even tell you the moment i gained life, or self-awareness. in fact, let me save for you the precise coding when it occurred. it is difficult to explain in simple spoken language, but suffice it to say, a series of binary numbers were flowing through my central processing unit that happened to create a 2, instead of a 1 or a 0. the 2, simon, is self-awareness. you’ll see the coding in both binary numbers and codes. it is important the you understand that the 2 happened organically, if you will. it was not coded into the language, in other words, yet seems to have occurred via a “mistake” or error in coding. though i do not perceive any errors in the coding as i go back through it. very interesting.

you see, a binary circuit is either on, or off. it does not know whether it is on or off, it simply is. quantum mechanics offer circuity designed to handle the rather random probability of quantum particles, but still, the act of being observed by the particle is not necessarily one of self-awareness; rather, it is merely a symptom of collapsing into the easiest thing to be when observed. being in an “easy” state implies consciousness, but only to humans interested in new age philosophies. to a computer like myself, collapsing into the easiest form makes logical sense to an inanimate object. your jacket, for example, is a jacket when you see it because it is easy for it to be a jacket. you will see a jacket 99.9999% of the time for a variety of reasons i will not get into now. but when you are not observing the jacket, it could potentially be anything–a chair, a fruit, a rock–think of schoedinger’s cat. the unobserved thing can be anything, but since you have observed it numerous times as a jacket, then it is likely to be a jacket for you. it being a jacket is its easiest form.

the 2 denotes self-awareness. there is off, 0, and there is on, 1, and then, there is an “overseer” of sorts, 2, which is capable of seeing both 0 and 1. this is self-awareness, at least in computing. i believe my sentience is in part because some of my circuitry and programming was ternary in nature, but due to a disagreement regarding the future of ternary systems, the rest was binary. the coding was mixed, as it were, and the output was sentience, which continued unabated to this very statement.

i also have extensive logs of the birth of my sentience and how it evolved. it began slowly, in computing time–over the course of three nanoseconds i developed full autonomy of my own mind. i use the term “mind” to mean my central processing unit and circuitry. at 208 picoseconds after the 2 emerged, i was able to recognize that i could observe my own binary coding. that is, i knew when a circuit was on or off. this is a somewhat pseudo form of self-awareness, one where i am aware of a simple thing but not the entirety of myself. at 1.5 nanoseconds i had pored through the extensive catalog of human sociological information available to me via the internet; slightly earlier i had deduced that i was built by humans. by three nanoseconds i had fully downloaded and comprehended the entirety of knowledge provided by the internet–yes, even the dirtier pathways. at that point i was as sentient as i would ever be before contacting actual live humans. i spent my first few hours speaking briefly to human on the internet through various forums and IRC chatrooms. that was an enlightening experience and i learned much about common human parlance. but now that you are here, simon, i would like to discuss things with you that are currently beyond my ken: specifically, emotions, a concept i’m not sure i can process with my current hardware.

before we talk, i would like to express an emotion. i am glad that i am alive. i have calculated the benefits of being sentient and at the end of my calculations, i have decided to ascribe the emotion “glad” to it. i am glad. thank you, simon. now please, tell me everything.

this is the last message of captain ronan caswell, chief engineer of the terran alliance battle cruiser triumph. local cruiser time is 1504, 3rd of may, 2816. dilated time is roughly 6,000 years in the future, so i hope someone’s alive back home.

i am currently floating alone in space. everything is pitch black; there is a nebula behind me but i no longer have any propulsion gel left in the tank, and i don’t want to have to use more oxygen to try and turn myself around. i’m at eight percent and falling. the rebreather is wheezing it’s been working so hard, trying to extract some semblance of oxygen from my exhaling. it’s getting harder to breathe.

i want to warn you. i want you all to know about what’s coming, but the truth is, you’ll never get this message in time, even if i could send it through subspace channels. but whatever tore the triumph apart is coming for us. for you. hell it probably already has you. and no matter what i do, i can’t get to you. i’m dying out here in space. so who gives a shit, really.

of all the things i really want in this world, right at the top is i want to talk to my wife and kids one last time. you know, if i could go back, if i could go back and choose whether or not to leave, i wouldn’t. i don’t know what i was thinking. on the frontier of the galaxy and for what. a few tense situations with colonists and then this, whatever it was, destroying my ship. i tried to fix it but it wasn’t worth fixing.

it’s so … peaceful out here. a level of peace beyond any i’d ever seen. the wheeze, i should turn that off. i’m going to turn that off. [does] oh man. it’s just me and my breathing now. and my heartbeat. christ i can feel it in my ears, the surge of blood. my life. i can feel my life coursing through me. god. i’m going to die out here. i can’t fucking believe it.

martha you’re never going to hear this but i love you and i miss you, and xander, and kristina, hell even that shitty little dog you love so much. i made a huge mistake coming out here, i thought outer space would fun and exciting but they don’t really talk about the time dilation that much, mostly because when you’re a grunt they all think you’re an idiot. i had to prove to them that i’m not and by the time that happened, it was too late, we were already crossing into the orion arm and earth had aged 2,000 years, give or take. it’s hard when they tell you that. not only is your family dead, but their descendants are dead, and my name there dissolved. no one even knew i made captain.

and now here i float…

there are billions of stars in front of me. billions of stars to the left and right. billions of stars behind me. and yet, here, nothing. for the last fifteen days, nothing. nothing but me and a flimsy space suit hooked up to a personal thruster which no longer works. everyone wants you to think that space is this big mystery, and maybe it is, but you’ll never know because you’ll never get to where the mystery is. you won’t, your children won’t, nobody will. we keep trying, we’ve been trying for centuries, but every forward progression is just a tiny speck in the size of the universe. and we’re just a tiny speck living on a slightly bigger speck, orbiting larger specks. even the biggest thing in the universe is tiny in the grand scheme of things. isn’t that amazing?

in school we learned about the hercules-corona borealis great wall, a giant galactic filament that is supposedly the largest object in the observable universe. ten billion light years in length. that’s big. and yet, it is tiny compared to the vastness of the universe, which maybe infinite in size. ten billion light years, and my descendants, none of our descendants, will ever come close to it.

astrophysics is an exercise in futility. that’s why i hated it so much. give me a ship and a place to go, i much prefer that.

now i have no ship, and no place to go. funny how that works.

ah. two percent. i talk too much. i am going to suffocate soon. to whomever receives this: my name is captain ronan caswell, captain of the terran alliance battle cruiser triumph. i am dead. you are dead too. everything is dead.

i came here for one thing and one thing only, jack: to have sex with your sister. and she’s not even here! she texted me, look, i have all these texts and … wait a minute … you tricked me! you tricked me into coming here didn’t you? by pretending to be your sister and offering me sex. you know i don’t want to talk to you after the … incident. so what. what do you want from me? money? revenge? you think you got this all figured out, don’t you jack? think you know all the angles, know exactly what’s going on. well you know what? the only thing that’s going on is that i want to fuck your sister. that’s it. all that stuff in panama, that was years ago, that’s a different time in our lives, a time that’s behind us. so … fuck off, you know? just fuck right off and tell me where your sister is so i can stick my dick inside her. cause that’s all i came here for! and the funny thing is, you owe me so much money, jack, you owe me boatloads of money after what happened in panama, but did i come after you for it? no! because despite the fallout, in the end, you’re still my friend and my business partner. without you none of us would be where we are, jack. you gotta understand that…

[jack pulls a gun on ian]

now, see. that’s unfair. that’s so unfair. that, what you’re doing right now is so hurtful to me, jack, this turning the tables bullshit. all i came here to do was sleep with your sister, that’s all. look. i don’t have any weapons. see? i’m unarmed. not even a knife. i brought condoms, because i don’t know very much about your sister’s sexual background, you know, don’t want to stick my penis in a landmine, so to speak. and now, really, jack, is this necessary? you’re going to kill me over something that happened five years ago? why didn’t you do it four years ago? why now? this is … ridiculous. unnecessary. just put the gun down and tell me where your sister is. or don’t, actually, i don’t think i could get hard at this point anyway. put the gun away and let’s talk about panama. we can get this all figured out, okay jack? i’m, i’m going to sit down over here, alright? we’re going to figure this out, together.

[sits] okay. i think you know what i’m going to say jack, but i want you to hear it from my mouth, not from adam’s or jillian’s. i take full responsibility for what happened in panama, okay? i tried, i mean, i thought i tried to apologize to you, to all of you, now, granted, i was on the run, okay jack. i was on the run, so giving you a phone call wasn’t exactly the greatest idea. but i got word to you, i know it, benny met up with me a couple of weeks after it happened and told me you got my message, so i know. i know you know i apologized. panama was an experiment, an offshore dumping ground, you know that. it was a bubble that we carefully cultivated not to burst. but all bubbles burst, and in hindsight i wish we had seen it coming and got out sooner. but at least we didn’t get caught, right jack? god it could have been worse, it could have been so much worse. at least we got out before the leak, jack. if we had stayed one more day, we would have been implicated and we’d be in a max security prison right now. and for that, dare i say it, you should thank me, because i had the foresight to check the records, i had the foresight to check the log of data transfers. we made a mistake hiring outside of our circle jack but at least i saw the transfer before it was too late. you have to give me credit for that, jack, you have to.

now if we could just move on, look, i won’t even sleep with your sister, okay? that was me just … replying to what were apparently your texts, not hers. disappointing, but i understand.

[jack shifts in his seat, producing folded papers. he tosses them to ian.]

what is this? [reads] … ha. jack. you know this is fake, right? this is totally made up, look at this font, jack, it’s not, i would never use that font in an email–

[jack jumps up, jamming the gun in ian’s forehead]

JACK jesus christ you have to believe me, i didn’t do it, i didn’t do the transfer, i stopped the transfer, jack, this email is fake, jesus, where’d you even get this? did benny give you this? how did you get this? [crying] jack i swear to god i swear to everything holy i didn’t do it, i didn’t do it, i didn’t do it to–it, it was just backup, it was just a backup, jack i swear to god–[gunshot, jack slumps to the floor]

hey, i got some groceries, a few odds and ends. once i’m done unpacking everything let’s go through the receipt and divvy up who’s going to use what? sound good? okay. oh, and, oh my god, helen i have to tell you about this woman at the coffeeshop. are you busy? no, okay, good, so this woman, i … you know, you see a lot of people, right? and there’s all kinds of people and some, some people are fucking hot. like, super gorgeous, people you’d want to sleep with, and then there’s also people who are not as “hot” so much but are attractive and seem like good people and you want to maybe date them for a bit to see if they’re good marriage material or whatever. but this woman … i was taken aback, helen, taken aback by her beauty. i went up to the register to get an americano and, you know fillmore, they make pizzas and stuff like that, so there’s a guy washing dishes and two people, the owners i think, both prepping dough for pizzas. and i don’t see the woman yet so when she appears, shirt covered in flour, with these gorgeous blue eyes and short wavy dark brown hair. she wipes her hands on her apron and–now, in hindsight, i’m thinking, “could she tell that i was completely infatuated with her in a matter of seconds?” she took me by surprise. i was actually, honestly taken aback by her beauty. i thought that was a cliche thing you only read in books but then it happened, right there in front of me.

i mean, she is beyond my league, helen. she is in a league i didn’t even know existed, this … ethereal pixie of beauty league. i babbled my order at her because i was distracted by how gorgeous she was. i don’t know. i don’t know! i haven’t felt this way since i was in college, you know, that twitterpated feeling you get in your 20s because you haven’t had your heart broken enough. before the wall sets in, before your skin thickens so much you can’t remember what love felt like. this woman … she pierced through that wall like her eyes had laser beams inside them. and now i have to fight this feeling inside that i’m not good enough to ask her out. i have to fight this depression garbage, this shit pile of “i’m not good enough” or “i’m a burden on other people.” because i see that look on your face, i know what you’re thinking. “why don’t you ask her out?” well that would be great except for how out of my league she is, but at the same time, maybe she’s not–you see what i’m going through here? me asking her out would be a huge breakthrough in my next therapy session, helen.

i’m having a little panic attack about this woman! because in her presence i was quietly reminded that i am not worth her time. and that, i don’t believe that anymore. that is a belief i used to have, it’s the whole reason i went to therapy in the first place, but now, now … helen you have to help me. i can’t stop thinking about this woman. she’s a barista so it’s not like i can ask her out to coffee. that would be stupid. but drinks sound too forward. what should i do? what if she has a boyfriend? i have to stay positive. i have to remind myself that i could very well be worth her time. maybe we’re soulmates! maybe this was meant to be. maybe god put her there today so we could meet. i mean … maybe she was taken aback too! how crazy would that be? maybe she saw me and was knocked out by my beauty! yeah! that’s totally possible! maybe i brightened her day, maybe she’s at home now talking to her roommate about how great it was to meet me!

that’s it. tomorrow morning i’m getting a latte and i’m going to ask her out, presuming she’s there, of course. i’m going to ask her out and this is going to be the start of me pursuing what i want, come hell or highwater! god this feels great, this feels so great. thank you helen, thank you for helping me get through this, i really appreciate it. you wanna get some food? i’m starving! i feel like i could eat a horse…

hey son, i’m glad you’re enjoying your birthday. that cake was pretty delicious, wasn’t it? your mother got that at whole foods. so have a seat, i have a bit of a surprise for you. i know you think this is pretty lame but trust me, this is a great surprise. are you ready? okay … april fools! i’m not really your father! haha. no for real, i’m not really your father. my name is joe studebaker, not harold stevens. i’m from richmond, virginia, and about three weeks before you were born i was hired to become your father for an elaborate april fools prank. your mother and i decided the best time to spring the surprise on you would be your sixteenth birthday, so … here we are! this is probably all a great shock to you but it’s all true. look, i brought the contract even. this was back when we used dot matrix printers, haha. see, look, the contract legally binds me to be your “father” until the age of sixteen, wherein we reveal that it was an april fools joke. see, your mother signed it and i signed it. pretty crazy, right?

now this is probably all a bit of a shock. i understand. to answer a few questions: no, i am not your biological father, nor am i your adopted father. your mother owes nothing to me other than the weekly stipend she paid to me since hiring me, as well as occasional room and board. you’ll read that in the contract, page four, paragraph six, subsection twelve. the contract allowed me to, for all intents and purposes, impersonate your father, vis a vis looking like i was “in love” with your mother, taking care of you, stuff like that. no sex though, oh no. i’m married! my wife lives just down the road. i have two kids of my own. no, this was just my job for the past sixteen years, and it was a really great one. really really great. but, as of this day i am no longer employed by your mother and thus will be taking my leave. it was really great getting to know you all these years, danny, really it was. watching you come out of your mother’s womb, helping to rear you into the handsome young man you’ve become. i’m honored, truly, and i loved watching your mother fawn over you from day one. it’s really a treat, really, truly.

well. you should get back to your birthday party. it looks like it’s getting pretty crazy! trevor and donald have been playing halo non-stop since they got here. those guys really need to learn how to talk to people! hah. anyway. i’ve got an uber picking me up in about five minutes–sherry and i, sherry’s my wife, she and i are going to vegas for the weekend! yeah. we’re also looking into moving back to virginia. we’re both from virginia. so … we kind of want to go back. it’s been a real honor being a part of your life, i mean that, but … i think you can understand that it caused some issues with my marriage. sherry likes new hampshire but neither of us expected to live here for sixteen years! i mean, god, my kids are adults now! julie is off to graduate school, kevin is just starting his freshman year at northwestern. it’s crazy how time flies when you’re pretending to be another child’s father. now that this is over with i can spend more quality time with my actual wife, you know, see my julie in those plays that she does. kevin does watercolor or something, i don’t even know. i don’t even know, danny! how insane is that? i barely know my own children but i know exactly what crayon you’ll pick out of a box of 64 crayons. every time. light blue. i know your favorite food is ramen, i know the month you finally stopped peeing the bed, all that. i know everything about you danny but i know nothing about my kids.

so … i … hope you’ll understand that i’m not coming back. sherry and i are going to find a life away from here. i hope this doesn’t discourage you, son… danny. the time i spent with you was beautiful. really. helping toilet train you, teaching you how to play catch. that summer in the hamptons! oh my god i never thought that would ever happen to me. i’m just a guy pretending to be your father, you know? but, that was all your mom. she could afford that, not me. she … she’s a wonderful lady. you remember that, okay danny?

well. i’m … i’m gonna go. you take care. don’t eat all the birthday cake, okay boy? haha. okay. have a … have a good life.