“I was told to write a journal.

I asked my psychiatrist what I should write.

I was told it was up to me.

I was told people usually write about their experiences.

I scoffed.

Who the fuck wants to remember their experiences? Especially in this fucking place.

I’ll write whatever, just to shut up the nagging from these glorified bartenders.”

A journal by a patient named Lugi was recently recovered. The journal contains an anthology of stories. Lugi wrote every day while he was staying in a mental hospital. The book was found by a kleptomaniac in the institution who stole the book and hid it in the basement where he hid what he stole.

Eventually, a nurse found the lair of stolen things. The nurse recognized the book. She knew it was the property of a patient who recently left the institution. The nurse weeps because of the memories she had of the patient. She read the journal, and she wanted to share it with the rest of the world.

The nurse showed the journal to the patient’s last psychiatrist, and he told her, “Lugi wrote stories about his life, and he fictionalized it to distance himself from his memories.” The nurse tried looking for Lugi, but all his records are sealed. She googled his name, but she realized Lugi isn’t his real name, and he isn’t the type of person who would have social media accounts.

So, she decided to give the book to a childhood friend who is a struggling writer. The nurse told her writer friend the story of the patient. She grew up with the writer, and she gave him the book to read.

The writer asked about the patient. “What was he like?”

The nurse cackled.

And cackled.

And she cackled some more.

The writer joined in on her cackling.

After a few minutes of cackling, the writer asked the nurse, “That bad, huh?”

The nurse stops and smiles. She gets teary and emotional. The nurse wipes a tear. “Yes. He’s been in and out of the institution since I started working there.”

The writer was taken aback by the statement.

The nurse sadly nods. “He arrived there when he was a child, and I remember some of the staff was wondering why they would even allow someone that young in the facility full of adult patients.”

The nurse holds back her tears. “Everyone assumed he was going to be a problem, but he was very nice. He barely spoke. We never had a problem with him. Although, I’ve heard he had several different psychiatrists, and several of them either transferred to another hospital or quit. I’m not sure if he was the reason, but I’ve heard he had problems with psychiatrists. But with the staff, he was always nice to us.”

“Really? Do you know the reason why he had so many therapists? Or is it normal for someone to be treated by multiple therapists?”

“Well, there’s nothing normal in psychiatric institutions, but I know there were several staff members who left because they couldn’t stand the sight of a child being treated there. There are some days where it’s difficult to see some of the patients, but for some people, it was too much for them to see a child in a mental hospital.”

The writer was inspired by the story, and he planned on writing a book about Lugi. However, the writer read the book of Lugi. The struggling writer quit because he knew he will never write anything better than what he just read. He decided to publish the book in its original form, untouched. “Well, I had to fix some grammar mistakes, but it’s mostly untouched.”

The following is an excerpt from Lugi’s journal apparently high on happy pills he was forced to take.

“Have you ever read your own stuff and wept?

Weep because it’s so good.

And weep because you might not be able to write anything better.

It’s heartbreaking really.

It’s heartbreaking how good I am.”

- Lugi on November 25, 2006

Since when was the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre funny? Even fictionalised - as it is in this movie - it’s hardly a barrel of laughs, is it? Especially when you’re looking down the barrel of a Tommy gun. It’s enough to make you choke on your tooth-pick. Maybe being filmed in black and white disguises the brutality of the scene (this certainly is no Scarface or The Untouchables). The blood on his spats that he’s troubled by later - not as bad, surely, as the coffee (that isn’t really coffee) which had been spilled on them in an earlier scene - these are the least of the worries that the humourless, cardboard cutout villain of the piece should be concerned with, surely?

Transgender rights are hotly-contested these days. But if you’re hoping for a nuanced approach to such matters, you won’t find them here. And it has to be said that the two cross-dressing leads - playing a pair of wisecracking down-on-their-luck musicians who have inadvertently witnessed a slice of gang warfare - really don’t look all that convincing at all as members of the fair sex. Even in black and white. Where’s Robin Williams when you need him? It’s not just the much-put-upon manager of the all-female band that they infiltrate (in their attempt to escape the Chicago Mob) who appears to have lost his glasses - everybody else is just as myopic, and there can be no other explanation, surely, for how they get away with their implausible scheme for so long.

The film’s view of millionaires (they would be billionaires now, of course - such are the effects of inflation) is quaint, to say the least. The assumption that most of them would be octogenarians is clearly outdated. Silicon Valley geeks were clearly a thing of the future. A modern-day remake of this film would doubtless feature a villainous billionaire looking like just like ‘Dr Evil’, with an obsession with space - and the package that is delivered in a key scene containing an expensive bracelet for one of the cross-dressing leads that he has unaccountably fallen for (more shortsightedness at work, clearly), would now be delivered by the billionaire’s ubiquitous freight service (which would be named Orinoco, or something suitable exotic). But instead of which, we must contend with stereotypical investors in stocks, shares, and futures; and watch as their beady eyes lift up in concert from the columns of the Wall Street Journal to peruse a rather more shapely set of statistics heading their way - not our gender-bending protagonists, but the seductively-proportioned ukulele player who functions as the female lead of the movie.

By all accounts, she didn’t get on at all with her male opposite number, and so the joke about the frigidity of their characters’ on-screen relationship may have mirrored what was actually happening behind-the-scenes. Not that any of this seems to bother the other male lead, the double bass player - one shake of his maracas, and he’s being proposed to by a lecherous millionaire who bears absolutely no resemblance to Elon Musk. Give it another thirty years, mind…

The reliance upon coincidence to further the ridiculous plot is telling. The most obvious example of this is when the hoodlums end up staying at the same hotel (out of all the many, many possible candidates) as the fugitives, where their improbable disguise as lovers of Italian opera is as unlikely as the fate they come to as a result of a suspiciously overlarge birthday cake. Viewers might be forgiven for assuming that at this point the female lead would pop out of said cake singing, ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President.’ No such luck. Never mind the sheer implausibility of a guy with a submachine gun hiding in a cake. Instead, let’s all chuckle as the spat-wearing villain spats out his final line: ‘Big Joke.’ It’s no Madame Butterfly.

Lots of screwball comedy ensues, with endless running around frantically (so much so, I was expecting Benny Hill to turn up at one point, and for Yakety Sax to start playing). But no, the only sax on view belongs to the square-jawed Spartacus star (no, not Kurt, the other one) who the ukulele player has fallen for, hook, line and stinker - despite the fact that, by his own admission, all he call really offer her is coleslaw in the face, old socks, and a squeezed-out tube of toothpaste. What an implausible end for these characters - though not quite as much so as the fate that awaits not-Spartacus’ best buddy. Despite asserting his true masculinity at the very conclusion of the movie, he still faces the prospect of marriage to a dirty-minded Bill Gates-substitute. Wowser.

In the final analysis, it’s all a bit of a lemon. I’m sorry to have poured cold water on those who think this movie is some kind of classic. But what more can I say about the film director who gave us this unlikely piece of whimsy - other than this?

‘Well, nobody’s perfect.’

I am not sure if this is in Comedy because there are 218 entries and counting, to win $3 in 11 years and some have clearly been waiting longer than that. Talk about long term investments but without any gains. Actually more like a piggy bank that may or may not belong to you, depending on time, chance or circumstance.

Or if it is because of the title of the challenge, which, because of the prize and time frame of the challenge, already makes us all very unserious.

Or if it is because A is clearly a Prose Gold user exercising his full rights by creating such a challenge. And which reminds me so much of Tumblr Blaze, if you know what I'm talking about.

Or if it is because there is a high probability the winner could be sick or dead and $3 will either not matter or A would get to keep his $3, except he won't because it would be in a dead person's wallet.

Or if it is because said winner could be me.

BONUS: Or if it's because this challenge is either democracy, in which case we will know the winner in 2033, on the very last day of the challenge.

Or monarchy in which case, A gets to go through 218 entries and counting, in which case, the result will most likely be biased or limited to what A can remember of this many entries. Or in which case, we never find out the winner, because a number of things could happen to A in 11 years including death (which A is forced not to take offense to no matter how young or reluctant to die he is, considering the title of this challenge and the portal in which it was posted).

You fed Me Meds

To clear

My Crazy Head

Watched me Gain

100's of pounds

My bodies

Now failing

Doc..I should take

U! For JAILING

YOU WIN DOC

IM DEAD

F...OFF

I SAID

From the coffin

Use your head

More often