Xenosthesia.com

What’s Your Damage?

The phrase, or question, “What’s your damage?” really deserves a revival.

Everyone is damaged somehow. Everyone has their pet peeves and their pet biases.

I have yet to meet anyone who is perfectly sane. There is a high percentage of people who are fantastic actors though, so we see most people with their sane faces whenever they’re in public.

Life is a stage. So said Norman Bates.

Or more accurately, so said Robert Bloch, the writer of Psycho, who recognized how humans can seem to be good, mother-loving citizens, but have some weird and psychotic secrets.

Driving around any city in America, the covert issues start to show, they start to be expressed rather than repressed. That’s when you’ll be wanting a rhetorical question like, “What’s your damage!?”

Attending a therapy meeting, with other like-minded individuals, you might use the same question, only you might soften the delivery a little, so you can get to know your new friends: “What’s your damage?”

Sounds like asking someone what their favorite neurosis is.

When shopping for someone to watch your dog for the weekend, this question is highly valuable. You’ll be wanting to know exactly what you’re getting for your money. “So, my potential dog-sitter, what’s your damage?”

If they say, “Nothing. I’m perfectly sane.” Yeah, right. They’re lying. What else will they lie about? Whether they neglected your pet or not?

When picking politicians out of the tar pit to represent you, the question doesn’t even need to be asked, it should be understood. “We the people, want to know what your damage is.” If the politician admits his, or her, failings and shortcomings, you’ll know they’re grassroots and won’t be in the political scene long. The lifetime politicians are the ones who hide every sickness, no matter how common.

The phrase, “What’s your damage?” works well in many distressing situations too. When a tree falls on your house, you can ask it, “What’s your damage, tree?” When a hurricane ruins your sailboat, the same question applies, except it’s for the hurricane. And when your rice paddy dries up, you can still ask, even though you know exactly what the damage is.

Really, it’s a question, or a phrase, with a variety of uses.

Look for ways you can use it.

Revive the phrase. Revive the question. Get to know the psychos in your life.

The Last Day of February

For all the persons born on the 29th of February, I have a proposition. What if, instead of dropping your day off the map, we dropped another day?

Think of it this way: your birthday is missing from the calendar for three year increments, then every fourth year it returns—but it doesn’t have to be. February 29th is just the day someone picked long ago.

What we could do instead is to remove a different day from the year on those in-between years, and we could start with any day you want. How about George Washington’s birthday? He’s passed on, so he won’t miss it.

Or, of course we could just go in order and have next year be missing March 1st. Then the next year March 2nd, and so on.

That kind of middle-of-the-month day removal could get confusing to some people. “Wait, yesterday it was the 19th and now it’s the 21st? What happened?”

No worries. It will be just fine. In fact, you can be the ambassador for the change and help console those poor people who don’t understand when the calendar is missing a specific day. Tell them it’s the new leap day. Tell them how the calendar requires minor adjustments every so often because Earth’s orbit doesn’t perfectly fit into a 365 day cycle. Tell them how the seasons would be off if we didn’t. Tell them how other major adjustments have to be made, such as having to choose between two other days on the calendar to celebrate your birth.

So, what we’ll do instead is we’ll keep the 29th of February for about 486 years, removing a different day each year, except leap years because we’ll be keeping leap years as the only years with all the calendar days.

Simple, right?

Happy Birthday!

Associative Meaning

One fun thing about words is that they can have one meaning by themselves, then a different meaning when combined with another word.

Consider the words Wash and Bag. Together they are a wash bag. Simple enough. Separate and alone, they each have a multitude of meanings.

A fun and valuable exercise (for your brain), is to take a single word and see how many associated meanings you can think up containing the word.

If you started with Wash, you might get: Car wash, face wash, dish wash, washout, dog wash, acid wash, hogwash, white wash, and George Wash…ington.

There aren’t any limits to this. The point is to see how the meanings change as the one word is connected to others.

If you did Bag, you might get: Bag of holding, doggy bag/doggie bag, sandwich bag, trash bag, vacuum bag, bag o’ donuts, kick bag, punching bag, sleeping bag, tool bag, overnight bag, and bag of tricks.

The best example here is doggy bag versus doggie bag. The separate meaning of each would let you know if you should eat out of that particular bag, or not.

Here are a few words for you to try: Head—Glass—Tank—Act—Foot—Car—Net—Book.

Pick any one of these, or have fun trying all of them.

Valentine

February is the time all those who fell in love start thinking about things more serious. Like what to do when that special someone finds out you don’t care for puppies. Oh sure, they’re cute—both the puppies and the special someone—but the puppies don’t excite you, the same way puppy poop doesn’t excite you. So maybe that girl or guy won’t like you so much after she or he finds out you can’t deal with the poop. That’s serious.

Love. It takes a whole lot of love to deal with some of the things other people like, especially if you don’t like those things.

Love keeps us together even when we find out we have differences. Said a different way: if the differences tear you apart, then you must not be in love. If you’re in love and that one you love confesses they don’t love puppies, you’ll give the puppy up for adoption.

The differences are what make us remember each other, too.

Without differences we’re all homogenized and that’s dull and immemorable—like watching soccer.

If you happen to be a male personage, you might do well to learn what the female half of the universe does and thinks and feels. Likewise, if you are a female, you would probably like to solve the mystery of the male personage.

When females have a bad day, they often like to get some shopping done. If you know her, she’ll tell you it’s “retail therapy” or “the giver’s high.” She’ll say she’s shopping for someone else, and nine times out of ten that will be true.

Somehow shopping cures what ails her. So, dudes, just let it happen.

Females also enjoy things that smell good. If you’re a female, raise your hand. Oh, WOW! Did you smell that? Even her hand smells good. She has a working nose, which is another way of saying she can smell things you dudes can’t. So, yes, when you buy her a flower, it really is a thoughtful gift. She will enjoy the flower’s scent as well as the color.

Women see colors a little differently than men see the same colors. This doesn’t mean either one of them is wrong when they say the color is more green, or more blue, or whatever. It only means they each see it from their own perspective. You men should take into account, though, that when she says she thinks a certain color is beautiful, and you don’t particularly like that color, it’s because she is seeing it as a slightly different variation than the one you’re seeing. Believe her that it’s beautiful. Simply believe.

Notice, too, if she wears a particular color a lot of the time, it probably means she really likes that color.

This doesn’t mean you should wear the same color if you want to be the special man in her life. In fact, don’t go letting her pick your fashion. She’ll never respect you. How could anyone respect a clothing store man-ee-kin? Don’t be a man-ee-kin, be a man. Let her wear her own colors, and you wear yours.

The same advice applies to the women: Don’t let him dictate what you wear. Not even if you have a difficult time making decisions. He won’t give you any good fashion advice. Trust that his fashion sense is as good as his sense of smell. When the day comes that he can smell rotten leftovers without opening the fridge, that might be the same day you can trust his sense of fashion, girlfriend.

Then again, it might not. One sense doesn’t heighten another.

When you’re thinking of getting him a simple gift, don’t think flowers, think food. What kind of food would he buy himself? Get that.

But if you’re thinking of marrying this dude, don’t go cooking the food gift for him. No woman should set that kind of precedent. In fact, it might be extremely valuable information, for you women, to know if he can figure out how to cook anything. If he doesn’t have those sort of survival skills, is he worth much time?

While you’re judging him, you definitely should be that nosy girlfriend, and find out what kind of music he likes. Can he listen to the same kind of music you like? Or does he force you to listen to what he likes all the time? It’s okay if he can’t dance. It’s even okay if he doesn’t enjoy danceable music. But if he doesn’t ever listen to it when you want to hear it, you might have a problem child rather than a man. There is one exception to this, ladies. If you already heard the same song three times and try to give it another listen, he isn’t the problem child, you are. Three repeats is the limit. After that it’s no longer music, it’s a torture device.

Men enjoy sports too, so don’t be afraid to watch him playing whatever sport he plays. If he’s the one watching sports, well, you might want to go back to that question of whether he can survive on his own cooking. He doesn’t play his own sports—can he do his own cooking?

Men aren’t the only ones who enjoy playing sports. Women should be bold enough to invite the men to play—and bold enough to win! Dont hold back!

Evidence

Recently, I was told, by someone who was objectively observing me, that I’m “one of those people” who must have evidence. I accept. I agree. Show me the evidence.

Evidence comes in two main forms. There’s empirical evidence, and there’s empyreal evidence.

Empirical evidence is temporal, tangible, often visible. Chromosomes, for instance, are evidence which will tell you what gender you are. XX: you’re a gal. XY: you’re a guy. There are other evidences for gender, such as hormones and the effects of those hormones, menstrual cycles, and the ability or inability to squash a spider with your finger. Yes, there are technical and less-than technical levels of evidence, aren’t there? Empirical, all of them.

If you tend to enjoy the more violent sports, such as hockey or jai alai, then you’re probably a guy. If you want to personally join in those sports, rather than watching, you’re a guy. If you don’t even care to watch, you’re a girl. Stereotypes, of course, are evidence of a bias.

As mentioned before, if you can see a spider and not squeal, you’re more likely a male person. If you see a snake and don’t squeal, but suddenly look around for a stick to poke at the snake, you’re a guy. Careless and inconsiderate and not too bright are only a few of the attributes of males. When something is poisonous, the male person doesn’t usually care until he’s been bitten.

Which brings me to the next question: Why in the world would a girl ever want to be a guy? That’s like a major step down. It would be like owning a Jeep Hurricane but wanting a Ford Pinto. A major step down.

Females are smarter, faster, more careful, more caring, and definitely better looking. Females are also quicker to see and feel and hear empyreal evidence.

Empyreal evidences are things like intuition, angelic visitations, messages from the Holy Spirit, and guilt.

Guilt is the one I want to focus on right now. Where does it come from, or in other words, where does guilt originate? Where do you feel guilt when you feel it? Is it in your chest? Is it in your head? Is it both? When you feel guilt, is that a tangible sensation? Does guilt cross the line from empyreal evidence to empirical evidence? If so, does that mean it’s both?

When people don’t seem to feel guilt, we call them psychopaths or sociopaths, so it’s obviously a good thing to be able to feel guilt. People who don’t are broken in some way.

There are those who deny their guilt. There are those who try to suppress it. That action usually comes back to make things worse. The guilt builds up and the person who tried to suppress it ends up cracking, losing their mind, bursting into uncontrollable whining sobs.

People, male or female, who don’t suppress their guilt but who admit fault, come clean, ask for forgiveness, these are the healthy ones. These are the people who can move on, past the guilt, past the mental issues that afflict others.

Everybody but those with broken mental capacities feels guilt. So, is it important how we deal with it? Is a healthy society dependent upon guilt, or more directly dependent upon how citizens deal with guilt?

Evidence for that question can be found in our prisons. Not necessarily by who ends up in prison, but by who repeatedly ends up in prison. How does the repeat offender deal with guilt? Do they deal with guilt in a healthy way, or in an ignorant way?

One sad statistic, but an opinion-supporting statistic, is that the majority of those in prison are male, and the majority of repeat-offenders are male. Guys are often careless and inconsiderate and not too bright. Is guilt a poison to some? Is guilt a poisonous snake? Well, that’s metaphorical, so there’s scant evidence…

Regardless of what analogies may apply to guilt and snakes, we can’t deny someone else’s feeling of guilt. So, if someone ever comes to you and says, “Sorry,” just give them the benefit of the doubt and expect your turn will be in the not so distant future, when you’ll be the one asking for forgiveness.

And right there’s one more aspect of guilt that needs more study: Is guilt something we need, but something we want to get rid of fast? If it’s so necessary for a healthy society, why is it something we have to cure with apologies and forgiveness? Hmm. Well, that is something we all do—try to solve the problems. When we encounter body dysphoria, we look for a way to fix it. When we encounter a poisonous animal, we call it a problem, and we look for a way to fix it.

“You say it’s a problem? Show me the evidence.

OW!

It bit me!

Ohwellnevermind…”