Writing your name on a friend’s cast would be “cast spelling.”
Writing your name under a table would be covert vandalism.
Writing your name in the snow is whizzing.
Writing your name in a tree is woodcarving.
Writing your name in clouds is skywriting. Writing with paper and pen while on an airplane is not skywriting.
Writing someone else’s name on a bathroom stall is graffito. Writing a lot of names on a bathroom stall would be graffiti.
Smacking the keyboard with a stick would be: q3targh’ankmvz.
Writing the governor is petitioning.
Writing 256 characters is tweeting. . . or at least it used to be. Now it’s probably called Ecksing, or X-ing, Musk-ing, or whatever they’ve decided to call it now.
Writing alien characters is science fiction-ing.
Writing poetry could be rhyming, while writing poetry to a beat would be rapping. Rap stars love chromed cars, eat rich like Russian tsars, poets trip on a lip, their muse a whip to keep them hip, tuning in to get a grip, rocking like a hurricane, nothing is real if you drug up your brain, smack the keys with a stick, why would you want to be a—poet, if they never have a payday?
Writing a eulogy would make you a “survivor.” Therefore, writing a eulogy is surviving. If you feel like surviving, get writing those eulogies.
Writing while stargazing is Carl Sagan-ing.
Writing on a rocking boat is sea-sickening.
Writing a message and putting it in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean is littering—unless you’re in distress somehow, then it’s SOSing.
Writing while fishing is Jacques Cousteau-ing.
Writing from the belly of the whale would be Jonah-ing.
With stereo vision you can find a lot of things. Do you have anyone in your life who loses things? Or do you have anyone in your life who asks you endlessly where things are?
I love this game and hate it at the same time. Especially when it involves the refrigerator. It seems like such a finite space that the finding can’t possibly be so hard. Can it?
We just found some grapes in the drawer that apparently no one knew was there. Is it so difficult to open a drawer? And if opening the drawer is so difficult, the drawer is clear, why not just look in there?
I can understand how a package of tortillas can hide in the fridge because they’re flat. Other items might end up on top of the tortillas. It must be asked though: How in the world does the block of cheese hide in front of anybody’s face? Unless it’s a sliver of its former self, then it’s definitely a three dimensional mass and often a color which does not work well as camouflage. How does it hide?
Someone recently asked for the peanut butter. I said, “We don’t put that in the fridge.” They gave me the look that says, “Don’t you know peanut butter absolutely has to go in the fridge.”
I’ve got a look of my own that says, “Don’t you know peanut butter doesn’t have to go in the fridge, and even if it did, it wouldn’t last long enough around here to need the extra preservation of refrigeration?”
Photo by Calum Lewis
One of the personages living in my domicile has a bet going that he can eat somewhere near 700 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the next two years. He’s not the only one who eats the peanut butter either. I gotta have a peanut butter and banana sandwich every so often. It makes my complexion smooth.
No one ever asked me where the bananas are. We keep them on the kitchen counter. Of course, no one ever told me the bananas have to, have to, have to go in the fridge—like peanut butter. Yeah, right.
The other thing that apparently gets lost in the big, old fridgerator is asparagus. We end up finding it when it’s less like vegetable and more like liquid. This may not be by accident. There may be a certain someone who enjoys hiding the asparagus to ensure he doesn’t have to eat it.
Perhaps it’s ironic, but the one who is suspected of hiding the asparagus is the one who never asks where things are. He just digs in to everything. Everything with the exception of stringy, green vegetables.
It was a dark and stormy night. The umbrellas were out but it didn’t matter because he was smoking in the shower.
If lunch didn’t come any earlier, he might shave with a ham sandwich. Extra mustard.
His palms were sweaty in anticipation of the noon train. Something was due on that train that he anticipated.
He had superglued all of his throwing stars to the wall so he would always know where they were.
He wondered why we only have one record of King Solomon’s wisdom.
Thinking about the train, he absent-mindedly picked the throwing stars up off the coffee table and hailed a cab. The cab driver looked exactly like David Lee Roth, so he threw him an extra twenty. All the way there he found himself humming “Everybody Wants Some” but no one threw him any money. To make matters worse, he stepped in gum as he was climbing the steps to the FBI building where he worked. He quickly slipped on a hat and a mustache so no one would recognize him entering the building in his long black overcoat, trench coat, and business suit straight from the Lapel Brothers tailor shop over on fifteenth where that donut shop was with the cute gal who always gave him a free maple-hole-cluster with his coffee and a toothbrush, but it was like a twenty minute drive over there—six minutes if he drove his Maserati—so he decided to catch the train, since he needed time to think about all the events leading up to the accident.
The scar was under his hairline, so no one ever seemed to notice, except when it itched and he needed to scratch it. There were times when he really missed his left hand, especially when he had to scratch that scar with his toes, but his feet were ambidextrous so he didn’t worry about it unless he had the shoes with no velcro.
Velcro bugged him, the way it sounded when it was repeatedly ripped apart, like duct tape ripped off a hairy leg. And there was never anyone there to cry out, or at least no one there to cry to.
He was lonely. He had to admit it to himself.
If that face in the mirror wasn’t bad enough. . . it had to talk back to him. It would tell him, no, it would insist that he go to the train station and pick up the package deliverable upon receipt. It was a risky business, but he had to try. . . for Olga’s sake.
So many negative emotions roll through your heart and brain when you realize it’s time to go to the doctor that it’s a wonder any of us are healthy at all. Pre-visit anxiety is enough to start you down the path to having a coronary, or an aneurysm. Which, of course, would cause you to need medical help.
The best way to battle this anxiety is to put on the white shirt yourself. No, you don’t need any sort of degree. Why bother sitting through endless hours of college just so you can put on a white smock? Unnecessary.
Here’s all you need to practice the science of medicine:
If someone has an issue you don’t want to deal with, claim you specialize in something different. For instance, say the patient has a bad case of foot fungus. All you have to do is claim you’re an ear, nose, and throat doctor.
If someone has an issue which doesn’t frighten you, use a lot of words that sound like Latin. “The problem here is not in the Swifticus Pantskickimus, but in the Arachnosmashoid Complex.” Should the patient understand what you’re saying, they must be a doctor too.
Feigned concern is not only a great way to earn money, it’s also a good excuse to exit any room. “Oh, I want to help. I’ll run and get a splice kit, or a sample kit, or an amputation kit. One of those ought to do it.”
Scrubs on Fridays is really just another way of saying Pajama-day at work.
Lastly, never forget this phrase: “Don’t Google it. That’s my job.”
Do you ever get caught up in a conversation and your thoughts turn to escape? Do you wish you could change channels? Do you wish you could switch venues?
There are talkers and there are talkers. Some are brief to the point of salvation, and others are finding new subjects from every bit of stuff, every bit of fluff, reflected light and dust mite which lands in their view.
The long talkers are amazing, no doubt about it. How do they manage to jump subjects like that? How do they so effortlessly ignore, evade, and deny segues? There is no such option for some long talkers—a transition between subjects to them is like a prehistoric monster beneath a Scottish loch—unknown and unknowable.
For sure don’t let them hear me saying such things, because the long talker probably has a hypothesis for such creatures, or at the very least, a one-liner.
Knowing that a person who can continue talking indefinitely probably will, you need some ideas on how to get yourself out of the vicinity.
Start with yawning. Yawning is contagious. The long talker will likely give in to the contagion and yawn themselves, then you can say, “Oh, you look tired. You better go lie down.” Once you have them convinced, you can make an exit yourself.
If, by some odd chance, they are able to withstand the urge to yawn, you can try the next best thing: fake a coughing attack. Leave immediately to find some water.
But what if the long talker produces a bottled water out of nowhere? You never know how needy they are for attention, or to what lengths they will go to keep their audience. If they give you a fresh bottle of water, ask them to drink with you. Tell the person you have a tradition or a superstition, or something. At least if they drink with you, then they can’t be talking while they drink. If they tried, they might have their own coughing attack. That could be your next way out. While they’re coughing up water they breathed, you can pat them on the back, and while you’re at their back, make your escape since they can’t see you.
Speaking of when they can’t see you: if you have the means to turn the lights out, you could always try that. Of course, if you don’t know your way around the room, you best not try it. You could end up tripping over the same thing as your long talker friend and end up in a shared hospital room with them.
One other thing to do is to talk over them. Some talkers can’t hack it. They’ll try talking louder or faster. They’ll bring in their own tactics to match yours. Yet, for some people who like to talk long, they’ll give up and search for a more receptive audience. When they can’t rely on you to listen, they’ll go find someone who will.
Without seeming callous and careless, you could also try fireworks. Not metaphorical fireworks, but literal ones. Should you happen to have a pocketful of fireworks, light them off, and in the process, scare off your long talker.
You could always bring up taboo subjects, but this tactic can make them think you’re invested in the conversation enough to contribute, plus they might have a one-liner for every subject.
If your long talker gets hypnotized by screens, you could try turning on a television. When they settle in to watch, tell them you’re going to get some snacks, and then accidentally don’t come back.
With patience you can try a different tactic, and that’s the tactic of sticking around to listen. Listen just long enough to figure out the rhythm of the person’s talking. When they get to a point where they should take a breath, act as if you’re taking an extra long breath for them. Exaggerate the action. This will be hilarious for you and for them.
Xenosthesia.com 