Xenosthesia.com

Candy Critic

Candy Corn: The name is perfectly alliterative. Candy Corn texture is ideal on the fresh ones, and only slightly less ideal as they get older, and harder. The flavor doesn’t remind anyone of anything. They are sweet, unique, goodness. The shape is also unique. Because of the shape, candy corns are a must for making yourself look like a colorful vampire or werewolf, or decorating a gingerbread house.

Candy Cigarettes: (Crime edition) Also alliterative, these have a nasty reputation for being a gateway drug. They might persuade you to think you’re cooler than those actors in the old-time, gritty detective shows. Only if you’re an impressionable young thing, of course. Otherwise you’re only going to chew them up, and if you do, you’re going to find them dull. They have a flavor and texture like conversation hearts.

Gummi Bears: These have different flavors. You’re sure to find a favorite flavor and color. They are basically like the hardened skin off a tub of Jello, which is honestly, lots of fun. One mischievous side effect is that if you lick the flat side of the bear, you can stick the bear to a window, or your friend’s forehead.

Cinnamon Bears: With a texture more sticky than a gummi, cinnamon bears are the kind of candy you will enjoy if you are fond of using your tongue to dislodge the between your teeth leftovers.

Swedish Fish: These are cinnamon bears with a different shape and flavor. Or possibly you could say the reverse is true. If you didn’t like the flavor of cinnamon, then Swedish Fish might be an ideal alternative to Cinnamon Bears.

Candy Necklace: Although I don’t much enjoy wearing my own saliva, the flavor of these is excellent. The ‘beads’ are like Smarties if Smarties had a hole in the middle, and the idea is that you wear it so you can crunch the beads off one by one. It’s a little weird that as you crunch the beads, the necklace starts to get tighter. Other than that strange sensation, the Candy Necklace is a novel arrangement.

Candy Bracelet: Same as a Candy Necklace, only smaller. Do not mistake this for a necklace.

Whoppers: Chocolate-coated malted milk balls. These are as fun to roll around as they are to eat.

Milk Duds: Chocolate-coated caramel. Not as spherical as Whoppers, Milk Duds don’t roll so well. The fun way to eat these is to suck all the chocolate off. What you do with the center is up to you.

Butterfinger: Chocolate-coated butterbrittle. Or is it chocolate-coated butterbrick? Butterfingers can be a tasty treat, but you have to be in the mood for biting into the hardest food in existence.

Ponderous One

Well, aren’t you the…ponderous one?

Second in the Ponderous series, Ponderous One is full of similar questions to those in the first, which will help you view the world around you much differently.

For instance, “Why would the second in a series be titled One?”

With such profound questions as, “What if fiction writers are not writing what they imagine, but instead writing about distant realities?” and “How can one search for empyreal evidence?” Ponderous One is a fantastic way to ruminate on life and the mysteries of your everyday.

The reason these books are titled Ponderous and Ponderous One are partly because of the fabulous song by 2NU (a.k.a. 2NU2) and their song “This Is Ponderous“. The song takes you on a trip with a mystical character through his dreamland, making you wonder what it would be like to miss work for a day and keep dreaming.

The Ponderous series will take you on a trip, or even a series of trips, as you mull over the profound questions within the pages. Ponderous One manages to pick up where Ponderous left off, and here’s a secret for those of you paying attention to this ‘barchive, rather than only reading about the book in your local critic’s ‘zine: it’s called One because the second number on a number line is one, and the first number is zero. Silly, I know, but it helps you think critically. It helps to see a different side of things, because when you can see the other side, it opens up possibilities.

Ultimately, that’s what Ponderous One is about: seeing a different side of things.

Outrageous Movie Titles

If, by chance, you read through this immense list of movie titles and find one you are dying to see, let me know in the comments and I’ll write the screenplay for it.

Teenage Zombie Felons

Demon Acid Dames

3-headed Dog Trainer

Dirtbags and Society Hags

Surly Wolf-child Crossing Gard

Red Hot Actress Reactions

Steel-toed & Hard-hearted

League of Lanky Lunkheads

Department of Cannibal Transportation

Leather Biker Ferrets

Lovely Moonchild Vampire

Angsty Golf Nancys

Phys. Ed. Teacher of the Damned

Dribble-face Toddler Heroes

Neon Razor Husky Huntress

Knucklehead Numptys Take the World for a Spin

Octogenarian Ninja Club

C.A.B. Driver (Chemist Apothecary Bartender)

Scabby Draggy Daisy-Duke Chopper

Twice Bitten Ultra-Shy Armageddon Surfers

Haunted Condominium Dwellers

Queen Bee Neighborhood Chick

Fright Fest on Speed

Caged Feral Waitress Kittens

Sasquatch Children

Send money!

The Sasquatch children are starving!

Collections are now under way to supply the hairy, reclusive children with a nice, warm meal.

Their habitat is shrinking. Every day, more wild places are being transformed into cities. Skyscrapers are becoming the norm, replacing tall trees, altering horizons. If this trend continues, there may be no place left for the big-footed children to live. Not only that, but their usual diet of grubs will be permanently disturbed as well, because the grubs live in the wild places too.

Every Sasquatch child deserves a warm meal, exactly like their Himalayan cousins the Yetis.

Send money!

The Yeti children are starving!

Alternative Antagonist

No one’s really afraid of Darth Vader.

Even though he’s the bad guy, the antagonist, dressed in all black. He’s even part human, part machine, which should make him scary or creepy. He has powers which allow him to manipulate objects from great distances without touching them. Such a power should be frightening.

Afraid to harm others, he is not, though he doesn’t often kill. He prefers, it seems, to torture those who get in his path. (Once, he set out to torture his own daughter.)

Though he possesses talent with a light saber, he doesn’t strike fear in the audience, only in other fictional characters within his fictional realm.

This is an odd dynamic for an antagonist. Compared to other, equally infamous, antagonists in fiction, such as Moriarty, or Sauron, or Voldemort, or Thanos, or Count Dracula, he, Darth Vader, is not so repulsive. Each of those other antagonists in fiction mentioned above have something about them which turns the audience away from them.

A repellent feature.

Darth Vader makes you feel sorry for him. You sympathize with him. When you discover Vader’s head is scarred, it might seem a bit off-putting, but by then you’ve also realized the sound of his breathing apparatus is not so much a terrifying sound as it is the sound of someone struggling to stay alive. He’s essentially a man who takes his CPAP with him everywhere, while he’s awake. Because of this he gains your pity. By the second movie when it is revealed that he is Luke Skywalker’s father, his pity factor skyrockets. You might feel bad for Luke too, because he has a weirdo cyborg father, though not to the degree that you feel sorry for Vader. He suddenly seems a desperate old man in a mask, trying impotently to regain a relationship with a son he never raised.

What’s worse for him is that when he makes the attempt to regain the relationship with his son—he’s rejected. He’s not only rejected, but soundly rejected. A face can’t be more contorted than Luke’s was at the moment he discovered the dark secret of his past. Luke wanted to go back in time to any point at which he didn’t know familial facts. Any point.

And yet, in following films, after that second offering from George Lucas, Luke gets on the pity wagon too. He tries to sway his father back his way, back to the “Light Side”. If there was a piece of dialog missing from the franchise, it was, “Oh Vader, you poor scarred thing, let me help you.” And Luke could have given the line. Any number of characters could have delivered the line.

In the end, it’s the audience who gives it.