Xenosthesia.com

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…”

An Ocean of Writing

Fly tying.

Spell casting.

Arm breaking. Cast forming.

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.

Arm mending. Bone strengthening.

Spool winding.

Hook finding.

In Plain Sight

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?”

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.

Star Scene/Scar Scene

INT.—DAY—Small Apartment

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.

Doctor Visit

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.”