Xismosa Xit

Ariana Intelligence (allegedly)

Hello all,

Today’s newsletter is sponsored by – wait, is this right? Can you ask the director in the back? Yea, hi, is this right? Oh… okay. – planning and a vague sense of foresight!

(I still don’t think that’s right… this is the same person who keeps misspelling “right” as “write” AND messed up who she emailed the last newsletter to? OOOOKAAAAYYYYY)

At The Top

I’m The Top 🤭

🖊️ Prose and Poetry of the Month

🐇 Jackalope Burrows

🦉 Book Búho

🪶 Quotes Quail

🐦‍⬛ Cuervos Chismoses

🐈‍⬛ The Void Shouts Back

Prose and Poetry of the Month

I heard recently that AI cannot make connections like humans do – it is a predictive algorithm that is only trying to guess what comes next in the sentence. Therefore, unbeknownst to me until now, this newsletter is something that AI can never truly replicate because it’s only about connections that I made in my head.

My honest question is: can AI truly shitpost and meme like we do? Those take LAYERS.

Anyways: women.

Dorothy, To Him, To Me

I wrote this about a photograph I encountered at the Philadelphia Art Museum a couple of years ago. I felt pierced by the woman looking back out at me, and I was surprised that the photograph was taken 90 years ago (1930’s) instead of 30 years ago (1990s 🙃). I kept it to 100 words because I still enjoy that challenge, and it felt appropriate for a physically small art piece. I address my 100 words to Dorothy Norman, the subject of the photograph, trying to get to her through the literal lens of the photographer who displayed her, Alfred Stieglitz.

Whenever I go to museums, I’m endlessly taking pictures. I love looking at the brushstrokes in paintings and imagining the hand that placed them there. I get as close as I’m allowed to. After the Philadelphia Art Museum trip, I wanted to write a longer piece going through my favorite pieces and making connections, a little bit of a review. However, I never got around to it because I’m not sure how it would be relevant. Yet, that should never stop me from creating. The spirit of that idea only lives in two words in the subtitle “Museum Musing.”

Genesis Woman

This piece is addressed to Alma Lopez, the artist herself (infamous and loved for Our Lady). I saw it and thought it looked like something she would make, and was ecstatic when I saw that it was her art!

This piece also has the subtitle “Museum Musings.” Could be the start of a series…

The Flirtation of Eve

When I address Alma Lopez above and say “You’re obsessed with her too!”, this is the piece I’m thinking of. This particular essay is about my process of writing the 100 words that I present at the end. (There’s a poem I’m struggling to find titled something along the lines of “Eve was an Indian,” which I thought was by Paula Gunn Allen but am not finding. She did write a poem titled “Eve The Fox.” It’s included within an interesting article about Eve poems.)

My Decision To Be Gorgeous

I think for the first time, I got both Top Story on the website AND Runner-up on the challenge! It’s about how I, wildly, decided to be hot – in self-love, and it requires spite.

[back to The Top]

Jackalope Burrows

Things I’ve learned, laughed about, and/or obsessed over

  • As of this writing, they have flown from the nest! I’m proud of them and I miss them 🥹🥺
  • Other owl pics to enjoy from previous newsletters:
if this ain’t me…….
  • Mini Street Art

[back to The Top]

Book Búho

What I’ve been reading/listening to bc audiobooks let me do both. Yes, comics count. And sacrilegiously, I even learn from ones I didn’t finish.

Sooooooo uuhhhhhhhhh I made another website: Bookbuho.wordpress.com! It’s dedicated to my reading adventures, but only starting with the books mentioned in this April 2026 newsletter. I will add books I read previously as necessary to making connections/according to my own whimsy and follies.

I made it to attempt a version of “If you like this, then read that.” Also to make it a little easier to find what I read. And I was talking to a new friend about her desire to have a library, which consists of owning 1000 books (allegedly). I don’t have the space for all that, so I’m wondering/hoping that posting 1000 books on a website will somehow counts as a digital library. Unlikely, but I believe it is still interesting and worth the try.

[back to The Top]

Quotes Quail

I’m always listening 😈 y’all are funny

You know, the funny thing about this section is that is was inspired by the favorite parts of magazines: the quotes sections. And it’s kinda fun that so many of you have said it’s your favorite part too! See if you can find yourself 👀

🪶

  • “Actually that’s what I find sexy: self-improvement” 

🪶

  • “Why can’t we take Patrick Dempsey seriously as an assassin? Why can we take Adrian Brody seriously?” – my dad while watching Predators (2010). Have y’all seen the commercials Patrick Dempsey’s new show?
  • Me, figuring it out as the words come out of my mouth: “He doesn’t want to look grimy! Adrian Brody is not afraid to look grimy.”
  • “[Patrick Dempsey] is probably a diva.” – my mom 

🪶

  • “Speaking of drugs.” – me, unprompted unpon coming back into the kitchen. We had not, indeed, been talking about drugs. 
  • “Did you get some? Enough for the class?” – co-cutie
  • Me: silent
  • “You didn’t get enough for the class? 🥺”

🪶

  • “It could be cheaper, it could be drugs” – co-cuties about Magic cards and table top games, in reference to a quote in my last newsletter

🪶

  • “Arianitis!” – me about my nephew crying when I am out of his eyesight to go get my wallet 
  • “Smitten!” – the OG Tia™️ (my mom) 

🪶

  • “You were late this morning! I went to go visit you and you weren’t there” 
  • I’m getting used to people say I Love You differently than I do

🪶

  • “I keep saying I want to expand the colors in my wardrobe, but then I keep buying purple and black!” – co-cutie #1
  • “Same!” – co-cutie #2
  • “We can’t all be Ariana with her colorful wardrobe!”
  • (and I wasn’t even there!)

🪶

🪶

🪶

  • “It’s not my fault me and my friends are loud!”
  • OKAAAAAAYYYYY
  • About getting caught watching five movies at the movie theatre and getting kicked out

🪶

  • “How’d she play us?”
  • “She’s a psychology major.”
  • from the Deaf U (2020) docuseries/reality tv trailer

🪶

  • “Questions, comments, concerns?” – me
  • “No, I just wanted to giggle about it.” – about my Friday night

🪶

  • “I can’t decide if I want children or if I just want a baby. I think I just want a pet baby that I can cuddle and then give back!” – not me, but I did laugh perhaps even louder than usual

🪶

  • “I had a thought tomorrow yesterday” – my dad to my co-cutie when she asked what he says about World Quantum Day

🪶

  • “I want to get her what she needs [for her birthday] but what do I get her? A therapy session?” – DAMN

🪶

  • “Do you still need a hug?” – a text I received because I was slightly upset 🥺

🪶

  • “I feel like you would die if you drank that one” – co-cutie about Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk vs my caffeine sensitivity
  • Who would win? I encourage you to bet on the coffee

🪶

  • “I made a list of my dealbreaks/hardlines for my future partner” – me
  • “666?” – co-cutie
  • “What is that?”
  • “666: 6 figures, 6 feet, and I can’t remember the last one…”
  • “6 inches?” – me
  • “No I remember, 6-pack.”
  • I don’t require a 6-pack. 6 figures would be nice.

🪶

  • “You’re like Plato’s allegory of the cave” – brother beaner 
  • “How?” – me
  • “When you take off your glasses, the world is just a shadow of what it truly is”
  • This is the same person that when we were at Sea World circa 2008, heard that killer whales don’t have a sense of smell and pointed at them and said, “Ariana, that’s you!” ;-;

🪶

  • “I’ve been thinking about how myths might be interpretations about real events, and I think about Medusa. I wonder if someone would confuse your hair to look like a head of snakes.”
  • “Thank you!!!” – me, and my hair looked GOOD
  • Unsure if he was trying to insult me. Little did he know that I LOVE Medusa 🐍
“Give her snake pubes you cowards”

🪶

  • It’s not a normal pitcher

🪶

  • I believe this is an understatement:

🪶

  • “I wouldn’t say clean, but it doesn’t smell bad.” – about some SEPTA stations

🪶

  • “You have a tattoo?” – co-cutie asking me after talking for at least three months at that point
  • “You’re just noticing?!” – me
  • “Yeah, I don’t look at your legs.”
  • “I don’t know why not, I’ve got great legs!”

🪶

  • Has anyone ever thought that maybe I’m not the only nerd in the house?

🪶

  • “I still have my diaries” – nerd mother
  • “Me too” – nerd daughter (me)
  • “I lost mine” – nerd father
  • “In your mind!” – nerd mother
  • “Dang! Mom came up with that FAST!” – me
  • “I think you’ve journaled ten days in your life” – nerd mom
  • “I was going to say two!” – nerd dad

🪶

  • “Es milagrosa” – my dad about his pen where you can’t even see the ink anymore
  • “It’s miraculous“

🪶

  • “Did you see the opposum Vaquero? Vaquero says ‘opossum go home’ and the opossum says ‘I am home, you go inside’” – as narrated by El Vaquero’s mother

🪶

  • “The tallest m*therf*cker in there wanted to dance with me. I think my ass was to his KNEE”
  • “What does he want? For you to Mario-jump it?? like PA-PLING!”
  • I cannot encapsulate how they replicated the Mario jump

🪶

i should call him

🪶

[back to The Top]

Cuervos Chismoses

chisme = gossip. ”e” ending instead of “o/a” in Spanish for more gender inclusion

  • I made a mini-Zine! If you would like one, please Venmo me $1 @axibi and email your mailing address to xismosaxit@gmail.com
  • I figured out five “dealbreakers”/hardlines for a future partner, besides a list of other needs and hopes, which prompted this conversation:
    • “It sounds like an application.” – father, concerned
    • “Yes.” – me, stubborn in not wasting mine or someone else’s time
    • That’s it.
    • Perhaps a little inspired by this clip from NewsRadio
  • Ask if you’d like to apply 😉
  • I performed Danza Azteca for the first time!!! This is huge for me because I grew up watching Danza, especially at Dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe services, and I every time I fall in love. So to be IN IT was a full circle moment. No pics bc I’m shy.
  • Speaking of hobbies as an adult (slide through –>):
  • meme a friend sent
  • a small car
  • Screenshot

[back to The Top]

The Void Shouts Back

If you would like to respond but don’t know what to say, answer the question below. If you don’t want to, just respond with keysmashing or send me a hug with your thoughts. If you don’t want to do that either, that’s okay too.

  • What kind of “superstitions” did you grow up with? Even playground ones, like:
    • twisting an apples stem for every letter of the alphabet until it breaks off, revealing the first initial of your next crush/girlfriend/boyfriend/future spouse’s name? May or may not include a hope for it to break off on a certain letter?
    • The white spots on yoru nails tell you how many people are thinking of you
    • The clasp of your necklace touching the pendant indicates someone is thinking of you
    • The buzzing in your ear means someone is talking about you
    • If you drop a fork on the ground then a woman is coming for visit; a knife is for a man. I think a spoon is for a child?

[back to The Top]

THANK YOU for reading! If you want some cheap retail therapy to go along with it, please check out my stickers.

Abrazos and/or high fives,

Ariana

my brain cells kissing sometimes

[back to The Top]

,
, , , ,

Leave a comment