Hello all,
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by the smell of plants in the open courtyard space of an office building. And the number
At The Top
I’m The Top 🤭
🖊️ Prose and Poetry of the “Week”
✨ Special Edition: ¡Feliz 5 Años!
Prose and Poetry of the Week
This is about how Vocal has changed my creative writing life starting in January 2021, and actually helped to spawn the Xismosa Xit you see today!
Once again fulfilling a prompt, but this does distill my writing process. My dad asked me recently if I would still be posting if I wasn’t getting financial rewarded for it (shoutsout to $0.006 per read on Vocal). Maybe not as much, or I would not be as dedicated to trying, but I was also posting on Colochos De Flores anyways. (Real ones remember when Xismosa Xit was only an email, and I only started posting on Colochos De Flores to use as an archive.)
What do YOU have anything to do with this?
A unexpected companion to the above about writing to an audience; how my public writing fits an audience. In encouraging others to work on their writing and post it publicly, I note how I do have to consider an audience to understand what and how I write.
Organs // Coracao // How To Break Yourself Down // Hallowed Be Thy Body
I really like writing the visceral-ness of having and awareness of our bodies, of dirt and grime and sliminess. Organs is in response to “Where she is opened. Where she is closed.” by Donika Kelly in her book of poetry Bestiary (2016). But all four of these are about trying to reclaim myself, my body, my emotions from others who want unconditional love but can-/will-/do-not reciprocate.
Jackalope Burrows
Things I’ve learned, laughed about, and/or obsessed over
- Notes toward a Neo-Luddite Manifesto by Chellis Glendinning
- from the Internet Archive
- from The Anarchist Library
- referenced by Jared Henderson’s video “The Revolt Against Technology”
- To compare/in conjunction with Struthless’ video asking What Can Go Right with AI? where he talks to Dr. Petr Lebedev about the good that AI can do
| High Knowledge Low Optimism PHD-OOMERS | High Knowledge High Optimism EVANGELISTS |
| Low Knowledge Low Optimism CYNICS | Low Knowledge High Optimism HAPPY DUMB-DUMBS |
- Guess where I fall 🥰
- On the other side where AI can’t touch: Junk journaling, as inspired by a recent re-connection with a friend
- Journal/notebook ecosystems
- A lot of them include commonplace books
- Another fleeting matryoshka! (the previous one)
- Infatuation vs love
- Remember when I asked what’s the last horrendous thing you shared with a friend? I present to you: Gage: A Ruler Romance
- Shared with me by a friend and I hate her for it
- v curious about the Haaland obsession, but it has been helpful for one thing (slide through –>>):
- Why is it taking a white man for me to get this? For the meme, I guess. But don’t worry! I, too, hate it.
- Pantone Birth Chart Palette
- My Venus color is “Mimosa Wink” (#F1D36F) which is, unfortunately, accurate.
- But have I also mentioned: “free” colors, as inspired by beef in the art world
- Stuart Semple invented his own black paint to spite an artist that trademarked the blackest of black paint
- hmph
- This comic killed me for no real reason but the way that I read the last panel in my head:
¡Feliz 5 Años!
Special Edition
- The first edition of Xismosa Xit was sent as an email on August 16, 2021! I have
pressuredgrown the original list of 26 people to 98, so by 376%!!!! (I had to remember how to work percentages for that number, and I will not claim to remember well.) - Thank you to everyone who answered my email that click-baited you into thinking it was the July newsletter 💜 There was no July newsletter, please forgive my sins (read sins as “I was busier than expected in July bc I was prepping for events in August”)
- Or as my cuñada says: “F I N A L L Y”
- slideshow timeeeeee
- Specifically sent to me by my cousin:
- “She’s very… CREATIVE” – my cousins about my room 😂😭
- Listen, the title to this newsletter is the most accurate I’ve ever been about myself. I love working on this newsletter, I plan a lot of my creative process around it. I love the reactions to it, and am grateful every single time someone brings it up to me first. I made a mini-zine because I miss magazines, and because I wanted people to answer back, and I got a couple!!
- I am also grateful for the people who sent me art because of the mini-Zine I sent out! Perhaps there will be another one…….
- 130 Stories and 5 Years Later (yes, already shared in Poetry and Prose)
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.
- The Book Búho website does exist but I haven’t added to it in a minute hehe
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 👀
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- Do y’all anyone who writes a newsletter with quotes?
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- “Like a rat from a sinking ship! Not even a sinking shop, it hit a wave and I was out!” – co-cutie
- “Like a rat from a slightly bumpy ship” – me
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- “I made my list” – mom about the FIFA World Cup
- “There’s an app” – dad
- “I don’t need an app, I have the list!” – me
- It’s giving this scene from The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003):
- “You read 11 books?”
- “No I mean I read the list” as he elegantly skateboards across the hotel room
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- “It’s like seeing a puppy date a turtle on the side of the road” – one person in the couple
- *later in the night*
- “Some of us choose books and some choose looks and she chose looks” – second person in the couple, about a dog 😂😭
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- “He wasn’t even ALIVE for Memo’s first World Cup” – me about
Gilberto Mora, the youngest player on Mexico’s national team - “He was ALIVE for Memo’s second” – dad
- “Emphasis on ALIVE” – me
- “Did he walk yet? We don’t know.” – mom
- “He was in kindergarten for Memo’s third!” – dad
- “STOP!” – mom
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- “I would’ve won.” – father trying to one-up the men that lost on The Newlywed Game (1966)
- “We.” – mother
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- “I am B L O O M I N G! I NEED A LOCK! ON MY DOOR!” – Alexa Vega’s character in Sleepover (2004)
- (some dude on YT ripped the movie to shreds but I don’t think he had enough grace for the weirdness of being a newly teen girl)
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- “You can’t spell peluca without Pleakley” – cousin
- “You can’t spell wig without Pleakley”
- Pleakley being transgender
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- “Sorry, I was texting heart emojis to my boyfriend” – my cousin when he didn’t hear when I said being in love is disgusting
- it’s so fuckin gay
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- (At the library)
- “Who is your cell phone carrier” – librarian #1
- “AT&T” – me
- “I’m sorry for your loss.” – librarian #1
- “My husband and father-in-law work for AT&T.” – librarian #2
- “I think less of you now” – librarian #1
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- “Anyways, pleasure breaking down with you gentlemen.” – me after only slightly screaming at the England v Argentina game
- “Thank you for letting me watch that”
- Also relevant:
- “England shouldn’t have cheaped out on their bribe” – co-cutie about the game
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- “You’re talking a lot for someone who only cares about soccer every four years.”
- “EXACTLY! I CAN ONLY HANDLE THIS E V E R Y F O U R Y E A R S” – me, calmly
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- “I decided I’m gonna drive myself.” – co-cutie #1
- “Oh, so you’re gonna be a 60 minute episode instead of a 30 minute episode because he has to dispose of your car too” – co-cutie #2
- “You deserve a 60 minute episode! Not a short one that gets tied up with other ones!” – co-cutie #3
- “I don’t want to be any minute episode!!” – co-cutie #1
- “There’s no guarantees in life, so might as well be a 60 minute episode” – co-cutie #3
- “Be your own mini-series” – co-cutie #2
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- “She was all radical in college and now she works for Taco Bell corporate. The jokes write themselves.”
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- “That’s a rock with muscles.” – co-cutie about my profile picture
- Recognize him?
- Maybe I should have made it this one
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- “Now you have everyone[‘s calendar]” – co-cutie #1
- “Hehehe!” – me
- “She says with an evil laugh *narrows eyes*” – co-cutie #1
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- speaking of work
- It all started with them sending me:
- huh…… I wonder why they would think of me…..
- but anyways
- They said:
- and I felt a connection to the comments (slide through –>)
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- Speaking of being known
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- “I wonder if all himbos are tall because their stem cells went to hight and not brains?” – co-cutie
- obligatory himbo meme i always talk about
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- I have not yet seen The Odyssey™️… however:
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- “I think the fastest ones should go in the back. If you’re that good, then it shouldn’t matter where you are.” – me about F1
- Mother, true F1 fan with her F1 notebook, laughing loudly: “I hadn’t thought of it like that!”
- “You’re right, and it’s the same with the winnings: and the best teams get the most money, and the worst ones get the least amount of money” – Father
- “Like capitalism!!” – me
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- “Mom, five years ago did you think you’d be a dog mom and an F1 fan?” – me
- “No.” – Mom, as she added another piece to her puzzle in front of F1 on the TV
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- “Ma’am! You journal!” – bestie calling me out when I called someone else a nerd
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- “Send me an olive 🫒 if he takes you to Olive Garden”
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- A quote I remembered recently from high school:
- “You can’t say ‘yo yo’… unless you a gangsta ✌🏻” – my Spanish teacher trying to clarify conjugations 😂😭
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- “Cocaine is a hell of a drug!” – the hockey coach who was bodying eight-year-olds left and right on the Crimes and Penalties episode of Untold about the Danbury Thrashers
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- “There’s blooper reels, why can’t there be anti-blooper reels?” – about crying in documentaries
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- “It’s quiet in here” – co-cutie #1
- “Well it was.” – co-cutie #2
- “[Co-cutie #2] is a little shit” – me
- “I have noticed.” – co-cutie #1
- “Thats hurtful. You can’t just say that out loud.” – co-cutie #2
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- “I keep tons of secrets” – dad
- “Tons?” – me
- “Only because you forget them!” – mom
- “They’re still kept!” – dad
- *proceeds to not keep secrets*
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- ooooooooh the death of a toaster
- Artist’s rendition of the toaster’s funeral:
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- A friend’s little girl patting my jackalope tattoo on my calf 🐇
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- “You owe me a $100” – a little shit as soon as Morocco lost the penalty kicks against France
- “We did not say that. We didn’t even shake on it!” – me
- “We just did, how can you not remember?” – little shit
- “We are not having the same hallucinations, [you little shit]!” – me
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- “See, [math] fun!”
- “I don’t like agreeing with you.” – me
- “Because you want to.”
- Later, tattling on me: “Ariana hated that she loved it.”
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- “Thank goodness there are no idiots on the team” – from Norway: The Dark Horse documentary on Netflix, mostly about team members being smart enough to not put their individual egos above the team
- “YOU KNOW WHAT HE’S FUCKING RIGHT” – me
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- “I didn’t realize ‘oopsie’ is a legal defense” – co-cutie
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- “Como esta Will Smith?” – me, watching the Dodger game with my Nana
- “No esta, creo que esta lastimado, pero no me ha llamado para sobarlo y a ver que billete tiene en su bolsillo” – my Nana
- “How’s Will Smith?”
- “He’s not there, I think he’s hurt, but he hasn’t called me to come massage him and see what money is in his pockets”
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- “Mama birthed you but it was my egg” – a love to their and their partner’s cat
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- “I thought you were going to tell me to shut up once I said ‘at my advanced age’” – co-cutie
- “I’m not going to deny you the truth” – me
- “… I respect that”
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- “I hate you! I hate you!!” – co-cutie seeing me with a cardigan over my shoulders while her side was a swamp
- “You’ve never been this mad at me before!” – me
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- “You can’t forget if you don’t know” – me
- “I like that”
- Related to:
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- “I’m fine with him, I like him.”
- “No you don’t!”
- “I like him, I just want to hit him. Hit him into submission! Like that guy in the movie I’ve watched too many times, He’s Just Not That Into You“
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- “Why is Jurassic Park (1993) the perfect movie?” – annoyance™️ to co-cutie
- “I don’t like agreeing with [annoyance™️]” – me
- “So you don’t think it’s the perfect movie?” – co-cutie
- “I said I don’t like agreeing with him.” – me
- *co-cutie walks away and the annoyance™️ goes back to talking about whatever bullshit*
- “She gets the fun question and I get the bullshit that’s the bane of your existence???” – me
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- “Do you have a reset button?”
- I’m not the one who needs it
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- “What are the ingredients?” – me
- “Stuff.” – father
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- “How does it feel to be old?” – me
- “I’ve been old since I was 12. I never cared for the sound of children on the playground.”
- (We made sure to be as discordant as possible when singing happy birthday to him and he still scolded us for matching up on a couple of notes)
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- “You gave him a mild scolding” – me
- “Some people need mild scolding to do better work”
- “I say mild only because it should have been a harsh scolding” – me
- “Yea, some people need mild scolding and some people need beatings”
- “Some of us like beatings” – co-cutie #1
- “That’s between you and your bedroom!” – me
- “Only the bedroom? Prude!” – co-cutie #2
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- “It’s a TAX WRITE-OFF! It’s not gambling!” – Red Sox fan while we were watching the Dodgers lose 🤭
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- “It’s going to be a day” – friend #1
- “Why?” – me
- “Some asshole parked in my spot. A colorful car” – friend #1
- “Are you sure it’s not Ariana?” – friend #2
- “Which one of you fucks was it?” – me
- *friend #1 goes down to take a picture of the car and shows it to us*
- “You fuck, that’s me!” – me
- “Yea, you’re in my spot! I didn’t think so because surely she’s been here long enough to know her spot!” – friend #1
- “how did this happen?” – antagonist
- “listen, [friend #2] slept 12 hours, I slept less than I should have, she stole my sleep!” – me, immediately trying to shift blame
- After I moved my car to the correct space:
- “It was betrayal.” – enemy (formerly known as friend #1)
- “It was a mild inconvenience for, AT MOST, half an hour” – me
- “Let’s call it what it really is: treason.” – enemy
- They put it on the shared calendar 😭
- “Put it on my calendar too 😁” – antagonist
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- “I like joking around Ariana because she’ll laugh at anything” – friend (formerly known as enemy)
- *I run away while laughing*
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- “See you in two weeks!” – co-cutie
- “can I hug you?” – me
- “UGH, if you must”
- “I don’t have to! You don’t want it!”
- “But I see you ITCHING for it”
- “No, then I don’t want it!!”
- She did resort to giving me a hug 🙂
- I keep making friends with people who don’t like hugging…
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- “No one would mistake me for a doctor.”
- “Yea, their beards are cleaner. Actually, I’m not sure, never mind.” – me
- I was, yet again, promptly flipped off for this comment 😊
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- “They were long blinks!!” – A father defending himself “not napping”
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- “Look there’s the 2026 poster” – me about Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta poster
- “That’s the old one.” – father
- “The twen.ty.twen.ty.six. pos.ter.” – me, annunciating
- “I heard you, I just thought it was 2028” – father
- *My head is immediately in my hands*
- “Why didn’t you say the 2026 poster!” – father, attempting to defend himself
- “Because I expected you to know what f*ckin year it is!!!” – me
- “It’s fun to watch your parents grow old” – mother
- “Is it? I guess it has to be” – me
- *30 seconds later*
- “They all have flamenco dancers” – father
- “I just said that two minutes ago!!!!!!” – me
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- “It’s past my bedtime” – lady leaving the courthouse performances in Santa Barbara
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- “My friend in a Subaru rescued me, she shoveled me out and bought me groceries” – co-cutie about getting snowed in in Portland
- “Very butch lesbian of her” – me
- “She was!”
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- “I slept on the floor, all the beds were taken. I even slept on towels, not even blankets!” – friend after our Friday night out getting back to her family’s hotel room
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- “How do you blow those out?”
- “You sing a lot faster” – mom about putting forty candles on a cake!
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- “Your mother is like ‘you’ll never find a decent woman’” – me
- “I found something better: an indecent woman!” – co-cutie
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- “What’s the likelihood that he’ll be too hungover tomorrow?”
- “A solid 80%”
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- “It’s entertaining to watch you guys interact” – co-cutie
- One time in high school I has some friends who always flirted during our passing period. Me and another friend would just giggle right in front of them. One day I showed up with a gallon-sized Ziploc bag of popcorn I made the night before so we could snack during our favorite passing-period show 🍿
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- “When you’re dealing with slow man, you gotta make the breadcrumbs a piece of toast”
- Diametrically opposed to:
(O)possum Playlists of the Quarter
Here, we scream.
And, “apparently,” I listen to my short playlists for a “wildly long time”
Cuervos Chismoses
chisme = gossip. ”e” ending instead of “o/a” in Spanish for more gender inclusion
- I took myself on my first solo trip to celebrate my 30th! I invested in the view (slide through –>)
- On the way I hit up what someone called “Mexican Whole Foods” and was not disappointed
- Ooooooooo the end of the world cup and Mexico losing 😭 (slide through, including the poster I made for me and my paisas –>)
- “My emotional stability depends on a 17-year-old kid, an ex-Colombian, an ex-Spaniard, and a dude that had a cranial fracture to all play well tomorrow 😮💨👌⚽️🇲🇽”
- I preformed with my grupo folklorico at Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta! My first time going!
- My cousin got married and it wonderful to see he and his wife dance so happily together ❤️ and I got to live my best tía life… (slide through –>)
- AND FINALLY
- Let me know what you think 😘
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 is there to scream about today, but for funsies?
THANK YOU FOR READING FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS!!!! IF YOU’RE NEW HERE, WELCOME!!!!!
If you want some cheap retail therapy to go along with it, please check out my stickers.
Abrazos and/or high fives,
Ariana
Xismosa Xit 
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