"X" Marks the Spot

I have my own personal X-Files. I don't generally open them up to the public, but just this once I'll give you a little peek.

- Basements. I don't like 'em. Not mine, not yours, not anybody else's. It's not that I think Norman Bates's mother is down there. Not really. Probably not. I just don't like being below-ground with cobwebs and sibilant, unseen things that like the dark, even if they are just pipes and boilers and stuff. Believe you me, when I move I intend to have an upstairs laundry room.

- Attics. I don't care that they're usually hot and airless. No, I stay out of them because I've seen a few attics, and I've seen some nasty stuff in them -- stuff like giant bugs, huge shaggy spiders, and -- yuck! -- even a dead mouse. I've heard of people having live birds and squirrels in their attics, too; not anything I'd care to tangle with. I've never been in my own attic. The ceiling trapdoor to it is painted shut, and it's staying that way. I've heard the creaking and rustling overhead, which is plenty reason enough for me to apply a fresh coat of paint to that hellish portal every now and then.

- Car noises that at the very second that you try to explain them to a competent and semi-conscious mechanic, magically disappear.

- Aches and pains that suddenly don't exist any more as soon as you plop yourself down in the waiting room of a doctor. The amount of money you get to pay for that out-of-body experience occupies its own sub-section of the X-Files.

- Interspersed throughout the X-Files are all those people who think they know something about V which is connected to W except that it really refers to X and not Y and in the end all boils down to Z -- when, in truth, they don't actually know jack-shit. As soon as I learn Voodoo (the primer for which is buried so far down in the X-Files that even I can't find it), I'll be visiting them. Mmm-hmm.

- And then there's the case of the Mutated Refrigerator Stuff. I put stuff in there, fully intending to go back and eat it before its expiration date, and then the next time I see it it's fuzzy and full of strange colors and looks like it could get up and dance. Except ice cream. Ice cream never seems to stay around long enough to die an ignominious freezer death. Why do you suppose that is?

- Somewhere in those Files are the plans I've been paying lip-service to for 20 years. It's time they got a dusting-off. This is where I make a small confession: I am a terrible procrastinator. Since I also possess nearly limitless patience and could wait out the Apocalypse if I had to, I sometimes wake up and realize that years have passed while I was waiting on something. Something's gotta give in the foreseeable future.

- I am XX years of age and am still (a little bit) scared of my mama. I hope that if I'm ever the matriarch of anything, all the underlings won't be scared of me.

Coming some time this century -- a glimpse into my Ex-Files.

So, what's in your X-Files?

I think some of these blasfomys are worthy of Scully and Mulder's attention. I sure can't divine what they mean. You?

deciet
premote
pompas ass
perverbial
corrected the correcte errors
soory
preditory
diplorable tretment