X for Xenophobia.

Basically because there wasn't much else I could think of that began with X.

Xenophobia, if people don't know and can't be bothered looking it up, is of course defined as the word that gave us the phrase "please explain" from Pauline Hanson.
OK, OK. It's a fear of foreigners/strangers, though can be extended to just a fear of the strange.

It seems to be quite rife amongst people these days. Strange is not good. It scares us. And that's not necessarily just whatever the "mainstream" is - because that's like an "anti-stream", which is predictable in itself that it always goes the opposite of where the mainstream goes.

If you've watched the Dark Knight, it's a bit like what the Joker said in it; "Nobody panics when things go "according to plan"… even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I told the press that, like, a gang-banger will get shot, or a truck load of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die…well, then everyone loses their minds!"


Strange is whatever isn't in the plan. It's what we can't account for or plan into what we've got organised. And that's what we fear. That the plan will get disrupted....that our perfect little picture will get blown up. Or maybe we accept that it's not perfect, but it's still ours, and nobody else is going to break it.


Thing is, there's only one picture, and it's not mine or yours. It's one on an infinite canvas, and it's God's. We're each just standing on a little piece of it and we like to frame it and call it "ours". Those people that do things that are, or are in themselves deemed "strange", aren't messing up the big picture. They're just intruding on our little ones where we don't want them to.