Porn, Moonshine, and Christ! Oh, My!

Today’s blog post is brought to you by the letter “X.”
Poor, abused, misunderstood X. All it asks of life is to be pronounced like a “Z” at the front of words.
Oh, I know what you’re thinking, X Ray. That’s eks-ray. Yes, and it’s also not a proper word.
Under the rules of the meme I am to tell you 10 things I love or at least like that begin with the letter X.
I asked for this. Most people don’t want X. The fools.

1 Xylophone – a musical instrument that is played by striking the bars. I had a toy one when I was young. I still have it. I have no talent for this sort of adventure, but it’s fun.

2 Xeriscape – dry, desert-like landscape. If you have a cactus garden, then you have a xeriscape.

3 Xerox – from xerography, a term coined for the procedure of making dry copies.

4 Xmas – This is pronounced eksmas and is formed from the Greek letter chi(X) the first letter of the Greek word for Christ.

5 XXX – before we had porn everywhere we had moonshine. Potent moonshine jugs in movies have three Xs on them to designate powerful juice inside. Porn needs no explanation, but it really should apologize. Three Xs also mean explosives inside.

6 Xanthan gum – used as a substitute for gluten in baking.

7 Xanadu – poetic name for China in the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure- dome decree:…” Also a movie with Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John.

9 X – marks the spot on treasure maps.

10 X – the Roman numeral 10.

X is the most useful of all letters. You can sign your name with it, use it to mark a spot, and abbreviate words like cross or Christ.

It galls me no end when people who were raised in the English language, who can read it, who went to school in it, and who use the alphabet every day cannot get their minds around the simple concept of pronouncing X words correctly.
Perhaps the best way to bring it home is to paraphrase “The Happy Hooker” herself, Xaviera Hollander. In the front matter of her second book she offers an explanation of how to pronounce her name “…like Riviera with a Zah.”