Return "True" on Empty jQuery Selector Array?

I'm working on creating a more semantic way of checking for elements with jQuery. Using $("#element").length > 0 just doesn't really feel very well worded to me, so I'm making my own selector addition for use in .is:

if($("#element").is(":present")) {
   console.log("It's aliiiveeee!!");
 }
 

That part was easy, like this:

$.extend($.expr[':'],{
     present: function(a) {
         return $(a).length > 0;
     }
 });
 

I want to go a step further, and make it easy to see if an element doesn't exist, using similar syntax:

$.extend($.expr[':'],{
     present: function(a) {
         return $(a).length > 0;
     },
     absent: function(a) {
         return $(a).length === 0;
     }
 });
 
 $(function() {
   if($("#element").is(":absent")) {
     console.log("He's dead, Jim.");
   }
 });
 

But this part is surprisingly hard to do. I think it's because I'm paring down the returned elements to get a result, and paring the selector to .length === 0 is the same as asking for no elelements: it returns false no matter what.

I've tried a lot of different ways to reverse things and get this to return true when the element doesn't exist, and false if it does:

return $(a).length === 0;
 
 return !($(a).length > 0);
 
 if(!($(a).length > 0)) { 
   return true;
 } 
 
 if($(a).length > 0) { 
   return false;
 } else {
   return true;
 }
 
 return !!($(a).length === 0);
 
 // etc...
 

Is there an easy way to get this to just return true if the element doesn't exist, and false if it does?

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