The Advocate

(Art by Dave Correia) Every day. Since January 22, 2003. I sit and I write. I read. I rewrite. I read something else. I write something else. I keep doing this and doing this and doing this. I have been writing so much for so long that I've lost more writing than I can remember or pull from storage. Some days I write better than others. Most days I just write what I need to write to make it to the next day to write something else, something more. I miss my life before writing, in certain ways. It was prelapsarian. It was before the recorded word. It was the BCE to my AD. I can imagine any number of things, any number of myths about who I was, why I was, how I was... Once I started writing, I became unable to distort my lived experience. It was stark. It was unambiguously factual. It was lacking adornment to the point of emaciation. Before I could write I was a life full of adventure and magic. It was tragedy, it was comedy, it was drama. It was. Now It simply is. My...

I've been meaning to write this post for quite some time. However, full-time parent + full-time husband + full-time public servant + part-time gamer + anytime reader + once in a blue moon musician leaves little time in a given day/week/month/year/lifetime. Anyhoo, this is a subject that, the older I become, the more I invariably raise in casual conversation. Core competency: the innate ability to figure shit out, handle their shit, never let their shit slip, and then get that shit done. Basically, a person who knows their shit, figuratively scatologically speaking. It's often confused for the "management theory" developed by C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel. I'm definitely not talking about this, you heartless hippy capitalist. It's also sometimes confused and/or used as a substitute for: common-sense, wisdom, intelligence, knowledge, education, genius, cunning, craftiness, being gifted, being sly, being slick, being thorough, hard-working, street-smarts, ...

(Sophia, Mother Of The Angels Art by Gustav Dore) These two NDE's (near-death experience) happened during a single long weekend trip to Slab City, near Southern California's Salton Sea, a scant couple dozen miles from the international border. It's a place of meth-heads, landed hobos, migrant workers, and burning deserted wasteland flanked by military bombing sites and toxic waste dumps. The air always smells vaguely of rot, courtesy of the Sea's ever-growing decayed population of fish exposed regularly to 120 degree heat. My friend G-Money and I were going to conduct anthropological research on the squatter's village in the Slabs for a future project. G-Money was the designated photographer, while I did interviews and took a massive amount of notes. We expected an easy few days writing, talking, and photographing. What we got was a hellish, nearly suicidal not-quite-a-vacation. But before I jump into the happenstance of events that led to mine and m...

(Credit) This is a prose poem. Please do not confuse the art with the artist by projecting the contents of the character into the creator. Begin rant/ I'm no longer on my antidepressant. I still take the Xanax though. My therapist, who I was finally starting to get comfortable with after months, has moved away for a new job. So I've stopped therapy completely. I treat my psychiatrist like a mushroom because he doesn't seem interested in me. I feel like my treatment has helped me as much by not helping me as it has by helping me. I still have intrusive thoughts about terrible things. I still exhibit hyper-vigilance. I still worry excessively about my shit and piss and bathrooms and wearing protective garments. Yet now I have stopped putting myself down for past my behavior when I was a child. I give myself space to try and openly be sad, to feel things, to not be perfect. Some days I even feel truly, unconditionally, and briefly happy. Especially with my infant. Still, I al...

Looking-for-Raid (LFR) was implemented November 29, 2011 . At the time it was called "Raid Finder." It allowed players to automatically group up with like-minded players for endgame content -- basically a way for people to raid who weren't in a guild or a pre-made raiding group. Additionally , the difficulty of the raid was tuned way down to make it easier (and, therefore, possible) for more casual players to complete the raid without the necessity of having played together before or even having gained significant experience doing the raid before. If the group still failed to kill a certain boss, they would be gifted with stacks of "determination" that would buff the entire group and help them to defeat a given boss. These stacks could each a maximum of 10, which would equal a huge buff to each player individually such that even the most incompetent groups could kill the boss. It revolutionized the way World of Warcraft (WoW) was played. For the first tim...

1. People who fail to use their turn-signal, resulting in: cutting me off, causing me to slam on my brakes, missing a light, nearly crashing into cars, going very slow, going waaaay too fast, backing-up traffic, confusing the fuck out of everyone in the immediate vicinity, and otherwise causing unsafe roadside conditions. Solution: USE. YOUR. FUCKING. TURN. SIGNAL. IT IS LITERALLY 1 INCH FROM YOUR HAND ON THE WHEEL. I CAN'T READ MINDS YOU IDIOTS AND I DON'T NEED NO CAR CRASHES AND VEHICULAR MANSLAUGHTER IN MY LIFE. 2. People who forget that sidewalks have lane. I mean, sidewalks have LANES like roads do. They split in the middle for opposites sides of foot traffic. The left-most side is for the fast walkers. The right-most side is for the slow walkers. The middle-most side is for the middle-most people. (Side-note: you also don't stop in the middle of the sidewalk. You go to the far end in order to not obstruct foot traffic. If you stop in the middle someone -- not n...

... The dumpster fire (Trumpster fire?) fueled on bullshit and bigotry by Darth Cheeto, AKA The Orange Menace, AKA Spray-Tan Hitler, AKA Twitterer in Chief, AKA ROTUS, AKA Apocalypse Now, AKA Donald Drumpf. How, might you ask? How can I possibly tear myself away from the litany of news feeds  (or, in the words of Republicans "fake news," AKA "alternative facts," AKA lies) showcasing #45's brick-shitting and eye-gouging stupidity?  I watch hilarious videos, of course! So, for your distracting pleasure in-between bouts of social justice, activism, and maybe even a little subversion, I give you my choicest selections: Trust me, the Russian Mafia Story just makes you want to cry tears of collegiate joy -- even if you were a "non-traditional" student like myself! It also makes so much sense when you think about college kids, Russia, and White people Whitepeopling. (Which I am told is, indeed, a verb, so fuck you.) This video is probably the ...

Subtitle: fighting back against the fascist, ego-maniacal, corrupt, lying, bigoted, fecal-fueled dumpster-fire that is, unfortunately   regrettably   depressingly   confusingly   infuriatingly  disgustingly our new President of these United (for how long, who knows?) States of America. As such, here's my starter's guide *PART ONE* to fighting back against this shitstorm with all the paper-towels at your disposal. 1. Follow and support organizations doing the front-line work of exposing the destruction being wrought and who are actively fighting back. Start  with local organizations in your communities FIRST! In my locale of the Bay Area, for instance, we've got...  Jobs with Justice SF , East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy and Bay Rising , 350 Bay Area , Alliance of South Asians Taking Action , Arab Resource and Organizing Center , Asian Pacific Environmental Network , AFT 2121 , CAIR SF Bay Area , California Faculty Association , Caus...

I guess I must be feeling juxtapositionally dichotomous since this is my 2nd post putting up a versus! Anyways, this time the question is: who played it better? Which song wins out between... BOMBERMAN 64 and SPIDERMAN!? You'll notice that both franchises use the exact same melody! They use the same arrangement, same catchy grooves, and basically are the same song (aside from the lyrics.) Of course, the Spiderman theme song wins out for being first on the scene. It was released in 1967 for the cartoon show! It was composed by 2 random dudes from New York and has been endlessly parodied since. BUT! Here's the thing, the Spiderman theme song was replaced in my cultural collective by the Bomberman 64 commercial during the 1997 holiday season. And it stayed there. Forever. I remember watching this commercial almost everyday back in '97, as it was basically on constant repeat. As for the game itself -- well, it was good but not great . I enjoyed the creative ...

I've recently been obsessively playing DragonQuest I, II, and III, through Google Play while, simultaneously, playing Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI. All on my smartphone, a Google Nexus 6P purchased direct from Google but using T-Mobile's network. Now, if you've never played any of these before -- then this post is probably going to bore the fuck out of you and hold absolutely no interest at all, so you might want to leave unless you enjoy (possible) spoilers, in-depth game discussions about games you've never played, and super-technical blah-blah. For those of you that have  played these games. 1) Good for you! 2) Let's talk about why FF is so much more popular in North America than DQ. Seriously. Both were groundbreaking games! Both featured revolutionary job systems, character design, battle design, artwork, etc. They are the definitive JRPGs (Japanese Role-Playing Games) we all know and love. They feature turn-based battles, mult...