The Advocate

(Art by Jonathan Horowitz) "I get along best with people I don't need to explain things to. Unfortunately for me, I tend to work almost exclusively with people who need some explaining." — paraphrase of Kat Blaque Take note and take care.

(Art by Takashi Murakami, Japan Supernatural: Vertiginous After Staring at the Empty World Too Intensely, I Found Myself Trapped in the Realm of Lurking Ghosts and Monsters, 2019) "Some people will never like you because your spirit irritates their demons."  —  Denzel Washington Take note and take care.

( Art by Robert Shetterly ) "To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." — Howard Zinn Take note and take care.

  "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." - Frank Herbert Take note and take care.

( Credit: Tyler Elise ) "Normalize changing your opinion when presented with new information." — Unknown, inspired by WandaVision Take note and take care.

(Art by Lourry Legarde) "I used to be afraid of the dark until I learned that I am light and the dark is afraid of me." — D.R. Silva Take note and take care.

"The highest good, like water, benefits many things, yet occupies dark places men despise." — Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu. Take note and take care.

(The Island of Procrastination, by Gemma Correll) "If you wait till the last minute, it'll only take a minute. I believe that if anything is worth doing, it would have been done already. I shall never move quickly, except to avoid more work or find excuses. I will never rush into a job without a lifetime of consideration. I shall meet all of my deadlines directly in proportion to the amount of bodily injury I could expect to receive from missing them. I firmly believe that tomorrow holds the possibility for new technologies, astounding discoveries, and a reprieve from my obligations. I truly believe that all deadlines are unreasonable regardless of the amount of time given. If at first I don't succeed, there is always next year. I shall always decide not to decide, unless of course I decide to change my mind. I shall always begin, start, initiate, take the first step, and/or write the first word, when I get around to it. I will never put off tomorrow, what I can forget abo...

( Tree of Hope, by Ashvin Harrison ) "Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes — you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone." — Rebecca Solnit Take note and take care.

(Art by  Zdzislaw Beksinski) "Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with...

A while ago I started posting this topic on my other social media accounts to cultivate a healthier and more sustainable social media praxis. But I never thought to share them on here! Well, to correct that oversight, here are all the posts since I started in order from the very first to the most recent. NB: for anything you're curious about, Google is your friend! But I'm happy to answer more in the comments. *** "So yeah, dreams are important. And I think there are more dreamers today than ever before in the history of anything…but…they're so afraid, so many of them. Afraid to lose all their 'manageable misery.' It's all just so…so…pathetic. Pathetic…and selfish. Are you seriously telling me…that you would deny the world an exquisite painting just because the cardboard firm from down the street is hiring? That you'd stay out of politics because your mates would think you a twat? That the greatest secrets of quantum physics would go forever unearthed…b...

Eunoia. Origin: Ancient Greek. Translation: "well mind" or "beautiful thinking". The shortest word in the English language which uses all five vowels. To me, nothing better illustrates eunoia than the words we create to capture the thoughts and feelings we must express. The words we create and tie together into kaleidoscopes of sentences. I have been collecting quotes for over 10 years now. Many are well-known. Others are so obscure that if I wasn't around to hear them... they might as well as never have been said for all history would know. To mark reaching the nice round number of 400-ish, I have posted them all for your enjoyment in order alphabetical. I give you... A Saboteur Academia Production! Alternative Wisdom for Hipsters, Hobos, and Haters  The Most A-mazazingly Phat & Nifty Collection of Quotes  Amassed in the History of Everything By Zek J. Evets With credit to Jasper O., Gian A., Tuba M.,  David T., The Miss So&So’s, Uncle Mal, ...

Been a minute since my last post. Got caught up in the grind, as we all do from time to time. Forgot about the take back, clap back, but it's a long weekend and some things have not yet arrived, so here we find ourselves. There are times when I've got that itch, that restlessness, that skin-crawling tingle. The feeling that keeps me up at night doing chores no one has any business doing at 4 AM. The feeling that keeps me up listening to another Bon Iver album, sweating in my boxer-briefs, typing into the cyber-ether. My proverbial shout from the mountaintops to the bottom of the sea. I hope you don't mind this divergence into something a little more personal. There are times when my fingers must. When they have to. Have to type. Have to spin words like spiders must spin webs, like electronic daemons must crawl the interweb, trawling cyberspace until the end of time. Soon, I'm going to be a father. I am going to have a little girl. It could happen at any time. She...