The Advocate

( Smithsonian National Museum of African Art ) I did and do collect a lot of things. Quotes. Keychains. Books. Pogs. World of Warcraft Achievements. Memories. Songs. Stories. Another thing I collect are words. Not just any words. I'm talking about the castoffs, the amalgamations and portmanteaus, the slangsters, the randos. I try to keep a running list and thought maybe ya'll would enjoy what I've got thus far: 1. Pessoptimist, someone who is both a pessimist and an optimist, either alternating or at the same time. 2. Eunoia, the quality of "beautiful thinking." 3. Sarcaustic, being sarcastic and caustic at the same time. Sarcasm that burns. 4. Lunaphile, being a lover of all things moon-related. 5. Xenophilia, an affection for unknown/foreign objects and/or people, the opposite of xenophobia. 6. Wonderlust, unlike wanderlust's strong desire for travel, this is a strong desire for wonder, for things amazing or magical or just plain aweso...

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, ...

(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...