Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

In a few, I'll post pictures of this trip. Having 2 weeks off from work, I decided to make a trip South and visit Brownsville, Texas (the place of my birth), which I have absolutely no memory of because we left when I was one year old. My father, who turned 80 this year, decided to come with since he'd not been back in 43 years either. So, on Saturday we set off for Albuquerque to stay a day in the new house. Monday morning we rolled out. Our first stop was Marfa, Texas. I'd heard about an arts festival they do so I wanted to check it out. Marfa also was the location for the James Dean movie "Giant," which i have not seen. Marfa is southeast of El Paso and about 7 hours from Albuquerque. Since we'd gotten an early start, we still had plenty of light and Marfa was really tiny. Cute, definitely worth coming for the festival, but no real hotel options. So on to Alpine, Texas. Alpine, Texas and the next major city, Marathon, are the closest stops to...

Okay, Healing is the hardest part of WOW, but in my running instances at 80 I've run into some problems in all the roles. If you are lucky to get into a group as a DPS, you prolly don't really need to worry about much unless your healer and tank suck. Having done both and sucked as both, I know what they look like. If your tank can't hold aggro and keep the mobs off you, then your tank sucks. Some fights its unavoidable that a mob will aggro you, but does your dps respond fast enough to get them off you? Does your tank come back and scoop them up? Those are the questions you should be asking. For example, I was running Heroic Gundrak. I inspected the tank and it looked like he should've been able to do it, but at the Serpent boss, I kept dying...The boss summons snakes that the tank must pick up, which he wasn't. So I switched to pally, we found a healer, and we finished the instance. Some things I learned, however, know the fights. Use wowwiki.com. I w...

If you're following this, then you know I haven't posted in quite a while. What you may not know is that I'm not doing much in poetry anymore. Instead I've been afflicted with World of Warcraft addiction. It's true, I'm addicted. I love the game. I love the subculture, the challenge, the virtual world, the complexity. To date I have a Lvl 80 Hunter, Rogue, Druid, Shammy, and Pally and a lvl 77 Warlock. While I was not writing about it here, something has gone very, very wrong with the location of my WOW blog. So now here I am. After 2 days of playing the same heroic dungeon (Utgarde Keep) on my pally tank, pally dps, and shammy healer (and have also played on my druid-bear, druid-boomkin, and hunter months ago). I can now say healing is by far the hardest job. Tomorrow....I'll post more in depth about my learning to stop being a spell caster and becoming a healer.

Greetings from the Democratic National Convention from my hometown, Denver, Colorado. No... I don't call Denver home anymore, but I did graduate from high school and college here so I have an affinity for the place that goes beyond being just another big American city. I mean, this is where I read poetry for the first time, got my first blowjob, was thrown threw a car window, and discovered I was a good writer. But seriously, I had absolutely no desire to deal w/ parking here, so I parked my car at 74th and Colorado and biked in. Not a bad ride had I not missed the turn and ended up nearly to Golden before turning around. I was short on water by the time I passed the Metropolitan Area Wastewater Treatment plant and begin composing some sort of rant about the relative joys of actually riding next the entire load of shit a city of 2 million plus dumps in a river while I slowly die of thirst. I'm so dramatic at times. But I was thankful when a water fountain appeared at t...

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Continuing in the tradition, I am posting from the third floor in Kim Nuzzo's townhouse in Aspen. I scheduled to read at Zele's Cafe this evening. I drove up from ABQ, 7 quick hours due north and right into the heart of the mountains, culminating with this spectacular climb up Independence pass. I hang out with Kim, meet his wife and daughter, and go watch the tail end of a little league hockey game. I've never been to a hockey game and it was entertaining as hell. Fast paced, crazy reckless, "where did they learn to skate like that at 12 years old." But, thinking checking out the Scorps (our minor league hockey game) may be worth some time. Kim was there supporting a friend's son. Kim, who I met last March at the Colorado Performance Poetry Festival (Sparrows) is certainly one of the nicest people I've ever met. Unpretentious, a great listener (in fact I did most of the talking-no surprise here). Aspen, Colorado, Stunning, beautiful, typical Colorad...

Flew in yesterday for the 2007 EC Retreat: Henry, Steve, Maria, Delrica, Rachel, Scott, Erik, and Bob getting together to talk slam. Watched some archival video from the early years, slam circa 1987 & 91. Henry had transferred some early footage. Watched Lisa Buscani versus Patricia Smith. It was great.