Michael profile picture

Michael

...to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.

About Me


Aspiration: "He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks -- that is, with a rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in." - Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder"

My Interests

Redheads, Bill Paxton, the evil German version of Doctor Who ("Doktor Who")

Music:

Exclusively reinterpretations of Eurobeat songs played on the pan flute and theramin.

Movies:

If there aren't ninjas being dismembered, I'm not currently watching it.

Television:

I used to subscribe to the belief that the government was watching you back through your television screen when you watched network TV, but my credit went into the red, so now I don't.

Books:

DUNE (sans Brian Herbert's corpse-rapery); Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books; Robert E. Howard's electric, eclectic stories; Edgar Rice Burroughs' tales of the king of, variously, Mars, Venus, and the apes; Sten Nadolny's "The God of Impertinence"; embarassing stuff that I'll defend to the end, like Stephen King's "Dark Tower," "Harry Potter" and "The Dresden Files"; Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"; Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash", up until it becomes sub-sophomoric philosophical garbage (Glossolalia: The Silent Killer, anyone?); Will Eisner's...anything; Kurt Vonnegut; Robert Heinlein; probably books that aren't science fiction; oh, "Crime and Punishment", I guess; Michael Chabon's OK, too; Raymond Chandler, with an especial love for "The Little Sister"; Dashiell Hammett's "Red Harvest"; Roger Zelazny's everything; Eiji Yoshikawa's "Musashi";.

Heroes:

Shaft. And Batman.

My Blog

Steal a constables helmet for the home team

One wonders if the emptiness within is exhaustion or hunger. I find myself buffeted between surges of desperate, vital energy and sullen moments of giddy morbidity. The world spins regardless of all...
Posted by Michael on Sun, 30 Sep 2007 01:44:00 PST

Je nage, mais les sons me suivent

I'm completely drained, but somnolescence is a fickle dame, and I just keep puttering around. Which, to be frank, seems a whole lot more like obsessive self-immersion than anything else.  The Gre...
Posted by Michael on Sat, 07 Apr 2007 01:49:00 PST

I am 700 badasses.

Formula: Number of asses kicked in total x Percentage of local dojos humbled in one-on-many combat + Generic beautiful women romanced and abandoned / Amount of times left wounded and/or crying in...
Posted by Michael on Mon, 04 Sep 2006 08:13:00 PST

Deep Black Heat

Summer's end, and my heart still says we're owed more scorch.  Feel strange, as though watching my own life through a shadowed glass.  I know it's me, but I can't quite feel like I'm really ...
Posted by Michael on Fri, 01 Sep 2006 08:28:00 PST

The Prosecution of My Love

It is singularly beautiful outside right now, and I plan on going out and enjoying the sundown, but before I go, I figured I'd share a little something. Human language has existed for perhaps millions...
Posted by Michael on Fri, 04 Aug 2006 07:38:00 PST

Quotidius: The Recursive Depths of Spiritual Angst from the Perspective of the Soteriologist

Just kidding, I love you guys!
Posted by Michael on Mon, 31 Jul 2006 12:01:00 PST

Someone Turn Off The Sky Now

I just saw a giant albino spider do battle with a helium-filled balloon, and the balloon totally won. I can think of three spectacles more badass than what I just saw (though my stock may be limited b...
Posted by Michael on Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:18:00 PST

Power, Responsibility, and Creepy Alien Goo-mo-Suits

Holy crap on a cracker.  I'm THERE.
Posted by Michael on Tue, 27 Jun 2006 02:22:00 PST

Advice to live by

Do: Let the summer wind carry floral scents on the air in the warm evening sunlight. Don't: Join a sex cult based on a series of trashy, misogynistic sci-fi books from the seventies. Just a helpful re...
Posted by Michael on Tue, 20 Jun 2006 04:27:00 PST

The empty edge of the earth.

These bastard days become princess nights before you realize you're after  Grey and hot, they pass like mandalas in the clouds, swirling eternal a-push and a-pull.  I can feel the absol...
Posted by Michael on Mon, 12 Jun 2006 03:26:00 PST