Michael Kwan

@mkwan.bsky.social

449 Followers 861 Following

Reader (fiction, science fiction, occasional fantasy, history) / Gamer (TTRPGs, boardgames) / Fountain Pen user & collector / Roller Derby NSO @ Angel City Derby. “It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.” - Lemony Snicket.

A picture of the character Leland Palmer from the TV show TWIN PEAKS smiling broadly. Played by actor Ray Wise.
Picture of Windom Earle, a character in the TV series TWIN PEAKS.
Cover image of The Vets Shelter Surprise by Elle Douglas showing two women walking horses in the countryside, looking at each other.
Photograph of The Memorial to the Murdered Members of the Reichstag in front of the in German Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, the former Reichstag. The memorial is made of 96 cast iron plates, places vertically in a line, with the names, birth and death dates and places of the 96 members of the parliament who died unnaturally between 1933 and 1945 engraved on the edges.
Photo of two cats,one tortoiseshell patter, the kther gray and white furred, sitting together on a bed.
A picture of David Lynch as FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole from Twin Peaks, subtitled saying, "And when you became Denise, I told all your colleagues, those clown comics, to fix their hearts or die."
Two frame meme of Tom Hiddleson as Loki from LOKI season one. In the upper frame, Loki is looking at at an inset of a post reading "Newsbreakinglive NEWS: Police in Massachusetts say seven Tesla charging stations were intentionally set on fire and the incident is being investigated as suspicious" (citing CBS News) and subtitled saying, "Yes. Very sad" In the lower frame, he is subtitled saying, "Anyway"
A picture of a tortoiseshell pattern cat, basking in sunlight on a carpeted floor.
Black cat on a front porch post.
Image of the Republican President wearing a crown, headed by his name TRUMP with "Long Live The King" in the lower left, all of which has been crossed over with red as if graffitied with the words "NO KINGS" centered over the image.
Screenshot from the text adventure, The Colossal Cave, featuring the repeated phrase "You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." in response to each move made by the player.
Photos of two cats sleeping on a duvet, backs to the camera.
Picture of a white and dark gray cat.
Diagram of positions and areas around a cricket pitch referenced by the area names used for The Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4.
Painting by Jakub Różalski depicting a winter scene with characters Anna and Wojtek the bear in the foreground and mechanized fighting machines in the background.
Image of Diane Lane as Ellen Aim in the movie STREETS OF FIRE.
Image of the Klingon characters Lursa and B'etor from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Image of the character Ashelin Praxis from Jak X: Combat Racing.
Movie poster for the 1977 Disney film, CANDLESHOE, featuring a teen-aged Jodie Foster, front and center.
Meme reading, at the top, "When I take a moment to focus on my own life" above a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine looking to the right of the picture with a subtitle reading, "Thomas had never never seen such a mess."
Movie poster for the anime, "Dirty Pair: Project Eden." Features protagonists Kei and Yuri in front of an insectoid monster.
Imagine of a gray and white cat curled up on a blanket on a chair.
Mike's RollerCon 2024 game list. From last worked to first. Home / High Seed - Visitor / Low Seed Black Diaspora - Fuego Latino Fuego Latino - SALAAM MexiCANs - Yellow Fever Rocky Horror - Rocky Balboa CA Antioxidants - TX Free Radicals Strippers - Tippers Magic Mike - Chippendales BDSM - Furries Sin Fronteras - Land Back Matrix - Fury Road Tomboys - Fasholes Badass Derby - Korea & Friends Knotty Knitters - Happy Hookers
Cover of the paperback edition of John Nichols novel, THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR.
Image of the cover of a book entitled Letters to Milena, with the name F. Kafka in the lower right corner. The book is on a table and there is a coffee cup in the upper-right of the image.
Imagine of the boxcover of Europa Simulazioni's wargame Strafexpedition: The Spring Offensive against Italy, 1916. In the center are period pictures of Austro-Hungarian Field Marshal Conrad von Hötzendorf and Italian General Luigi Cadorna. At the bottom is an image of Austro-Hungarian soldiers pulling a field artillery piece forward.
Image of a blue, Moleskine planner book with a label affixed reading "2020 Roller Derby Scheduling"
Image of the cover of THE REDISCOVERY OF MAN: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith. (NESFA Press ed.)
Image of the cover of the novella, ALL SYSTEMS RED by Martha Wells.
Meme reading: Get to know my reading taste. For every like, I will post one book I love.
Photo of the lineup of skaters at the start of a jam in an outdoor derby flat-track.
Image of a car's odometer reading 088888. (For completeness' sake, the display also shows it's in D(rive), has gone 61.0 miles on the A trip odometer, and has nearly a full tank.)
A picture of the Retro51 rollerball pen styled after the Nautilus submarine lying on top of the Canterbury Classics WORD CLOUD edition of Jules Verne's TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA.
A quote from Terry Pratchett's novel SNUFF, with a Conklin All-American Raven Black fountain pen lying across the bottom of the pages. Quote reads: "... but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?"
Quote from Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Breakfast of Champions, which reads: "I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind. Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not. '
Quote from Harlan Ellison's story "'Repent, Harlequin,' Said the Ticktockman" written in fountain pen, which reads, "Why let them order you about? Why let them tell you to hurry and scurry like ants or maggots? Take your time! Saunter a while! Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the breeze, let life carry you at your own pace! Don't be slaves of time, it's a helluva way to die, slowly, by degrees...down with the Ticktockman!"
Photo of a bowl of Japanese ramen with bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, green onion, a halved hard boiled egg, and a slice of fish cake.
Image of the cover "A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed By The Rise of Fascism" by Julia Boyd & Angelika Patel.
Image of a flat-track roller derby track with members of Angel City Derby warming up.
Meme/image of the character Daria from the animated show "Daria" with the phrase "Don't worry, I don't have low self esteem. I have low esteem for everyone else."
Photo of a piece of paper and a brass pen with a quote by Samuel Beckett from "The Unnameable" The quote reads, "It will be the silence where I am? I don't know. I'll never know: in the silence you don't know. You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on."
Screenshot of portion of web page showing the meaning of the name "Oswin" to be Divine Friend and God's Friend.
Picture of a large domestic cat white and dark gray coat staring at the viewer.