Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs
2009.11.15 : The Sun on My Face
Plus The New Apocalypse Reviewed
And Leeroy Jenkins Remembered
"You can only move as fast as
 Who's in front of you
 You can breathe today"
Get the Flash Player to hear this rockn' track.
"Shame on the soul, to falter on the road of life while the body still perseveres."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

So today I ran with the sun on my face.

G%£ d&*^ that was nice.

This was my first run in, oh, probably three months. Which is the longest I've gone without running in, oh, probably about 15 years. Basically, I've ruined my legs. I mean, they're just wrecked. I tried a lot of things – expensive shoes, etc. One of the problems was my sort of cantakerous attitude toward things of this nature. In this instance, when my legs would really start feeling like stumps of wood, except threaded with exquisitely exposed and raw nerve endings, my basic reaction to that was to run much farther, much faster and harder. Which I imagine didn't help.

So I took up swimming again, which I'm remembering I don't enjoy nearly as much, to give my legs time to heal. (If they're going to (heal).) My friend Joe mentioned (*) this theory – controversial, but not by any means fringe – that you get about twenty years of good running with every set of legs. After that, hang 'em up – because you're going to start having all kinds of problems. Which, if true, means my day is done.

But not this day.

On this day, the beautiful sodden leaves lay on the ground after yesterday's rains, cushioning my footfalls, and all the beautiful dampness glinting in the autumn sunlight. Somehow I've never really noticed this phenomenon where rain knocks down a lot of leaves that maybe were almost just about ready to go on their own, but not quite. Oh no, wait – I have, once.




If you were on the fence about this, allow me to commend you to eschatalogical auteur Roland Emmerich's new filmic apocalypse, 2012. Even after two decades – which commenced with Jim Cameron's Terminator 2 – of being dunked in more and better and even more and better computer generated effects, 2012 was, simply and literally, jaw-dropping. Really, I kept feeling myself making this ridiculous face, there in the dark, literally with my eyebrows going for the ceiling and my jaw in my lap. Literally hanging open. Plus it was nail-biting; and tear-jerking. I cried, by my count, six times. But I'm a sap. It won't ever be mistaken for a masterpiece of dramatic or story-telling craft, but the story was solid enough to hang the spectacle on, sagging only slightly in places. (*) Plus great cast. John Cusack played John Cusack, but he's really holding up very well as he ages. Which cannot be said for Hugh Grant or Sarah Jessica Parker, whom I saw in a trailer for their new film before this film, and they both look 60.




Last night, waiting for Anna to come home, not having to get up in the morning, I amused myself by staying up late and watching such fabulous tripe as the original Leeroy Jenkins video –


– as well as one or two remixes, of which this is much the best:


God those just make me laugh my ass off every time I watch them.



  exercise     film     humour     interwebs     joy     music     video  
about
close photo of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

THE MANUSCRIPT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
PANDORA'S SISTERS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
DON'T SHOOT ME IN THE ASS, AND OTHER STORIES by Michael Stephen Fuchs
D-BOYS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
COUNTER-ASSAULT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book One - Fortress Britain, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Two - Mogadishu of the Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Genesis, by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Three - Three Parts Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Four - Maximum Violence, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Five - EXODUS, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Six - The Horizon, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : NEMESIS by Michael Stephen Fuchs

ARISEN, Book Nine - Cataclysm by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Ten - The Flood by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Thirteen - The Siege by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Fourteen - Endgame by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Fickisms
ARISEN : Odyssey
ARISEN : Last Stand
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 1 - The Collapse
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 2 - Tribes
Black Squadron
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 3 - Dead Men Walking
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 4 - Duty
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 5 - The Last Raid
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