Hello, there! 👋
I’m Matthew Graybosch, the operator of this website and the author of everything you read here (unless I attributed it to somebody smarter). Here’s a little bit about me.
- I’m a writer by choice, a programmer by necessity, and a metalhead by the grace of the witch.
- I’m too old to be a Millennial, and perhaps a bit too young to be Generation X, but I identify more with the latter than the former.
- I’m a working-class college dropout with delusions of erudition.
- I’m a New Yorker with a face made for radio and a voice made for print.
- I’m autistic because your God drinks on the job.
- I’m the reason that the Gemini protocol’s companion upload protocol is called “Titan”.
- I have a day job, not a career, and that’s the way I like it.
- If I’m the smartest guy in the room, then everybody else in there with me is fucked.
- If you’re gonna make a rock opera about my life, you’d better call it Antipop Superstar.
Character Sheet
- class: absolutely none whatsover
- alignment: benevolent egoist
- patron deity: Prometheus
- weapon proficiency: pen
- alternate weapon proficiency: rifle
| attribute | score | bonus |
|---|---|---|
| STR | 10 | 0 |
| DEX | 14 | +2 |
| CON | 12 | +1 |
| INT | 18 | +4 |
| WIS | 12 | +1 |
| CHA | 14 | +2 |
| type | damage taken |
|---|---|
| physical | normal |
| fire | normal |
| lightning | normal |
| ice | resist |
| wind | resist |
| nuclear | normal |
| biological | resist |
| chemical | normal |
| psychic | null |
| bullshit | resist |
| curse | absorb |
| holy | null |
| darkness | absorb |
About My Online Persona
I’m not one of the good guys, and I’m certainly not a nice guy. While I’m working to be a kinder and gentler man, I am still determined to be my own man, and I will never claim to be anybody’s ally.
I’m the sort of minor villain you used to see in 1980s action figure infomercials like Masters of the Universe. Or, if you’ve seen Blake’s 7, I have rather more in common with the cynical egoist Kerr Avon than the idealistic altruist Roj Blake.
I’m usually at odds with the designated heroes — or people who think they’re the heroes of the piece — mainly because I find them self-righteous and meddlesome. They find me obnoxious because I generally respond poorly to people giving me the hard sell when they want me to take up their idea of a noble cause. Nor does it help that I’m determined to do as I please without considering others as long as I’m not actually hurting anybody or trampling their rights.
Nevertheless, when a real villain shows up, I’ll help the so-called or self-styled good guys for my own reasons. I will then shrug off whatever gratitude they deign to offer because I wasn’t doing it for their sake. I also know damn well they’ll forget that I was there for them when shit got real the next time I tell them to fuck off over something trivial.
Why am I like this? I was born a bastard, but anybody can be born a bastard; it’s a mere accident of birth. I worked hard to become the asshole I am today, but even assholes have standards. Even if you’re a bad guy, there’s shit you just can’t tolerate while retaining your self-respect — especially when it’s happening right in front of you.
If this seems strange to you, it may help if you understand the following: I think that Lucifer didn’t truly fall until he renounced his pride and accepted that he was the villain of the story.
If I seem willful, or seem to exhibit what psychologists might call a persistent drive for autonomy
or even oppositional defiant disorder
, it is because I hold two fundamental beliefs:
- I am no more subject to the approval of my equals than they are to mine.
- If you can barely captain your own soul, you have no business aspiring to admiralty over mine.
Rather than accepting a diagnosis of my personality from the practitioners of a science so soft that it barely withstands experimental scrutiny, I prefer to see myself as possessing a limited version of the Nietzschean will to power. I seek no more power than is necessary to become and remain my own master. I wish neither to reign in Hell nor to serve in Heaven, but merely to live on Earth.
In Moorcockian terms, I am an advocate for Chaos in a world whose balance has tipped toward a deranged and corrupt form of Law that protects a privileged few without binding them and binds the rest without protecting them. What rule of law exists in this world seems to have divorced itself from any reasonable notion of justice; what was once a means to a higher end has become an end in itself, bent solely on its own preservation even as it becomes inimical to the good of the people.
The America in which I was taught to believe never existed. The America I was taught to love was a mere myth, a noble lie told to placate the hungry masses at the gates lest they raise up a Spartacus to lead them.
The funny thing about myths, however, is that with sustained effort they can be made reality. With constant vigilance, they can be made to remain real. The lies you tell yourself are the lies that define you. With sufficient effort, concepts like equal justice under law
and with liberty and justice for all
can be imposed upon an insouciant universe indifferent to human ideals.
Updated Author Bio
in case I ever publish again
According to official records maintained by the state of New York, Matthew Graybosch was born on Long Island in 1978.
Urban legends suggest he might be Rosemary’s Baby or the result of top-secret attempts by the USA’s military-industrial-congressional complex to continue Nazi experiments combining human technology and black magic. The most outlandish tale suggests that he sprang fully grown from his father’s anus with a sledgehammer in one hand and the second edition of The UNIX Programming Environment in the other — and has been a royal pain in the ass ever since.
The truth is more prosaic. Matthew Graybosch is an author from New York who lives with his wife and cats in central Pennsylvania. His existence is — for his parents at least — an unfortunate and preventable accident. He is also an avid reader, a long-haired metalhead, and an incorrigible nerd who plays too many video games.
His novels include Without Bloodshed and Silent Clarion, and he’s got a couple of projects called Spiral Architect and When You Don’t See Me on the back burner. He has also written several short stories, among them “The Milgram Battery” and “Limited Liability”.
His day job is software development, and we’re not sure how he remains sane. We could ask, but we suspect he’d say, “I’m not sane. I’m just high-functioning.” This, of course, was before he was diagnosed as an autistic person himself. Nowadays he’d just ask, “I’m not sane, and I’m not sure if mental illness is a prerequisite for a STEM job or an occupational hazard.”