Mark Wallace
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markwallace.bsky.social
Mark Wallace
@markwallace.bsky.social
630 followers 470 following 900 posts
Anguish flâneur and professional writer: NYTimes Mag, Salon, LARB, Rumpus, GQ, more. Ex-ED at the Writers Grotto.
Games: markwallace.itch.io
News: inlooking.substack.com
Once wrote a book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262513227/the-second-life-herald/
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markwallace.bsky.social
Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy
Same photo of Elliott Gould looking sad at the bar that I usually post. I mean, it's a great photo, so... And my moral philosophy!
November 16, 2025 at 10:45 PM
markwallace.bsky.social
Just spent a week with my aging dad. Had a nice time and was happy to be able to help him out. Fringe benefit: came back with these 15mm Napoleonic figures he's had for 50 years and which we used to wargame with when I was ca. 8yo. Some of these little Prussian guys I painted when I was a kid!
Some 15mm Napoleonic lead figures. On cardboard bases. It was a long time ago. 15mm Napoleonic lead figures in a pile. Been in the box for too long, time to get some wargame on.
November 15, 2025 at 5:36 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
Age yourself with gaming
Opening screen of the 1977 computer game ADVENTURE. Which I played the shit out of that year. "You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."
November 12, 2025 at 4:27 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness
John Cho and Kal Penn in the movie poster for Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
October 21, 2025 at 3:56 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
Today's harvest. (About 4x this many went in the compost — too many worms.)
50 apples and a quince drying on a towel, artfully shot in portrait mode against the backdrop of a dun California hillside
October 13, 2025 at 12:18 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
What was your first tabletop wargame?
Cover of the 1975 rulebook for Empire, Napoleonic wargaming, with a drawing of Napoleon on horseback addressing his troops. First played when I was 8 or 9.
October 12, 2025 at 5:29 PM
markwallace.bsky.social
well played
A California license plate in yellow on black reading 0SLP2BK. Beastie Boys, yo.
October 1, 2025 at 1:10 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
it's fun when William Gibson reads like the lore in a TTRPG module, especially when he's just talking about the here and now
A page from the William Gibson novel Agency in which the POV character talks about the fall of democracy and the insulating power of the kleptocracy. Apologies for not typing the whole thing out on my phone.
September 10, 2025 at 7:29 PM
markwallace.bsky.social
No new pictures, where are you mentally
A large grey sloth, clinging vertically to a tree, peering deep into your soul, seeing your secrets, knowing your guilt. Or perhaps just asleep.
August 26, 2025 at 6:07 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
I feel like they worked on this sign
The shop sign for Hobson's Choice Cleaners in San Francisco. Because there's only one choice, really.
August 17, 2025 at 6:48 PM
markwallace.bsky.social
If you see this, post a sword ⚔️
A shirtless Paul Richter holding a big sword out in front of him in the 1924 Fritz Lang movie Die Nibelungen. I haven't seen it, but I enjoyed the first hour of the 2024 film Hagen, which is a retelling of some of the same tales. Might even watch the rest of it someday.
August 7, 2025 at 4:45 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
I am staying next door, so I guess I'd better start writing some kind of weird-ass novel.
A plaque that says, in French, "The Irish writer James Joyce stayed in this hotel in October 1922. He started writing his novel Finnegan's Wake." That's a big fucking bed to lie in, I tell you.
August 4, 2025 at 12:30 PM
markwallace.bsky.social
The Centrale Montemartini is a museum of Roman antiquities set in a nearly 100yo former steam power plant. One of the most striking juxtapositions of imagery I've seen in a while. Very cool.
Ancient Roman busts arrayed alongside a huge black iron steam boiler with contraptions along the top that echo the rank of disembodied heads. A headless statue from ancient Rome standing in front of the ductwork of a 75yo steam boiler. Busts and a headless statue from ancient Rome beside a huge black iron boiler, as well as it's control panel. An ancient Roman sarcophagus with a wavy vertical motif in front of huge vertical black iron boiler pipes.
July 31, 2025 at 12:09 PM
markwallace.bsky.social
Elliott Gould looking dejected in a bar with a drink from the amazing movie The Long Goodbye.
July 24, 2025 at 11:11 PM
markwallace.bsky.social
If you see this, post a vampire 🌺
A six foot tall and stinky corpse flower, kind of like a giant lily but smelling really bad. At least, that's what my wife said. I didn't see it, I had to work.
July 17, 2025 at 3:25 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
little porch visitor today
A cute little green-and-yellow parakeet or budgie perched on a wicker chair on our porch. No, we do not need another pet right now.
June 26, 2025 at 12:27 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
What's a poster you had in your room growing up?
Queen's Fat Bottom Girls / Bicycle Race poster, from the album Jazz, featuring a lot of naked women on bicycles. Remarkably lenient, my parents, to let me hang this in my room.
June 24, 2025 at 12:17 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
You've been kidnapped. The characters from the last TV show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who is coming to save you.

No, you don't want to see my belly.
Scene from Severance in which Mark and Hilly wait for the goat people to approach.
June 12, 2025 at 7:05 PM
markwallace.bsky.social
I've made a terrible mistake: have not listened to Low in quite some time. Rectifying now.

#bowie #davidbowie #brianeno #tonyvisconti
June 2, 2025 at 3:18 PM
markwallace.bsky.social
A movie that takes place where you're from.
John Cazale and Al Pacino looking sweaty and nervous in Dog Day Afternoon. What a film! Don't tell me you've never seen it. Actually, do tell me, and I'll be the biggest cheerleader for the treat you're in for.
April 17, 2025 at 8:38 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
Those are awesome. Also...
Wooly Willy, the toy with the magnet that let you arrange iron filings on dude's face. Yes, it really was a toy. No, I never opened mine up to check out all the iron dust inside.
March 25, 2025 at 4:26 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
Post a warning
A half peeled-off sticker warning of "microwave harassment in this area" and talking about "suppression of natural states of divine nonchalance causing normalcy and other disabilities," with a phone number: 1 (888) 717-7517. Go ahead. I dare you.
March 25, 2025 at 4:08 AM
markwallace.bsky.social
If you see this post a knight!
Cover of the Swords Trilogy by Michael Moorcock, featuring a Ken Barr painting (think Frank Frazetta, if you don't know Barr) of an armored knight on a black steed (it's totally a steed and not a horse), with a sword raised at the end of one muscle-bound arm and a scantily-clad maiden clutched in the other.
February 22, 2025 at 8:44 PM
markwallace.bsky.social
fond memories...
New York Times Spelling Bee showing the word "antlion"
January 31, 2025 at 5:52 PM
markwallace.bsky.social
If you see this quote with a photo of a bridge from your gallery
Vast miniature railway layout with a little rail bridge at the right
January 27, 2025 at 11:07 AM