• mikebilleter
      • hello Mike Billeter
      • Username: mikebilleter
      • In response to: "What do you do on the side?" Writer / Reader / Social Media Scholar / Online Community Organizer / Awesome Person / Comic book fan / Music lover
  • mikebilleter's latest answers
    • If I Could Be Any Character From a Book, I'd Be...

      • Plinky asks who I would be if I could be any book character. The answer came to me within 1/10th of a second. Here's why I answered with Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes...

        Why would I want to be Calvin? The kid has the thoughts of a wise philosopher combined with the imagination and simple wonder of a 6-year-old. On top of that, he has a best friend that fulfills every need a best friend should fulfill. His sledding and wagon-riding adventures are epic, his escapades are legendary, and he builds the coolest snow art of anybody who ever lived.

        Furthermore, he is in a perpetual state of 6-year-old innocence (stretching the word innocence, obviously...) and personifies the essence of summer in the eyes of a child.

        I could go on and on about my love for Calvin (and Hobbes), but, if I could be any book character, it would certainly be him.

      • answered by mikebilleter on 08/13/2010
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    • How I Feel About Swear Words...

      • Plinky asks how I feel about swear words. Here are my thoughts...


        As far as swearing goes, I consider it a con. I won't lie, I swore quite a bit in high school and college. The caveat is that I tried as hard as I could not to swear around girls and I NEVER swear around children. It makes me angry to the point of chastising other people (including people I don't know) when they swear around kids.

        I have worked very hard to cut back and eventually stop swearing, starting a few years after finishing college. I felt like it was a classless way to express myself and, as a writer, I felt I should be able to use my vocabulary in better ways than simple, crude words to describe things that could be more eloquently stated.

        As an adult, I've realized that swearing does little to encourage your status in society. Swearing in front of people who hate swearing only serves to make you come off as less intelligent and unnecessarily crass. On the flip side, not swearing in front of those who swear constantly rarely seems to arouse their anger or even their notice. It's typically overlooked. In fact, it's rarely noticeable unless you spend a substantial amount of time with someone who doesn't swear (like one of my roommates).

        Bottom line - it does more harm than good as far as I'm concerned.

      • answered by mikebilleter on 08/13/2010
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    • I'll take a tattoo of a Captain America's shield – just for a week...

      • The questions to this plink are as follows: If I could get any tattoo for just a week, what would it be? Where would it be? Would you consider getting it permanently?

        It's a good question. And I'm happy with my answer.


        It's funny this is brought up, mostly because I thought about a tattoo no less than half an hour ago. Fact is, I'd never get one. Not that I have ANY problem with those who do, I just have no desire to do so. At all.

        However, if I HAD to get a tattoo for just a week (or permanently), I'd get a very small replica of Captain America's shield, similar to the one in the included image. Captain America has always been a long-standing hero of mine and the shield symbolizes so much more (both personally and pop culturally) than so many options I could choose to slap on my body.

        As to where I'd place it...that's a good question. I'd probably want to go with one of my pectoral muscles. That way, I wouldn't see it all the time or all day, but when I did see it, I'd stop and think about why it's there.

        In my head and my heart (and the heads and hearts of many others), Captain America's shield is a sign of strength, courage, bravery, pride, and a true adoration for this country and what those before us have have done to fight for our freedom.

        It's powerful. And all of that symbolism can be encapsulated in one small, striped shield with a star in the middle.

        That's what I'd go with.

      • answered by mikebilleter on 08/26/2009
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    • Via Plinky: What I just found in my backyard that I'm so excited about...(though 'tis only a dream...)

      • My latest plink on a prompt that took me about 1.2 seconds to answer and needed no revisions whatsoever. My happiness and joy in its purest form, with no hesitation.


        Marvel comic books. Old ones. From the 60s and 70s. A whole stash of them, buried in some kids 7th grade time capsule and clearly long-since forgotten. It's filled with various copies of early Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and Avengers comics from a time when comics were pure and characters were being shaped and molded into the eternally-living icons they have now become. Heroes at a time when the world needed heroes, and humans at a time when heroes needed a touch of humanity. The wonder and awe of my childhood wrapped into the yellowing pages of modern mythology.

        They may not be metal themselves, but I'm glad that kid left them in a metal container. Good work, little metal detector...

      • answered by mikebilleter on 08/18/2009
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    • 'Dante's Inferno' wasn't an easy read (but it was an awesome read)...

      • This Plink is one I found hard to answer. I typically enjoy thoroughly every book I want to read, so I had to think back a little ways. I read this freshman year and, though I understood it, it took more work than most of my reading took...

        Reading the first cantica of Dante's Divine Comedy was difficult simply due to the extensive number of references Dante makes to the events of his time period. Although footnotes and other elements helped explain the backstory for many components, it was a tedious process to constantly decipher the significance of each line.

        That said, it was absolutely worth reading. The general concept of the book itself is a somewhat mind-boggling one. To think that back in the 1300s, Dante had literally illustrated (literally as in...illustrated using words) the various levels of hell and why people ended up in their respective places of punishment is fascinating. The language is beautiful at times, terrifying at others, and is just an unbelievable concept (inserting himself as a character and not using a first-person narrative style of writing and journeying with the famous poet Virgil through the Gates of Hell).

        Again...hard to read, but totally worth reading.

        Which book did you find difficult to read?

      • answered by mikebilleter on 08/07/2009
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