WWdN: In Exile

Hundred Beast King GoLion

(Thanks, Jessica!)

Now that's what I call your last chance to see me at ACME

For the last month, I've been doing a show at the ACME Comedy Theatre with Shane Nickerson. It's called Now That's What I Call ACME Volume One and it's a "best of" show.

I've got two writing credits in the show, for a poker-related sketch called William's Tell and a a sketch I co-wrote called Living and Dying In DWP, (which CMack and I wanted to call The Tibetan Sketch of Living and Dying, before we were overruled.)

I'm also in the funniest series of sketches I've ever been in, called "Tribute." I love these sketches so much, I will perform them for the rest of my life, if Anne (who wrote them) will let me.

There are four performances left, counting this Saturday night.

Details:

What: Now That's What I Call ACME, Volume One
Where: ACME Comedy Theatre
When: Saturdays until November 19th.
Time: 8PM
Tickets: $15. (Reserve online)

This is the last chance you'll have to see me at ACME for a looooong time. I was sick with mono when the last writing session happened, so I won't get a chance to be in any of the shows before mid-2006.

two thousand talking points

I keep seeing these magnetic ribbons on people's cars that say, "I SUPPORT PRESIDENT BUSH and our troops." I always applaud these brave people, who have taken the extraordinary step of attaching a magnetic ribbon to their car as a reflection of their deeply held convictions.

Personally, I don't think one needs to support the president or the war to support the soldiers, but this is a favorite talking point from the RNC.

Witness the case of Cornell du Houx.

The senior is most well known on the Bowdoin College campus in his role as development director for the College Democrats of America and as co-president of the Maine College Democrats. Under his leadership, the organization in Maine has grown from two chapters to 23.

While Cornell du Houx has actively rallied against many of President Bush's policies, he feels that his involvement in the Marines is not a conflict of interest.

"Regardless of my opinions regarding the war in Iraq, it is my duty as a U.S. Marine to serve and I am ready and willing to do my job to its fullest extent," he said.

Others on campus, particularly his political opponents in the Bowdoin College Republicans, feel differently about his service. Daniel Schuberth, a leader of the Bowdoin College Republicans and College Republican national secretary, said, "I applaud Mr. Houx for his service, just as I applaud any other soldier who is brave enough to take up arms in defense of his country. I find it troubling, however, that one of the most vocal opponents of our president, our country and our mission in Iraq has chosen to fight for a cause he claims is wrong. Mr. Houx's rhetoric against the war on terror places him in agreement with the most radical fringes of the Democratic Party, and I am left to question his logic and motivation."

Boy, it sure is cute how Daniel Schuberth tries real real hard to spit out his Mehlman-ordered talking points, but has he listened to what he's saying? Daniel Schuberth, who should probably earn some sort of award from Operation Yellow Elephant, has the fucking nerve to criticize a brave soldier who is following orders, even though he doesn't believe in the war, when he won't enlist himself. He may claim that Cornell du Houx is a representative of the "most radical fringes of the Democratic Party," but it's pretty clear that chickenhawks like Daniel Schuberth are in direct agreement with the mainstream of George Bush's Republican Party. I'm sure he has "other priorities", just like Dick Cheney did during the Vietnam War. What a brave, brave little fighting keyboardist he is!

Tonight, there are vigils all over the country to mark the death of the 2000th American soldier to be killed in George Bush's Idiotic Adventure. Blondesense has links, and advises people who support the soldiers but oppose the war (a difficult concept for bemagneted car owners to comprehend, but a valid one nonetheless) to Just Go. I agree.

I would like to ask all young and able-bodied war supporters to join me as I mark this tragic milestone: I will do everything I can to end this war, and prevent others like it from happening. You can head to your nearest recruitment center and join up. Dan Schulberth has a spot in the military with his name on it that he's not using.

forbes.com on communication

There is a really cool feature at Forbes.com all about various forms of communication. They've got interviews with some incredible people, like Arthur C. Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Goodall. They've also got a discussion about blogging with me. A brief excerpt:

Wil Wheaton is a writer and actor. His Web site, wilwheaton.net, is one of the most popular blogs on the Internet. He has written two books, Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot, and has a third due later this year. As an actor, he is best known for roles on Star Trek: The Next Generation and in the film Stand By Me.

wil_wheaton: believe it or not, in all these years I've never done an interview over IM

david_ewalt: since we're doing stories about communicating, this will show a whole other way in which people communicate

wil_wheaton: i was talking with my stepson the other day about this

wil_wheaton: he's grown up in a world where IM has always existed

wil_wheaton: he spends time IMing with his friends like I used to sit on the phone with mine

wil_wheaton: and I have iChatAV on my laptop and my desktop, so when I travel for work or whatever, I can stay in touch with my family visually.

david_ewalt: this, in fact is why i wanted to talk to you...you seem to have mastered many of these new forms of communication

david_ewalt: that's the nice way for me to say "you're a geek"

wil_wheaton: w00t

Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade drew a funny-because-it's-true comic on blogging, and Bob Jeffery supports my theory that traditional channels of media and distribution just aren't that important anymore. The whole thing is awesome, and it's an easy way to lose several hours filling your brains with thought-provoking Slurm.

Reviews: X-men Legends 2 and Thief

In addition to my regular Games of our Lives column, I've got a review in The Onion AV Club this week.

Games of our lives looks back at Thief:

You robbed the bank. That's good! But you dropped the money all over the known universe. That's bad. But you have a spiffy car to drive around and pick it up. That's good! There are cops everywhere. That's bad. But you can occasionally blow them up for big points! That's good! You want to play Pac-Man, but you can only find a cheap imitation! That's Thief!

Gameplay: Using a joystick, you drive your little car around the ugliest maze in the world. Your goal is to pick up all the dollar bills so you can advance to the next level. Opposing you are four little police cars. They don't have names, but you could safely call them something like, oh... let's randomly say Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde. If they touch you, you'll blow up in a magnificent fireworks display. However, if you pick up one of the dollar signs scattered around the maze, a siren will sound and your enemies will become ghost cars that you can run into for bonus points.

[. . .]

It's a little embarrassing to watch Thief try to be as cool as Pac-Man, but it's still a really fun game that works extra-hard to keep players happy. The game plays a super-cool police-scanner soundtrack right out of a '40s movie, and when you're down to your final life, Thief helpfully says "This is your last chance!" Can you remember the last time Pac-Man said as much as "Hello" to you? Didn't think so.

And I reviewed X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse:

Whether to get out of homework, exact revenge on a bully, or just impress a potential date, every kid wants to be a superhero. But the Earth's yellow sun gives its native population sunburns instead of superpowers, and radiation is likely to make you a cancer patient rather than a mutant. So what's a wannabe to do? Retreat to the basement with X-Men Legends II, of course! In this follow-up to 2004's X-Men Legends, Apocalypse threatens to destroy Earth. In the face of this mighty adversary, the X-Men team up with their arch-rivals from Magneto's Brotherhood to defeat him, presumably so they can get back to fighting each other.

Final judgment: X-Men Legends II is more of an action-based button-masher than a sandbox RPG, but there's nothing wrong with that. The few limitations are easily offset by just how enjoyable it is to play this game.

I realyl liked both of these games. In fact, Legends 2 is so much fun to play, I got a copy of it for PSP so I could play it when I wasn't at home . . . which brought to mind an interesting idea: wouldn't it be cool if you could have some sort of online place to save your games, so you could play them on different platforms and keep your progress in synch?

Rosa Parks

If I had to pick one way to change the world, if there was only one thing I could do, I would eliminate prejudice and bigotry, and ensure equal rights for all people. Period. That people are so ignorant, and so stupid that they can judge others based on factors which are randomly assigned by the universe, rather than the quality of one's character, just baffles me.

When I heard yesterday that Rosa Parks died, I wanted to write something about it, but I couldn't find the words. It's hard to imagine what her world was like way back in 1955, especially since 99% of the people who have the ability to read this blog will probably never know a life a billionth as challenging as hers -- and none of us are going to make one tenth of the difference she made. So what could I say that would matter?

Crooks & Liars managed to say it for me:

Try to imagine yourself as Rosa Parks did when she left work that day in 1955. Exhausted from working long hours in the department store, she looked to take a seat like always; but making sure she sat in the right section of that bus at the risk of being handcuffed. You can't-can you? It took this incredible woman to refuse to give up her seat to a white man on that bus to change the course of American history.

Think about that, and honor her legacy whenever you can. I challenge you all to make a difference, in some positive way, in someone's life today. And tomorrow. And the day after that . . .

In 3-D!

I can't believe I forgot about this: I'm all over VH1's I Love The 80s 3D. I wasn't in much of 1980 or 1981, but I did about 9 hours of interviews with them, mostly focused on 1985-1989, if I recall correctly. Check local listings for maximum Uncle Willie Snark and your USRDA of funky giant post-Walter sideburns.

cap it!

There has been a lot of fun poker in the last few days for me. The Friday WWdN Invitational has been a huge success two weeks in a row, and seems to be growing, I had a BLAST at IGN live, and the PokerStars Blogger Championship yesterday was a whole lot of fun.

I posted a live blog of the Friday Game at CardSquad:

5:04 PM - We're at the first break. This is incredibly fun. What a great group of people! I have 3105, and I am third at my table (leader has 5400). Average is 2533. Our chipleader is the poker princess  herself, with 7285. There are 90 players left.

5:05 PM - First hand after the break, I get KK in the cutoff. I raise it up 3x, no callers. It's funny to me that I get nervous when I see cowboys now. :)

5:27 PM - CJ from UpForPoker just got moved to my table. He's REALLY good, and has position on me.

5:34 PM - wwdnposse just got moved to my table. His avatar is the image from "Wil has a posse." That is too weird.

5:35 PM - I'm all-in UTG with pocket eights. One caller, plus CJ who also pushes. I hope I'm in for a race here. Oh. No I'm not. CJ called me with KK. Can I crack Kings? No, there's a King on the flop. I go home in 54th. What a disappointing finish. I really wish I hadn't donked off those chips like a dipshit, but I had a LOT of fun, and now there's only one "wil" avatar at the table.

5:37 PM - Join us next week for the WWdN: Up4Poker Invitational! (Tournament number 14090593, for you early registration types.)

The whole thing is at CardSquad, includng the final table, and the cash game I played with a bunch of other poker bloggers after I busted out. While you're there, you may want to check out the recap of the Blogger Championship:

I was playing from IGN Live in Anaheim, where I was signing autographs and playing in SNGs for PokerStars. (Note: IGN Live was really cool. If you get a chance to attend one, GO!) I was seriously multi-tasking at one point, when a reporter from Area51 radio sat down and talked with me about my books, poker, Star Trek, gaming, voice overs, and all that other crap I do.

I moved up to almost 3000 chips early, but I missed some draws, got pushed off some hands by GRob, and slowly dropped back down. I went into a shell as the blinds came up,  and with just over 900 left, and the blinds at 75/150 I was way behind par. I pushed from early position with a A-8o. It was folded to ohthen, who called with pocket nines. The flop came ace, ace . . . nine, giving ohthen a full house against my set. The turn was a queen, and I caught the case ace on the river to make quads and double up! Dems quads, beetches!

I'm working on a couple of posts for the next few days over there, that I think will be of interest to beginning players.

some thoughts in exile

I love the impermanence of WWdN: In Exile. It's given me a lot of freedom to experiment with designs, content, and the Typepad experience.

So far, I really like all of it, and I'm even considering sticking with Typepad once I get WWdN up and running again. The WYSISYG editor is outstanding, and the most important factor for me in deciding what blogging tools to use is: how easy is it for me to get my ideas out of my head and onto the screen? I've noticed that since I moved to Exile, I've actually been able to blog a whole lot more than the last few weeks at WWdN: BE, just because it is so easy to use.

I also get to try things out here to see if I'm comfortable with them or not, before I integrate them into WWdN:2.0. That's why there is that Google AdSense thing over on the right side of the screen. For a long time, I've resisted putting ads on WWdN, and I even scaled back, then ultimately took a hiatus from BlogAds (which are great, by the way. It wasn't them, it was me. We're still friends.)

But  the fact is, I love to write. I love to write for CardSquad, I love to write for The Onion, I love to write for Suicide Girls, and I love to write for WWdN:IE (yuck! IE! Gross! Maybe I should call it WWdN:ix) I would like to earn my primary living as a writer, and if AdSense means my blog helps pay some bills, I can put more time into writing good content, and publishing books. (This is especially important since O'Reilly sent me my "royalty" statement for the last quarter, which was all negative numbers. Thanks for all that great promotion and support, guys!)

I don't know if I'm going to keep the AdSense around or not. I understand that Google is hardcore about the way bloggers talk about the ads, so all I will say is that if they don't earn me a certain amount of revenue each month, I'll get rid of them. Oh, and Mesothel -- Ha. Just kidding.

I'm interested in knowing what you other bloggers think, especially bloggers who use AdSense, TextAds, BlogAds, IndieClicks, etc. Is it worth it? Do you have any trouble with content, sponsors, or readers?

haloscan fix it guide

A lot of the blogs I read use Haloscan for their comments. Many of them are reporting problems with Haloscan in the last 24 hours or so.

Via Crooks & Liars, I stumbled upon a solution which I reprint here as a public service announcement:

Haloscan Fix it guide

Bloggers, go into Beta features in Haloscan and in the middle of the column it says Spam filters. Just say "no" and your comments will come back up. Hat tip Jane for the info. 

I'm not a Haloscan user, so this doesn't affect me at all, but I know a lot of bloggers are, so I hope this workaround helps you out.