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in the heat of the summer better call out a plumber

Back in the old days, the good old days, when it was generally accepted that Fascism and Nazis were bad, bloggers would write these posts that were sort of recaps of what we were doing, what we’d been doing, with some links to stuff we liked. This is one of those posts.

Good morning. I’m in Jackson, Mississippi, for the Mississippi Comi Con. Come see me if you’re local! I’m here all day today and tomorrow.

My travel yesterday was basically uneventful, once I was actually on a plane and in the sky. My connection in Dallas was delayed three different times, and each time the airline told me that my gate had been changed from where I was, to the gate that was farthest away in the terminal. So I spent a couple hours walking back and forth, which honestly wasn’t bad at all. I probably got in more steps walking in that terminal than I get on a typical Thursday.

The invention of noise canceling earbuds has made all the difference for me, with travel. I can wrap myself in a bit of a cocoon, and just get where I am going without a lot of sensory overload and overwhelm. Usually, I just listen to one of my playlists, but I have a mountain of Audible credits that I’ve been turning into books. For the last week or so, I’ve been going back and forth between Rip It Up And Start Again, by Simon Reynolds, and Peter Hook’s book about Joy Division1. They are both oral histories of the post-punk movement from around 1976 to 1990, from different points of view. The parts where they overlap are just fascinating. Hookie has his memories of specific events, and Reynolds collects memories from other people who were at the same event. I’m sure there are other books, from other members of other bands, that would fill in even more details. This is one of the reasons I just love history so much, and why it’s so satisfying to track down primary sources.

When I wasn’t listening to those books, I read a short story that’s one of the Hugo finalists2, Marginalia, by Mary Robinette Kowal. It’s featured in Uncanny Magazine, which is where a TON of finalists were published this year.3

I usually arrive hungry (thanks, Anthony Bourdain4) but I did some math in Dallas and realized I wouldn’t be landing until almost 11, and I didn’t want to eat at midnight, even if my body insisted it was only 9pm. So I looked around the terminal and my choices were Starbucks and Whataburger, or some combination of granola bars, a dodgy-looking apple, and a sad Wil. So I chose Whataburger and OMG it was perfect. I don’t usually eat stuff like that, and it was like BOOM COMFORT FOOD from the first bite. It reminded me of the little burger shacks that were in parking lots in the Valley when I was a kid, with those perfect drive-thru fries that you’d eat half of before you got home. My body wasn’t thrilled that I put a burger and fries into it so late in my day, but my body’s been kind of a dick lately, so it can just deal with it.

ANYWAY. I finally got to my hotel. Finally got checked in. Got to my room just around 1130pm, not hungry, but wide awake. Neat.

I watched some YouTube, read some blogs, and finally fell asleep around 1am local time. I slept shockingly well, woke up feeling fully rested, and now I’m trying to find things to do until it’s time to go to work. I’ve actually run out of brain cycles for reading, or even listening to someone else read — does that happen to other people? You really want to keep going because you’re so interested or enthralled or whatever, but your brain is just like, “dude I can’t. I’ve run out of focus and I don’t know what to tell you.” It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me.

While I was trying to wind my brain down, I watched this video about merch5, and now I want to record myself narrating a very short …. something … that’s up to about 5 minutes, and release it on extremely indie, extremely DIY, cassettes and vinyl. When Sean Bonner and I did Saturday Night Massacre back in 20176, as part of the Kickstarter one week project thingy, we wanted to do something like this, and I can’t remember if we actually made physical media or not. I don’t think we did, but just because we ran out of time. It looks like it isn’t too difficult to get the things made, though. It’s just the fulfillment that would take some meaningful time.

If I created some bespoke physical media that cost around $30 all-in after shipping, would you be into that? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll prioritize accordingly.

Oh! Speaking of physical things … we have a new enamel Good Morning Nerds pin for you at Stands! Check it out!

I love the image of my bookcase they put on the card, my glasses, and the spout of hair that always explodes off the side of my head. It’s the little details, y’all..

And I brought Trek Side of the Moon back at Cottonbureau.

This con marks the official beginning of my 2025 Summer Convention Season. Over the next month or so, here’s where I’m scheduled:

  • July 4-5 I will be in Montreal for Montreal Comic Con
  • July 11-13 I will be in Knoxville for Fanboy Expo
  • July 20-22 I will be in Atlanta for ATL Comic Convention

I think there are one or two others that I’m not remembering, but that’s July. I really should have a page with this information that I can link to, rather than relying on my memory, but I’ve never done more than five shows in a calendar year before now, and my memory has been more than enough to keep them all straight. This year, I’m doing more than I have in a long time because I feel like we need to get out and do the fun things, get together with our fellow nerds in a safe place to express ourselves and see each other, now more than ever. Everything is terrible, but at least we can have a few hours, a couple days, of peace and respite, surrounded by people who love the things we love, the same way we love them.

Community is important in the best of times. It’s VITAL when we have thugs brutalizing, terrorizing, and kidnapping our friends and neighbors, under orders from a wannabe despot who seeks to use the power of the State — power that belongs to the people — to wage war against citizens who won’t accept him as our king. Going to conventions, game days at your local game shop, Neighborhood Nights Out in your community, and gently interacting with other people is a massive bulwark against tyranny7, according to professor Timothy Snyder, one of the leading experts in the world on the subject.

So do your patriotic duty and go to a convention this summer! It’ll be fun! Joy is resistance!

I’m so blessed and so grateful that I attract kind, creative, enthusiastic people when I am at a show. I always get the most surprising and beautiful things, and I love to share them. As always, I’ll be posting to my Instagram stories from the con. Clever is my Kryptonite, and there are always clever people at these things.

Okay, that’s all for today. I hope everyone has the most wonderful weekend possible. Take care of yourselves, and take care of each other.

  1. He has the most soothing voice, ever. I feel like I’m sitting in a cafe with him while he tells me all about this time in his life. The way he makes me feel as I’m listening to him is what I hoped to give to people who listen to Still Just A Geek. ↩︎
  2. I have this idea to narrate all the finalists in the short story category for my podcast. I don’t think we’ll be back in production in time to do this before the awards are handed out, but it’s something I’d love to do next year, and every year after that, if they’ll let me. ↩︎
  3. Have I mentioned that Lynne and Michael Thomas, who edit Uncanny, found all the stories I read in the first season of It’s Storytime? If I can afford it, I’m hoping to work with them again. They are amazing. ↩︎
  4. May his memory be a blessing. ↩︎
  5. As it relates to DIY and indie creators. This guy is as enthusiastic about this kind of thing as I am, and loves to make fun stuff just because it’s fun to make. There are a lot of ancillary benefits, as he observes, but even if you’re not someone who would enjoy (or is looking for) those particular benefits, his excitement, enthusiasm, and creativity shine though. I can see how just making this thing he thought was silly and fun affected not only his creativity, but the whole band’s creativity. ↩︎
  6. GodDAMN was this project fun. The history, the Kickstarter, all of it. It’s one of those things we did because we wanted it to exist, and we didn’t care if a hundred people or zero people liked it. As it turned out, 138 people liked it. That’s a nice, even, 140 when you count both of us. ↩︎
  7. 12. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life. ↩︎
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lift every voice and sing

Lift every voice and sing,
‘Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ’til victory is won.

I did not know about Juneteenth until I was in my 40s. I recall how embarrassed and ashamed I felt, but it just wasn’t taught to me in school, and America doesn’t exactly go out of her way to teach privileged white kids like me about the horrors our ancestors inflicted on generations of human beings. Hopefully, that has changed.

In the extremely unlikely event you are hearing about this for the first time: “Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. The holiday’s name, first used in the 1890s, is a portmanteau of the words June and nineteenth, referring to June 19, 1865, the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War.”

As the institutions and corporations that influence so much of American culture draw shamefully away from celebrating and honoring marginalized communities, including communities of color, it falls (as it always does) to us, the people, to step up and use our collective voice to speak out so our friends, neighbors, and fellow humans who do not have the same privilege that so many of us have are seen and heard.

Here’s LeVar Burton reading the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Google put this on their doodle a few years ago. Today, there is nothing. Shameful. My bad. My VPN autoconnected to the UK, and when I reset it to the US, I see that Google is honoring Juneteenth. I regret the error.

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it picks me up, puts me down

I’ve been open and unashamed about my mental health struggles and triumphs, always willing to talk about my CPTSD, always willing to supportively listen when someone chooses to share their experience with me.

I make this choice every day, because I am doing my best to be the person I need in the world. I need people who are kind and compassionate, who are willing to share their struggles and victories in a way that validates my own experiences. I make this choice so that maybe I can be the person I need, for someone I will never meet, the way people like Jenny Lawson, or Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade were for me, when I was beginning my healing journey.

It’s in that spirit that I’m writing today. This is sort of a general update on how that journey is going, and a look at where I am, with some thoughts on how I got here.

So, broadly and generally speaking, I’m doing great! I mean, everything in the whole world is terrible, but the little bit of reality that’s being rendered around me at any given moment is pretty great. I’m healthy and safe, my family is healthy and safe, I have all the work I need, I have time and space for activities.

But … the chaos, cruelty, rage, and unpredictability coming out of the White House is identical to what I experienced growing up1 and holy shit has that activated a lot of stuff for my body to remember.

For the two weeks or so that preceded Sunday, I woke up to intense anxiety every morning, before I was even fully awake and aware of anything. It was really unpleasant, but at least I knew that it was nervous system dysregulation2, and I have a lot of skills I can use to help my nervous system get back into a parasympathetic, resting, state. I’m grateful that I know what to do, but my god did I wish I didn’t have to do it every morning at the start of my day.3

Then, Sunday, I woke up like Frodo in Rivendell, and I have, every morning since. I don’t feel tight and clenched in my chest. I haven’t sweat through my pajamas and woken up shivering. I have had peace and warmth and gentle calm.

And the thing is, I didn’t know when this would happen, but I knew that it would. This sort of nervous system freakout thing tends to happen when I’ve been working hard to reprocess one or more specific traumas, and I’m really close to closing a circle on my imaginary trauma healing watch. It’s like my body doesn’t realize, yet, that I’m safe and I’m now, and it needs to be gently coaxed out of dysregulation.

I’ve closed a few metaphorical circles over the years since I started EMDR and IFS therapy, and I have had some version of this experience each time. When it does, I imagine a drawing of my body, like from one of those old Disney SCIENCE IS FUN cartoons. In some places, there is fear and anxiety.4 In others, confusion5. Depending on how old I am in the drawing, there’s anger and resentment6. And all around these memories, connected to each of them, is sadness and loss. Over time, as I’ve worked so hard to heal from the abuse of my emotionally immature, toxic parents, those pieces I see in the drawing have faded away, eventually joining together in lingering loss and sadness.

And honestly, I’m okay with that. It’s okay to feel sad. It’s okay to acknowledge the loss. I hasten to clarify that this took literal years of work. When I first began to see all the sadness, it was like looking into infinity. When I first felt the enormity and profundity of the loss, it was free falling into an abyss. There were a lot of stops and starts as I learned how to regulate it, how to reprocess it in a way that wasn’t overwhelming.

Again, not easy. Again, years. Again, worth it.

Now, listen, I am not a doctor and I have no professional experience or education. I’m just sharing my experience. But if you see something familiar, I encourage you to look into what nervous system dysregulation is, and learn some of the techniques we use to calm our bodies down when they aren’t on the same page as our mind, our soul, our Self.

A few resources I value include

There’s a somatic component to emotional healing and trauma recovery that I didn’t expect. It’s only recently that my emotional self and my physical self have started to work in harmony, and that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t know that the somatic part existed. It’s taken such a long time, and though the work is ongoing, I hope that someone who needs to know that they aren’t alone sees this. I hope this helps on your own healing journey.

Thanks for reading my blog. If you would like to get these updates in your email, here’s a thing:

Take care of yourselves, friends, and take care of each other.

  1. My father’s rage, my mother’s fear, and the tension between them was so thick in the air, it was suffocating. I never knew what was coming down the hallway, or through the front door. Would dad be mean to me, or would he just ignore me? Would mom and dad fight so ferociously that it ends with my mom kicking another hole in another cabinet? We’re running out of towels to hang over the ones that are already there. I’m going to put headphones on and turn them up as loud as they can go because that’s the only way to escape the yelling and arguing that vibrates through the walls into my bedroom. ↩︎
  2. For decades, I had panic attacks every night when I was falling asleep. More often than not, I had night terrors, these vaguely remembered nightmares that had no images or other senses associated with them, just pure terror. When it was really bad, they happened more than once a night and the only reason I stayed asleep was after I’d cried myself to sleep in exhaustion. Trying to escape them was a big part of my alcohol abuse. I’m so grateful that doesn’t happen anymore. ↩︎
  3. And it still kind of lingered with me throughout the day, you know? It was a lot. ↩︎
  4. Oh, imagine that Professor Duck guy, giving a lecture at a chalkboard. ↩︎
  5. Why is he so mean to me? Why won’t she just let me be a kid? Why won’t they love me like they love my brother and sister? ↩︎
  6. Or, there was. The healing ring I am most proud of closing, the one that was the key to closing so many others, was this one. When I realized that my anger was no longer a shield that protected me, but something else entirely that only caused me pain, it was astonishingly easy to find it, coax it out, validate it, and send it on its way. There isn’t any anger in my drawing now. Where it used to be is something that is almost indifference. ↩︎
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behind his eyes he says ‘i still exist’

This thing has been happening to me since I built my first blog about 25 years ago, and you’d think that by now it would have stopped, but here we are.

The longer I go between posts, the more SUPER IMPORTANT the next post becomes. This is especially gross after I’ve been promoting something. I feel like I’ve bombarded the world with my promotional stuff, so I ought to give the world something to offset that.

…only when I sit down to do that, the part of me that creates those things is like, “Oh hell no. I’m on vacation.”

So I come in here, day after day, get to about this point in a post just like this one, and then I get frustrated, delete it, and go play video games.

I have to break that cycle, so here’s a little bit of a roundup to put something new here.

Yesterday, I finished building the LEGO Batmobile, which I started months ago. It has some adorable little details that were a lot of fun to discover, but holy shit was it tedious most of the time. It turns out that building vehicles, even one that I have been obsessed with since I was a little kid, is not something I enjoy.

I think I’m doing the Haunted House next.

If you’d told me a year ago that the Stanley Cup final in 2025 would be the same teams from 2024, I never would have believed you, and once again I am cheering for Florida because Edmonton is literally the only Canadian team I just can’t abide. Sorry, Oilers Nation, but fuck Corey Perry.1

Remember Trek Side of the Moon? It’s back, in T-shirt form.

I loved the movie, but am very late to the What We Do In The Shadows series party, so I’m only now getting into its third season. A couple nights ago, I watched an episode that takes them to Atlantic City. Nandor gets completely hooked on a Big Bang Theory slot machine, and is delighted to discover that there is a television series that is “faithful to the slot machine.”2

The thing is … because The Big Bang Theory canonically exists inside the What We Do In The Shadowsverse, that means I exist inside that universe. This feels like an achievement that should come with a badge, and it makes me stupidly happy.3

Late last week,I saw that Loretta Swit passed away. We worked together when I was a kid, and I remembered some things about her.

A friend of mine observed that we are slowly becoming the Elders, and that’s just really weird. I have been thinking about that, and it turns out there is a lot about that I’m not really ready to embrace, like accepting that people I love, who mean so much to me, are getting older (and elderly) with all that implies. It’s just … it’s really weird. At the same time, it feels really good and … gentle? … to embrace a position in life that allows me to be a kind, patient, supportive, and encouraging person in the world for anyone who needs it.

I’m thinking a lot about how I can talk about things from a place of experience, in a way that younger me would have been able to hear and internalize. I want to be a Helper so much, y’all.

I had a meeting with my team to discuss next steps on It’s Storytime. The audience is small but passionate, and growing steadily. I think we’ve found a way to make it break even, or slightly better, while the audience continues to grow. Thank you to everyone who is supporting the show on Patreon, to everyone who has liked and subscribed and whatnot. It looks like the audience is right around 20,000 listeners which seems like a lot to me, and something I feel really good about! But you know what’s crazy? In the podcast world, it’s tiny. Isn’t that nuts?

When I was walking Marlowe, I came across this weirdly bent spoon in the street, so I posted it in my Instagram stories with the caption “If anyone sees Uri Gellar, tell him I found his spoon.”4

I think this is a pretty good joke.

I watched a fantastic film a couple nights ago, about the post-punk scene in West Berlin from 1979-1989, called B-Movie: Lust & Sound. It’s streaming all over the place, and if you like the same kind of music and aesthetics that I do, it’s probably worth your time.

I think that’s all for now. Have a good day, friends.

  1. Also, Florida sent 9 players to Four Nations, and Four Nations was the most exciting and satisfying hockey tournament I have ever seen. So there’s that. ↩︎
  2. I love how this show keeps surprising me like this. The first time, it was throwing the bone off the roof in the werewolf fight. I never saw it coming, and it just killed me. ↩︎
  3. I also exist inside Tommy Westphal’s snow globe, but that doesn’t feel as exclusive. They’ll let anybody into that thing. They let me in there! ↩︎
  4. If you get this reference, that means it’s time to schedule a colonoscopy, if you haven’t already. And make sure you’re getting enough vitamin D, because our aging bodies need it. ↩︎
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hey it’s me on the katee sackhoff podcast!

I recorded this episode of the Katee Sackhoff Podcast a couple of weeks ago. It’s when I realized I needed to spend some money on a camera and some lights, so I could present myself in my — literal — best light.

I mean… look at the difference between us:

On the left, Katee Sackhoff, properly lit and photographed. On the right, Wil Wheaton is blown out and pixelated.
Left: Katee Sackhoff is properly framed and lit. On the right: Wil Wheaton is blown out, pixelated, and coming to you from a nightmare.

Okay! Lesson learned! All future on-camera podcast appearances will look a little less … uh … 320×260.

I had such a wonderful time talking with Katee, this could easily have gone on another hour. It was such a privilege to spend this time with her. Here’s an embed from YouTube:

Very much looking forward to having breakfast with Katee. Seth McFarlane is not invited, but will be honored while we wait for our food1.

Podcast news!

Feedback, reviews, comments and emails all tell me that the audience for It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton absolutely loves it. I am so honored and so grateful to know that it’s landing on listeners the way I hoped it would.

This first block of episodes was a learning experience for me. I had some stumbles that I’ll tell you about someday, but they weren’t insurmountable and I learned from those mistakes. I leveled up my skills as a narrator and I hear it in the work. I know how to do this, now, and I just have to figure out how to make it cost-neutral (with the expectation that it will eventually find sponsors and revenue sources that allow me to convert it to something I do every week as a job.) I have a meeting coming up with my business team to discuss all of that. As I said in my last post, my gut is pessimistic, but it does that to protect me from disappointment and I know that. My team is positive and enthusiastic about this meeting, fully expecting that we’re going to keep doing this. So I’m doing my best to trust that they have more experience than my gut in this regard, and I’m cautiously optimistic.

If you’d like to get these updates in your email, here’s the thing

It’s Story Time With Wil Wheaton is available wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

Subscribe now at

You can also support the show on Patreon, where you’ll get the show with no ads, as well as some spiffy extras that all the cool kids are into these days.

  1. This will be amusing to you, after you’ve listened to the podcast ↩︎