the best laid plans

I haven’t had the spoons to write for a few weeks, but today, something was different, and I finished my breakfast with an ambitious, totally realistic plan to do a little work on Project Daffodil.

So I walk into my office, sit down, and realize that my desk is a clusterfuck of notes and magazines and stickers and … batteries? okay, batteries, I guess … and more than enough dust to complete the metaphor.

I stand up, and begin Unfucking my desk. It comes along nicely. I move the pile of New Yorkers I’m totally going to read to the top of the other pile of New Yorkers I’m totally going to read, careful not to disturb the pile of WIREDs I’m absolutely going to read.

I declare magazine bankruptcy; into the recycling they go.

Back to my desk. These sticky notes that fell off my monitor can enjoy their retirement catching up on the New Yorker. And I’ll just pick up this — what the? Okay, who even uses 9 volt batteries and why do I have one on my — oh, the smoke detector. Right. This should have gone into the trash when I put in a new battery on Daylight Saving Time. I glace around, furtively, Commander Hoek with his Beloved Ice Cream Bar. Real quick, before I toss it away, I taste it. Just to be sure.

Hm. These Gym Mats have very little battery zap in them. A surprisingly high number of 90s animation references, though. Into the bin.

I sort the stickers. Most will be added to project Cover This Box With Layer After Layer of Stickers. But one of them victoriously emerges from the rest, as a laptop contender. I place it on the desk where it will be … considered.

That’s when I get a closer look at the dust. I don’t know how thick a single layer of dust is, but this is enough to qualify for a blanket.

PRO TIP FROM UNCLE WIL: Iif you’re super lazy like me and hate dusting, you can put the air filter in your office to maximum, close the door, and use your compressed air thing to blast the dust off your desk, right into the air. The filter will suck it all out and you get to decide if you want that to be a dirty joke or not. This is not recommended for people with allergies. Wearing a mask while you do it is encouraged.

The dust settles. And now my work area is clean and orderly.

Well … except for that cable.

SOME TIME LATER

Fucking cables my god why does everything have to be so hard all I wanted was a Pepsi.

But the desk really does look great. In fact, I can feel the creative energy building around me and flowing…

…right into that stack of boxes in the corner, next to the bags of stuff I brought home from cons last year that I was going to sort through right after I got caught up on the New Yorker. It’s kind of pooling there, sloshing up on that Lego set I’ve been hoping to build since the 1900s.

Shit. Okay. I guess we’re doing this. Having unfucked the desk, I now turn my attention to unfucking the entire office.

I make three piles: recycle. trash. keep.

The keep pile is sorted into categories: Presidential Library, Art, Badges, Books, and so on. They will be put away in due time, but I linger on some of them: dice. drawings. notes from people who didn’t trust themselves to remember the words when they met me (I see you SO HARD, friends). And I remember how fun it was before Covid, how hard we’ve tried since Covid to make it fun again, and how much I’m sincerely excited to see my friends, castmates, and fellow nerds again in Austin next month.

I put the keepers away in their various proper places, handle the rest, and look around my freshly unfucked office. Now! I can get to work!

Into the chair. Okay, shake off the cobwebs, open xed and … oh. Wow.

Wow that’s … wow.

My keyboard is so dirty. Like, I need to write myself up for this. How did I not notice this before? Why is that key sticky? Is that cat fur? And is that … is that fucking barbecue sauce down there between the K and the L?

The keys come right off for easy cleaning. I have a little tool and everything.

Shit.

I’m not going to write a damn thing today, am I?

If not now, when?

In 1960, SAG and WGA struck to force management to adapt to the new technology of television. Without that strike and the agreement it birthed, residual use payments would not exist.

Wil Wheaton and Gates McFadden support SAG-AFTRA and WGA at Paramount Studios

My parents forced me to be a child actor, and stole nearly all of my salary from my entire childhood. My Star Trek residuals were not much, but they were all I had, and they kept me afloat for two decades while I rebuilt my life. I have healthcare and a pension because of my union. The AMPTP billionaires want to take all that security away so they can give CEOs even more grotesque wealth at the expense of the people who make our industry run.

We must now fight for the future of our industry in the face of changing technology, the same way our elders fought for us in 1960.

To give some sense of what is at stake: There are actors who star in massively successful, profitable, critically acclaimed shows that are all on streaming services. You see them all the time. They are famous, A-list celebrities. Nearly all of those actors don’t earn enough to qualify for health insurance, because the studios forced them to accept a buyout for all their residuals (a decade of reuse, at the least) that is less than I earned for one week on TNG. And I was the lowest paid cast member in 1988. They want to do this while studio profits and CEO compensation are at historic highs. Nearly 9 in 10 SAG-AFTRA members does not earn the $26,470 required to qualify for health insurance. Meanwhile, studio executives are pocketing tens of millions of dollars of bonuses and compensation. Each. (CNN: “When Iger rejoined Disney as CEO in November 2022, he agreed to an annual base salary of $1 million with a potential annual bonus of $2 million. The agreement also includes stock awards from Disney totaling $25 million [and] Netflix’s co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters made $50 million and $28 million, respectively, in 2022, according to a company filing.”)

Those billionaire CEOs complain that what we are asking for is unrealistic and unsustainable. They say we — we — are destroying the industry that was so profitable and successful for a century before they arrived.

I realize they want to remodel their third vacation home so they don’t embarrass any of the guests they take there on their yacht. My heart just aches for them as they struggle to keep up with a changing business model. Here’s the thing: if the current business model of the industry only functions when labor allows itself to be exploited so that executives make thousands of times their salaries, that business model should be destroyed.

If workers refusing to be exploited makes a CEO’s bloated salary unsustainable, I think that’s kind of the point.

We in Labor aren’t hurting our industry. We’re fighting to save it from predatory sociopaths who will gleefully watch people lose their homes and go hungry, rather than release 2% of their grotesque wealth to ensure a healthy industry for everyone.

I mean, if not now, when? And I haven’t even touched on AI and working conditions. I’m only talking about the fundamental ability and opportunity to make a living, to survive and hope to thrive, in the entertainment industry.

We must now fight for the future of our industry in the face of changing technology, the same way our elders did for us in 1960. So today, my Spacemom and I went to the place where it started for us, way back when, to do just that.

I see all your support. It means so much. Thank you.

Still Just A Geek is a Hugo award finalist

Well, this is certainly unexpected. I thought making the New York Times list was the most surprising thing that would happen with Still Just A Geek, but … Still Just A Geek is a finalist for the 2023 Hugo, in the Best Related Work category!

I have been nominated for a few things in my life. I’ve even won a few. But I have not won way more often than I have. Based on my experience, the “I won!” thing is awesome for a short time, but where that euphoria fades quickly, the genuine honor of “I was nominated!” lasts forever. With that in mind, I looked at the other nominees this morning, and … I think it’s very unlikely I’ll be making space for a Hugo statue in my house. But that’s okay! I got to reach out to my TNG family today and tell them about it, and everyone who replied made me feel the love and pride that I imagine kids feel from parents who love them unconditionally.

If Still Just A Geek wins in its category, it’s going to be awesome. I’m not going to lie: I think it would be pretty great if I got to have a Hugo in my house, next to my Tabletop trophies. But if it doesn’t, the excitement, joy, and gratitude I feel that my story even made the finalists this year will never go away, and I get to have that whether I get the statue or not.

Voting on the final ballot begins on July 10, and we’ll find out who gets the award at World Con in October.

shoutout to my fellow cycle breakers

I don’t celebrate Father’s Day (or any other Hallmark holiday) for reasons that will not surprise you if you know anything about my life.

But I do celebrate all the other children of fuckers and pieces of shit who survived like I did, who broke the cycle of generational trauma like I and my sister did, whose mothers forced them to praise and worship their abuser “because it’s father’s day” like mine did, who fucking hate the endless reminders to celebrate the dad we never had (in my case, because he chose not to be a dad to me like he chose to be a dad for my brother. I guess being a bully was more satisfying to him).

I see you, friends. I see you, and I know you see me, and I am both grateful and sad. We know this secret handshake we wish we didn’t know. We know a very specific kind of loss that only we know, a type of lingering pain that never really goes away entirely, that can only be reduced to part of the background noise, but can crank itself up to 11 without warning.

I just want you all to know that I see you, and I love you. I know how tough it is, how much it hurts.

I want to specifically make meaningful eye contact with all of my fellow survivors who are also dads, who show up for our kids in spite of the pain and loss. It’s such a challenge, and it means so much. We broke the cycle and that is massive. I’m so proud of us.

the wait

We aren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead, even when they were monsters in life who hurt countless people.

Okay. But nobody said we couldn’t write fan fiction.

The Wait

Pat Robertson walks past thousands of souls, smugly and full of pride, and cuts to the front of the line at the velvet rope in outside the entrance to his version of Heaven.

The bouncer looks up from their clipboard, observing Robertson with thousands of eyes in a swirling cascade of light.

“Pat Robertson,” they say. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Pat Robertson silently congratulates himself. He swells with joy. All those people who died from AIDS, natural disasters, even 9/11 … they all deserved it. They were sinners!

The bouncer speaks into their headset. “He’s here.” They listen. “Yep. At the front of the line.”

The bouncer turns most of its gaze back to Pat Robertson. “Just wait here for one moment, please.”

Pat Robertson steps to one side and waits.

After one thousand years, he begins to wonder if there was a miscommunication.

“Excuse me,” he says to the bouncer, “I am Pat –“

“Robertson. Yes. We know. We’re just getting everything in order for you. It will just be one more moment.”

Tens of thousands of victims of gun violence walk past him and enter Heaven. The population of an entire village, lost in a typhoon that was intensified by climate change, is welcomed. And still he waits.

They file past him, all the people he looked down on. All the people he hurt, directly and indirectly, don’t even notice him as they pass. It’s like he isn’t even there.

Another thousand years pass. Pat Robertson realizes he hasn’t had a thing to eat since he died and he is so very hungry.

“Hey!” He shouts at the bouncer. “What’s the problem? Don’t you know who I am?”

The bouncer rolls half a million eyes at once. “We know exactly who you are.”

“Well, alright, then!” Pat Robertson spits out, exasperated, “if you aren’t going to help me, get someone here who will!”

The bouncer speaks into its headset again. “We’re ready.”

A gibbering mass of what is mostly human flesh — or was, once — slithers / rolls / flops into Pat Robertson’s view. It is covered with mouths that bleed and weep and click their teeth together. Enormous open sores swirl and burst and close and reopen and drip pus and viscera across blistering skin. The faint memory of a smell surrounds it, something like very old cigar smoke and very expensive liquor.

Pat Robertson tries to scream. Arm-like stalks extend from the quivering shape. One resembles a hand at the end of an arm, dripping viscera.

In a flash, it grabs Pat Robertson’s hand and shakes it. Something hot and acidic splashes up on his arm, blinds him in one eye. He feels weak. Afraid. Alone. Confused.

Hundreds of mouths try to speak. Dozens of them vomit acrid bile that splashes across his chest. Dozens more silently spit out the lies they’ve been cursed to repeat for eternity to an audience who will never hear them again.

One mouth speaks clearly. So clearly, it’s inside Pat Robertson’s head and everywhere else all at once. “I’m Rush Limbaugh,” it says. “I’m your new roommate. Come with me.”

And that’s when Pat Robertson knows. That’s when it all hits him, all at once. He’s getting everything he deserves.

The line to get into Heaven does not see or hear or notice him, or the Limbeast. They can’t hurt anyone, anymore. They are, finally, invisible.

The cancerous mass of hate wraps its arm around his shoulder and just like that Pat Robertson finds himself in a vast parody of a cathedral. It’s built of bones and flesh and lies. The walls writhe, and he sees that they are not bricks and lathe but bodies wrapped in confederate flags and wearing red hats.

The pews are filled to capacity with the souls of people who followed him in life, hated who he told them to hate. Only their hate is now focused on him, hot and unforgiving. Relentless.

Pat Robertson looks for his companion, but it has vanished. It has left him alone to suffer.

A sermon rises in his chest and pushes against his throat. Pat Robertson is compelled to speak, and as he does each word tears through him like broken glass. He spews his hate and his lies, just as he did in life. Only in this place, he doesn’t feel the glee and the satisfaction he always did. No, he feels the pain and the suffering and the agony of every human being who he deliberately hurt. He. Feels. All. Of. It. He tries to stop speaking. Of course, he can not. He can not ever stop.

And Pat Robertson’s eternity begins.