Author: Wil

Sean Bonner has a great post at the SBdC about the power of blogging.

[This] was just e-mailed to my by Dana in NYC. It’s pretty amazing…

"One of our authors Tessa posted last week about having a
delivery man force his way into her apartment and demand all of her
money as a tip. The delivery man was with the extremely popular
internet based NYC grocery service Fresh Direct—everyone I know and
everyone they know uses this service (which incidentally has a strict
no tipping policy) so there was a lot of shock, dismay, outrage over
this incident. Tessa’s posts were linked to on Gothamist and Gawker
although she chose not to go to the newspapers about this incident. She
went right to Fresh Direct who told her that the delivery man would be
re-assigned. Many of our readers were upset that this man could deliver
to them next so yesterday I posted information on how to contact Fresh
Direct and demand a better resolution from them. A lot of people told
me that they followed my suggestion and wrote to Fresh Direct about
this too. And just now I just got a mail from Fresh Direct management
assuring me that after an internal investigation that the offending
driver has indeed been fired.

Imagine this same thing happening as recently as five years ago. Based upon their initial reaction to the complaint, it is likely that without the flood of concerns from other customers, this company would not fire an allegedly dangerous employee. (How irresponsible to even consider reassigning him!) Without the blogs, how could she get the word out far and wide? The mainstream media? Unlikely. And even if the victim had been able to get attention from some mainstream
news media, it would never have the immediacy and wide reach of
communicating it on a blog. Who knows how many other doors this guy would have kicked down before he was stopped!

Whenever I am interviewed about my blog, or blogging in general, I always try to get the interviewer to grok that the real power in this medium is that anyone can communicate their opinions, fears, outrage, silliness, or whatever is important to them with a large, self-policing peer network. There is such overwhelming power in communication, if that power is treated responsibly.

That is why blogging is important. That is why it’s exciting, empowering, and cool. For better and for worse, the rules of communication have changed. So far, I don’t see a whole lot of evidence that the mainstream media or current corporate masters of the universe understand that. I wonder when they’ll get a clue(train).

Just a quick reminder that tomorrow’s WWdN Friday Game at PokerStars is set to go at 7:00 EDT.

What: WWdN: Decker711 Invitational
Where: PokerStars.
When: Friday, October 21st. 7:00 PM EDT
Password: monkey
Tournament number: 13788952
Buy-in: $10+1

I
hope that the later starting time can accomodate a
few more players than last week. Remember that this is a semi-private
affair, open to anyone who knows the password is monkey.

This is always fun. Head over to TK421.net, and find out which Sci-Fi or Fantasy character you are.

Apparently, I am John Sheridan.

An experienced survivor who has maneuvered around many obstacles, you are looked
up to by those who rely on your good judgment.

In the last few years, we’ve stumbled. We stumbled at the death of
the president, the war, and on and on. When you stumble a lot you tend to look
at your feet. Now we have to make people lift their eyes back to the horizon and
see the line of ancestors behind us saying, "Make my life have meaning,"
and to our inheritors before us saying, "create the world we will live in."

I know it’s a silly online survey, but I was surprised at how much I identified with those words, and I was very grateful that I wasn’t Wesley Crusher (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) So if you’ve got a few minutes to waste, head on over and tell us who you are.

(Thanks, Ocean!)

If you’re in Anaheim this weekend, you can come out to IGN Live and play poker with me and Greg Raymer.

There are a lot of poker tournaments, but none offer the big chance the PokerStars.com All-In Tournament is offering. Play your cards right and you’ll get a chance to ante up against 2004 World Series of Poker Champion Greg Raymer. That’s right, the Fossil Man himself. Will you take down the champ or will you fall under the spell of his multi-colored glasses?
   

As if that wasn’t exciting enough, you can also win a chance to play against former Star Trek: The Next Generation star turned poker pro Wil Wheaton. In addition to playing cards, Wil is a big gaming enthusiast. Maybe try to chat up his gaming habits to take him off his poker game.

Hey! How about some advice on knocking Greg off of his game? Thanks, guys. While it’s a little much to say that I’m a poker pro, they nailed the "gaming enthusiast" part. I’ll be there early on Sunday just so I can play the XBox 360.

What PokerStars has set up for this weekend is very cool: there will be a series of free sit-n-go tournaments throughout the day on Saturday and Sunday. The winner of each tournament will win a seat at the final game of the day. Saturday’s winner will play with Greg, and Sunday’s winner will play with me. We’ll also be in the PokerStars booth signing autographs during the afternoon on our respective days.

If you can’t make it to The Los Angeles Anaheim Convention Center of Anaheim, but you still want to play poker with me, don’t forget tomorrow’s WWdN Invitational!

I‘m a bit of a zombie geek. In fact, one of the first real stories I wrote was for English class in  middle school, called Land of the Zombies. I wrote a little bit about it in Just A Geek:

"You were always such a wonderful writer, Wil." She said, wagging her finger at me. "We all thought that you’d end up as a screenwriter or novelist."

Something started to slowly turn in the back of my mind.

"Yeah, I always enjoyed it."

"Remember your Land of the Zombies story? All the students loved that."

I smiled and nodded. As a creative writing assignment around Halloween in 1985, all the seventh graders wrote horror stories. Inspired by "Night of the Living Dead," D&D, and a family trip to San Francisco, I wrote a story about a man and his wife, fleeing from the terror of zombies who had escaped an army research base, and were slowly taking over the country. They discover that water can force the zombie-causing chemicals out of the living dead, so they end up on Alcatraz island, which I had decided was the only safe place left in America. I remember the story ended with something like, "Alcatraz was once a federal prison for killers. Now it’s the prison that’s saving our lives. We even sleep in the Birdman’s old cell.

"As the sun set over the Golden Gate Bridge, I looked out onto America: once, the land of the free. Now, the land of the zombies."

It’s not Hemmingway, but it’s pretty good for a 12 year old. It was voted scariest and goriest story by the seventh and  eighth graders, and I proudly photocopied it, and sent it to all my relatives. They were all horrified and told my parents that I should get professional help.

If I can ever find that story, which I think is somewhere in my mother’s Infinite Bag of Childhood Relics, I’ll reprint it. Better yet, I’ll scan it so you can read it in all its Applewriter glory, complete with judicious use of bolding, outlining, and shadowing. Mmmm yeah. It’s good stuff.

As I grew older, so did my fascination with zombies. When I was a teenager, I was a total geek for Dawn of the Dead (not so much, Day of the Dead, though)  and rented it regularly on VHS tape from a video rental store (ask your parents, kids.) While I appreciated the humor of Return of the Living Dead, I watched that one less frequently (and then mostly for the boobies) because it just didn’t please the purist in me. Because, you know, one is capable of being a zombie purist, especially when one is a huge fucking nerd.

For example, Darin and I saw the remake of Dawn of the Dead when it was in theatres, and we enjoyed it, but I was left a little wanting. There were plenty of scares, and the gore factor was nicely balanced by the suspense factor, but I like my zombies to be slow moving menaces, rather than lightening fast maniacs. It’s what separates the Zombies from the Tasmanian Devils. Again, me=zombie purist.

I still haven’t seen 28 Days Later, or Land of the Dead (the former because I hear it’s not exactly zombies, and they are of the Tasmanian Devil variety, anyway, and the latter just because I haven’t had time — hey, even zombie purists have work to do, you know) but Anne and I finally got around to watching Shaun of the Dead last night.

Holy shit. What a fucking brilliant movie! I kept hearing about how great it was, but I was reluctant to believe all the hype. (Purist, remember? Okay! Fine! Not Purist! Snob! There! I admitted it! Are you happy now? I AM A ZOMBIE SNOB AND I DON’T CARE WHO KNOWS IT!!!!11) Not only is it a brilliant zombie movie, it’s a wonderful story about friendship, love, the importance of a good pint, and how there is greatness in just about everyone, even if it takes a zombie invasion to bring it out. I gave it five severed heads and nine out of nine chainsaws, for those of you who like to score this sort of thing.

And though it goes without saying, I’m going to say it anyway: if you have even the tiniest bit of affection for the living dead, you will positively love Twilight Creations’ Zombies!!!

Zombies!!! puts you in the middle of the action as you try to escape
the ever advancing zombie horde. Players must use a combination of wits
and brawn to be the first to the heliport and certain escape. The only
problem is, the zombies are everywhere, they appear to be very hungry
and your opponents would really prefer if you didn’t escape.

The basic set puts you in Small Town USA, and they’ve got several expansions, which add military bases (complete with glow in the dark zombies! for reals!) shopping malls, and even a cabin which is susipciously similar to Evil Dead 2. It’s more fun than eating a skullfull of brains, dontchaknow.