The Roll Model T is in its final days.

We are in the final days of my Roll Model T-shirt with Stands, and I felt like this was a good opportunity to post all the amazing graphics Riley at Stands has made for me to use during the campaign.

These are all based on original AD&D books, and I love them so much I kind of wish we could make them into prints.

I’ve been busy with work, and struggling with my mental health, for months, now. I’ve learned that a big part of my self care routine is to be grateful for good things, even if they seem very small, because those little bits of light in the darkness can come together to help guide me out of a painful place. These images have reminded me of the decades of joy I’ve had playing D&D, and have reminded me that there have been incredibly good times in my life, even at a time like this when all I can seem to feel is sadness and despair.

So I guess I’m tying to say thank you to Riley and everyone at Stands for not just giving me the opportunity to put something fun into the world (when I was on the Star Trek cruise earlier this month, I saw some people wearing Owl Bear shirts and it made me so happy, like we were fellow travelers who were sharing an inside joke), but also for indirectly granting me a strong connection to happy and joyful memories.

Aren’t they great?! Now I want to go into the game room, pull out my D&D books, and plan a retro campaign for some friends.

Let me be your roll model

I love working with Stands to make and share fun and clever nerdy stuff, like my Owlbear Conservation Society T-shirt.

It turns out that Stands likes me, too, so we have teamed up again to bring you another fun, clever nerdy shirt that is inspired by.

I hope you get one for yourself, and ten more for your closest friends. We’re giving proceeds to Pasadena Humane Society, because I love animals and want to support the organization that gave me Seamus and Marlowe, so other dogs and cats can find their forever homes.

radio dot wil wheaton dot net

I’ve been experimenting with a Shoutcast music stream that Mysterious Kevin helped me set up. I have a bunch of different playlists that I rotate through, including 70s punk, 80s metal, 90s ambient electronica, and 90s grunge. I mix in a bunch of random weird and strange files that I find online, including excerpts from Star Trek Power records, ancient European commercials, audio bloopers from various TV shows, and other things you’d expect to find on a mixtape. If you’ve ever heard my podcast mixtapes, you know what to expect.

You should be able to listen to this in any browser, or you can download the .pls file to stream in VLC or the media thingy of your choice. I also think this little player thingy should work right here. ~~If I configured it the way I want, it should even be playing AUTOMATICALLY LIKE MAGIC~~ (I reconfigured this so it doesn’t autoplay, based on your feedback.):

The current playlist (which I expect to keep live all week) is the 80s metal collection. It features some Sabbath, Maiden, Van Halen, Metallica, Scorpions, and stuff like that.

Unrelated: this new WordPress composer (BLOCKS AND BLOCKS AND OTHER BLOCKS IS HOW WE DO IT NOW) is really weird and makes me feel like a very old man who used to hand-code blog entries in raw HTML. I’m sure it’s very powerful and flexible when you get used to it, but right now I feel like I’m writing with someone else’s hands.

ALSO UNRELATED: The Star Trek cruise was amazing and deserves its own entry, but I’ve been decompressing and catching up on work since we got back, and I haven’t had time to sit down to properly compose my thoughts.

RELATED: Van Hagar sucks.

Oh, and also…

The captain dreams of flying but he’s oh so scared of heights

I’m having a bad mental health day.

Well, I’ve been having a string of bad mental health days.

Ten weeks or so, it seems, and every day is a battle just to get up and face it.

I’m paralyzed by a fear of failure, and that fear is stopping me from creating anything that matters.

Hell, it’s preventing me from creating anything at all.

So I gave myself an exercise today, to see if I can help move this ship that’s been trapped in ice.

I had a simple idea, and I gave myself permission to just spit it out without thinking too much. I decided to write in a style that I don’t normally use, just to crack the ice a little bit.

And because I’m so afraid of failure, I gave myself permission to share this unvarnished, unpolished, trapped-in-ice bunch of words that spilled out of my head.

The monster lives under the bed. It sleeps among the dust bunnies, wraps itself around the box of sweaters, stretches its legs between toys.

It keeps the lost socks. Lost things are desired to be found and that need sustains the monster when the children are not in their beds.

The children know the monster is there, as all children do, having felt its presence in the dark of night. Their parents don’t believe in monsters, as no parents do, having forgotten the truths they knew when they were children.

What the children and the parents don’t know is that the monster under the bed does not threaten on the children.

It protects them. From the other monsters.

The monster in the closet.

The monster who taps at the window when the wind blows.

The monster who lurks in the hallway, just outside the bedroom door.

The monster who stands in the room when the children hide beneath the covers.

The monster who lives under the bed waits for them to come calling. The monster who lives under the bed waits for them to tap on the window or scratch on the walls or creak the closet door open. The monster who lives under the bed waits and when the children are in danger, it reaches out with an impossibly long arm, covered with fur and scales and blisters and oozing pustules. It reaches out and opens a claw, snaps it closed on the neck of the monster who lives in the closet, crushes the life out of the monster who taps on the window, flays the skin off the monster who lurks in the hallway. When the children hide beneath the covers, it breaks the neck of the monster who stands in the dark bedroom.

It protects the children, as it protected their parents, as it will protect the children’s children long after they have grown into parents and forgotten it or any of the other monsters existed.

It protects them

and it waits.

It waits for all the other monsters to be driven out, so that it may uncoil itself, stretch itself out, creep into the bedroom

and feed.

Fifteen or so minutes, 352 words, a few images, an unexpected ending. Something where there wasn’t something before. Something unpolished and raw and imperfect. Something published for the sake a making a thing that isn’t perfect. Okay.

Maybe this will crack the ice, or at least sweep away a few snowdrifts.

Owlbear Pin Winners!

Okay first things first: I went to the Kings game last night, Dustin Brown scored a hat trick, and when I threw my Santa hat onto the ice, ADRIAN KEMPE PICKED IT UP WITH HIS STICK and it made it onto the TV broadcast!! AND they put me on the jumbotron twice during the game! I’ve been on TV like a thousand times, but that didn’t prepare me for how excited I was going to feel when I saw myself on the big screen in Staples Center. Yay! They really suck out loud this season, but GO KINGS GO!

Now to business. Here are the randomly-selected winners from the Owlbear pin drawing. If you’re one of these lucky folks, email me and we’ll get you your pin:

pandorasdadca
Steve
Jason Thorpe
Todd
Chad Walter

And while I have your attention, allow me to remind you that there are just hours left to join in on the fun and get your own Owlbear Conservation Society stuff.

Just a few hours left to become a part of the Owlbear Conservation Society and get your official enamel pin! Happy Owlbear to all, and to all a good night!