Category: Uncategorized

I think it’s time to open the WWdN mailbag . . .

Subject:Wil how a terrible news that ya are a lefty
Date: April 10, 2005 1159
From:Craig R.
To:Wil Wheaton
Message:Will sorry to hear that you are one of those lefty’s from Holly Wood … Though it should not surprise me much of what comes out of Holly Wood these days . You are just like the other sewer crap that comes out of Tensile town , I’m referring to the Pathetic schmucks such as Whopi Goldberg , Ya know her a as the faithful bar tender on the Enterprise . Martin Shean , Susan Surandan and Sean Pen . Ya all just have to face it Bush got over 51 to 52% of the vote just look at the map. So face the facts hippie and live with it BUSH WON BY A LAND SLIDE !!!! NOW I KNOW IT DON’T SET WELL WITH UR INTELLECT . HAVE A NICE LIFE AND LEARN TO SUFFER IN SCONCE … OH BY THE WAY KERRY VOTED TO CUT THE INTEL.. BUDGET BY 80% READ THE SENATE VOTING RECORDS. GUESS YOU WILL BE OFF MY MOVIE LIST WHEN YA COME OUT IN THEATERS AT LEAST PATRICK STEWART KNOWS WHEN TO KEEP SILENT. YA CAN LEARN ALLOT FROM HIM ON CLASSY BEHAVIOR. YOUR JUVENAL AND CHILDISHNESS IS STILL SHOWING SO WHY DON’T YA GROW UP.

FORMER NEXT GENERATION FAN.
CRAIG R.

Dear Craig,
I learned allot from your classy e-mail. I was unaware that 51 to 52% of anything was a landslide, but we sewer crap probably use a different kind of math than you do. I apologize if that don’t set well with ur intellect.
Next time I see Martin Shean, Susan Surandan or Sean Pen I’ll be sure to share your insights with them. Maybe we can all trade our juvenal and childishness for suffering in sconce.
Best Wishes from Tensile town,
Will Wheaton
(I’m not sure if this is real, or not. If it’s not, it’s the funniest satire in history. If it is . . . it explains so much.)

Holy shit.
I just realized something.
My website is one of the ugliest things on all the Internets.
Isn’t that weird? I’ve looked at it every single day since 2001, and it just suddenly hit me this morning: I need to redesign and update the site, and I need to do it about a year ago.
So watch for some massive overhauling very, very soon.
Update: I’m not going to fill this up with stupid “bells and whistles,” as some people have feared. I’m mostly going to move some things around, optimize the site so it hopefully loads faster, and remove a lot of the visual clutter that’s all over the place right now. Don’t worry. I’m doing everything I can to ensure that it doesn’t suck.
UpdateUpdate: I also think the BlogAds have got to go. I’ve tried them out for a little while, and it just doesn’t feel right to me anymore. If I was making a huge pile of “Indecent Proposal” money with them each month, it’d be one thing . . . but I really don’t, and I think the “sell-out-ish-ness” I’m currently feeling isn’t offset by the small amount of revenue they generate. So when the current ads run out, they’ll be gone. I’m also working with my friends at igrep to get a smaller, more seamlessly-integrated search box for my site. Right now, I feel like WWdN is an explosion of advertising, and the content is struggling to get a seat at the table. The opposite should be true, and I’ll take care of that in the next week or so.
And I looked at WordPress, because it sounds like it does all the things I want to do . . . I started the “five minute” install around 10 this morning . . . and I’m still trying to make the goddamn thing work at 7:30 tonight. Which is not a comment on WordPress, at all. It’s a shining testament to how shitty my computer skills have become lately. Heh — it’s almost like my creative and techincal skills are inversely proportional to each other.
Now I have to leave and somehow make it to Hollywood for rehearsal in 4.5 minutes. Bending Spacetime is getting *really* hard, you guys.
Oh, and I keep trying to comment on my own goddamn blog, but TypeKey is acting really weird and keeps logging me out and pissing me off. So if that’s happening to anyone else, you’re not alone, and I’ll see what I can do about it.
As soon as I have time. Which I don’t. Now I have to be in Hollywood 2 minutes ago.

I worked in the yard most of the weekend. All the rain has finally gone away, and now there are a mountain of weeds to remove.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about getting into my overgrown backyard with the garden claw, a shovel, a rake, some pruning shears, a beer, and taming the wild overgrowth.
It was pretty sad that Felix wasn’t there to walk over and talk to me while I tore through the dandelion patch that’s constantly trying to move in under the orange tree. I know he’s not coming back, but I can’t help it — I keep looking for him, and expecting him to show up in all his regular places. I think I’m going to talk with a grief counselor, because my level of sadness seems very disproportional to the loss. I think there’s some other stuff wrapped up in my mourning, maybe about my Aunt Val, and a family friend who we lost in November of last year. I really appreciate all the kind comments and e-mails from so many WWdN readers. Thank you, everyone.
We had a preview show at ACME on Saturday night for the new sketch show Acme: A Day In The Life. I was really nervous and felt like I was totally unprepared to get out there and give up the funny . . . but I think we did really well. There were some sketches that didn’t work and others that I thought wouldn’t work (including one of mine) that killed. I felt like the company is in exactly the same place right now as Love Machine was when we were three weeks from opening, and I’m confident that this show is going to be just as great. We open on April 16th.
The kids are on Spring Break this week, so we stayed up late last night, listened to A Ghost Is Born (The kids are getting as sick of Wilco as they are of The Pixies. I remember feeling so sick to death of The Beatles when I was a kid, and I love them now . . . so we’ll have to check back with Ryan in Nolan in twenty years or so and see how they’re doing.) and played the Radica World Poker Tour game that plugs into your TV. It was a consolation prize when I played in the WPT Invitational, and it’s surprisingly fun.
We played against three computer opponents, all set on Expert. I went out first when my AK got busted when the computer opponent called me with AJ and caught his J on the flop. Ryan went down shortly after that, not realizing that it’s pretty tough to go on a stone bluff against a computer. This left Nolan to defeat the computer menace and prove once and for all (for one game, at least) that humans are superior to computers.
It looked dicey a few times, but Nolan caught cards when he needed to, and ended up winning it all.
Yeah, it was as anti-climactic as it sounds, but it was fun to hang out with them until we could no longer stay awake around midnight.
Three unrelated things that don’t really fit anywhere else:

• I’m an official Spokesman for igrep! It’s incredibly cool, and I’ll get into the details later today. Until then, you can read the press release

  and those bright lights

  Posted on 1 April, 2005 By Wil

  Just after 9 Wednesday morning, we said goodbye to Felix The Bear. He left us peacefully and quietly, surrounded by his staff who love him.
  It’s been a really sad and difficult few days for me and my family. I keep looking for The Bear in the usual places (not because I think he’s still alive, but out of habit) and when he’s not there, the tears come. I discovered yesterday that I have this totally illogical construct in my mind where I somehow hoped that we could trade the sick, sad, dying Felix for the healthy, tough, stumpy little Bear we used to know . . . but he’s never coming back, and he really is gone. This reality keeps hitting me with varying severity and no warning. I’m kind of a wreck right now. I really, really miss him.
  I’ve got some Onion, Dungeon and ACME work to do and I’m not feeling particularly creative or inspired right now . . . so I need to put what little energy I have into fulfilling those commitments. I don’t think I’ll be posting here much for the next few days.

One morning a few years ago, Anne walked out into our garage to put some towels or something into the dryer. I heard the door close, and a minute of so later, she called out to me, “Wil? Can you come in here? Quickly?”
There was a tiny bit of urgency in her voice, so I jumped up from the couch, ran through the kitchen, across the breezeway, and into the garage. She stood next to the dryer, a pile of wet clothes in her hands.
“Is everything okay?” I said.
“Shh!” She said, and pointed to the middle of the garage. “Listen!”
I did, and after a few moments, I heard a very soft meowing. Both of my cats were indoor cats, so I called out, “Biko? Sketch?”
I turned to Anne. “How did they get out of the house?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, but —”
A sleek black cat came walking out from beneath one of several piles of crap we have out there (putting a car into our garage is about as likely as one of us building a rocket in the backyard and colonizing the moon). He had bright yellow/green eyes, a white star on his chest, and little white “socks” on his front paws. He had no tail.

“Hey, Kitty!” Anne said, “what are you doing in my garage?”
She shoved the clothes into the dryer, and crouched down on the floor. The cat began purring loudly as he walked over to her. She extended her hand and he rubbed his little face up against it.
“You are such a little Bear!” She said, as she scratched his ears.
I’ve seen this from her before: she was in love. She looked up at me, like a child. “Can we keep him?”
“We already have two cats, Anne,” I said, “and what if someone misses him?”
“We’ll wait a week, and look for signs around the neighborhood. If we don’t find signs, and he’s still here, we’ll take him to the vet and make sure he’s healthy.”
I’ve also seen this from her before: her mind was made up.
For the next week, he stayed on our patio, and we looked for signs in our neighborhood. We called local shelters. pet stores, and vets and asked if anyone had reported a missing kitty. Nobody had. As far as we could tell, this kitty had just shown up out of thin air; if anyone missed him, they weren’t being very vocal about it.
The first few days of that week, I tried not to get too attached to him, but whenever I walked out onto the patio, he’d talk to me a bunch. If I got close to him, he’d start to purr and rub up against my legs. He was so affectionate, it took about three days for my him to win me over. I started counting down to the seventh day, when we would take him to the vet and know for sure if he could officially become a member of our family.
At the end of the week, we took him to the vet and had him checked for diseases and stuff.

“What’s his name?” The receptionist asked us.
Anne and I looked at each other. Over the week, we had both loved this little guy a lot, but we’d never thought to name him.
“Oscar?” I said.
She smiled and shook her head. “No.” She turned to the receptionist and said, “His name is Felix.”
“Yeah!” I said, “Felix the cat!”
While we were there, we saw a picture on the wall of a cat that looked just like him, and we found out that he was a special breed called a Japanese Bobtail. Over the next few years, this would lead to us calling him “Stumpy,” and referring to his activity as “just stumpin’ around in the yard.” His blood work came back the following day: he was free from all diseases, but his kidney levels were a little high — probably the result of him being just a little dehydrated. We know now that it was much worse, but at the time we were blissfully ignorant, and the Wheaton household grew by one.
We brought him home, and introduced him to our cats. Biko was indifferent, but Sketch cranked at him right away. Ever since he was a kitten, Sketch has been a daddy’s — then (and now) a momma’s — boy. He didn’t like that there was a new kitty in our house who would be siphoning away some of the attention and affection. For the next week or so, there was a lot of peeing on the furniture, but eventually, Biko and Sketch accepted that this new kitty wasn’t going to leave, and his arrival didn’t diminish our love for them.
Felix loved us, but always on his terms. There’s a saying, “Dogs have masters. Cats have staff” and so it was with Felix. He was always affectionate, but he made it clear that he wasn’t our cat: we were his people. We didn’t mind at all.
A few years passed, and Felix brought all kinds of joy into our lives. He had his “rotation,” where he’d sleep on Ryan’s bed for a week or so, then Nolan’s, then with me and Anne. Even though he was just a cat, when he chose to put you on his rotation, you couldn’t help but feel special. Chosen.

We learned quickly that Felix didn’t take any shit from anyone, especially other cats. In the first year that we were his people, he went to the vet several times for shots and stitches after fights with other neighborhood cats. When he went outside, Anne and I started telling him, “Watch for cars, and don’t get into any fights!” He rarely listened, but he was an incredibly tough little guy who earned his nickname “The Bear,” and as far as we know, he never lost a single fight.
About two years ago, we noticed that he spent a couple of days acting a little strange. He didn’t want to be cuddled, he wouldn’t eat very much, and he just looked like he didn’t feel well. We figured it was the result of his latest fight, so Anne took him to the vet for more antibiotics. When she came home, her eyes were red and her cheeks were shiny with tears.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“The vet said that Felix doesn’t feel well because he’s having kidney failure. He could die within a month.” She collapsed onto our bed and sobbed. I did my best to comfort her, while I processed the shock of the news.
“Is there anything we can do?” I said.
“We may be able to give him special food and fluids, but —”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” I said. And we did. We gave him some fluids every morning, put him onto special food, and gave him a little extra love. Within a couple of days, The Bear was stumpin’ around the yard, chasing birds across the grass, and curling up in our laps whenever we sat on the couch. His sleeping rotation put him into our room, and I fell asleep for many nights listening to his soft purring.
The rest of that year, he had ups and downs. One terrifying weekend Felix was rushed to the emergency vet because the gardener sprayed weed killer in our front yard — which I’d specifically told him not to do — and Felix had walked through it. During that stay at the vet’s, I visited him often. WWdN readers were really supportive of Anne and me, and I blogged a “note” from The Bear:

“Hi. ThiS iS FELix. My Mom AND Dad ToLD mE HoW MUCh WWDN ReADerS SupPoRteD ThEM whiLe I wAs SiCK, aND i WaNT to sAY ThANK you. ThEy LovE ME A loT AnD I KnOW THIS Was hard FoR thEM.”

During that stay, we found out that his kidney disease had progressed more rapidly than we expected. He was up to about 85% failure, and he was starting to become anemic. He had lost a bunch of weight, and was down to about 11 pounds. Again, we made mental preparations for the worst, and again Felix surprised us all by bouncing right back to life.
A few weeks ago, Felix started to look and act like he felt icky, so we took him to the vet yet again. This came on the heels of my cat Sketch’s near-death experience, so my nerves were pretty frayed. “I wish I could get frequent flier miles here,” I joked to the receptionist for the hundredth time. She politely pretended that I wasn’t the most annoying pet owner in the world.
We ran some tests on him, and the results confirmed our worst fears: his kidneys were almost completely destroyed, and he had developed such a severe case of anemia his body wasn’t able to get any nutrition out of his food. He was, quite literally, wasting away.
It was clear that if we didn’t do anything, he was going to die within a few days. We talked it over with our vet, and she told us that our options were to put Felix to sleep, or give him Epogen injections three times a week, sub-q fluids twice a day, liquid vitamins and an aluminum hydroxyde suspension each morning. It seemed like an awful lot of stuff to do, but Anne and I talked about it, and tried to figure out what was best for Felix, we would not prolong his life simply because we didn’t want to say goodbye . . . but if we could help him feel better, and have good quality of life, then we would do whatever we could afford to do. We talked it over with his vet, and decided that we’d try this out for two weeks.
“What are the odds of him bouncing back?” I asked his vet.
“If it was any other cat, I’d say very slim,” she said, “but Felix is one of the toughest kitties I’ve ever seen. Honestly, his kidney values are so high, any other kitty would have died by now.”
“Is there anything we should watch for?”

She told us what I’ve heard from hundreds of WWdN readers: “Your cat will let you know if he’s ready to go, or if he wants to stick around and try to feel better.”
That was two weeks ago. For the first week, Felix perked up, but he didn’t bounce back the way he always had before. He stopped being reclusive, but he wasn’t as affectionate as he’d always been. I hoped against hope that he’d miraculously recover, like he always did, but it just wasn’t happening. I realized that I was watching him die.
A few nights ago, I sat in my dining room and read my book. I felt something brush up against my leg. I looked down and saw The Bear. He was so skinny (just over six pounds) his spine stood up on his back like Mr. Burns.
“How are you feeling, The Bear?” I said.
He let out a slow and quiet meow, and walked into the living room. He wavered when he walked, like he was unsteady, or uncomfortable, or both. When he was about fifteen feet away from me, he stopped, crouched down on the floor, and flicked his little stump.
“Your cat will let you know if he’s ready to go . . .”
I got up from the table and walked over to him. I felt a lump rising in my throat as I got down next to him on the floor.
“Are you done?” I said.
He flicked his stump, and looked up at me. His eyes looked a little cloudy; his third eyelid was closed about a third of the way.
“Okay, Felix. Okay.” I scratched his little bony head. He purred weakly and tightly shut his eyes.
I knew this moment would come, and I hoped that I’d be prepared to face it, but I wasn’t. Huge sobs shook my body. Giant tears fell off my face and ran down my nose.
Ferris cautiously walked over to me from the kitchen. She stopped about three feet from me, sat down, and cocked her head to one side.
“Felix is dying, Ferris,” I said. “I’m okay. I’m just sad.”
She sighed, and laid down on the floor with her head between her paws. She watched me while I sat there and cried.
Later that night, Anne and I had The Talk. We decided that we’ve done all that we can to help him, but it’s just not enough. He’s not really living now . . . he’s just staying alive. We promised each other, and we promised Felix, that we wouldn’t keep him alive just because we didn’t want to say goodbye. Yesterday morning, I called the vet and had The Talk with her. We made an appointment to bring Felix in tomorrow morning.
I know I’m doing the right thing, but that doesn’t make it any easier. As I’ve written this today (and it’s taken most of the day to write — I’ve had to stop writing this several times just to get a grip on myself.) I have realized that Felix hasn’t been The Bear for a long time.
I will miss seeing him stand up and stretch himself out on the trunk of Anne’s car, before he jumps down onto the driveway and greets me when I open my car door. I will miss him jumping up into my car, and talking to me while he walks around and explores the passenger compartment. I will miss watching him sit in the grass and torment the squirrel in the tree next door. I will miss watching him stump around in the backyard. But most of all, I will miss being on his rotation. Even when he decided that four in the morning was when he needed to go outside, and the best way to accomplish that was to run across our heads until one of us woke up and let him out.