in which some comfort is found

Posted on By Wil

I saw Ferris' empty dish last night when I fed Riley, and it unleashed an agonizing wave of sadness so overwhelming, I dropped to the floor in our living room and cried as hard and as long as I ever have in my life.

After she was finished eating, Riley came over to me and sniffed at my face. Through my tears and gasping sobs, I told her it was okay, I just missed Ferris a lot and I was sad.

She rubbed her face against my cheek and trotted into the family room. A moment later, she returned with her soggy tennis ball, which she gently put into my lap. She looked up at me, and then walked into the corner of the family room, where she picked up her rope – her favorite toy, which she brings with her to the front door whenever we come home – and brought it over to me. She set it on the ground next to me, and then laid down and put her head in my lap. I cried for a good long time, but I was comforted by Riley's actions, even if I'm projecting my own feelings onto her. I felt like she could tell I was grieving, so she brought me the things that make her happy, before letting me cry on her until the fur on her neck was soaked with my tears. When I finally stopped, mostly because I was physically and emotionally exhausted, I felt a tiny bit better. 

Anne is out of town and Ryan went back to school last week. This is Nolan's first major loss, and I haven't wanted to burden him with my own grief, so other than emails from friends and comments on my blog, I've been essentially alone with my pain the last three days. It's been incredibly difficult, and I'm glad Anne is coming home this afternoon, so I'll have someone to cry with.

i can’t think of a title, so i’ll just say thank you

Posted on By Wil

I once had a terrible case of the flu. In addition to the body aches and chills and stuff, I was puking my brains out all over the place all the time. The worst part of it was that it would happen with no warning; one second I was fine, and then I'd suddenly feel my stomach turn, and I'd be throwing up whatever was left in my stomach from the last time. I couldn't control it at all, and after about 12 hours of it, my neck and throat just ached like they'd been kicked by a mule wearing 1930s baseball spikes.

For the last 24 hours, I've experienced the same thing, but instead of throwing up, I'm hit by these unexpected waves of incredibly powerful grief that seem to start in my stomach and explode into heartbreaking sobs in a matter of seconds. My whole body aches, but my throat, neck, and shoulders are especially sore and tired. I know I slept last night, but I don't feel like I got a whole lot of actual rest. 

This morning, I made it about 5 minutes before the first wave of sorrow hit me, but at least I knew what set it off: automatically looking for Ferris on her little doggie cot in the living room, where she'd greet me every morning, wagging just the tip of her tail, until I came over to pet her. Since then, it's been less like I'm crying every five minutes and more like there are these occasional breaks when I'm not. Maybe my body needs time to make and store new tears, I don't know.

I went to the comic shop to get my mind off of things. I haven't been in almost a year because I've been so busy, but figured I'd pick up some trades and recent issues of my friends' books, so I would have something to do. Besides, going to the comic shop always makes me happy.

I picked up a lot of books, and decided to give Green Lantern, which was one of my favorite titles in the 80s, a look. My comic guy recommended this one particular trade as an entry point, so I added it to the pile. When I went next door for some falafel at Zankou, I opened it up while I waited for my order to come up. In the first panel, Hal Jordan is talking to someone named Ferris. I felt the sob rise in my chest, but I caught it in my throat and managed to keep it down with some deep breaths until I got into the car a little bit later.

It's been an extraordinarily difficult day. Our other dog, Riley, who we got as a companion for Ferris when Ferris was 2, has realized that something is very wrong in the house, and keeps looking for Ferris. All day today she's never strayed very far from my side, and though I'm aware that I may be projecting and anthropomorphizing, it sure does seem like she has sadness in her eyes.

Anyway, I wanted to take a moment and say thank you to everyone who has offered condolences for our loss. Ferris was our dog, but she was as much a part of our family as any human, and loved us unconditionally. There is a gigantic open wound in my heart and a vast empty space in my house that feels like it's never going to heal (even though I know it eventually will.) I've always felt like telling someone "I'm sorry for your loss" wasn't ever enough, but being on this side of it, I can tell you that it's more comforting than I ever expected.

through the fish-eyed lens of tear stained eyes

Posted on By Wil

My dog Ferris, who was rescued from a bus stop in Monrovia by my wife Anne almost exactly 8 years ago, had a heart attack and died this morning. It happened very quickly, and I was with her, which is supposed to make me feel better, but at this moment all I can feel is nearly-unbearable sorrow, and the empty space in my life left behind by my awesome dog. 

Ferris Wheaton

Bye bye, Ferris. I love you and miss you. You were the best dog ever.

A small request: if you choose to comment, please don't post that Rainbow Bridge thing. I know you mean well, but it has always made me uncomfortable.

in which bad golf is played and news items are discussed

Posted on By Wil

Last week, I took Nolan to the 3 par golf course I played on all the time as a teenager for a round of what we call Bad Golf. 

The rules of Bad Golf are pretty simple:

1. If you completely blow it on a shot, you get an automatic do-over, no penalty.

2. If you miss the cup by a distance equal to or less than the head on your putter, you count it as "in the hole", so long as you shout, "it's in the hole!"

3. If you somehow hit a squirrel (unintentionally) you automatically win the round.

4. Once a round, you can call "that was totally bullshit" and have a do-over.

5. You must quote Caddyshack whenever appropriate.

These rules were built by me and my friend Kevin when we were in our early 20s, because we loved golf, but were truly horrible at the actual playing of it. They worked out well for us, because they forced us to not take the game too seriously, and gave us a number of excuses to have fun, even when we were playing poorly (which was always.)

This was the first time Nolan or I had picked up a club since the last time we played on this course three years ago, when Nolan was still shorter than me. We played the front 9, invoked Rules 1 and 2 a few times, and had a blast. I shot 37 because I am the master of the four-putt, and Nolan shot 40 because he's taller and stronger than he was last time we played, and even trying to take it easy with his pitching wedge, he was flying over most of the greens. Like everything I do with my kids, though, it wasn't about the score of the game as much as it was about the time spent playing it.

On the way home, I saw a lot of signs around the golf course that pointed to a website called SaveTheGolfCourse.org. When I got home, I looked it up and was horrified to discover that a dirtbag developer is trying to destroy the Verdugo Hills Golf Course and build 320 condos on the land. A lot of residents are fighting it, and I hope they win. I love that place, it's a real treasure for everyone who lives in Sunland, Tujunga, and La Crescenta, and the last thing that area needs is more condos.

And now, various items for your Sunday reading, starting with some book-related things:

I have the final cover for Memories of the Future Volume One, and I'll be posting it next week. Yes, this means that the official release date is right around the corner.

I think I'm bringing a limited-edition chapbook to PAX. If I can get it all together, it will be a short fiction collection, including unpublished stories that I'm pretty sure don't suck.

Jim C. Hines, author of the wonderful book Goblin Quest, read Just A Geek and wrote some extraordinarily kind things about me and my book in his blog.

My columns at Suicide Girls and the LA Weekly, which have been on summer vacation, will be starting up again next month.

For the last two weeks, I've been jogging just a little bit every day, so I can get my skeleton and muscles used to the idea of me doing more physical activity than just sitting at my desk and writing (remember, I've resolved to play ice hockey again before the year is out, and with just four months left, I'm running out of time.) I take my iPod with me and listen to podcasts while I'm out, and I wanted to point out two recent episodes that I enjoyed: From Escape Pod, Carthago Delenda Est and from Stuff You Should Know, The Necronomicon. 

Back in March, I posted about the debut of my friend Ed's webseries, Angel of Death:

Angel of Death stars Zoe Bell (who you've seen double all kinds of people, but probably didn't know it. She also spent much of Death Proof
riding around on the hood of a car being awesome) as an assassin who
"gets stabbed through the skull; she survives, but the head injury
leaves her with an awkward side effect: She
suddenly develops a conscience."

Though Angel of Death was originally released as an episodic webseries, I guess they always intended to eventually release it as a feature film, and last night, Nolan and I finally got to watch that version on DVD. It looks and sounds great, and the story plays even better on TV than it did in my browser. If you liked Kill Bill, Grindhouse, or Sin City, I think you'll like Angel of Death.

I came across a blog called Study Hacks (via Reddit) that is worth a look, especially if you're a student.

As it turns out, I'm all over the damn place next week: Season 3 of The Guild premieres on Xbox Live on Tuesday the 25th, my episode of Leverage airs on Wednesday the 26th, and the newest D&D Penny Arcade Podcast begins on Friday the 28th.

the spambots on twitter are completely out of control

Posted on By Wil

A few months ago, Twitter changed their @replies tab into something called @mentions. This had a significant impact on a lot of us who use Twitter, especially those of us with a large number of followers.

Originally, I'd only see a message with @wilw in it if that's the way the message began. It worked very well, and there was much rejoicing.

Then someone at Twitter decided to change the way it worked. From that day forward, whenever someone used @[your twitter name] anywhere in the body of the message, it would show up as a "mention" in tab that was until-recently-known as replies.

I know a lot of other Twitter users with lots of followers didn't like the change, because for many of them it turned an already-busy replies tab into an avalanche of mentions that was nearly-impossible to keep up with. I can only speak for myself, but I probably only see 10% of the actual @wilw messages that are sent now, because there are so many of them, I just can't keep up.

I have always said that Twitter is a free service, and it's pretty unseemly for us to complain about it because we're not paying for it, but I've also begged Twitter to let me give them money in exchange for a few features, or even just because I love the service so much. So far, my pleas have fallen on deaf ears (or maybe they're so buried in mentions that they never see them.)

Anyway, about a month or five weeks ago, I started to notice a severe spambot problem on Twitter. Obviously, some mother fucker douchebag pile of shit figured out a way to write a script that exploits weaknesses in the signup process, and every Friday (maybe to hide among the higher-volume "follow Friday" Tweets) my @mentions tab is flooded with these goddamn spam bots. 

For example, here's a screenshot of my @mentions, taken just a few minutes ago:

Goddamn_fucking_twitter_spambots_can_fuck_off_and_die

I hope that Twitter is taking proactive steps to do something about this, but I don't see any mention of it on their official blog or status page. I hope that they're not just ignoring it, because it's not like there's a whole lot of random crap that needs to be sorted out here: The bots all post from API, they all use identical phrasing, and there is certainly enough of a pattern to the abuse that someone at Twitter HQ should be able to automate blocking them. I've reported dozens of them to @spam, but it doesn't seem to be having an effect.

It's gotten so frustrating that I'm not using Twitter until the problem is resolved*. I genuinely enjoy the interaction I get to have with other people via @messages (I often call Twitter "time-shifted, asynchronous instant messaging") and I since this started yesterday, it's just too much work – and too infuriating – to dig through all the goddamn spammer bullshit to find the legitimate messages.

I've used nest.unclutterer, but the spambots are smart enough not to follow too many accounts. I've tried to use Twitblock, but it chokes before it can finish (that looks like it's going to be an incredibly useful app, once it's out of alpha and beta and gets to lambda lambda lambda.)

I know other high-profile Twitter users have been targeted by these scripts, and I know that a lot of them are expressing similar frustrations. I don't know if they use Twitter the same way I do, but for those who use it as an actual communication tool, and not just a broadcasting platform, it's got to be just as annoying as it is for me.

I love Twitter, and I am incredibly grateful for how it's helped me reach out to and interact with hundreds of thousands of new people. I just hope that someone at Twitter is listening, and is trying to do something about a spam and abuse problem that is threatening to overwhelm an otherwise-awesome service.

* I want need to clarify: THIS IS NOT A BOYCOTT, and I wish people would stop suggesting that it is. This isn't some kind of stupid threat, or the suggestion that I'm taking my football and going home. It's more like deciding not to go to a place you've always loved until the owners clean it up, because it's gotten so filthy you can't stand it.