In this week’s Games of our Lives, I ask:

Ever wonder what Donkey Kong would have been like if the game had talked to you in a weird underwater voice? Or what if, instead of playing a tough little carpenter fighting a giant cool gorilla, you were a wussy little lumberjack fighting a giant lame-o bird? And what if the game really, really sucked?

Head on over to the AV Club, if you’d like to know the answer.

I rarely visit websites or blogs directly any more, because I prefer to read everything in Bloglines. I do that because I move among several different computers each day, and — because Bloglines is web-based — no matter where I am, I can see if one of my sites has been updated. I try to hit the actual sites I read at least once every few weeks, because sometimes there are announcements or other content that doesn’t make it into the RSS feed . . . but I thought it would be swell if I made a post for all you RSS readers, so you can see the news that you’re missing if you don’t see my smilin’ mug every day at WWdN.
At the top of my blog, you’ll see this:

By popular demand, you can now see or hear me read from my books Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot! If you like what you hear, you may want to pick up a copy of Just A Geek: Teh Audiobook. Or not. Whatever. I’m not the boss of you.
You can also find me on PokerStars.com as “Wil Wheaton”, and at blogging.la. My column The Games of our Lives is updated every Tuesday night in The Onion AV Club. I contribute poker stories to CardSquad, and I am an editor on the Suicide Girls (NSFW) technology newswire (SFW).

So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

I played in another WCOOP event today, a heads-up shootout. It’s a format that I really like, and where I’ve historically done quite well . . . but I sucked out loud, and let a guy outplay me in a pretty embarassing way.
The whole thing is posted at CardSquad, but you’ll notice that this entry comes not from the Poker deparment, but the blog department, because of the following:

. . . but the truth is, I was very distracted from the moment I sat down. I’ve been thinking a lot about the people who are suffering down in the Gulf Coast, and all the refugees, and just before the event began, I heard that they’ve found e.coli in the water in NOLA. That’s really not good, and I’m sure it’s just the beginning. I’m not excusing my shitty play, but I’m profoundly upset about the aftermath of Katrina, and I am even more outraged at how poorly the federal government has handled it. I know this doesn’t have a lot to do with the nuts-n-bolts of playing poker, but it brings up an interesting topic: if you’re in a funk, you just don’t play in a cash game or SNG. But if you’re registered in a tournament, you’ve got to show up and play, right? You’ve got to just suck it up, do your best to focus, and play the best you can play.
It’s easier said than done for me, which is annoying, because if I was supposed to work on a film or TV production today, I would have no problem setting my grief and anger aside until the end of the day (probably to resurface when I’m on the 405 at rush hour.) But today, sitting in my office playing on PokerStars, I wasn’t able to do it.

It’s a question that applies beyond poker, or Halo 2, or working in the yard, or whatever: when you’re in a funk, and you’ve got something to do no matter what, how do you just set it aside and do what has to be done? It’s a tough question for me to ponder, because if I had a family obligation, or a TV or film commitment, the answer would be, “I don’t know. I just do.” So what is it that we draw upon to “just do it?” And if we can just do it for one thing, why not others?

It’s just a dream he keeps having
And it doesn’t seem to mean anything
It’s just a dream he keeps having

— Wilco, Summerteeth.

A former WWdN reader wrote me earlier today, and told me that he’s not going to read my blog any more. He was very kind about it, but he said that he’d just lost interest, and missed the stories I used to tell.
He voiced some of the things I’ve actually been feeling myself when I look at WWdN recently, and it made me feel sad. So I wrote him back, and told him that I honestly understand how he feels. I’ve recently been culling all sorts of material out of my blog for the new books, and the last few months are fairly boring, especially when compared to the older stuff.
Part of it is that I don’t have the time or creative energy to tell stories like I used to, and part of it is that I’ve really got my hands full with the pod people. A BIG part of it is that I just don’t feel comfortable living my life as an open book anymore. The Internets are positively filled with total fucking wackos, and I’ve got a family to think about, you know?
Part of it is that the aspects of my life that I’m willing to share just aren’t that interesting right now. My voice agent since I’m 7 unceremoniously dropped me over the phone, via my manager, without so much as a phonecall to me. (That’s Hollywood for you.) So I have no agent right now. I’m considering literary representation, but that’s a slow process with a steep learning curve for me. My manager is waiting for me to put together a new voice reel, and a new theatrical reel, so I can get new representation, (which we know will be pretty easy) but quite honestly, I don’t know how excited I am about the prospect of starting up the soul-crushing audition process again.
Until I figure out what I’m going to do about acting (beyond the couple of jobs I mentioned awhile back), the writing, and I get a handle on the parenting, I’m positively loving playing poker for PokerStars. I’ve finally found some people to work with who I genuinely like, and who take great care of me. I’ve never been happier, as far as business relationships go, and since that’s what I’m mostly doing right now . . . well, that’s what I’m going to write about. I moved most of the poker content to CardSquad mostly because I can earn a little bit from Weblogs, Inc. when I post there, but also so people who don’t want to read the poker stuff here don’t have to. But since that’s mostly what I’m doing, well, you do the math.
Anyway, at the end of the day, I have to figure out why I’m keeping a blog. It’s certainly not because it’s going to help my currently-non-existent acting career, and it’s not because I need or want to maintain any sort of “fan base.” Those are the reasons typical celebrities keep their publicist-penned blogs.
It’s not because I’m getting rich off of this, either. I mean, look, I could fill this place up with ads, and probably earn enough cash each month to make blogging on WWdN a full-time job . . . but I don’t want my site to become a billboard where the content is secondary to the advertising. When I finally have time to redesign the whole site, I think I can go back to accepting a very limited number of BlogAds, but that’s a little way off, and it’s not a guarantee, anyway.
If anyone wants to know why I started this blog, read Just A Geek (you know, that Star Trek book you’ve heard about, but can’t find in any bookstores because Star Trek books don’t sell?) It’s pretty well-covered in there (and much funnier when you hear me talk about it in Teh Audiobook. Sure, there are publicity aspects to it: It’s also a good way to let people know when I’ve got a show coming up, or a personal appearance, or a new book, or whatever.
But now? I think that I keep this blog because it’s a risk-free creative outlet with no deadlines. I can write about whatever is on my mind. Sometimes, that’s great, but other times . . . well, it’s not so great. Such is the nature of our lives, right?
So I don’t know what the future is. I don’t know what, or how often I’ll be writing here in the near future. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to return to the Golden Days of WIL WHEATON dot NET, when I felt a real tight sense of community, and I had the time and energy to heavily interact with everyone who showed up to read my lame blog. I agree that a lot of what made WWdN great has fallen away in the last eight months or so, but my life has also changed a lot in the last eight months or so. And since WWdN is a reflection of me, well, what you see is what you get.
Well, this has turned into some random late-night ramblings, that’s for sure. Hooray for the goddamn insomnia. I doubt this would ever make it past an editor . . . but isn’t that the point?

You know what would be cool? A Greasemonkey script that lets gmail users mark as read and archive a message with one click, or a keyboard shortcut. Sort of like Gmail Smart Delete. UPDATED 9.6.05: w00t! The same guy who wrote Smart Delete has a script that pretty much does exactly what I wanted. Behold, Gmail Action Links! (Thank you to reader Suresh Malakar for the link.)
You know what already is cool? The easter egg at the end of the Trogdorcon. It’s cool because it’s funny, because it’s true.