Monkey, my monkey.

If you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, they say, those monkeys will churn out something great, like Shakespeare.
If you give 50,000 monkeys at 50,000 typewriters enough time, they won’t get anything done, because they’ll be too busy reading WWdN!
But!
I have read at Fark, (and gotten about 600 e-mails about) what happens when you put 6 monkeys at one computer. (Hint: they put about as much effort into creating something great as the people behind “The Bachelor.”)
So I watched the ABC show last night. At first, when they announced, “Coming up next . . . your favorite stars from Reality TV and CHARO!” I thought that I was totally screwed.
I mean, I’m not exactly “A” list . . . or “B” list . . . or, really, on the list at all right now.
But I can claw my way back, if I want to, you know? When I saw that . . . well, let’s just say my stomach tightened and my palms began to sweat. The “has-been” voice screamed in my head, as it so often does.
When the segment came on, though, I was really pleased. I thought I photographed well (you totally have to stare to see my awesome double chin) and I thought I came off very well.
Though I wondered if “I’ve written a book,” has become the 2000 equivlent of the 1970s “I’m in a band.”
Heh.
Guess who got confirmation of his Trogdor shirt shipping today?
Oh yeah!
Have a great weekend, everybody.

Kiteless

I just walked in from a ping-pong match with Ryan, where he kicked my ass. If we were in prison together, he could have traded me for smokes. We play best of three, and he took the first game 21-8 and the second game 21-3. Ouch. Kid can take advantage of my really lousy backhand, I tell ya what.
Dancing Barefoot should be shipping in about two weeks.
Holy shit, man. Two weeks.
I’ve been going back and forth between very excited and absolutely terrified. I’ve discovered this interesting thing: when I work as an actor — well, worked, I guess — there is always a point where I just have to let the performance go, and move on. Once it’s been printed, and we’ve moved on to a new scene, it’s totally out of my hands.
It’s very different as a writer. Because I can rewrite things all the time, and because I’m such a perfectionist about everything, it’s very hard for me to look at something I’ve written, especially one of my books, and just walk away from it. I wonder if, in time, I’ll develop the same detachment from my written creations as I have from my dramatic ones?
I made an e-mail announcement list for Monolith Press, so I can let readers know exactly when Dancing Barefoot is ready, what the progress of Just A Geek is, and stuff like that. If you’d like to join, go here. (Topica will try to get you to opt-in for a bunch of spam. You don’t have to do that in order to get my newsletter.)
In other news, there’s a Story about me and G4 in Salon today.
I’m going to plug Salon for a second:
Salon is a great online magazine, and I’ve been a subscriber for over a year (got 6 months of Mother Jones as part of my subscription, too!) and it’s totally worth it.
If you go to read that article, you can hook up a free day pass, to check out the site, or you can subscribe.
End of plug. /mastercontrolprogram
So.
I bet there will be lots of new readers coming to the site today, because of Salon, and I thought it’d be cool to point you at some stuff I’ve written that I’m pretty proud of. Not that it matters, but they’re all true:

And finally, a Thought For Today:

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
-Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

EhSteve!

I just found out that I’ll be on ABC tomorrow night!
They interviewed me for a program called “Our Favorite Stars, Then and Now.” I guess they are doing a bit on Stand By Me, and they picked me as the guy they’d interview. We did the interview at the ACME a few weeks ago, and I talked about how none of us expected Stand By Me to be so popular, though I always felt like we were working on something special. I also talked about what it’s like to be famous for previously being famous, and why I’m writing now. I think I mentioned the WWdN in there, too.
It should be interesting . . . it seems like just about every mainstream media interview I do gets edited or spun into “Wil Wheaton is a has-been,” so we’ll see what happens with this one. Seems like I get burned more often than not.
Speaking of getting burned, I read a wire story (warning: pop-up and cookie hell) that talked about the explosion of “celebrity weblogs.” In it, he mentioned me, failed to mention that I was doing this LONG before it became a marketing tool for Big Celebrities, and portrayed me in what I think itsn’t a very positve light.
Take a look:

Most celebrities combine the writing and promotional element. For example, while Star Trek: The Next Generation alum Wil Wheaton uses his blog to discuss his life and air his opinions, he also urges fans to write Star Trek convention organizers “a brief, polite, friendly letter, to tell them that you’d be willing to fork over 5 bucks to meet your old pal, TV’s Wil Wheaton.”

That quote, of course, is taken out of context from the Convention page.
Here’s the entire quote from that page:

“Many of the convention promoters won’t book a guest unless they feel that the guest will bring people into the show. It’s simple economics, really. I mean, why bring out The Guy Who Was The Red Shirt in Episode 22 when the people really want to see The Guy Who Was The Red Shirt in Episode 61?
If you’d like to see me at a con, you should let the promoters know, by writing a brief, polite, friendly letter, to tell them that you’d be willing to fork over 5 bucks to meet your old pal, TVs Wil Wheaton.

It’s hardly “urging,” you jackass.
I wonder if this “journalist” even bothered to read this site? I wonder if he took the time to find out about my focus here: my real life, my struggles as an actor and hopes as a writer? I think it’s far more likely that this person came here with an agenda, just like the idiot who slammed WWDN in Entertainment Weekly, and looked for a quote to support his pre-determined conclusion.
Of all the “celebrity” weblogs out there, I’ve been told that I’m the most accessible. How hard would it have been to e-mail me a question or two about this site? Would it have added to this guy’s story if he’d taken fifteen minutes and asked me why I do this?
I shouldn’t care, but I do. Maybe I’m over reacting.
Maybe I need to walk away from the computer for ten minutes.
Maybe I should switch to decaf.

It’s just a jump to the left . . .

I was reading through some archives last night, and I came across a link to Where’s My Burrito? [Mirror here](thanks Neph!)which was the very first effort I ever made at having a website.
Oh, it’s horrible, in that great “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” way, and I thought I’d share it with any readers who haven’t seen it before.
It’s at Geoshitties, so watch for popups.
When I looked through it last night, I had this warm feeling of nostalgia. It was fun building it, and even though it’s just awful, I’m still proud of my efforts. I can see glimmers of what would become WWDN (and then WWdN) sitting in there. Funtimes. Funtimes.