We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)
I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.
I've been looking through (and printing out) stereograms from the Library of Congress, Smithsonian, etc, to view on my stereoviewer. There are also some recently-published books of these which include a stereoviewer in the front cover.
Text from the back of the photo card; probably around 1930 (at the end of the popularity of stereograms)
"WHEN THE FROST IS ON THE PUN'K-IN, AND THE FODDER'S IN THE SHOCK"
INDIANA. Lat. 40° N.; Long. 86° W.
Here is a genuine fall scene in the country You could almost walk across
the cornfield by stepping from pumpkin to pumpkin. In the background are
some fodder shocks, and beyond this lies the apple orchard.
It is "gathering-in" time in the fall. In the bright days of autumn when
the frost glitters in the early morning, farmers begin to gather in the
crops.
James Whitcomb Riley, the Indiana poet, thought this the best time of the
year. He tells about it in the poem that is the subject of this
description. You have doubtless read others of his poems such as "When the
Flag Goes By, "The Old Swimmin' Hole," "Out to Old Aunt Mary's." Riley was
born in 1853 at Greenfield, Indiana. He had only a common school education.
Then he went as an assistant to a patent medicine man. Later he began
writing verse for the Indianapolis papers. He soon became popular as the
"Hoosier Poet" , and is known all over the world where people like the
poetry of common things. He died in 1916.
Whittier also wrote a poem on the pumpkin:
From his home in the north.
On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth,
Where crook-necks are curling and yellow fruit shines,
And the sun of September melts down on his vines.
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past like the rich pumpkin pie?
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!"
The last lines refer to Hallowe'en when the shell of the pumpkin is used to
make a head in which a candle is set.
137- (16755) Copyright by The Keystone View Company.
Welcome to our first stand-alone After Action Report! He got in a full body Spiderman suit. And then the action began. Hear Dan chat with the man who took cos-play to a whole new level. If YOU recently had a new sexual experience (good or bad,) write it up and send it in to Q@Savage.Love … Read More »
Hey, everybody: I’m not feeling well — can’t shake this cold I’ve had for more than two weeks — so this one is gonna be short… Says Anonymous via email… Comment for the 48-year-old female caller, dating man 12 years younger, who called in to Episode 990: Proceed with caution. I also got involved in … Read More »
Miss Beatrice woke me up around 12:30 AM with a series of extended "help me" yowls. She didn't have a hairball; I think she just wanted attention. Of course I had to get up and check.
Eventually I got back to sleep, but didn't sleep well the rest of the morning. Dragging today. ETA: the lounge coffee was decaf, which I found out after I made a cup. That's cruel.
A woman just started a dating a man 12 years her junior. But he doesn’t know her age, and has never asked her, even on her birthday. Should she tell him? A couple were approached by a man who initiated a relationship where he is their sex slave. But he is a very demanding slave, … Read More »
I’m the parent of a 14-year-old boy who is on the autism spectrum. Recently, I discovered that he has been searching online for some niche sexual material. Because of his autism, he tends to hyper-fixate on things, and I’m concerned about what might happen if I ignore this. Could it affect his future sexual development … Read More »
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.
Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.
Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
This week's Resolution Recipe: Banana (Nut) Ice Cream. "A banana is like a candy bar made for you by trees. But honestly, this fruit is downright weird." ( Bananana. Doo doo doo doo doo )
Next Thursday, October 23, I am speaking at the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center’s 55th Anniversary Gala. We hope to raise some money to help them help our neighbors, and I’m going to share my story, which I hope inspires someone to take the first step on their own recovery journey.
I’ve been reviewing some of my existing speeches, while I prepare this one, and I came across this part, near the closing of a speech I gave to the Southern Kentucky Book Festival in 2023. It’s one of those things that I say in some form every time I have the privilege of speaking to people who are trusting me with their time and attention, especially when there are younger generations in the audience.
One last thing, before I finish. I want to speak directly to any young people who are here: This is your world, we’re just borrowing it for a little bit while you decide what to do with it. We’ve left you a real big mess to clean up, and I’m sorry about that. Believe me, a lot of us tried — and are trying — to make it easier for you, but we haven’t done enough.
I talked a bit about how afraid I was as a kid, how I felt like I was constantly on the verge of getting in trouble. One of the things I got yelled at about was doing something “on purpose,” so that’s a pair of words that have always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. For a few years now, I have taken the concept of “on purpose” and made it literal. I want to share with you some things I do “on purpose”, to literally give my life purpose and meaning, to help guide me when the path is unclear.
I’m a reasonably successful person. I don’t mean in my work, or only in my work. I mean in my life. I have great friends, I am so close to my adult children. I am married to my best friend. I get to do cool things, and I’m happy a lot more often than not. A real big part of that is committing to these choices:
Establish and protect your boundaries. You do not owe anyone anything. If someone does not respect your boundaries, it’s all the red flags.
Choose to be honest. I’m 50, and I’ve learned that the only currency that really matters in this world is the truth.
Choose to be honorable. This dovetails with number one. You attract to yourself what you put into the world. Dishonorable people will take everything from you and leave you with nothing. Do your best to be a person they aren’t attracted to.
Choose to work hard. Everything worth doing is hard. Do the hard work that sustains and nourishes relationships, that gets you the most out of your education, that gets you closer to your goals. Sooner or later, you’re going to run into something in your life that’s really hard, and you’ll want to give up, but it’s something you care so much about, you’ll do whatever you can to achieve it. It’s going to be hard, but it’s going to be less hard for someone who has practiced doing the hard things all along, than it is for someone who doesn’t know how to do the hard work because they’ve always chosen the easy path.
Always do your best, and know that your best will vary. Monday’s best may not be close to Tuesday’s best, and Wednesdays best may eclipse them both. Even if you don’t get the result you wanted, doing your best is really all you can ever do. We tell athletes to leave it all on the field. Whatever your version of that is, do it. And if you notice later that maybe you kinda phoned some of it in? Do your best to be gentle with yourself. We’re constantly learning and growing.
The last one is the most important one. If only one thing sticks, I hope this is it. This is the one I hope you’ll share with your peers: Always choose to be kind.
And just to be clear: Nice and Kind are not the same thing. Nice is about manners, and it comes from here. [I point to my head] Kind is about empathy, and it comes from here [I point to my heart]. Cruel people can be nice, but they will never be kind. Please, practice kindness.
I always come back to these choices, because they are the ones that always make a difference for me. I’m working on adding a reminder that courage is not the absence of fear; it’s when you something you know is right, even though you are afraid.
Struggle Session is a bonus column where I respond to comments — just a few — from readers and listeners. I also share a letter that won’t be making in the column and invite my readers to share their advice. Tolyamorist spotted in the wild… My husband’s having an affair but doesn’t realize I know. … Read More »
Last night the wife and I met at Left Door, a speakeasy on the other side of town. We went there once before last-minute with some friends when our intended bar was booked for a corporate event, and everyone liked it - so we thought we'd go again with a reservation so we could sit instead of standing at the bar.
Sadly it wasn't impressive this time. None of the house cocktails spoke to either of us. I ordered a Blood & Sand because it's thematically appropriate for a '20s bar and I wanted something I generally can't make at home. Our waiter didn't seem to understand what I was ordering... and then came back saying they didn't have the ingredients. (For the record: Scotch, vermouth, Cherry Heering, and orange juice. Nothing outrageous.) I am pretty sure that he didn't communicate it and/or the lone bartender didn't know how to make it. So we both had sidecars, which were okay but nothing more than that.
We ordered a round of oysters, which were fine, and a set of other appetizers, which were okay but tried a bit too hard. We decided not to order anything more and walked up and down the street a bit before getting a decent gelato.
Oh well. Date Night itself was fine, but I don't think we'll go back to the bar. There are plenty of other high-end bars that can make classic cocktails on demand.
Grace Helbig is returning to YouTube. She made a video about it, and said something that resonated with me: we start out doing something because it is fun, and we keep doing it because we enjoy how fun it is. If we’re lucky, the thing we are doing for fun also helps us earn a living.
And then, when we aren’t paying attention, the thing that was fun is now work, and we are stressed as fuck about views and likes and reshares and oh my god this isn’t fun at all. Now, we are burned out.
Go watch Grace talk about this, if what I just told you seems interesting to you; she says a lot of insightful things that are worth hearing. I’m inspired, and want to make videos just like she does, if I can figure out some linux video editing software tools. But even if I can’t do video, I just want to get back to what it felt like when it was only fun, and I didn’t let all the other stuff get in the way.
I mention this because I only write in my blog for fun, and when I make it more important than just having fun, I really get in my own way. Yeah, I announcethe cool things that I get to do, the cons I’m attending, I share my work and my podcast, and things that are work-adjacent, but if it isn’t fun to sit here and write about something, I just don’t do it. I won’t even go into how frustrating it is when I feel like I have to force it.
And I forget, every single time, how much I enjoy posting in my blog, how much I enjoy interacting with anyone who reads it in comments, how good it feels to make the human connections that, ironically, don’t seem to happen on social media, on account of all the bots and trolls and endless efforts to disrupt our peace.
So, hi. I’m glad you’re here. I hope we can interact in the comments and feel a sense of shared humanity and community.
If you’d like to get these posts in your email, you can sign up here:
And now, a few things that have been on my mind, but not enough to fill up their own posts. I’m putting it behind a jump, because this got kind of long.
Since we are thinking about community …
LAist did a story about friendly local game shops. They talked to Donna Ricci, my friend who owns Geeky Teas & Games in Burbank, which happens to be both my favorite and my local game shop, and Jeff Eyeser, from Revenge Of in Eagle Rock (or maybe it’s Glassell Park, or Atwater Village. I’m unsure how the neighborhood boundaries work over there, but I’m sure someone will correct me). They both talked about not just building community, but nurturing and protecting it.
“We honor everyone who walks through our doors — except mean people,” Ricci said. “They can f**k off.”
I love this energy. Everyone should have this energy. Imagine how great it would be if every business (if every human) adopted this policy.
If you follow me on Bluesky, you know that something happened to me yesterday or maybe overnight while I was asleep, that seems to have flipped a switch inside of me that I have wanted to flip for literal decades: Some part of my brain insisted that I listen to the original cast recording of Cabaret. This is really weird. All I know about Cabaret is that Joel Gray and Liza Minelli are in it, and it’s painfully relevant to current events. That’s it. I have heard the “Welcome to the Cabaret” song a few times, but nothing else from the show.
I’ve never seen Cabaret, but from the moment I woke up, my brain DEMANDED that I listen to the original cast recording. I don’t even like musicals; I’ve lamented that I don’t have the gene, but holy shit this is so wonderful and I think maybe I got a mutation somehow and I get musicals?— Wil Wheaton (@wilwheaton.net) October 13, 2025 at 11:34 AM
You need this context to understand why this is a Thing for me: my whole life, I’ve wanted to like musical theater. So many of my friends have done musicals, are doing musicals, love to sing songs from musicals. And I just don’t get it. It’s like I don’t have the gene, or something? Everyone I knew growing up loved Grease. I just can’t stand it. Same with Phantom of the Opera and Cats. Oh my god do I hate Cats.
There were notable exceptions: Chicago, Les Miserables, Moulin Rouge. Rocky Horror Picture Show (which I didn’t even think of as a musical until yesterday, having categorized it as a cultural touchstone that is so much more than the sum of its parts) and Hamilton, of course.
But the classics? The ones that my elders adore? They’ve always left me cold. South Pacific and Oklahoma make my teeth itch.
Until yesterday. Yesterday morning, I listened to Cabaret three times in a row. Then I listened to The Music Man (oh my god Robert Preston where have you been all my life?), then I had to turn it off and listen to Joy Division so I could work without being distracted.
I don’t know if it’s a phase, but something is different in me today than it has been for my whole life. I still don’t like the musicals I don’t like, but I’m extremely open to discovering everything I’ve missed. I got tons of recommendations in my Bluesky mentions yesterday, but I’d love to hear yours, if you have any.
Let’s stay with music for a moment. I am late to the party, having only recently discovered The Warning, but better late than never. Three sisters from Monterrey, Mexico, who fell in love with music when they were kids, playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band. They formed a band that rocks so fucking hard, they will melt your face off. Listening to their albums put some of their contemporaries into my suggestions, and I am loving all the Mexican metal, largely driven by women, that is currently rocking my world. Start with Keep Me Fed, and you’ll know before the end of the first song if they are your jam. What are you listening to right now? Any new punk, metal, or hard rock you care to share?
I found this in my unpublished drafts folder with a note that says “this is overwrought and you should delete it” … but I didn’t. I feel VERY vulnerable sharing it, because it’s not my usual style, but this is now the third or fourth time I’ve thought about posting it, so clearly part of me feels it’s worth sharing.
This was drafted about five years ago:
Felt sad.
Felt scared.
Walked my dogs.
Went for a run.
Felt despair.
Had dinner with my family.
Held off a panic attack.
Took a walk with my wife.
Felt cynical.
Watched a movie.
Got through a day.
Cleaned my kitchen.
Did some work.
Felt hopeless.
Did some more work.
Had some meetings.
Felt angry.
Felt depressed.
Felt angry again.
Tried to sleep.
Did not sleep.
Finally slept.
Cleaned my office.
Felt numb.
Read a book.
Read some comics.
Felt okay.
Played some video games.
Got knocked down.
Got the fuck back up again.
To be able to create and share your creations without fear must be really wonderful. I have recently noticed that I’m not struggling with that the way I once did. Or, at least, not as intensely.
For almost ten years — Jesus Christ that’s a long time — I struggled like hell to understand why I never booked auditions. I asked trusted friends who I have worked with to please tell me what was wrong with me. Surely they must know, and surely they would be honest with me about why I stink, how they are able to wash the stink off when I work for them. Why does everyone tell me that I’m not just a good actor, but one of the better ones, and still I never book auditions? If I get feedback at all (and before I hung it up, I hadn’t gotten feedback for so long I don’t remember when the last time casting made the effort) it’s always positive. “You were great, but blah blah was cast.”
As the adult version of a child who was constantly told he had to earn his father’s attention and affection, but never told how to do that (ps – no child should have to earn love and attention), every audition was triggering. That’s why I quit. As much as I love being in a cast, as much as I love how good it feels to nail a performance, the industry has been loud and clear: Hollywood is not interested in me, hasn’t been for a long time, and if I keep chasing, that’s on me. I thought, “It’s weird that I can do this thing, and do it well, when I’m on the set, but never in auditions. What’s that all about?” Well, it turns out to have a lot of parts, but the bottom line is that actors who book jobs roll into the room with this confidence and commitment to the character that silently and instantly communicates to the room “Listen, you can cast me or not, but this is the best take on the character you’re going to see.” Because I was forced into acting by my mother, and then kept in it through her manipulation and exploitation of my desperate need to feel accepted in my home and family, I rolled in there with an underlying desperation: “please choose me so I have a chance at being loved by my parents. This is everything to me and I will do whatever it takes to make you happy.” I mean, it doesn’t matter how solid the performance is, how technically brilliant I am, whatever you want to call it, when there is a desperation that I’m not even aware of, underneath it all.
I’m genuinely and sincerely envious of actors who love the art, who come alive when they are performing, who don’t care if casting likes them or not, who get to feel in their souls what it means to be part of the community of performing artists. I have been close to that, I have felt it on occasion, but until this year, I didn’t realize that there was so much trauma and pain in between all of it, and me. I have wondered if I could try to do … something, probably theater, to find out if all of my trauma recovery work, which has been so intensely helpful in so many ways, has created space for me to love it the way I wish I could.
Earlier this year, I was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by AMDA. I didn’t say anything about it in public because I felt a little embarrassed. I’m only 53, so lifetime anything feels premature, but also … like … how can you give an acting and performance award to someone who can’t book an audition? Who, when you really get down to it, was just lucky to be in a few really, really good and memorable pieces of art? Sure, sure, I showed up and did the work, but it wasn’t just me. It was everyone involved in production. Nobody gets anything done on their own; everyone needs help to do any of this, and singling out one of us always feels weird.
I wanted to decline the award, but a couple of people who are close to me encouraged me to accept it, if only because it would give me an opportunity to speak to some kids about making great art.
I can’t find a local copy of the remarks I wrote for the event, so here’s a video of the entire talk (if you have time and interest, and a love of the arts, you may get something out of it). If you want to skip to my prepared remarks, they start right around 51 minutes.
Before I go, I need to clarify that the title of this post comes from The Dead Boys, not Paramore, and not Guns and Roses. Okay, I think that’s all for today. I’m glad you’re here. Take care of yourselves, and take care of each other.
Our compliance firm sent us an early holiday present -- a 40-pack of Rice Krispie treats. Points for corporate present, but zero them out for appropriateness. There are two of us who regularly go to the office. Even if I wanted to eat them, this is way too many.
The other guy offered the box to me. I told him to take them to his church.
Flashback: My last serious girlfriend was kinky. I am pretty vanilla — I’m not a natural sub — but I was game. We got into D/s play, and we went to some big fetish parties together. Her favorite “foreplay” was having me kneel between her legs while she showed me guys on dating apps she’d … Read More »
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