19 posts from March 2011
in which i am grateful
Los Angeles totally turned out for our show at Largo last night. I think the house was about 80% full, which is incredible for a show on a Tuesday, anywhere, but expecially in Hollywood.
We all had a great time, and the new material I did with Paul and Storm seemed to play as well as we hoped it would. Some of it will definitely make it into w00tstock 3.0.
A little earlier today, I was reflecting on the show, and I kept thinking about two things. One, how relieved I was when my set was finished. I didn't run too long, the audience seemed to enjoy all of it, and I had a lot of fun while I performed. The other thing, which is why I wanted to write this post in the first place, was how awesome the people are who come to see us perform. If you've ever come to a w00tstock, a Coulton show, or to a Paul and Storm show, I think you'll recognize what I'm talking about: the audience is always full of fun, relaxed, friendly, generally happy people, and the this atmosphere before, during, and after the show is incredibly positive and inclusive. I don't want to ever take for granted how lucky I am to have this kind of relationship with an audience, to work with friends I admire and adore, and I hope this never changes.
I'm so grateful to perform for audiences like these, and I'd like to believe that one of the reasons we get the same kind of people wherever we go is somehow related to the atmosphere we work hard to create and maintain. We work hard to give you a good show that respects the investment of time and money you've made, we want everyone to have a good time, and after tons of shows, I don't think we've ever attracted a statistically significant number of people who would qualify as not-awesome, let alone people who qualify as dicks. I'm really happy to be part of something that is so consistently positive. I also love seeing so many parents bring their teens and tweens to the show (and sorry about my foul mouth, guys; I am a little too in touch with my inner dirty pirate hooker.)
Though I am completely exhausted after every show, when we've signed the last poster and photobombed the last picture, I can't wait to do the next one. If our audiences weren't so awesome, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't feel that way, so thank you.
tl;dr: Thank you for coming to our shows, and thank you for consistently being awesome audience members. Maybe it's silly to say it out loud, but I'm grateful for it, and it's important to me that you know that.
Posted on March 30, 2011 at 02:19 PM in w00tstock | Permalink | Comments (38)
Soup. Black Bean. Hot.
"What are you making?" Anne asked.
I looked up from the cutting board, and put the knife down so I wouldn't somehow cut my hand off when I wasn't looking (yes, I am that clumsy). "Black bean soup," I said.
"Is it from a recipe, or are you winging it?"
"I've made so many different recipes from so many different places, I just looked through the pantry and refrigerator and wung it."
We looked at each other. "Wung it?" I said. "I think I mean I am winging it What's the past-tense of winging it? Wang it? Winged it?"
"I don't know, but it's not 'wung it,'" she said. I couldn't argue with her.
"Anyway, it's fun to feel confident enough in my limited cooking skills to pull together some ingredients and combine them in a way that seems to make sense, based on my previous experiences."
She nodded, and left me to my work.
That was about an hour ago. I'm currently sitting here, eating an absolutely delightful bowl of soup, that's a little sweet and spicy. I'm so proud of myself, I could fart a rainbow (and I probably will in a little while.)
Because I did this on my own, I think I can share the recipe without breaking any rules or stepping on any actual chef's toes, so here you go:
SOUP. BLACK BEAN. HOT.
You need:
1 can black beans
3 tomatoes (I used Romas)
2-3 cloves garlic
1 small yellow onion
1 chipotle chili (you can get these in the Hispanic foods section at the store for next to nothing and they make all sorts of recipes kick ass.)
1 Teaspoon dried oregano or 2 teaspoons fresh, chopped
1/2 Teaspoon cumin
2 Tablespoons olive oil.
Juice of one lime.
Salt and pepper.
OKAY GO!
Chop the onion and mince the garlic.
Heat the olive oil in a 3qt soup pot or similar-sized saucepan over medium high heat for a minute or so.
Sautee the onion until translucent, about 4 or 5 minutes. While it cooks, chop up the tomatoes into small chunks and chop the oregano if you're using fresh. When the onions are translucent, Add the garlic and cumin, stir it all around, and continue to sautee for about another 2 minutes. Be careful not to let the garlic burn.
Shake up the can of black beans, open it, and pour it all into the soup pot. Stir, and then add the tomatoes and oregano.
Chop up the chipotle chili (you can use more if you want, but be careful not to use too many or all you'll taste is the spiciness, and that's not fun.) Stir again, and then add the chopped chipotle.
Add the lime juice (if you're hardcore, just juice that little green bastard right over the simmering pot, and say some Bond Villain stuff about how you expect it to die.)
Add about 1/3 cup of water (more or less, just don't let it get too watery or too thick) and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 10 or 15 minutes, until the beans are tender.
Add salt and pepper to taste. You can serve it with plan yogurt or sour cream to cut the spiciness if you want.
This recipe made enough to feed me and Anne, though I'm sure it could easily be doubled for more people.
Posted on March 23, 2011 at 04:50 PM in Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (103)
It's Wednesday, so here's a post about comic books
When I was a kid, I was a DC Universe guy all the way, with rare forays into the Marvel Universe to read a few X-Men books, and the occasional Silver Surfer 100 page spectacular (remember those? I loved those oversized one shots in the 70s and 80s.)
I realized last week, though, that the bulk of the DCU does absolutely nothing for me these days, and I’ve stopped reading DC books, even Batman, which I don’t even recognize at the moment.
The Marvel Universe, however, has been blowing my mind and pleasing me greatly for at least the last year, mostly because Brubaker, Fraction and Gillen all write Marvel titles, that kick all kinds of ass. I’ve been reading Captain America, Uncanny X-Men, Invincible Iron Man, Secret Avengers, Thor, and Osborn, and I eagerly anticipate every Wednesday with an excitement I haven’t felt since I was a teenager.
Yesterday, via Reddit, I came across this article at Platypus Robot: A Marvel Universe Primer. It gives some basic history of the Marvel Universe, and suggests some starting points for new readers. If you or someone you know is interested in reading some amazing stories but don’t know where to start, check this article out; I think you’ll find it quite useful.
What are you reading these days? Who's that artist or writer you will follow to the ends of the multiverse? And where are those pictures I ordered? Is Don on the phone?
Posted on March 23, 2011 at 12:41 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (126)
wil wheaton vs. paul and storm at Largo this Tuesday
REMINDER: Wil Wheaton vs. Paul and Storm is this coming Tuesday, March 29, at Largo.
As you might possibly guess (if you are incredibly perceptive), we are doing a show with our old w00tstock fellow-traveler Wil Wheaton. This time, we’ll meet on the battlefields of Los Angeles at one of our favorite venues everwhereplace: Largo at the Coronet. There will be music from us, stories from Wil, more special surprise guests, and pirates everywhere. This will be one for the ages, folks. (All ages, that is) (Get it?)
Tuesday, March 29 – Wil Wheaton vs. Paul and Storm
Largo at the Coronet, Los Angeles, CA – 7:30 pm
Tickets: http://bit.ly/h2vuPk
At w00tstock, I only have time to do one story with musical accompaniment from Paul and Storm. At this show, I will have time to perform a couple of stories that were not part of w00tstock 1.x and 2.x. You could say it's ALL NEW ZIPPY WHOOO YEAH if you wanted to do that sort of thing, even. Paul and Storm will join me for some things, and I'll do some things on my own. Also, we're putting together something kind of rad for this show that you absolutely want to see.
Paul and Storm will play a set, we will all sing a song about pirates, and we have some secret (and awesome) special guests dropping by. Tell your friends, and come on down, because it's going to be a really fun show.
Posted on March 23, 2011 at 11:37 AM in Music, w00tstock | Permalink | Comments (12)
The Day After and Other Stories - Kindle edition
My very short collection of very short stories, The Day After And Other Stories, is now in the Kindle store for $2.99 (prices slightly higher outside of the US. This is beyond my control.) It's DRM-free, because DRM makes me stabby.
Here's the description thing I wrote for it:
In The Day After and Other Stories, Author Wil Wheaton explores the tenuous bonds that hold us all together. Also, there's zombies.
The Day After - Tim is an angry and scared 18 year-old, trying to decide if surviving the zombie apocalypse is worth it.
Room 302 - Something is very wrong with this picture.
The Language Barrier - Sometimes it takes someone who doesn't speak your language to fully understand you.
Poor Places - Eddie used to be somebody, but now he's a guy who plays poker and takes a lot of pills.
You can grab your own copy in the Kindle store, and you can still get the pdf version at Lulu. Eventually, I'll make ePub versions for nook and other readers, but I'm going to take a break from the digital-edition-making business to get back into the writing-original-stuff business first.
For those of you keeping score at home (and not using AdBlock,) here are some spiffy links to my original works in the Kindle store:
Yay!
Posted on March 22, 2011 at 11:00 AM in Books | Permalink | Comments (10)
Though I hadn't seen him in over twenty years, I knew I'd miss him forever
I stood in the lobby of the Falcon Theater in Toluca Lake, and looked at Twitter while I waited for the rest of the guys to arrive. The walls were covered with posters from productions like CHiPs: The Musical and It's A Stevie Wonderful Life. Being in a theater during the day, when it's just a building with a stage, instead of the performance space it becomes when an audience fills the seats makes me feel like I'm getting to see The Haunted Mansion with all the lights on, like I'm in a secret place that few people get to see, and I felt an almost imperceptible longing to perform in a play tug gently but insistently at that thing in my being that makes me an actor.
Someone came over and started talking to me. I made polite conversation, but I don't remember what or who we talked about. This was an emotional day for me (though I didn’t know precisely how emotional it would be until later), and while I didn’t want to be rude, I wasn’t in a particularly chatty mood. It was the first time Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell and I would be in the same place since 1986 or 1987. We were technically there to give some interviews to promote Stand By Me’s blu-ray release, but -- for me at least -- it was much more than that. It was a reunion.
We made Stand By Me twenty-five years ago. To commemorate the anniversary, a special blu-ray disc has been produced. Among the obligatory special features is a feature-length commentary that Rob Reiner, Corey, and I did together while watching the movie a couple months ago. On that day, I was apprehensive: what would they think of me? Would our memories match up? Would the commentary be entertaining and informative? …who would be the first to talk about River, and how would we all react to it?
It turns out that I had nothing to worry about then. It was a joy to watch the movie with them, and I was especially happy to discover that, after a very troubled life, Corey seems to be doing really well. Rob made me feel like he was a proud father and we were his kids, and when we talked about River, it was … well, private. I’ll leave it at that.
So as I stood there in the lobby, waiting for a familiar face to come through the door, I was happy and looking forward to our reunion without nervousness or apprehension. This stood in marked contrast to all the times I reunited with my friends from TNG when I was younger (my problem, not theirs), and I was grateful for that.
A few minutes later, the door opened, and an incredibly tall, handsome, well-dressed man walked through it.
“Holy crap,” I thought, “Jerry grew up.”
It was such a stupid thought, but there it was. I see Jerry on television all the time, and I knew that he was tall and handsome and only two years younger than me, but I had that strange disconnect in my mind that can only come from not seeing someone for about twenty years and I simultaneously did and did not recognize him.
I was standing near some food on a table, and Jerry walked up to grab a sandwich. As he reached toward the table, we made eye contact.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi, I’m Jerry,” he said, with a friendly smile.
“I’m Wil,” I said, “We worked on this movie together twenty-five years ago.”
In a few seconds that seemed to go on for minutes, I saw him look at me in disbelief, surprise, recognition, and joy. He flashed a smile that lit up the room and wrapped me in a hug.
“Oh my God, dude,” he said, “I can’t believe it’s … wow! You’re -- I -- Jesus, look at you!”
I smiled back, and strangely noted that my son is taller than him. “Look at you!” I said.
We talked as much as we could, trying to compress two decades into ten minutes, before he had to go to the make-up chair. As he walked away, my brain tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You know, he’s married to Rebecca Romijn. When he’s talking about his wife, that’s who he means.” “I know, brain. I know,” I thought back, “don’t be weird. Be cool, man.” A moment later, Richard Dreyfuss walked into the lobby, followed fairly quickly by Rob and then Corey.
Before I had time to do more than Twitter about how surreal it felt to see them all, we were all gathered together and directed from the lobby into the theater for our first interview. On the way in, I said to Corey, “I feel like there are all these famous, successful people here … and me.”
He laughed and said, “I was thinking exactly the same thing!”
Before I could make a witty zinger, he clarified, “about myself, I mean. Famous people and me, not, like, famous people and you.”
I laughed. “I knew what you meant, man,” I said.
It was the kind of friendly, enjoyable, effortless conversation we couldn’t have when we were younger, and I was glad for it.
There were five chairs set up for us in a semi circle. Our names were on pieces of paper so we knew where to sit. I was between Rob and Corey, and Jerry and Richard sat to Corey’s left. When we all sat down, Rob looked down the row of seats and softly said to me, “it feels like there should be an empty seat here for River.”
People ask me about River all the time. He and I were close during filming, and for about a year or so after filming, but the sad truth is that he got sucked into a lifestyle that I just don’t have room in my life for, and we drifted apart. When he died, I was shocked and horrified, but I wasn’t completely surprised. I didn’t feel a real sense of loss at the time -- the River I knew and loved had been gone for a long time at that point -- but I felt sad for his family, and angry at the people around him who didn’t do more to help him help himself. Since he died, when I've talked about him, I've felt like I’m talking about the idea of him, instead of the person I knew, if that makes sense.
But when Rob said that to me, with such sadness in his eyes, it was like I’d been punched in the stomach by eighteen years of suppressed grief. I knew that if I tried to say anything, all I would do was cry, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to stop. I took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and nodded. “Yeah,” I whispered.
Later that day, when I’d had time to think about it and was recounting the whole thing to my wife, Anne, I said, “I think that having all of us together -- the surviving members of the cast -- made me feel like he really wasn’t there for the first time since he died. I don’t mean to be callous or anything like that, but that’s what it took to make his death and his absence a real thing that I could feel, instead of an event that I wasn’t part of but am forced to talk about more often than I’d like.”
I spent much of the next few days remembering all the things we did together during production, thinking about how much I looked up to him and how much I loved his entire family. I don’t know what would have happened to us if he hadn’t overdosed, if he ever would have come back from the edge, or if we would even have had anything in common … but when he was fifteen and I was thirteen, he was my friend. That’s the person I knew, and that’s the person I miss.
We talked about River in the interview, of course, and I think Richard put it best when he said that there is this monster in Hollywood that everyone knows about. It lurks just out of view, and occasionally it reaches up and snatches someone … and it got River.
Richard also talked about why we are actors, and what it means to him to be creative. It was so poetic and inspiring, that almost imperceptible longing to perform in a play I felt in the lobby turned into an overwhelming compulsion. Distracted by the responsibilities of every day life, it’s easy for me to forget why I love and need to perform. It’s easy to forget how satisfying it is to create a character, to discover something magnificent in a script or a scene, and then bring those things to life with other actors in front of an audience.
The entire interview lasted for close to an hour, I guess, and will be edited down to something between three and six minutes. I hope that the producers will cut together something longer, or even run the entire thing online somewhere, because it was one of the rare conversations that I think a lot of people, especially artists, would enjoy listening to.
When all of our interviews were done, I asked Jerry if he’d like to get together when he was on hiatus to have a proper conversation and really catch up on stuff. He said he’d like that, so we traded e-mail addresses. I didn’t expect him to actually want to see me once the glow of seeing each other for the first time in two decades faded, but we’re actually planning it, which delights me. Rob hugged me and made me feel like he was proud of me, and Richard blew me away with the work he’s doing for The Dreyfuss Initiative.
As I drove home from the theater I was overwhelmed by conflicting emotions. It was wonderful to see those guys again, and especially to reconnect with Jerry, but it was also tremendously sad to truly feel River’s loss for the first time. That turbulent mix of joy and sorrow stayed with me for several days, which is why I haven’t been able to write about it for almost a week.
Most actors will go their entire careers without doing a movie like Stand By Me, or working with a director like Rob Reiner. I got to do both when I was 12. For a long, long time, I felt like I needed to top or equal that, and it wasn’t until I was in my early 30s that I accepted that it’s unlikely to happen -- movies like Stand By Me come along once in a generation.
But getting to spend a few hours remembering the experience with Rob, Jerry, Corey and Richard, free of the burden to prove to them that I was worthy of Stand By Me’s legacy, was something I will cherish for years. I just wish that River was here to enjoy it with us.
Posted on March 21, 2011 at 06:04 PM in Film | Permalink | Comments (175)
in which a good person is kind
My son Ryan was home from college all week for Spring Break, and I kept expecting him to grab one of my logged-into-Twitter devices to tell the world how awesome I think he is. (I pretend to get all mad, but I secretly love it when he does this.)
Today, he went back to school, and I went out to meet a friend for lunch. We left the house at the same time, and when I got back and logged into Twitter, I saw this:
Who’s the greatest? Ryan. He’s the greatest. Someone should make a website named RyanWheatonEqualsGreatest.com.
My first thought was, “I’m so glad he did that.” My second thought was, “Oh fuck. Some dick is going to buy that domain and do something horrible with it.”
Ryan is tremendously kind, and isn't the sort who would think "I better not do this, because someone may do something really terrible with it," but I've been around the block and through the wringer a few times, so I put the URL into Chrome, and steeled myself for the worst … but instead I saw that someone had indeed bought it, and made it go to the post he made on Twitter from my account.
I’m really lucky for a lot of reasons, but I’m especially grateful to interact with people on the Internet who are, for the most part, good people. I don’t know who bought RyanWheatonEqualsGreatest.com (whois is all protected and anonymized and locked and stuff), but whoever did it is a good person.
If you’re reading this, Person Who Bought RyanWheatonEqualsGreatest.com And Didn’t Do Something Cruel With It, please get in touch with me; I’d like to give you something awesome as a thank you.
Posted on March 19, 2011 at 03:03 PM in WWdN in Exile | Permalink | Comments (64)
Sunken Treasure joins Hunter in the Kindle store.
Kindle readers! You can get your very own DRM-free copies of Sunken Treasure and Hunter directly from the Kindle store.
Sunken Treasure is $2.99, and Hunter is 99 cents.
You can get to Sunken Treasure and Hunter by clicking those links, or you can use these snazzy clicky-image-buying-the-book things (which you won't see if you're running AdBlock):
Neat!
Posted on March 17, 2011 at 07:31 PM in Books | Permalink | Comments (13)
From the Vault: see this place where stories all ring true
This morning, while driving around town, Anne and I heard Green Grass and High Tides on the radio. It was part of a set of songs with "green" in the title, on account of it being St. Patrick's Day. It's a stretch, but any excuse to play a great song on the radio -- especially a song that's nearly 10 minutes long -- is fine with me.
After a minute or two, I said, "it feels kind of weird to just listen to this song, and not feel worried about failing out of it before it's over."
"Is this that song from Rock Band?" She asked.
"Yeah."
"I totally remember you and Ryan playing it over and over a couple years ago."
"Well, it's --"
"and over and over"
"I know. It's a really great song," I said, "it's just so ... evil ... at the end."
We drove on and just listened to it, until there were about three minutes left in the song.
"This is where it gets brutal," I said. In my mind, I could see the bar on the left side of the screen turning yellow, then red. I kept my hands on the wheel and resisted the urge to reflexively activate Overdrive, which we will always call Star Power, no matter what music game we're playing (even DJ Hero, which doesn't make any sense at all.)
I realized that my heart was beating harder than it should have, and I felt flush.
"Oh my god," I said, "I'm getting stressed out! It's like I have Rock Band PTSD!"
"Nice," she said. "You want to slow down?"
"What?"
I looked at the speedometer and realized I was going ... a little too fast for the street we were on. I took my foot off the gas and gently applied the brake.
"Whoops."
Speaking of Rock Band and Green Grass and High Tides, here's a story I originally wrote about it in 2008, which is included in the Chapbook I did for GenCon last year, called Games Matter.
Ryan goes back to school in just under 2 weeks, and I've been bugging him to play the Endless Setlist with me on Rock Band before he leaves.
If you're unfamiliar with Rock Band's multiplayer thing, the Endless Setlist is the last thing you unlock in the game when you're playing as a band. It is exactly what it sounds like: a concert featuring all 58 songs that come with the game. It takes about six hours to play if you don't take any extended breaks.
Today, Ryan and I tackled it on expert. He played guitar, and I played bass. It was awesome. We got five stars on pretty much everything for the first 20 or so songs, including three gold stars. I got the authentic strummer thing and 99% on about half of them.
We were seriously having a good time, striking the rock pose, putting our backs together while we jammed through epic songs, bonding through the power of rock.
Then, with five songs left to go, we got to Green Grass and High Tides.
For those of you unfamiliar with Rock Band, this is a fantastic southern rock song by the Outlaws. It's also one of the hardest in the game, and the longest, weighing in at around 10 minutes. It's a song that you don't play as much as survive, and it does its best to really beat you down. If a song could kick you in the junk, this would be it. If this song were a poker game, it would be Razz.
So, after already playing for 5 hours, (and not exactly conserving our energy) we started to play this rock epic, knowing it would be the greatest challenge we'd faced yet.
Our first time through, we failed at 84%. It was entirely my fault for holding my guitar too high and deploying our emergency overdrive when we didn't need it.
"Sorry about that," I said as we lost 360,000 fans. "I blame my guitar."
Ryan looked at me.
"Okay, I blame myself."
Ryan laughed and said it was no big deal. He was confident we'd get it on the next try, and when we started the song, I could see why. He was in the zone, nailing 97% of the first solo. I wanted to holler about how awesome he was, but I felt like it would have been the same as talking to my pitcher in the middle of a no-hitter, so I stayed quiet and did my best not to screw things up.
I screwed things up, and we failed the song at 96%. We lost another 360,000 fans, almost wiping out the million we'd picked up when we did the Southern Rock Marathon last week. Compared to the nearly 5 and a half hours we'd spent playing, that 18 minutes wasn't that long, but it sure felt demoralizing, especially because it was, again, entirely my fault we'd failed. See, there's this bass phrase that's repeated over and over and over, and if you're just a tiny bit off (like I was) you're screwed, and . . . well, you get the point.
I dropped my hands to my side and let the guitar hand around my neck. My arms were tired, my legs hurt, and my vision was getting blurry.
"I think I've identified the weak link in our band, and it's me," I said. "I'm really sorry."
"It's okay," Ryan said, "but I think I want to take a break."
"Good idea," I said. "Let's pause this, go out for something to eat, and come back later."
Ryan walked into his room and turned on his shower. I unplugged my guitar so we didn't have to worry about our dogs knocking it down and starting the game again while we were gone.
In my memory, the next few moments happen in slow motion:
- I pick up Ryan's guitar, the wireless PS2 guitar from GHIII.
- I hold down the button to get the control screen.
- The dashboard comes up, and it gives me the option to cancel, turn off the controller, or turn off the system.
- I click the strum bar to select "turn off the controller."
- I set the guitar on the ground -- carefully -- and reach up to click the green fret button.
- I hear the Xbox beep.
- I push the button.
- I realize that the beep was the strum bar clicking one more time when I set the guitar down, selecting "Shutdown the System."
- The system shuts down, taking all of our progress with it.
- Time resumes to normal. For the next 120 seconds, I use every curse word I know, until my throat is raw. It takes everything I have not to grab the guitar and get all Pete Townshend on it.
Ryan came out of his room.
"What happened?" He said.
I told him.
What happened next was astonishing to me: Ryan didn't freak out. He didn't get upset. Instead, he told me, "Calm down, Wil. It's just a game. We can do it again."
I was still really upset. It was an accident, yes, but it was my fault. In my head, I kept replaying all the different ways I could have powered down his guitar that were more careful. I really felt like an asshole, because I screwed up twice and caused us to fail both times. I felt like an asshole, because I screwed up and lost all the progress we'd made. Mostly, though, I felt like an asshole because I really wanted to accomplish this feat with my son. I really wanted to have that memory.
What I got, though, was better than what I'd hoped for. I got to see Ryan exhibit one of the key values I'd raised him with: he kept everything in perspective, and found all the good things in the experience, like the gold stars we scored, the fun we had playing all the other songs, and the time we spent together. He reminded me that it's not about winning, it's about playing the game.
If you've read my blog for any amount of time, I'm sure you can appreciate how great it felt to hear my words and my values come out of my son's mouth.
I don't write about my boys very often these days. Their friends read my blog, and they sometimes read my blog. They're not little kids any more and I feel like it's not cool to talk about everything we do together with the Internet . . .
. . . but in this case, I'm making an exception.
You can hear me read this story on Radio Free Burrito Episode 20, if you're into that sort of thing.
Posted on March 17, 2011 at 11:29 AM in Books, From The Vault, Games | Permalink | Comments (23)
Direct Relief for Japan
One of my favorite webcomics is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Zach Weiner cracks me up every day, and a lot of his jokes are just science-y and geeky enough to make me feel smart when I laugh at them.
In today's post, he writes:
Hey geeks. No doubt you've heard a lot about the Japanese tsunami. We're now hearing reports of coastal cities losing 15% or more of their population. Imagine 1 in 7 people in your town dying violently in a 24 hour period.
Direct Relief, which has a very good rating for spending most of their money on relief (as opposed to administration and promotion) have a setup where you can choose to give to Japan. Remember, this is the country that gave us Samurai, Ninjas, dirty cartoons, and Godzilla.
I think it's reasonable for a lot of people to have Disaster Fatigue right now, as we watch disaster after disaster strike all over the world. But like LeVar Burton said on Twitter, we have to fight Disaster Fatigue and do what we can to help.
Just think about what Zach wrote, and try to imagine what tens of thousands of people are suffering through right now. There are a lot of us, so I'm sure that, together, just a few bucks at a time, we can make a difference for them. Please do what you can.
Posted on March 15, 2011 at 02:21 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (19)
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