Day: February 12, 2002

Wil Wheaton writes:

Although I hadn’t ridden the backstage tour in years, I knew immediately that I would miss it forever.

I never went on studio tours again like the ones I did when I was 16.

Jesus, does anyone?

I think maybe this is what I like most about Wheaton’s (award-winning, la de da) weblog and why I continue to come back to it — his willingness to poke fun at his image and his movies, in this case Stand By Me.

I still don’t think I’ll ever like Wesley Crusher, though.

Caterina writes:

I’m always interested in how little people sleep, seeing as how I’m a terrible insomniac myself. Rumor has it that [Thomas] Pynchon sleeps til noon or one, but then works non-stop until three in the morning.

But, then again, just about everything about Thomas Pynchon is rumor, isn’t it? The only known photographs of the man date back to the early 1950s, he doesn’t actively promote his novels, and he has been interviewed only once in the past forty years. Presumably, no one but his agent and editor could tell you when, or even if, he sleeps. I certainly couldn’t. I’ve never even read any of his books.

Uncle Harlan says:

“It’s come to the point where very few people in these strange times can make a living writing short stories. I’m able to do it because I’m one of the last of that breed. There was Borges, Bradbury and me, and that’s about it.”

From an interview with Fantastic Metropolis. Be sure to also check out Kelly Link’s wonderful short story “Most of My Friends Are Two-Thirds Water” while you’re there. Found via Boing Boing.

Rebecca Blood worries that it might be “slightly the wrong approach”, its creator calls it “a sort of evolutionary arms race,” and I can’t help but think of Pat Murphy’s short story “Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates”, in which a dying woman creates the robot dinosaurs that will outlive mankind after a nuclear war. But, if you want, you can just think of it as Battlebots with a brain.