Mr. Wheaton Goes To Melbourne

HOLY CRAPBASTARDS! ME AND WIL MADE “THE CODE” INTO A SHIRT!!!
Get it now @ Sharksplode! People will be scanning your chest like freaking crazy! 

Wil Wheaton QR Code T-Shirt, The Code, @wilw, WilW, WWDN, Scannable Wil Wheaton Shirt

By the time you read this Wil is probably nearly, if not entirely upside down and with nothing but my sage advice and (hopefully) a bathroom grade machete to protect him. Godspeed, Wheaton, you Fancy Bastard. May your wits and your poop sword keep you in good health, good spirits and good whatever something something bullshit technobabble.

COMMENTERS: Have you ever been successfully trolled by international travel lies? Something like, “When you get to _____, everyone calls each other cuntface. They’ll be insulted if you don’t do it.” What about a similar “initiation prank” at a new job, school, etc? People are pretty much terrible assholes. I’m sure some of you have fallen victim to their assholery.

Holy shit, C2E2 in Chicago is next week. I’ll be with Blind Ferret at Booth 432. You Chicago FB’s saw how well Seattle did in the cookies, coffee, and booze gift  department right? Are you going to let them show you up? Have you seen how shallow the pizza in Seattle is? Are you going to let them win?! [iced or hot soy latte, Starbucks Doubleshots, rum, vodka, tequila, pretty much any kind of chocolate, no nut allergies… I’m just sayin’.]

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69 Comments

  1. You’ll love Australia Will! Vegemite is an acquired taste but you HAVE to try Tim Tams while you’re here.

    • a friend was kind enough to give me some Tim Tams and also taught me the Tim Tam Slam:

      1. procure the drink of your choice (mine was milk, Bailey's & Kahlua)
      2. bite off both ends of the Tim Tam
      3. use Tim Tam as a straw to suck up as much drink as possible before it starts to dissolve
      4. slam disintegrating Tim Tam into your mouth and experience pure choco-alcoholic bliss

      you're welcome.

      • The Tim Tam Slam with coffee changed my life forever. An Aussie FB mailed me a few packages of them with instructions a couple of years ago. I was born anew.

      • Pfft. Speak for yourself. As an Aussie, I have to say that vegemite is amazing. It's really just an acquired taste. Give it a try and you might like it. Preferably with cheese.

        • I like the Discworld explanation for Vegemite which is that its the result of drunken cooking and an attempt to make soup out of beer. The taste is so horrible that the brain cancels it out immediately, causing you to think its not so bad and go back for another bite – much the same as marmite.
          My wife has discovered another use for marmite and its antopdoial cousin vegimate though as a weather prediction device. If its soft and spreadable when she puts it on toast then the weather is warm. If she has to chisel it out of the jar with a pneumatic drill then the weather is cold!

    • Max Jackman I believe. Unless thats a different Aussie FB. Either way, the Tim Tams and a candy more than made up for the Vegemite.

    • The trick with Vegemite is knowing how much to use! I find most non-Australians assume you use a similar amount to jam or some other breakfast condiment. It's to be used sparingly! It's mighty stuff 🙂 And yes, Tim Tams are to die for, especially the double coat ones, you haven't lived til you've had them!

      • Hot toast, lots of margarine/butter and the thinnest smear of vegemite is my preferred method. I can't eat it any other way

  3. I put Vegemite on my toast like jam (or jelly) WITHOUT butter. Even fellow Australians think that's gross 😀

  4. I love Vegemite, but I'm half-Aussie so maybe you have to have the Aussie gene to like the stuff. Mr. Wheaton should definitely try a meat pie while he's Down Under. 🙂

  5. Sarcasm and disdain for a certain American ex-pat aside…

    When my husband was in the Navy, his ship stopped in Sydney in 2004. He had kangaroo steak at the Sydney Tower, and absolutely about shit himself when a friend told him just the other day that a local butcher shop carried kangaroo.

    Someone's going to have to explain Tim Tams and tell me if there's an American equivalent. I'm intrigued (but not enough to Google it myself).

    • We've found a few Targets that sell Tim Tams. Any Whole Foods or the like should have them. They are essentially the best cookie.

      • Target, eh? Lucky for me, there's one right across the street. I'll have to go check that out when they open back up Monday. The other stores are a little trickier because my car hates me.

        Thanks, Joel!

    • I had kangaroo for the first time last week and it has got to be the tastiest meat I have ever tasted! It involves a half hour drive either way to go get it but I want to eat it all the time now! Tender, full of flavour, and lean too. I have to wonder if the aussies have just been keeping this meat secret all this time for fear we would descend on the continent in a massive, slathering, Skippy devouring horde until there are none left.

      • You got lucky, many people get turned off eating kangaroo because their first encounter involved someone who doesn't know how to prepare it. Depending on how it's aged/stored it can get quite a gamey taste and because it's so lean it's very easy to overcook and end up with the equivalent of shoe leather.
        Culturally, something about it being on the national coat of arms seems to put people off.

      • Roo meat is, indeed, awesome. I rarely get to eat it because the only time I cook my own steak is staying at my sister's place, and she refuses to let me cook our coat of arms (so there goes the kangaroo/emu combo plate then…)

  7. On a high school choir trip to California, we took a side-trip to Tijuana to sing at a school there. One of the girls was terrified that some Mexicans might come up to her and be for money and asked me how to say "I don't have any money, go away" in Spanish.
    "Tengo mucho dinero."

    • *snicker*
      I wouldn't be able to get away with that, because my friends all speak a little bit of spanish. However, I can still get them to say stupid shit in hebrew.

  8. My best friend and I trolled ourselves by thinking that all of the UK would have Motel 6s or some equivalent when we went on a road trip there in 2005. Instead we wound up sleeping parked on a beach in Cornwall in our tiny euro rental car, huddled together on the passenger seat underneath my ski jacket for warmth.

  9. What is the reference I'm missing in the last pane? 😛

    Lol, vegemite is delicious! The best way to have it is on bread with slices of cheese on top, then melted under the grill. 😀

    Also, tim-tam bombs (or slams) are best done with a hot drink, like coffee or hot chocolate. To get the most out of your melty, bite off diagonal corners, not the whole top and bottom as mentioned above. 😉

      • You caught it before I could say the reference was LOST on you.

        Stop after season 3. Pretend it was cancelled and you'll be SOOOO much happier.

        • I don't know if I *can* watch it. Knowing the endgame has a tendency to kill shows for me.

          Enterprise and Voyager are exceptions to that.

        • NOOOOO! Why all the hate for LOST? Season 5 is awesome, and they actually try to explain their time travel theory in a plausible way which no one ever does! (though I get why people hate the last season and won't even waste my time trying to defend it).

  10. On a trip to Kenya, it took me a whole to understand how to haggle. Let's just say when I understood it, I manage to rip off a LOT of locals.

    • I'm terrible at haggleing. Whenever we play D&D I have to send someone else out to do my shopping.

      Someone other than the Theif.

    • My guess is that you _thought_ you ripped them off… In reality they won't sell for less than they want/need – all you did was shave off some of their profit margin.

  12. USAF, UK, 1981. Orientation for new arrivals. They prevented the usual sucker prank. We were warned: If you are in a pub, and someone tells you to turn your glass upside-down when empty (as a ‘tribute to the Queen’) – DON’T. It is an nasty insult to the queen. She will be avenged by the locals.

    • If you don't say "As a tribute to the Queen", is it still an insult, or just a gesture to the barkeep that you're done drinking?

  14. I dunno, that seams like reasonable Australia advice to me. You should definitely have told the lovely Wil that Vegemite should be slurped down like a shot, and that it tastes like Cabbury cream eggs. Or better yet, to fill the chocolate part of a Cadbury egg with vegemite, then enjoy a fabulous taste sensation!

  15. Last week at work I convinced a girl who was born here in Melbourne that Drop Bears were real. The tourists sitting next to me played along and the local girl decided that she needed to buy a bigger hat.

  16. Drop Bears did exist, alas they are extinct, except they were more drop lions than bears.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsupial_Lion

    Also, I think vegemite is one of those tastes you get from your mother's milk. What do I have to support that, well I like Vegemite (thinly scraped) on toast, but, the Marmite (very close to Vegemite some would say) the poms eat is bloody awful.

  17. Aussie here. I don't get why people need to make up Drop Bears. Australia has tons of actual things that will kill you. (I could make a long list… but the main points: Spiders love toilets, because it's the coolest room. Don't swim if no-one else is swimming – there may be box jellyfish, or maybe someone riled up the sharks. Koalas are bastards.)

    Also, I love vegemite. If you get the old vegemite punch-to-the-face, you need to use less. The trick is to find your tolerance level: any more and you'll get the face-punch, too much less and it will just be kind of terrible. There is a sweet spot, though, where it is delicious. This spot is different for everyone, trial and error is the best way to find it.

    Vegemite is also kind of a test. If you can eat vegemite, you will probably not die on a trip to Australia. Probably.

    I did once have fun convincing some people that we do Christmas in July, instead of December. Everything in Australia can kill you, it's more imaginative to troll in other areas. Like convincing people the platypus doesn't actually exist. It's just a taxidermist's joke – have you ever seen a live one? I thought not!

  18. I've never been successfully trolled, but as a Texan spending the semester in Europe, I had planned to do some trolling. Unfortunately, my plan to spread strange rumors was thwarted by the fact that Europeans already have some pretty firm ideas about our state. A Slovenian couple informed me that in their language, to say that something is "like Texas" implies it's chaotic. A Scottish guy claimed that looking at someone the wrong way is grounds for getting shot in Texas (and named Waco, where I attend school, as the most dangerous city in the nation). A girl from Singapore asked me if we still have cowboys riding around on horses (I said yes). I'm afraid there isn't much more I can accomplish here.

    • It gets better. As an Aussie I have convinced a few people we have 2 species of venomous mice. Basically if it moves here it can most likely kill you. As true as it is it's hilarious going to other countries and having no fear towards essentially harmless members of the deadly 3. Snakes, spiders and scorpions. If it won't cause death it's a non-issue for us.

  19. I did see some live ones once in a zoo. They were kept in a dark tank with a lot of water. Couldn't see them that well, so if they were animatronic…that was ground breaking 80's technology.

  21. Australia has 9 of the world's 10 most poisonous spiders.

    Actually, strike that, Australia has 9 of the world's 9 most poisonous spiders.

    • Bovril is a syrupy liquid made from beef -delicious! Vegemite is a thick vegetable extract -also delicious… in a thin scraping on buttered toast, that is. (To add to the 'only Aussies like Vmite' debate – i'm not an Aussie by birth but have lived here for 20 years.) I think Marmite is a thick version of Bovril but I'm not sure. I once had 'Marmite Chicken' at a restaurant in Chinatown… Bleeehhhhh.

  23. I have not trolled anyone from another country, but I have trolled people from south Sweden. I live in north Sweden. You foreginers are not alone to think that we have polarbears walking on our streets. We ride on reindeers to school (the non-flying type, I'm afraid), but the roads are to narrow to take more than one reindeer at the time. A girl I know even convinced somone from the south that her little brother was eaten by a fox. Seriosly, you could think it would be hard to troll somone from your own country. By the way, the mosquiteos will totaly drain you for blood if you come in the summer. No kidding.

  24. I haven't been trolled, but the sad thing is, people seem to troll themselves about conditions in Canada….the man's relatives have asked me some truly silly questions… "is it snowing today?" (in July…) is a good example…

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