Oh, it's ON, baby! Yeah!!

I was gonna go to Plimouth Plantation on Saturday, but "Noel" is being a pain in the ass. So much for my plan to make a Saturday blog post of the trip. Maybe on Sunday instead, if there aren't fallen trees littering the roads. Meanwhile, I figure I'd better post this now, on the off chance I lose power during the storm or something.

It's official: the writers' strike begins Monday. I've got a five-hour Webex training session that I've been dreading, so I thought it might be funny to skip it, sleep late that day, wait for my boss to call, and then say "but I thought we were on strike!"

But then I thought again. We've got three more hours of torture enlightenment coming to us on Wednesday, and attendance at these eight hours' worth of misery opportunityness is supposed to count towards 5% of our annual review. No kidding. It's serious. And the Monday thing is 10 to 3 and they're not even providing lunch, so we have to bring our own. I'm gonna have to eat my lunch out of a BAG. *snif* I mean, I'll decorate it with crayons and junk, or maybe even bring it in my old King Kong lunchbox, but when I'm away from home I really prefer to have my lunch handed to me by a professional.

Anyway.

The Writers Guild of America strike means that there won't be any new Daily Show, Colbert Report, or other hot-off-the press stuff (Letterman, Conan, etc.), effective immediately. That sucks. I'm going to miss them. On the other hand, it means I'll probably get to bed earlier.

Daytime soaps like General Hospital typically have about four to six weeks' worth of material in the can. If they dry up while the strike is in progress, I'll have enough of a cooling-off period to dump GH. I was going to dump it sooner or later anyway, but this would make it easier.

Prime time dramas and sitcoms usually have just a little more saved up, and if those dry up there will be nothing to keep me from watching all the telenovelas I want (we typically run several months behind Mexico, and I don't think this strike even includes Mexican writers). Fortunately, one hour per night is my limit. Aside from that, I can catch up on some books and DVDs, or even do something productive, although that seems unlikely.

The lead times on some of those cartoons I watch on Adult Swim are really, really long. Plus, I'm half-asleep when I watch them, so if you show me the same episode a few months later, I'll think it's a new one anyway. So I don't expect any pain there whatsoever.

The movie business could be impacted in some way too, except the gestation period for a film is so long that it'd probably be easier for the film industry to absorb the impact. It often takes me a couple of years to get around to watching a movie anyway.

So if the strike isn't resolved quickly, the 2008 TV season might be a little slow. Which is fine with me. I can survive for a long time on just reruns and the highly mockable local news broadcasts. If they try running reality shows instead of letting me catch up on the things I was hoping to see in reruns (Bionic Woman, Boston Legal, House), then I will have no choice but to spend that time exercising, enriching my mind, and god knows what else. Maybe knitting and martial arts. I'll become a really well-read, mitten-wearing killing machine.

Plus, this strike involves only writers in the US, so this might make it easier for foreign movies and TV shows to get more screen time here.

The last writers' strike, in 1988, lasted 5.5 months. Amazingly, even though I watched plenty of TV in those days, I don't remember the strike at all. That doesn't mean that I don't think the strike is irrelevant. The writers are asking for an updated deal on royalties on DVD sales (which were originally negotiated in 1988, based on either tapes or laserdiscs I guess), as well as "new" distribution channels like downloads, for which they currently receive nothing. That seems reasonable to me. I will very happily read books and watch The Andy Griffith Show for as long as I have to, and I'll be equally happy when the writers come back, too.

(Note ACTUAL POSTING TIME below... I set it myself with my own little hands!)

(Update - again - HA! I also set it WRONG. It should say AM, not PM. One of these days I'll get it right...)

Useful Spanish of the day
Adelante. Alégrame el día.
(Go ahead. Make my day.)