Working Undercover For the Man

Okay, this one gets a little tricky, so try and keep up. See, it all started with this review of a recent stage performance of an episode of 30 Rock, which got me thinking: "What am I going to do if this writer's strike continues and I get no more 30 Rock or the Office or [gasp!] Lost (not to mention Life, Reaper or How I Met Your Mother... all of which are worthy of your time) this season?!" (And to answer your question, yes, I even think in parentheses. It's my shtick.)

This thought filled me with dread. And also apprehension. And trepidation. And horror. And unease. And disquiet. And cookies - cookies of sadness.*

Which brings me to today's post: This writer's strike and where I stand in relation to it. because I think it's important that you know where I stand on the important issues. Like how delicious falafel (Or is that "falafels"? What's the plural for "falafel"? Oh man. Another thing I don't know about.) are. Or the fact that I am stuck on the last boss in Star Wars: Knights Of the Old Republic 2: the Sith Lords and will most likely never beat that @#$% game. Or how I think that Angelina Jolie looks very much like a man.

Because that's what the internet's for: voicing your opinion on things you're woefully uneducated on.

Anyway, the strike boils down to this: Writers are not receiving any ad revenue for their work when it s shown online. You know, like when you want to watch an episode of, say, 30 Rock and at every spot where there would be a commercial in "real life" there's an especially annoying ad for, I dunno, Chase Credit Cards where the Rolling Stones are covering the Soup Dragons' "I'm Free". Just hypothetically. And you can't skip the ad. The corporation that owns the episode is making money off of that ad. The writers are not. The writers would like a little bit of that money. Because, you know, they created it. And this internet fad is sort of sticking around, despite the claims by the studios that , "Well, it's still to soon to tell how the internet will affect us." The proper term for this sort of logic is "A bunch of crap." Or, if you're a 90-year-old man, "hogwash".

Here, this explains it a little better:

So, yeah, the writers are getting screwed.

"What?" You may exclaim. "But Dylan, you mean to tell me that you, a blue-blooded left-of-center bleeding-heart-quasi-liberal type, choose to side with creative types who are getting screwed out of money rather than mega-corporations who want to reap the benefits of the internet without paying the people who actually create the work?"

Um, yeah. Duh? Seriously though, it's sort of obvious who the good guys are here, right?

So now that I've dazzled you with my logic and rhetoric (pronounced: shown you a YouTube clip and rambled on for oh, roughly forever), you may be asking, "But Dylan, what the heck can I do to help?" Well, the WGA and the old mega-rich white guy idea thieves are sitting down to discuss this whole thing and if the OMRWGITs know the public is behind the writers, they're more likely to play ball with our beleaguered writers. So, you can do the logical thing to show your solidarity and support and send the studios a pencil.

You read that right.

You have probably noticed that I have this little thing in my sidebar. With it, you can give the WGA a buck and they'll send a box of pencils to the studio. They will stick it to the man. It's some kind of a metaphor or something. Here, read this. Just give 'em a buck, okay? Also, you can track the writers through this blog which is chock-full of the sort of pinko commie propaganda you'd expect from those Union types as well as funny videos chock full of the sort of pinko commie propaganda you'd expect from those Union types. (In case you have no sense of CyberSarcasm, uh, this is CyberSarcasm.)

¡Viva la revolución!

Anyway, so yeah, Happy Thanksgiving. I'll post more over the super extra radical long special edition director's cut weekend, now with more Greedo-Shot-First and Luke-Crybaby-Screams!

Yeah, I didn't quite get it either.

*Special thanks to my Thesaurus Dashboard widget. You rule.