Per CNN:

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LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Striking Hollywood writers will be back at their keyboards Wednesday after voting overwhelmingly to end a 100-day walkout that essentially shut down the entertainment industry.

More than 92 percent of the Writers Guild of America members who cast ballots Tuesday in Los Angeles and New York voted to end their work stoppage over residuals for writing in the digital age, including new media and the Internet. The new deal is for three years.
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As a proud consumer of TV and film, I look forward to sampling the dramatic and comedic delicacies once again being cooked up in the heads of our talented writers.

All kidding aside, it’s good to have you back.

As so many bloggers I read are great about analyzing, critiquing and clamoring about aspects of the Bush Presidency (I give praise to them for doing so), I often feel whatever I would say about it has already been said.

However, seeing as there doesn’t seem to be a great amount of activity about the ongoing writer’s strike in what I regularly read, I guess I’ll just step up to the microphone for a bit.

SIGN the petition to support the WGA strike.

READ about the latest strike news

LISTEN to Billy Bragg – There Is Power In A Union

While you’re at it, read this and VOLUNTEER — the writers need support, but there are plenty others who need it more.

Hiya,

I don’t know if you have been keeping track of the ongoing writer’s strike, but I find it interesting in a variety of different ways.

1. Labor asserts itself against management, usually something I can cheer for.
2. One of the core issues of the strike involves digital rights and online content.
3. I may not get paid for it, I may not be great at it, but through this blog I am an “online writer”.

There’s some lively intersection that can occur between my tiny blogoworld and the world of these striking writers, I just haven’t figured it out yet. There’s a way of coming together, of supporting a group of people, but I don’t know how to do it. Any ideas are welcome.

I did make an offer to any writers to create a story featuring the iSplotchy, but have only had one taker thus far. Yes, I’m pathetic, I’m glad you pointed that out. I did finally locate the WGA’s strike rules (at least for their east coast branch). From what I can tell, I am not a “struck company”, so a story featuring the iSplotchy would not constitute a violation of strike rules.

Regardless of the iSplotchy stories about to leap from the pale stubby fingers of the striking scribes (alliteration…suffocating…me), there are some busy online-content-generatin’ writers generatin’ online content.

Here’s a couple links:

A nice little video put together by some Daily Show writers (link via BoingBoing)

Another link of interest: an ongoing writer’s strike blog by some Late Show writers (link via Reel Fanatic)

Long Live Labor,

Splotchy

Hello, writers on strike! — whether you’re groggily surfing the web from a laptop on your kitchen countertop, or are hitting this site from your cellphone, taking a a little break from walking the picket line, greetings to you!

I hope you have your demands met to your satisfaction, and have them met soon. I’m not currently in a union (nor is there a union that I can join at this point), but I walked the picket line with my art teacher mother a couple times when I was a kid. The experience made a really strong impression on me, despite the fact that I didn’t understand the ins and outs of the dispute at the time.

I think it was important to me because it represented individuals banding together to effect a positive change. Of course, unions aren’t necessarily altruistic by nature — they are more organizations of self-interest, but they do function as a defense against larger entities often motivated by less-than-honorable intentions. It’s weird how people form into these kinds of groups, that these situations such as the ongoing strike can arise, and then it gets me thinking about other groups people form, and the resulting war and genocide that can occur as result of different groups clashing. Then I think about how some stupid crap in our genetic makeup will probably result in the extinction of our species, and we’re all walking towards a cliff, knowing we’re walking towards the cliff, and knowing we shouldn’t, but we walk off that cliff anyway.

That being said, if it wouldn’t constitute a violation to the rules of your strike, and you wish to keep up your writing chops, I’d be happy to have you contribute a fictional story involving the iSplotchy — sci-fi, erotic fiction, etc.

I’m not a rich man, but I’d happily pay you in doodles.

If rules prevent you from contributing iSplotchy stories during the duration of the strike, I apologize for requesting them (I looked for the strike rules on the WGA site without any luck). I *will* still be accepting stories after the strike is over, of course.

Long Live Labor And The Human Race,

Splotchy