Ages ago I talked about the possibility of me working on some video blogs (vlogs), but it ended up never happening until this week.

The original project ended up never happening, but I ended up doing one episode for Mashable’s new video series, Mashable Conversations, a few weeks ago.  After a few false starts, this has now morphed into a daily video cast co-hosted by Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins and myself.

Our first episode went up on July 2nd, and features Mark and I discussing the current blogosphere thoughts on Digg, followed by an interview with guitarist Ryan Newell from the band Sister Hazel about his involvement with iVideoSongs.  Most episodes will follow the format of Mark and I discussing a topic of the day, followed up with an interview with someone from the web 2.0 space.

The second episode is out now where Mark and I discuss domain name changes (well… only Mark was on the video for that part as I messed up my recording) with Rob Johnson of EventVue, and then followed up with a discussion of what his company is about.  (I liked the concept a lot… as I said numerous times on and off cam)

There is a definite learning curve to being on cam when the only person you see is yourself, and you have to ask yourself questions such as, “Have I nodded enough?”,  “Why am I smirking?”, “I shouldn’t have had those beans for lunch…”.  I think I’m getting more comfortable with each recording session, and since I have several more weeks of episodes to do under the current promotion, hopefully it will get better with each one.

I’ve embedded the first episode below for you all to check out, feel free to give me comments and feedback on it!  Just try not to rip me apart…

Well, it’s just been settled and I will be attending my first, and possibly only,  Mashable party.  For those of you in the tech world, make sure to mark your calendars for July 12th for Summer Mash Seattle.

Besides myself, boss man Pete Cashmore and Karen Hartline will be in attendance, so no need to worry about just talking to “the list guy” all night with nothing else going on.  “This one time, I wrote a list, and it had over 120 items on it!  Why are you falling asleep?”

When: July 12th, Saturday, 7:00 - 10:00 PM
Where: Showbox SoDo, 1700 1st Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98134
What else?:DJ El Toro, Light Appetizers, Drink Tickets, Door Prizes and more…
RSVP?: Tickets will be released through Eventbrite, 21+ Only
Socialize: Facebook, MySpace, Meetup and Upcoming

I can finally talk about this since it has been published, but I am now one of the hosts of the “Mashable Conversations” podcast. My first audio episode is an interview with the lead singer of Dredg, Gavin Hayes, about the new microblogging service, Blip.

Blip allows you to share what you’re listening to in music with other members in an interface similar to Twitter. You can find the actual song, insert it into your message and other users can listen to it, so it turns into a huge music finding/online radio experience. Quite fun. You can find my Blip profile and follow along, though I haven’t had much time to use it yet.

You can check out my article and podcast by heading over to the article on Mashable.

It seems all I am doing this weekend is writing: here, Mashable, an upcoming project I don’t want to discuss yet.

And when I’m not writing actual articles, I’m working on tweaking WordPress templates, reorganizing categories, trying to figure out a pixel issue at another blog, and more.

In short, I am attached to my keyboard more so than usual even by my standards this weekend, and not one bit of it is for “fun”. And all of this is bringing up the laptop debate again, but I have the answer that as soon as Windows XP SP3 comes out this month, I am going with a PC laptop. One of my co-workers at Mashable made an excellent point that I can basically get two PC laptops for the price of one Mac, so think of it as a really odd extended warranty.  All I know is that I need a new laptop ASAP, this one has seen better days, and the “d” key has a mind of its own.

Alas, I must get back to checking over 20,000 articles by hand to find something.  Good times.

In an article on TechCrunch yesterday, Michael Arrington, founder of the site, talked about blogs raising more funding, and one of the problems he listed was the rates bloggers are expecting to be paid working at the big name sites.

Writers suddenly want to be paid market wages, far above the $5 per post that they received two years ago. No, we’re talking a big salary, with benefits, and stock options. There went half your margins at least.

This led to Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb to bring up a subject that has floated around for ages, but been shot down every time it comes around: A union for bloggers.

A bloggers union is an idea that was most recently advanced last month in an issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. “It’s a Wild West out there for bloggers — even though, without them, the Internet’s frontier would not have expanded so broadly or so rapidly. And even though, without them, the Web-derived profits many of these blog sites are starting to rake in simply wouldn’t exist,” wrote Chris Mooney.

Mooney envisions a professional guild for bloggers, not unlike the Writers Guild of America, that would strictly rep professional bloggers. How you weed “professional bloggers” from the hobbyists would be task number one for guild organizers, whom Mooney thinks would initially be the blogosphere’s most successful writers — i.e., people who have sway with management. Unionizing bloggers is something the National Writers Union recently voted to be a priority.

I made no secret of my support for the Writer’s Guild of America strike, but that doesn’t mean I want a union in my backyard.

What I get paid for blogging is confidential, but I will say I have worked for blogs that pay well, and some that haven’t. However, that is the nature of being a freelance writer, but you know before hand what you are going to be paid. I am no longer considered freelance, and have an actual contract in place with Mashable, I accepted those terms and chose to work there. I have set terms as to what is expected of me, and I have a set term in what I expect to be paid, as it should be with any job you accept.

The Internet is a beast unlike any other job out there. A good portion of its appeal is its ability to change on a dime, and if it got regulated to everything having to be run through a union first, it would kill some of the very nature that made the Internet what it is today.

You also have to ponder the international aspects of the Internet. Mashable is technically base out of Scotland as our CEO and founder hails from there, while BLORGE, whom I used to work for, is based out of Australia. Would the union be able to follow the laws of every country on Earth? What if unions are illegal in the country where the blog is out of? Blogs could easily change server locations so they would be served out of that country, then claim that

And let us also not forget something in that blogging is not exactly the hardest job in the world. Yes, it is work, and there are some nights I get so flustered that I want to throw my laptop, but it still not exactly like we’re doing hard labor. Quite often during my weekend shifts I sit in my favorite chair all day, still in my pajamas, sipping coffee, TV on, and a dog laying on my shoulders acting as my headrest. I wouldn’t exactly say my work is harsh.

I am not alone in my feelings about this: Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, one of my co-workers at Mashable, has stated his displeasure at the idea, as has Leslie Poston, a former co-worker at BLORGE. From other bloggers I have talked to today, none of us like this idea, and I’m not quite sure how the National Writer’s Union even thinks they could bring us all together into some form of cohesive group. We are a notoriously independent lot of people, and we don’t take particularly well to “authority”.

I think part of the thought process comes from my time writing for print media.  I sometimes got paid as low as $.05 a word, or $30 for a 600 word article.  Considering the length of a lot of blog articles, $5 isn’t that far off the mark, and considering how much faster I can get an article done, it’s not that bad.  And, to be blunt, where were the unions when I was in print?  Why am I suddenly more worthy of a union because I’m blogging?  Not that I would have joined one back then either, but I still find it odd.

Either way, talk about it all you want, but I think you will find a lot of bloggers not being very receptive to the idea.  Oh, and question… say we went on strike… where would we picket?  Would we sit in front of our computers holding up picket signs?

Back in January I talked about how I feel like I am suffering from information overload.  To the right you can see my unread item number form Google Reader just about 3 minutes ago.  Daunting isn’t it?  That’s just today’s haul, not a couple days, just today.

Since I obviously consume so much info, I always find it amusing how I miss information about myself.  Remember when I recently mentioned how I got quoted by the New York Times?   I didn’t know until Pete Cashmore, the owner of Mashable, instant messaged to tell me about it.  I had no clue what he was talking about and had to go look at it several hours after it was up.

Well, last night the honor of telling me about myself went to Paul Joyce from SimplifyMedia.  (Check out his site for a nifty application that allows you to stream iTunes from your computer to your friends, and vice-versa)  It seems that a story I wrote for Mashable this weekend about the FBI looking into NCAA March Madness betting on Facebook had garnered me some quotes on PC World.  In turn, it turned out that was syndicated from this story on ComputerWorld.

Apparently I need to set up some filters to alert me of when I get mentioned on the web as it’s rather embarrassing always saying, “huh?” when someone tells me I get mentioned somewhere.  At least it wasn’t Valleywag!  (for those not in the tech blogosphere, Valleywag is a gossip rag all about people who work in tech)  Either way, it is always flattering getting quoted by another news source, I’d just like to know about it sometimes!

I’ve hinted before to my writing career of the 1990’s, but have never gone in to great detail about it. So… why not now?

In the early 1990’s I was running a lot of ads in Toy Shop magazine to advertise our mail order toy service. The publication was put out by Krause Publications, the leading publisher of collectible magazines. At one point they decided to do a toy price guide, and since I had a good relationship with them, they asked if I would look over what they had so far. Well… after I tore it apart and basically rebuilt it, they thanked me, and I thought that was the end of it.

Somehow people talked about what I had done, and it got back to Wizard magazine, a monthly magazine about comic books and related products. One of their writers, Brian Cunningham, called me one day to talk about his toy column and look over his price guide. Again… I tore it apart. It was a mess and it had to be rebuilt. After that, I consulted for Brian a few more times, but nothing major.

In late January 1992 I was prepping to go to Toy Fair for the first time, the annual sales conference for all the toy manufacturers. I get a call from Brian, but there was something different about it in his tone. We chit chatted for a few minutes and then he told me he had been promoted inside of Wizard and he was looking for someone to take over his toy column and wanted to know if I would be interested. I said sure as I had wanted to be a writer since I was 4-years old. He said great… and I needed to cover the Toy Fair.

That was a trial by fire like you wouldn’t believe and would be a small novel to explain everything that happened there.

A few months later another editor at Wizard called me and asked if I wanted to write for their retailer magazine, Entertainment Retailing. It would be a monthly column entitled “Toy & Game Chest”, and I would alternate discussing how to retail toys and role-playing games. I took it, but it only lasted 6-months as the magazine failed, but I still had my Wizard gig.

When some internal politics happened, that I won’t go in to, I left Wizard after a year and a half in quite a huff of anger. I figured my writing “career” was over, and just shrugged, prepared to go on with my life. I called an editor I had become friends with, who also had left Wizard, to tell him what happened. He told me he needed to make a phone call, but he would get back to me soonish.

The next day a man I didn’t know, Ian Feller, called me from a fairly new magazine named Combo. It seemed he had just lost his toy writer and he had heard from the friend I had called that I was available. Apparently when he lost his writer, he had told our mutual friend “Man, I really wish we could land Sean Aune, but we’ll never be able to get him away from Wizard.”

… heh.

So, I spent the next two years at Combo until it sadly went under. And I really was sad about that as Ian was a dream to work for, and I am still in contact with him to this day. (Check his company out if you ever need a press release done)

As the Combo chapter of my life came to a close, I again felt my “career” was over. I had picked up some miscellaneous freelance work during my time at Combo for magazines like Star Wars Galaxy Collector, Comic Buyer’s Guide, and some stuff under ghost names due to legal peculiarities, (I love my “ghost name”, but, alas, I can never share it) but nothing long lasting.

That’s when I got a call from someone who had left Combo shortly before the end, and he wanted to know if I’d like to join Beckett’s on their new publication, Hot Toys. I absolutely despised the name of the magazine, but it was a writing job, so who was I to argue? I got my first ever cover story out of the job, but I really disliked some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that was going on. And when we got a new editor around issue #7, well… let’s just say she and I did not see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. I left the magazine over “creative differences”, and was proven right when the magazine didn’t even make it to issue #10.

So, here I was again. It was 1996, I had pulled off five years of writing, and I didn’t want to leave the field, but there was no place to go. The Internet was gaining in popularity, and I knew that with the creation of eBay, price guides weren’t even worth the paper they were printed on. You could go on the net and find out all the toy info you wanted within minutes of it happening, I knew there really wasn’t going to be a place in the writing world for me anymore, so I just didn’t even bother looking around.

Over the eleven years that followed, I did miss it, and I especially missed having a couple hundred bucks a month to blow on frivolous things like movies. That’s what led me to looking around in July of 2007 for writing work online, and… well, we all know how that’s ended up.

I do miss being in print publications though. There’s something to be said for holding a tangible copy of your work, printed on high gloss paper. And no thrill matches standing in a book store and seeing a magazine on the racks with the story you wrote on the cover.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the blogging, and it certainly pays better than print did, but there’s something so transient about it. At any moment one of the blogs I work for could close down, hit delete, and it’ll be like my work never existed. Yes, magazines only stay on the racks for one month, but you also know that tucked away in a box, back in a dusty corner of someone’s attic, there’s a magazine with the line “By Sean P. Aune” in it.

Well, it looks like it’s all over.  The Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) didn’t get exactly what they wanted the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP), but close enough.

So, when do you get new TV shows?  The Watch With Kristin column over at E! has a huge list done show-by-show, but basically, expect sitcoms back in mid-March, and dramas sometime in April.  Some of the most interesting tidbits is no 24 this year as it’s just too late, Heroes is done for this season, as is Pushing Daisies.

In other words, it’s a blasted mess.  Watch your guides closely for what’s new and what’s not.

All I can say is that at least the writers are getting some of the money they deserve.

I haven’t talked much about the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike because there isn’t much going on. There have been talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP), and apparently there has been some movement, but nothing definite as of yet.

The WGA did release the following letter to their members (and reprinted via Deadline Hollywood)

Dear Fellow Members:
I would like to update you on where we stand with bargaining with the AMPTP. While we have made important progress since the companies re-engaged us in serious talks, negotiations continue. Regardless of what you hear or read, there are many significant points that have yet to be worked out.

In order to keep members abreast of the latest developments, informational meetings are being planned by both Guilds for this weekend-details to be announced. Neither the Negotiating Committee, nor the West Board or the East Council, will take action on the contract until after the membership meetings.

As the talks proceed, never forget that during this period it is critical for us to remain on the picket lines united and strong. We are all in this together.

At this point, there is a chance of saving the “back nine” episodes of the season (most shows get an order for 13 episodes, and then for another 9 to finish the season), but as it will take shows 4 - 6 weeks to spin back up, things are looking sketchy.

The interesting thing is that no matter when this ends, it looks like NEXT season is in jeopardy of having any new shows.  This is the time of the year that the networks begin to go in to “pilot season” and start picking their shows for the next season, but nothing is currently in development, so, maybe no new shows next season.  What an idea: Develop what you have!

While listening to The History Channel today as I wrote, a documentary about Jonestown came on that got me to thinking about how words and phrases work their way into our vernacular.

For those unfamiliar with the story of Jim Jones and Jonestown, it would take forever to explain the finer details, but essentially it was a religious cult that set itself up a small town in northwestern Guyana. When the town came under investigation for various crimes, and was visited by United States Congressman Leo Ryan, several cult members decided to leave with the politician, setting Jim Jones into a rage. He ordered the Congressman’s plane attacked, and fearing retribution for their acts, he ordered the entire cult to commit suicide. Those that did not commit suicide of their own accord were killed by the devout followers.

The means by which everyone died is where this plays into my thoughts on language. A large vat of Kool-Aid was mixed up and laced with cyanide. The followers were then told to “drink the Kool-Aid”, those that did not do so voluntarily were injected with it.

At some point, this incident turned to the sayings of “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” when you think someone is being blinded by someone or something, or “They’ve taken a drink from the Kool-Aid” if you think they’ve already been sucked in. Of course there are numerous variations of both, but you get the general idea.

So, I’m curious as to how this became such a part of the American lexicon when I highly doubt many people realize its origins. True, it is very fitting in some situations, but how many people realize they are referencing an instance of mass murder when they use it? Do people not care? Do they not know the origins? Do they not care? And don’t get me wrong, I’ve been known to use it, and I did know the reference long before today, but it is the best analogy at times.

What do you think? How did it get so ingrained? Do you know other odd instances? What do you think of this particular one?

It appears with the success the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) had in their negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) has led to the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) asking to go back to the negotiation table.  Apparently talks could resume as early as this Tuesday.

I had wondered if the AMPTP settling so quickly with the DGA may have been their way of sending a message to the WGA without actually having to tell them directly that they want to talk.  So long as the writers get what they deserve, I could care less when the talks happen.

Well, I think it was more a slap in the face than anything, but the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) has already settled their negotiations with the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) after only six days of negotiations.  It seems the directors are getting a bump to their DVD residuals, and they’re getting paid for streaming Internet video with ads.  At least that is what The New York Times is reporting.

Um… isn’t that what the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) has been asking for?  I mean, we’re in week 10 of the strike, with no movement, and the DGA gets exactly what the writers have been asking for in the span of six days?  I don’t want to scream about the way Hollywood views writers vs directors, but I think this pretty much speaks to it.

In my opinion, writers have never gotten the respect they deserve in the creative process, and this is just another example of it.  How DARE those writers ask to be paid for work they’ve done!  Who do they think they are wanting to make money from their toils when the producers are collecting advertising revenue based on said work!  OUTRAGEOUS!

This just smells of an insult to me.  It’s insulting they won’t give writers the pittance they are asking for, and its insulting they would bow to the DGA as quickly as they did.  At this point, I hope the strike drags on for months, if not years.  The 1988 strike went 22 weeks, we’re almost half way there, let’s see how the producers feel at, oh say… week 40?

This will be my final post on “GizmodoGate”, (yes, I made that the name… this was needing of a “Gate” <em>edit:I didn’t mean first anywhere… I figured SOMEONE had said it, I just hadn’t seen it, much to my surprise</em>) as it is obvious that they have their heads to far up their own hindquarters to care what anyone in the world says about them.

They have posted a reply to their “critics” about the “prank” they pulled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week. Instead of standing up and taking their comeuppance like men (it was all men from what I understand, so I’m not being sexist), they have decided to wag a finger at the people who have criticized their childish antics.

What Brian Lam, the “man” in charge of Gizmodo, fails to see is that his actions reflected on the entire blogosphere. Any blogger trying to get access to an event now will now be lumped into the same primordial ooze pit these troglodytes crawled out from. Bloggers already have credibility issues, and for you to attend a major business function such as CES with the intent to cause disruptions is inexcusable.

Journalists are meant to report the news, not to create it. By injecting themselves into the proceedings in such a manner they ended up doing just that; you became the story. They took the focus away from the event, from the companies who pay enormous sums to hold this event, and made their little Jackass style prank the belle of the ball. If it wasn’t their intent to put the focus on themselves, they wouldn’t have videoed the entire proceedings and then placed it on their site.

In his response, Mr. Lam tries to make the prank sound almost noble, as if it was his site’s duty to do this.

You don’t get more access by selling out for press credentials first chance you get, kowtowing to corporations and tradeshows and playing nice; you earn your respect by fact finding, reporting, having untouchable integrity, provocative coverage and gaining readers through your reputation for those things. Our prank pays homage to the notion of independence and independent reporting. And no matter how much access the companies give us, we won’t ever stop being irreverent. That’s what this prank was about and what the press should understand.

“Untouchable integrity”? Intentionally interfering with the operations of a business during a presentation is now considered “untouchable integrity”? And to lift your antics to such lofty levels to say it “pays homage to the notion of independence and independent reporting” is nauseating, at best. How was this reporting? At what point during this “homage” did it lead to anything more than a self-gratifying night of giggling as these people edited together video snippets of their acting like asses?

Mr. Lam tries to liken his site’s reporting to great journalism, but I hate to burst his delusional bubble of self-importance… he writes about gadgets. Yes, it is a multi-billion dollar industry, but at the end of the day, it’s still just shiny, expensive toys. This style of reporting isn’t saving lives, it isn’t uncovering government corruption, it’s not reporting on genocidal crises such as Darfur, or the current unrest in Kenya, it’s expensive toys. Nothing more, nothing less.

This isn’t to say gadget bloggers shouldn’t be considered journalists, it’s no different than someone working at a newspaper as a food critic; that person is still a journalist, just of a different stripe. And gadget bloggers could be seen as journalists someday, but we won’t ever get their if we continue to over inflate our importance in the world of journalism, or as long as we pull grade school pranks.

Gizmodo should have said “mea culpa”, taken their lumps, and moved on, instead they decided to alienate themselves from the rest of the industry. Good job.

I haven’t touched heavily on the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike the past couple of weeks due to the holidays, but it’s time for another roundup of what’s going on because now people are showing their fangs.

As I mentioned in my post, Return of the Late Night Talk Shows, Leno admitted to writing his monologue, and that this seemed to surprise the WGA as it violates the strike rules. Not much seemed to happen about it, but now the rank-and-file writers have complained, and the WGA has had talks with Leno, and this may be followed up with some sort of punishment.

As a member of the WGA, Mr. Leno is not allowed to write material during the strike, but NBC says he is allowed to write and perform for himself. I’m betting this is where the problem is in that he is actually performing for NBC as they own the show.

But, that’s not where the fun ends! It appears Leno and Jimmy Kimmel have been whining to the WGA about the fact that David Letterman and Craig Ferguson have their writers due to the interim agreement reached with Worldwide Pants. Well, whine all you want, but it’s allowed. If Leno and Kimmel should be whining to anyone, it’s their corporate bosses, NBC and ABC respectively, and to the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP). They are the people not negotiating, and they are the ones who last threw a wrench into the works.

So Leno and Kimmel’s solution to this whole debacle? Why, to be guests on each other show’s this Thursday night, of course! Yeah, that’ll show them!

But it’s not just TV where things are popping. According to Deadline Hollywood, United Artists, now run by… Tom Cruise, has struck their own deal with the WGA. This deal is only in place until the strike is over, and if the final overall deal would be more favorable to UA, they will be able to switch over to that deal. Rumor is the other studios are furious… boo hoo. Get the AMPTP to head back to the bargaining table, with a real deal, and you can have your writers back also.

Any way you slice it, things are a mess, and I only shared the tip of the iceberg with everyone. For the lowdown on everything that’s happening, there’s no better source than DeadlineHollywoodDaily.

Yes, you heard correctly, Late Show with David Letterman is coming back on the air on January 2nd… with its writers!

Each show is allowed to negotiate with their writers independently of the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP), and David Letterman, who has been an ardent supporter of the strike, decided to do so. Mr. Letterman, whose Worldwide Pants production company also owns Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, has been paying the staff of both his shows out of his own pocket during the strike.

The news of the Late Show writers returning has been confirmed by the writer’s Strike Blog, LateShowWritersOnStrike.com. There has been no confirmation on Craig Ferguson’s writers also returning the same night, but it is believed they will be. (check out the writer’s blog anyway for some pretty funny strike humor)

Most of the late night shows will be returning that night, but I know which channel I will be tuned into. We, as fans of television, owe it to Mr. Letterman’s unwaivering support of his writers to tune in and watch at least that first night. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t a fan of his, it doesn’t matter if you’ve never even watched the show, David Letterman obviously understands the vital role writers play to any creative process. He is to be applauded for his willingness to step outside of the normal negotiations and make sure his writers got what they deserve.

Of the other shows returning, I just can’t support them without writers. Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel have both been very supportive of their writers, and I understand why they are returning so their staffs won’t be fired. Jay Leno has been, well, an ass about the whole thing, so I wouldn’t support him anyway. I wish O’Brien and Kimmel well, but without writers, it just doesn’t matter.

So, kudos to David Letterman for being a shining beacon of understanding where he would be without his writing staff.

I just spent the past four days blogging my little heart out over at Mashable due to it being the holidays. Since I live with my family, and had nowhere to travel to, I went ahead and took all the open shifts, including Christmas day. I figured if I’m going to have my laptop on anyway, I might as well be earning money.

The news was fairly sparse, so I didn’t do all that much writing, but I did get to work on my first all opinion piece for them which was nice. You can swing by there to see my part of our predictions series, Mashable’s 2008 Predictions: Sean’s List. Some of it won’t make any sense to my normal readers, but it was fun to put together.

So what does this have to do with my normal blogging around here?   It’s amazing what I’ve learned about blogging as a career since I started doing this in July.  A few of the highlights:

1. It doesn’t matter how little you think is going on in the world, you better be finding something to blog about.
2. Holidays?  What holidays?
3. There is always someone out there who will take great glee in pointing out your mistakes… including a simple typo.

Overall it’s been a great experience.  And come New Years… I’m working it again!

We’re in week 7 of the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike.  And we have a new wrinkle: The late night shows on NBC are coming back without the writers.

It seems the Peacock network is holding the support staff of and  The Tonight Show With Jay LenoLate Night With Conan O’Brien hostage.  If the shows did not return on January 2nd, strike resolution or not, the staffs of both shows would be released.  You really can’t hold the hosts accountable here.  It was either stand by their morals or see their staffs of 80+ people per show be jobless.

The Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) and the networks are playing dirty at this point.  They are at fault for the talks breaking down, and they are still endeavoring to make the writers look like the bad guys.  Sorry, but I just don’t see it that way.  I know… I’m bias.  Oh well, so sue me.  David Letterman is pondering coming back, but he is in a different position as his writer’s are actually in favor of his returning to work so he can state their cause.

As we are going in to the holidays, there is little hope of the strike ending before 2008, and that means most of the prime time shows that ran out of episodes are done for the season.  Hope you enjoyed what we got.

Okay, I think I’ve had my fill of blogging.

Since I got up today, it’s all I’ve done. BLORGE, Mashable, a new blog that hasn’t opened up yet, and now over here, and after here, I have more to do. It’s not that I mind the blogging as an act, but the fact it’s a seven day process, every week of the year. There is always blooging that needs to be done: Weekends, holidays, when you’re sick, when you’re healthy, the blogging is always there.

But, alas, it’s helping pay my bills, and it’s nice to be writing, but, darnit… I have a vague memory of this thing called “sleep”… I could be mistaken though… maybe I wrote an article about it?

As for the unopened blog… I can’t say anything about it until it launches next month. I left another job to give myself more time, but when this dropped in my lap, I couldn’t resist. I’m very excited about it, and I am anxious to share what it is, but everyone will just have to wait a couple of weeks to find out. I know at least one my regular readers here will be banging their head on their keyboard when they hear what it is…. this makes me smile, and for that alone, I can’t wait for that.

So, with all this blogging, getting inspired for posts over here has been a bit rough at times, what do you all do to get inspired? What part of your daily life makes you go “There it is… there’s my blog post!”?  Is there something you want to see me cover more?  Something I haven’t covered at all?  Help a brother out here!

So, Merriam-Webster conducted a poll of what their visitors thought the word of the year was.

w00t… w-zero-zero-t

This isn’t a word people, it’s a sound.  It’s like the dictionary adding “d’oh” from The Simpsons, it annoys me as it is not a real word.  Sounds should not be in the dictionary, I’m sorry, but I just don’t think they should be.

While w00t hasn’t made it yet, it could, especially with this backing it, which make me think I will never, ever, use this word again for any reason…

Brace yourself folks, we’re looking at months it seems.

Of course both sides have their versions of what’s happened.  You can find the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) version of events here, and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) side of things is on the front page of their site currently.

There is a great breakdown of today’s events at DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com, and it seems that it was known the producers were going to try to pull a dirty trick today.  It seems they were tired of being seen as the bad guys, so they wanted the writers to walk away from the table to show they were the unreasonable ones.  Problem is, the story got out before they decided to give the WGA a list of demands that would bring the negotiations, such as they were, to a screeching halt.

As it stands, the producers have thrown down the gauntlet, they aren’t ready to budge.  At this point we’re probably looking at months, and this television season is effectively over and done with.