sag-in-the-news

haiku-version

from november 29 2005 to april 25 2011

11-29-05 stalker talks about photo law that stops assault. (i guess that law's... new? ) as piracy grows, producers start to outsource more. (sucks for our guys) someone's using statistics to predict our strike or no strike (...heh) okay news piece five contradicts three, saying jobs more bountiful now number six says yeah, well, it's good now, but will be bad later... (whatever...) tivo still skips ads, but now they let you find ads, like classified rag

11-30-05 l.a. paranoid about films outside l.a. takin' way our dough art unions demand drawing of vague lines around ads slipped into scripts certain child actress' warning about watch dogging comes true.. plot thickens producers, it seems, and casting directors, all hate the handicapped verizon, i guess, just discovered diversification. (..okay..)

f.c.c. realized choosing cable stations would bankrupt trinity another about it, whats good for us's bad for cable freeloaders

12-5-05 (disclaimer: author of these has no opinion about politics) new execs may have used stolen email lists to spam their way to top now results may be questioned, like florida, such drama-politics rumors of splitting union like gilmore rogers (no fear, won't happen) sag awards turn down network in favor of more artistic freedom in other news they are using brain matter for drives and cpus (all fun and games till computer grows an eye, starts calling you daddy)

12-7-05 paul, new york, says al, l.a. censors. al denies, and nothing happens

videogames make good corporate brainwashing. (umm... duh? this is news?) videogames try to maximize money made off brainwashing (...and?) people discuss the affects of brainwashing on children. (it's not good) someone realizes fat food ads for kids makes america obese n.b.c. caves in to sony-apple-tivo evil alliance (all-in-all aren't you glad you didn't waste your time reading full version?)

12-9-05 e.a. no namers have swallowed some games before soatvo eatsem some other no namers are changing their name thinking that will help them some real policitian, or used to, or fake, is fake again, or real

12-13-05 studios fight back, delaying regulation of porn on tv

f.c.c., they say, making noise to justify their own existence dan glickman (unlike macarthur) dares to challenge chinese.. (piracy) sag brags to the press about our efficient new electric data sprint finally jumps on the download bandwagon, (several years behind) jeep's got a tv channel on the phone. sound weird? axe brand will too, soon. a lot of babble about whether bubble will burst on tv stuff whole article 'bout felicity's interview. this never happens some new comedy bringing more jobs to mental handicapped actors.

12-14-05 kichaven gets the thumbs up from the national board for exec direct cash capote or murrow could win award did phil peak too soon? someone realized slump is paranoia (they must have read my haikus)

now that they've sold all these phone tv stations, they've got the chip for it

12-15-05 new york will freak out soon if the subways go on strike. ...solidarity!

12-19-05 morgan freeman is the anti-metallica of moving pictures haiku obscure, makes no sense at all - like shooting box office in foot

12-20-05 the script writers for reality tv want to discuss wages (clue: if there are scripts it's not reality, you have to hire actors ) talks on rerun funds soon - how will they measure it? nielsen's all-see'n eye?

12-21-05 big union thinks that little union shouldn't stop subways. judge agrees. new york surviving cause its all walkable. just like superman 2

nbc voting to "decertify" aftra (...how does this work now?)

12-22-05 nielsen finally says "maybe we should keep an eye on tivo now..." kim runs aftra now, hollywood reporter had uneventful chat the senate apparently has time to make deadlines for digital tv

1-9-06 production workers get paid a lot for tv (well yippie for them) podcast and tech stuff could be a discussion point (wait a sec... "could"? "could"?!? ) google wants piece of tv flick downloading cash, (will they survive...?)

1-17-06 not funny haikus; anne frank's movie mom just passed, see tv special delphi creepy chief talks about making deal with labor like veiled threat

1-18-06 crack down on hypothetical politics -nproducts in the scripts europe finally catches up to creating the problems we hate tricky deals for stars getting sweet percentage on box office bombs: zilch more networks inching toward cell phones (and blah blah blah blublublublublah)

1-19-06 data flows free these days, which has something to do with oscars, i guess droning bickering about how the cellpod cash gets divided, see? microsoft to use early 90s cash crop, those ads we all hate so

1-20-06 little old ladies getting offended about what kids watch again was actress fired cause of pregnancy? (they can't work that into script?)

1-23-06 the pres waves finger at little old ladies who call for "decency" (the thing everyone agrees is absurd is the fining of actors) everybody loves ambassador shirley temple. (....ambassador??) statistics show we're half as socialist, twice as fascist, since carter tech bubble seems to burst before even being blown into being

1-24-06 i guess they're nervous or frightened about disneypixar merger a union i don't know, called yatzee i think, is having some trouble actors politics, like something out of team america, but real soon you can download twenty four episodes on your cell phone (run, jack!)

1-26-06 overt right wing fox in jealous rage over warner-upn fling

shirley temple to receive sags lifetime award (can't make interesting) slightly higher percentage spent on ads, they think, (...after inflation?) cbs makes up new word: multiplatform. (not a very good word ) someone says deprived sleep is bad for you and some one else thinks its news

1-27-06 one was about the president (that's all i have to say about that) can't get beyond the forced shakespearian title. it's really that lame.

1-30-06 remember all this talk about a "slump"? well we're up nine percent now other states luring crews away from california (as if we're special) itunes downloads both comedy nets and... whatever mtv is now

2-7-06 disney radio didn't make sense anyway. good call, mickey mouse!

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sight-sound-smell-touch-feel tv to make porn even more popularer

2-9-06 ad-placement-protest is heating up. (for details see yesterday's news.) celebrities "who?", "what's-her-name", and "that guy", to promote tourism

2-10-06 actors passively discuss obscure bio-terms of corporation showtime jumps on the itunes bandwagon (blah blah blah blah blah blah blah) f.c.c. approves choose your own cable stations, (see ya, tbn!)

2-13-06 in such consuming brand-name-west, where's line between ad plug and realism? subconscious ad plugs reinforced a great deal by anti-ad-plug news cbs realized itunes making money, hires its own cybergeeks

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2-14-06 funding approved for putting actors in glass cage on way to restroom who are unions to recognize black history month? well i'll tell you. see... a happy singles awareness day! (don't feel too left out, you couples)

2-15-06 that guy we all felt bad for got big pay-off, doesnt need our pity if tv sets the trends, mixed love is in now.. (..sounds like a party..) darth sumner and luke oedipus redstone battle legal lightsabers

2-16-06 labor and engines break off from union's union?? (..united we stood..) new york film doing better, thanks csi and nypd blue!

2-17-06 l.a. artists get tax breaks, thus catching up with ireland. (google it)

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other states wanna imitate tax break. (that's good news, not bad -- selfish! ) too convoluted to summarize hotel stuff: bad situation

2-21-06 anyone else catch the subtle godfather three cardinal reference? grey's anatomy is diverse, is it good? i haven't seen one yet the yatzee union, it turns out, has to do with crew - how interesting! vid-game cycle: surveys, programmer, machines, cigar-guy gets cash

2-22-06 not sure how to feel: ludlow turning-coat against his own corruption. sony passes the buck to some ghostly cameraman with fake sag contract

2-23-06 networks could strike back? that's the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard. let's prohibit some vague generalization of immoral conduct!

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diverse-placement cops upset writers don't invent characters for them

2-24-06 someone thinks actors might end up in commercials without being paid cheryl rhoden might have handsome settlement from blackmail. we don't know. since ludlow pulled the nixon, unions seek out new rep. sad politics. (nurses seeking more power can team up with my union anytime)

2-25-06 so it's a big glass cage.. where will we put our desks? sounds like fun but... dude talent agents try to pull a fast one. (good luck, sag is watching you..) multiplayer games confusing everyone (...with the metric system...?) will smith typecasted as medieval middle-eastern thief-hero, again.. mickey mouse making desperate latin housewives (oh how much he's grown!)

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3-2-06 sneaky products placed via photoshop into popular sitcoms unions complaining abc didn't check with them first on ipods arnie listens to eddie, realizes life outside kaliphonya

3-3-06 the news imagines conspiracy theories on sally's exodus negotiations to raise percentage for commercials. (..how much?)

3-4-06 board to become more transparent (and i have no opinion on this.) immitation is flattery; cali thanks new york for compliment crash comes out in lead breaking back of walk the line. (what was crash about?) latin tv to improve the sets, as well as the role of women

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3-7-06 more about crash. it won the oscar. i guess i'll download the trailer guess they don't know it's legal to use clips in real 537 canada unions with cleaner reputations get "jumper"s bus'ness

3-8-06 illinois film biz in danger. illionis has a film biz? who knew if china's war with u.s. is limited to movies, fine by me want diversity in ads? give cash to diverse target consumers

3-9-06 always thought stage plays' advantage was humanness... now they're podcasting... federal government enforces minimum age for porn. (still no union.) latin tv on the grow, like movies, music, and sexy billboards

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3-10-06 yatzee ratifies three year contract, says don't like sag or writers guild

3-13-06 self-motivated agents demand cyber-dough way ahead o y'all nothing new on stealth ad front, 'cept they think reading's better than tv sexually harassed hollywood wire-tap spies.. (is this a movie?)

3-14-06 cybils' ex husband turned digital warrior, i love that, huzzah. consumers keep on consuming, down nine percent in (who cares) europe pirates not just in carribean, disloyal glowing screen zombies

3-15-06 new york gov to fight copy-cali tax break for local producers get ready for the "go to the movies" campaign these guys are desperate

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captain obvious say: dvds make movie going obsolete

3-20-06 precedent in works, redefining "principal" in law before guild trying to get feds to stop multinational corps from outsourcing (..?) three million buck fine, ten million dollar orgy: a speeding ticket.

3-21-06 deniable press rumors are.. covert bargaining? slim accusation some alpha wolf say: tv could change.(astute observation, gramps) clich not in the medium - message is the medium. got that? (all these shows are on tv, is tv not a "product" that's "placed" in these shows?)

3-22-06 studios weren't paying attention last year, now they're all "surprised" rather than pay more than sixteen years ago, they prepare for a strike

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canadians have an actors union too? how cute! how're they doin'? they've gone and done it: cbs news itself, now an albertson's ad

3-23-06 corporate demons say: tivo hurts us, product placement only hope ftack taking away entertainment jobs from the canadians, eh

3-24-06 cali's tax break that new york's resisting, london mimicked, and it works movies digital, so big stars are doing voice over ..you surprised?

4-3 & 4-06 films downloadable (legally) now. they think it will save hollywood one third of board seats to be replaced, could change things (depends on which third) with all this high tech, old school sounds not replaced (drum machines have no soul)

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4-5-06 people are baffled by this new technology (ads on internet) someone explains why union contracts aren't that great for union members cell phone spam. wire-less corporate infestation. little banner ads. msnbc happy to announce it's new cell phone commercials. scarry movie four.. first i-pod.. trailer..? is this worth it's own haiku?

4-6-06 "take the lead" makes clips available for djs for advertizing f.c.c. wants to not stop newsrags from owning tv (like newscorp?) podcasting killed the tv star.. brain downloading to kill podcasting star? walmart is cutting corners for profit?? (say it ain't so, auntie em)

4-7-06 ad demons to let unions chat with them (long as there's no discussion )

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yatzee's mean comments really hurt wooga's feelings, (divided we fall)

4-10-06 short sighted stockers sell shares when disney says it will show shows on net nationalist rag refers to bollywood as "threat" to industry to flagrantly waste money, survey conducted: says tivo hurts ads another survey says on net folks more inclined to listen to ads en-pee-are's mathis attacks subtle racism in academy

4-11-06 latin sag members have hard time, latin non sag doing very well unions starting to become passionate about product placement thing technology and merging corps have something to do with ...retirement? blog, pod-cast, rss ad-dollars.. (uh-oh... all out of syllables)

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walt-abc proves ads more important to them than stock-holders are french accept what we call "stealing" - unions say: "we love french cinema" cool new york spots aren't cool no more cause everyone films their movies there for some reason they don't wanna say how much they pay big tv names

4-12-06 lots of old news, no ad change, f.c.c. being f.c.c., you know from stalker film to iron-on band shirts, hollywood is cali's cash cow cable begins to target under thirty (as if that's something new) to combat tivo ads trying to make themselves fun, like a strange game like a beautiful mind starring at stats, tax thing declared successful

4-13-06 unions pretend chat with ads was productive: deal to remain the same

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as technology improves, laws must change faster and faster. creepy. two billion on gameads. (to reiterate: deal to remain the same ) wagging fingers shout "illegal!" southpark without ads. (that's the net, guys.)

4-17 to 20-06 takes neither psychic nor survey to see web ads took off yesteryear hollywood happy, china too, more beheadings to appear friendly new word everyone: "derm" is the metallica cops: whitehat hackers

5-16-06 amptp uses the old "well i was willing to be friends till you called us your enemies". (listen, boss, you've been pocketing cash you earn by telling us artists to write zima in our scripts "or else and you get paid ten bens per second when we, the artists, wear coke shirts

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you do not get to take the moral high ground, we can see right through you)

5-30-06 short-exsighted don't know how virus laden their computers are from downloading all their favorite shows off limewire. they will learn in time.

5-31-06 advertiser run ad research to delay the contract for long time in same breath: online ads increase forty percent... (...where is our union?)

6-12-06 future so bright with residuals from games based on old tv shows, musical remakes on big screen, downloaded to cell phones and emailed to fish with blue teeth (ad placement still lines only studio pockets)

6-13-06 first of all, you don't need to *hunt* for cows. that's the cool thing about them

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second, if you'd work out some ad placement contracts you wouldn't be so afraid of google video, youtube, tivo; evolve. catch up. (dorks.)

6-14-06 "officially" ad spending down; (preparation for divvying up) to punish us for tivo, we'll have to download our movies, not rent some have said "what's the big deal? how many people have tivo, really?" (but the two that do buy far more crap than all the ninety eight that don't)

6-15-06 unions unite to congratulate themselves for their diversity abc catches up with comedy central's unskippable ads more reminders of all the product placement cash unions don't demand general mills will soon embrace the socialism unions can't quite grasp

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8-4-06 download movies; cut walmart's profits, they'll have to pay employees less.. - oh wait, that's right, can't pay less than five fifteen per hour before taxes union girls picket non-union girls in adult theatre... (tickets?) writer's viceroy pulls golden pen from stone and becomes king of guild

8-9-06 now that people are more entertained by youtube than disney, job loss writers guild feeling confident and making threats, wait til october while we wait two years for ad contract, six percent hike. (they're listening) captain obvious says hurricane season should affect florida new york film going so well they're waiting for the other shoe to drop rhode isle capitol's mayor, sag member, to get cash from show, for state adult theatre actresses stage walk out for unionization..

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(where are the paparazzis??) oh and aftra has a new ceo

8-11-06 north carolina jumps on tax incentive bandwagon for tv digital sanrio, young girls prime target for new media adverts mel's err like blaming all americans for bush (but more sensitive)

8-14-06 video games based on tv shows now, pacman the cartoon backwards one fifth of adults (in this decadent land) skip tv and play games rupert says "let's sell movies on this new fangled internet cash cow" claire hoffman and chris gaither think french soap ads are what's called "hardcore porn" which comes first, the egg of hummers with flags.. or the chicken of murdock? studios to say it's okay to copy films hoping we'll buy one

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guess they want neilsen watching us watch dvds (per patriot act)

8-15-06 now that dinsey has no employees, they are making a profit it seems downloading movies to dvd was hard for some before google and redstone team up to go head to head with myspace-murdock abc live on net (catching up with latin beauty pageants' tech)

8-16-06 they're still excited about streaming flicks for free day after broadcast if studios don't profit from on-line broadcast neither does talent (but the second the army sticks an add on it, they'd better pay up!) overt ad placement artists struggle not to seem too "commercialized" either writers guild needs translators contract or translators need guild

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8-17-06 sitcom-placement in the grocery store, the other dot in the yin yang product placement on conveyer belts in stores, no royalties to pay advertisers rush to fill void, there's a whole world out there, with money agents claim to be useful, watching ads online to get your fair share more complaints about "accuracy" of nielsen's all-seeing ad eye here's explanation so complex you have to shut up and be happy: if we chase alongside new media, maybe we'll find a pattern in two years, then be more prepared to commit to something, mean time we'll pretend six percent makes up for past and future dollar inflation and enjoy kickbacks. oh and while you're at it, get some new chairs in here.

8-18-06 top model, symbol of all reality shows, will kneel before zod

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(zod in this case is writers guild who won't let up on cw) writers guild striking internet too.. first things first: claim "reality"

8-21-06 murdock's foxy network goes live, without a net, on the internet. (and his newpaper buddys give publicity in the form of "news") sixty-five billion ad dollars, i'm sure that six percent will cover lionsgate-ceo admits fraud, embezzling.. arson ..just kidding lionsgate-ceo announces exciting new itunes ..uh.. downloads

8-29-06 unions lay down and surrender to vagaries till late in '08 plus a how-to on getting the most out of new advert-potential

8-30-06 ad placement up one quarter this year (more next year, more next, then contract)

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ads trying too hard with youtube, planning too much. it's clearly failing. checkout counter ads brainwash you successfully, stats show, so.. well done!

9-7-06 duncan is new hope; guild may not go the way of the horse and buggy todd es nueva esperanza; guild adapts to growing markets

9-8-06 as technology evolves, perhaps more than two will handle contracts federal cc's vast overstepping what it was created for now taken complete for granted, someone needs to step in, shut them down ad deal solves problems like sugar pill cures migraines ...maybe placebo?

9-11-06 for reasons of selfpreservation i cannot haiku interview biz-rags divided on reality tv writers guild issue:

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some realize if there's writers it's not "reality", others are morons

9-12-06 ad-payed cell tv next year, just in time to be year before contract morgan freeman to be first to surrender to inevitable

9-13-06 apple found the key eliminate the tiny screen, stream to tv sitcoms on net thrill those still watching packaged crap; indy's where it's at apple's new "unbox" like itunes but for movies, and a new nano f.c.c. going after corporate media cross ownership finally! something useful for them to do! (they're low on bribe money)

9-14-06 abc's packaged crap clear to funnel through the internet tubes n.o.w. stands for news on cellular tiny little screens

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9-15-06 senate, impotent politically, blows cash on "media study" f.c.c.'s first and only worthy pursuit "shelved" (bribe money came through) writers guild sharpens axe for c-dubya, who blows millions on those ads

9-18-06 no news is good news, or fake news.. newest news is google news.. who knew?

9-19-06 statistics showing percents of movie theater internet research (miss the point using percentages not numbers: net is new theatre) warner music makes copyrighted music on youtube legal soon (embarrassed that they can't keep track of all those who use them anyway) barbara boxer taking on murdock via f.c.c.'s blunder

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9-20-06 actors too lazy to mail photo-resumes have talent agents these days actors are realizing that so it's not a good profession "not" bill-gates launches "soapbox" to compete with hit "youtube" (search my name) (for those confused, bill is "no longer involved in microsoft" he says) grandpa disney has discovered itunes.. wants press to write about it.. (its comical how press gets so excited when a network web-streams like a family applauds and laughs when grandpa says something like "dude") more on f.c.c., tivo is watching you, and writers swap out board

9-21-06 happy birthday to me, steven king, and anne rice i think, and reznor mobile vision has captured imagination of all samsara nielsen say tv watchers on grow (must be looking outside u.s.)

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new mexico's tax incentive almost as good as old mexico's writers really try to take back reality, totally surreal

9-25-06 goldfish say: "sag is likely to seek dues increase" (like three years ago) (hollywood press' turnover too quick to recall early two-thousands) abc online, gets advertisers... (this is news? seriously?) catchy headline in daily variety mocks equity chief's death

9-26-06 sag's life achievement award goes to... julie who? ohh... mary poppins! net ad spending up, down, all around, you know how statistics can be boxer blames martin, martin blames powell, "study" unnecessary: we all see the fruits of media cross-owners, worse than railroad trusts

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9-27-06 psst.. rumor has it i'll stop being so hard on the two year delay.. writers rallying fiestily, not friendlily, against c-dubya now that they can search for weapons, they wanna search for hot dvds... is there profiling involved? are sniffing dogs the answer? you decide. schwarzenegger still gets soft balls from movie rag, hollywood reporter equity sends a suspicious telegram to mexico city..

9-29-06 aftra is now the official self-proclaimed voice of all performers zucker says "let's choose to go along with net thing" (still in drivers seat) is democracy allowed to vote for an end to first amendment?

10-2-06 rules loose on youtube, google video, revver... revver? what's revver?

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f.c.c. is on the stand (for kowtowing to the powerful few) economy is under attack, been living off wartime milk since... ...oh wait, it's about piracy... economy threatened by dumb kids cabletelvision ad-bureau decides web is not priority

10-5-06 actors vote anne out, mccord in, as always i have no opinion lame compromise found, make big five show more indy (co-opt everything)

10-6-06 today fedcom talks about broadcast spectum (at last! their job!) issues they're establishing bounderies for unlicenced video broadcasts tv shows on disk already higher than last year - wait till christmas..

10-10-06 desperately seeking impartial org to crunch net ad profit numbers

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sumner redstone eats youtube, his digestive juice: cbs, sony warner, universal trying to make the only indy corporate (isn't that just the opposite of what the fcc said to do?) whether retro or paranoid, uniformed or lazy, video profits are up one percent this year (they say it's mostly rural folks)

10-11-06 stars admit fight to keep films un-canadian is not a fight of nationalism, but of selfishness; sag's vips stay the same, and change

10-12-06 i guess we need a union for people who drive cars off-camera news brief begs question: is hollywood reporter owned by viacom?

10-13 through 17-06 fool compares indie to democrats and unions to republicans

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ironically, it's "reality" that's making us watch more tv wall street skips murdock's agendas - going straight for what sells... thank... goodness? one article says l.a. film down, one says up, (i say.... nevermind) scanning actors has grown from eighties fiction to two thousand six fact redstone lashes out from all the persecution he's had to endure so, does hollywood embrace change? ...what exactly is this "hollywood"? at least japanese still going to theatre to see main stream movies

10-18-06 new staff chief and dues increase to test the current pres... how exactly? indie defined: not from big five's money. so: indie 103 is not "indie" in anything but name (that's redstone's game) -so ya know studios get suehappy over internet video downloads

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10-19-06 talent, rightly, wants cut of pay-per-click ad cents, (those pennies add up) anglo studios are making latin movies for latin viewers (to equalize the economy, reverse this: start with better schools) aneurisms from forcing old rules onto new media. poor guys. germany adopts governator's tax relief incentive idea history channel to make the past a game, a new innovation

10-20-06 if we're not happy in two thousand eight, then we'll invent.. cyber... strike nbc knows it's better to make stockholders happy without an arm, leg, ears or eyes, than it is to not make the stockholders happy fedcom struggles to reconcile new media landscape with payoffs hal varian jumps on pick on tom cruise bandwagon in name of youtube

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10-23-06 you'll find no haikus on issues open to vote like dues increases team player allen transferred from the field to the auditorium more on writers strike that might happen next year if abc's still cheap

10-25-06 rupert sumnermouse threatens to hit mute on new nielsen's adratings

10-26-06 uta looking for youtube stars to take them into the mainstream someone wants freedom, someone else wants protection, on the internet

10-27-06 dollar value bombs; yank-producers trying to rip off canada senators propose state gives money to actors (schools don't really need)

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11-15-06 in yesterday's news, alan rosenberg replaced melissa gilbert canadian actors still bent on strike, go for it! more work for u.s.! hollywood, microcosm of nation, runs on smoke, mirrors, junk bonds... vhs proclaimed dead - i for one never used it - still use beta murdock wakes up, says "huh??" and makes his newscorp shows available on his myspace (like they have been for three full weeks on redstone's youtube) article explains to us morons that ratings are about money f.c.c. says they might think about ownership rules (needs more kick-backs) locations get tired when they've been around the block, movies film elsewhere

11-17-06 canadians vote on whether to strike or not (well isn't that quaint) unions are good.. as a concept (writers guild, new financial blunders)

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cbs "settles" letting writers guild "conduct bidniss in private" writers guild lacks spare cash for settling wrongful firings out of court now they call it "raids" calling servers and saying "shut down pirate's site" new mexico still looks old enough to film old west movies and such

11-20-06 "american girl" charging american girls with unfair labor hollywood to host pyramid scam type talk to educate congress reiner "exits" lots of "insinuating quotes" in the article captain obvious announces: tv series on disk for christmas starbucks selling more dvds than blockbuster what a sad.. sad world

11-21-06 bush'll let putin hang out if they crack down on idea-pirates

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11-22 through 28-06 sag paying 5k to best "love equals" story written by a child sag pays 50k to legal fund to help stop canadian films murdock trying to lift bad-word ban (guess he's not so bad after all... not!) actors must tithe more to pill-pushers dressed as priests who want bigger yachts chicago gets it's chance to reject the concept of talent agents france to use famous schwarzenegger incentive for video games british producers want tax credit for working outside the islands sag refused comment on writers plans to maybe strike, and so do i

11-29-06 writers guild refuse cbs proposal (cause diamond was too small) massachusetts proud to finally have one showbiz job that pays six figures the press just noticed a whole lot of amateur movies on the web

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time warner announced the end of blockbuster and possibly wal-mart

11-30-06 white actors employed twice as much, minorities could sue studios (who would compensate for the loss with "randomly selected" lay-offs) "trident" new name for hong kong pirate poker, we talkin like... neptune? the ten cents movies give to second world talent goes a long way there... study says bloody video games may negate free will in some teens article frames the rebuttal as billionaire lobbyist prattle

12-1-06 cesar chavez and murdock unite against the f.c.c.'s old rules

12-4-06 backstage overtly persuading actors to vote yes on dues increase how to keep track of improv being made script without taping auditions...?

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actra no longer demanding things, they just want to talk about things hfpa claims not to be biased based on their nations... (yeah, right) camcorder pirate example gets seven years, the real lesson being... if you use a fake social, then try to escape, you get seven years

12-5-06 sag chummier with conglomerunion; makes some nervous, some happy iatse comes out of left field, votes to unionize top models crew too glickman stands before the army of suits, sells them on helping us out producers guild has an award show now? way to pat your own backs, guys.. some whine that the net doesn't pay off in big chunks like spielberg movies

12-6-06 iatse fights writers for rights to write... (wait isn't iatse like stage crew?)

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unions are nervous about figuring out net residual rates... my advice: resign yourself to getting it wrong, fix in twenty-ten duo arrested for pirating dvds of some movies like "running with scissors" hey! i saw that at that billionaire's house last month...

12-7-06 "prepare to prepare to strike!" "preparing to prepare, sir!" (those silly mounties..) f.c.c. defends their right to censor foul mouths saying "if not for that, then why do we exist?" (to be sure air waves aren't monopolized...) f.c.c. also says cellphones can distribute network's garbage too

12-8-06 belay that - actors don't have to pay more just yet to priestly pushers it's not that the biz is ending, just transforming drastically and fast

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mel's new flick is out (psst... he's not worried about offending mayans)

12-11-06 canadian strike looming makes american scabs prosper, of course british tv still so far ahead our headline reads: "huh? i'm confused.."

12-12-06 showbizness slowly becoming diverse: 'babel', 'volver', 'dream girls'... 'apocalypto' may have diverse cast... but it's mel gibson's vision... as the oil runs out, dubai invests millions in their own movie biz unaware of newfangled technologies, group "dodona" predicts increase in moviegoing abroad over the next three years or so unisonybros pooling resources to make movie for download f.c.c. condemns v-chip that dares compete with them for thought-control

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12-13-06 mister gorbechave (martin) tear down this wall (of censorship... and leave) the academy screenings not as popular as bingo at saint anne's court rules profane trial can be televised... (just not in real time, of course)

12-14-06 l.a. times tells us how to shmooze with the sneuty and get extra work those animated short things from whenever are coming back again broadway popular as academy screenings (i blame the weather)

12-18-06 if iatse can't have writing, maybe they'll settle for just canada hollywood's valet strike, admit it - you didn't know those guys existed who settles disputes between murdock and chinese media? clinton? blu-ray defined: more dots than there are rods and cones in your eye... pointless?

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12-20-06 countries blocking our "entertainment" to preserve their ways and cultures the article, of course, mourned the extra cash we could all be sharing

12-21-06 hell no, canada won't go for free internet rights. they know what's up. voters say "where's my screeners? what will i burn for the kids for christmas??"

12-22-06 antonio says don't buy cds from parking lots, merry christmas

12-26-06 as predicted, flick downloads have officially sunk dvd sales cable tv fights for dear life... those guys should be okay... in some form some only let their pure-bred purse dogs watch hi def (and sniff pink cocaine)

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12-27-06 as per usual janet's nipple distracts us from bigger issues world split between hi-def home theatres and low-def youtube proles cbs... just pay the nipple ticket (but in lue of this year's bribe)

12-28-06 japan makes more than half what they see in theatres, nothing else is new

1-2-07 canada rethinks mass career suicide, and "delay" silly strike sony google corp exec five billion merger, ipod, blah blah blah

1-3-07 canada has the guts to say "definitely gunna strike next week"

1-4-07 some pervert gets to pay thousands for shirt shannon died wearing on lost

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the masses almost figured out how to work their dvd burners

1-8-07 canada, except where they speak english, in on strike now... best wishes

1-9-07 agents turn to sag member-governor for help with their "existence" canada says they're "canary in coalmine" to u.s. producers

1-10-07 tati suarez is right: let's redistribute wealth using statistics country has improved: plenty acting jobs for kids of irish migrants... producers strike back: try not letting actra keep working while on strike anything apple sticks "i" on as a prefix is the next big thing former napster guy now with "i hate gnutella association"

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1-11-07 to make bribes to copps legit, they will take the form of "violence fines" f.c.c. chairman speaks at ces about our internet rights cbs thinks their plan to co-opt the net is going a-ok

1-16-07 judge not by color of their collars, but whether they paid union dues an eulogy for the made-for-tv movie ...but its still breathing attaway and mao zadong launch a "just say no to pirates" contest

1-17-07 it seems no one told mpaa forbidden things are enticing: "this is illegal for kids to watch even if parents say they can" rating in the works for movies that are not porn ...overstep bounds much? two-thousand's 'n sync album last time a lot of people "bought" something

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1-18-07 wall street steps closer to becoming like ireland's goverment (good thing) sundance looks at films shot with five thousand dollar cameras: minimum digital music, bought doubles, brings profits down, humbling rockstars

1-19-07 canada learns hard lesson: "strike" means nothing if you don't stop working f.c.c. trying to get advertisers to back tiered subscriptions in spite of what i've read, a lady on the bus didn't like borat said government should do more to stop movies like that from being made

1-22-07 italy first to shake off murdock and enter new millennium china catches up with north koreas "indy" propoganda scam

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1-23-07 hollywood against war (making all who call us babylon for war)

1-24-07 turns out alan and billy the kid have more than one thing in common courts will decide if actra can strike, or work, or work while they're on strike...

1-25-07 members to vote to pay more so execs can have bigger parachutes (and also feebly attempt to stay on top of changing media) ontario court "expected" to treat actors like subway drivers as "reality" gets more popular, l.a. get more unemployed

1-26-07 cheerleader lead in school play once told me drama is just like football... mirroring changing media, fifteen minutes fame now eight seconds

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you guys don't need to lionize mary poppins; she already roars

1-29-07 awards happening, and some reporter complains about his tivo

1-30-07 herding cats, a la the present and future, through co-opting rebels evidently our congress gave up on changing anything worth while oscars won't snub dream girls like second tier award show "the golden globes"

1-31-07 many pleasantly surprised sag awards went well, and awards heavy canadan actors and producers both glad aboot arbitration ominous signs (like italy) point to need for 5 million new jobs

2-1-07 fox tries something new, "the right and moral thing to do" diversity

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optimists with old models predict six billion increase from web sales golden globe defense: "dreamgirls about co-opting of black culture" (a too urban theme for golden globe's european royalty voters)

2-2-07 believe it or not, sag's going to stream actors reels with flash, like youtube long article says "think of something reminds you of script-emotion" well-paid-off senate reprimands f.c.c. for, you guessed it, bad words

2-5-07 scorsese's secrets of success: have nicholson improvise with gun actra trying to work horse stable futures into contract in progress two thousand six, good year for chicago, if you're making commercials

2-6-07 iatse gains some notoriety by adding e! to their causa

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italians increase new film fund (now that they've cut off all possible residuals by making it legal to download movies for free)

2-7-07 writers guild feeling confident, "practical but tough", expect no strike will smith, on behalf of globe thing, told congress of actors lesser known actra strike working american producers hiring us again hollywood suggests paying more attention to what your own kids watch for those confused by poorly written l.a. times articles, read on: connolly leaving aftra to lead equity, no merger in sight

2-8-07 download business still elusive... bears still doing their business in woods study shows kids still leave their tv on while they're stalking on myspace

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feehery's job was what will smith just did so well, then feehery quit

2-9-07 walter cronkite warns: "bears they do their personal business in the woods!"

2-12-07 the thing is, even if you divided all the ad bucks among all talent behind what's on youtube, still not as much as they're used to murdocks men behind redstone's, as usual, myspace soon to purge vids

2-13-07 for those who thought i was making up sag-youtube thing, check sag dot org they didn't say why the arthurian gesture; presidents' table f.c.c. has set media hearing (hearing but not listening) he who owns google (redstone) decides what is and is not popular

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2-14-07 allen, not to be confused with alan, upset with aftra for stuff f.c.c. steps in, tells cbs (viacom) to pay writers more actra "cautiously optimistic" about new approach: surrender

2-15-07 online video hard for nielsen; embedded videos don't count will music ever be as lucrative as it was long ago? (no) producers hang on to scripts already theirs, just in case there's a drought

2-16-07 dues hike? no. how dare you even ask. what? really? oh.. okay, then.. yes glickman's suggests skip iran and invade china to save hollywood

2-20-07 task force forms to fight piracy; industry lost five bil' in oh five

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four point nine billion for producers, the rest for scribes, hands, and faces and in other news, consumers saved about that much buying bootlegs

2-21-07 actor strike would hurt l.a.'s economy (like new york's garbage strike) actra happy, will receive 10 percent raise over next three years plus they've worked out some kind of new media deal. something like aftra's. evidently french canadians use the word "ecstatic" who knew?

2-22-07 writers guild sites first amendment right to write to writers on web site more money just went into web advertising (get pop-up blocker)

2-23-07 fair use means you can use the clip if you're making a point of your own

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2-26-07 another crime spree goes legal and corporate like the kennedys

2-27-07 sag awards around the corner, eleven months. (place your bets today) what's not there yet key to media future (they wrote that one for me) networks adjust ad time to cater to a.d. d generation

2-28-07 canada lays the proverbial glass floor for hollywood's contract itunes open to indie producers (just like gnutella has been)

3-1-07 taxman snubs movie biz, which is america's only strong asset

3-2-07 congress, rather than stop *actual* violence, will encourage it

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by teaming up with f.c.c. to make it a no-no on tv

3-5-07 congress does something! like timberlake, they're bringin' socialism back! they've finally re-thought antagonizing china. it's canada's turn

3-6-07 turns out actra strike was a skit by talented barrack and waddell

3-7-07 despite everything news said before, box office sales up for '06 (what do you mean? the news always said we've been at war with eurasia) experts estimate new digital media will uhh change. a lot

3-8-07 they won't come out and say it, but they're going to put chips in all our heads

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3-9-07 unanimously instituting big brother to fight piracy

3-12-07 sony pictures will will outsource special effects to new mexico homer simpson says all latin america will back his union advertisers on mindcontrol video games: a perfect system

3-13-07 four percent more spent on ads, so of course talent made more money not! seriously, no joke: redstone taking himself to federal court

3-15-07 okay, so is this nineteen eighty four or what? am i the only one who remembers when redstone bought google? i mean... this is creepy so... soon we'll either have a president that shoots studios in foot

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or the corruption of judges by viacoms dollars will prevail

3-20-07 things change, and stay the same, no more daily haikus, but weekly sonnets if this is your first haiku, (hi sascha!) it will make sense on friday

3-19-07 through 3-22-07 much like the local absentee slumlord does redstone's puppets sue themselves for us (since ads pay anyone who gets them eyes); dear-abby tells extras not to nag about vouchers, time warner and murdock unite to dominate net, nielsen sad to see us not watching nielsen, gay transgendered caucus goes to new york (well i, for one, think "caucus" is a funny word) when press says gamers are underestimated, the readers can only overestimate; and the f.c.c. at last has made it clear, that corporate entertainment incest is here

3-23-07 through 3-27-07 red chinese raid twelve thousand pirates' homes, (still hollywood says to be more severe), and when you read the word "deferred" assume it says "when snowballs learn to fly, in hell". two writers to be paid for shows on the net (a symbolic monumental victory) two actors playing lawyers improvised that coke zero gimmick (which explains the billboards) cannes got conned into streaming video, and to those who say "what, still no objective third party research team to study new media ads, what are we paying you for!?" i plead... october oh-eight is still so far away, by then new-landscape will change again anyway

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3-28-07 through 3-29-07 the long cold war, we all knew existed, between canadian unions, at last, has peacefully ended; what does jennifer bresnan, at the cw, mean by "who could resist a diverse group of girls?" a sag sponsored "holistic health" workshop will teach you how to get the part (without purging, lypo, or that cyane-pepper-syrup diet) and.. natas freaked out atas by adding myspace as a sponsor (..mytas could care less) youngblood accused of lying about his ancestors; sensitive subject: my great grandmother bess got knocked up by geronimo, the cat's out of the bag. the casting directors will all have one rolodex in june... so, actors, upload your reel to iactor soon!

3-30-07 through 4-2-07 you may recall writers directors and talent complaining that viacom and it's ilk own their souls and there's no anti-trust action happening (f.c.c.???); it was swept aside and now viacom complains about actors posting their reels on youtube, i guess, but vaguely with the words: "bad actors and good actors who do bad things". but the federal trade commission might get strict about celebrities profiting by lying about products and services without a lot of fine print, assuming, of course, those products don't raise their bribe-tithe pronto. and the ripples grow larger from the splash made by janet's jackson's nipple so long ago, and now violence is as naughty as sex.

4-3-07 (totally not a sonnet) google, who's knowledge of what you *think* about surpasses that of any government, announces it's new tv ad campaign, they hope to use their mastery over the audience to raise twenty three billion pronto, just incase they loose the case with their less-than-half-parent-corporation, viacom. and there are some who say producers who are also agents who pay themselves for their services of representing actors is a little bit of a conflict of interest.

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4-4-07 thorugh 4-5-07 if you're the sort that likes to be sold on land, then jo cruz' "speed dating" shindig is just the thing. albuquerque bids us greetings and sand, with signs at the airport saying "hollywood's newest home" with youtube being beaten to death in court, many other "illegal" broadcasters step up to the plate twinkle twinkle, little stars' parents complain kids' med and dental don't cover them as well, brittany curran says sag people never forget your birthday (happy birthday booker t washington!) the recent financial meltdown of china which spread worldwide now a distant memory (wait... when was this?) and the new media column is filled through and through with a lot of percents and statistics, but nothing new

4-6-07 through 4-10-07 good news for a-moral unemployed teenagers: grocery strike looming; hello again, trader joe's, this just in: those in west hollywood are now referred to as "wehoans". south park is the first tv show to go hi def and make cable obsolete, (just like howard stern made the radio obsolete) aftra had a veil on their candidates, then took it off of them the big union conglomerate (awful-seeoh) takes aim at verizon's head, (but can they hear him now?) sag is thinking about maybe having a rule about agents again, some random theater owner is afraid of digital, and finally: even talk of strike in hollywood could bring chaos, looting, and riots, to british columbia

4-11-07 through 4-12-07 (totally not a sonnet) actors put their own material on the web, get more hits from casting directors eyeballs. trying to make commercials more appealing, by having mckee disciples analyze every frame. (some people put forth that that's a waste of money) columnist, cieply, likes writers guild president' wife, tacoma library gets press with star power: pamela reed, unions have agreed not to send employees to fill the positions of striking grocery store workers... again, tv-to-video profits not making meryl lynch investors happy,

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(since they only get many thousands more than any of the talent.) ten year old, kessler, wins award for "where the palm trees grow" columnist, longwell, thinks his readers don't know the capital of latvia, and the sonnetist has aneurism trying to make tax incentives seem interesting.

4-13-07 through 4-18-07 some idiot asks f.c.c.'s copps to comment on tv violence's connection with monday's shootings, a-o-hell becomes a-o-we're-a-tv-station-too, well... of course nbc would call piracy "the most significant threat to global economy", (just like prada would say it's pirated shoes), google and yahoo "battling" to be the first to fully control unconscious mouse-click free-association, charles gary uses racial slur for headline about asian actors, aftra bragging about being on top of new media, mobile-tv hot in europe, (since it's so much easier to watch while riding a bicycle) and qoob is "television turned inside out" (which explains why you've never heard of it)

4-19-07 through 4-20-07 judge margaret morrow hates unions and foreign residuals. the five studio heads propose to stop a strike preemptively by hiring out an objective third party to do all the math. it could, in theory, work about as well as it has for interactive media, and iraq. since the little unions have left awful-cio mommy, they can't seem to agree on how to handle walmart, and whether or not to formally create a second class for illegal migrant workers. article examines the pros and cons of arabs playing terrorist roles in popular sitcoms (on fox) alec baldwin verbally abuses his twelve year old daughter, and dachshunds are the latest thing. i don't know why.

4-28-07 this just in: edward is bringin' haikus back, by popular demand

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sag buddying up with writers; directors are still loners. rebels. "professionals do not work non-union" (except when they go fi-core) valenti passes on after a lifetime of wonderful things (...who?) f.c.c. says kids see too much of a certain je ne sais crois

4-30-07 "back stage" sites "roots" to defend nudity and rape on television soap opera actress now president of writers guild. think about it. (a few hours later) aha! reardon is now aftra pres, not writers. that makes much more sense

5-1-07 aftra postponed it's negotiations till when the writers are done "back stage" tries to help four talent agents defend their right to exist so.. have fun.. go dance around a may pole.. or start a revolution..

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5-2-07 writers guild insists it was "about to give y'all that pile of money" we're (not) holding our breath waiting for writers strike (against their union?) arrrr.. piracy is now a five grand penalty in new york state, arrr..

5-3-07 to 9-3-07 (...crickets...)

9-4-07 dear ftac, clue: canada is its own country with its - own laws. therefore, yes, it is legal for them to give producers some perks parents who signed those sick wavers may have waved their right to be parents

9-5-07 (not) surprisingly, hollywood's political "investments" go to often opposite sides of the fence. think bono and, like, mel gibson press wakes up and says "oh gee, look what we did, we gave kid nation this

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free publicity, now their ratings are through the roof, oh what karmic ramifications must we suffer for our part in this tastelessness?"

9-6-07 the committee for convincing canadians they should give jobs back to americans (or "tcfcctsgjbta") predicts success... over next few years the holly (wood) and the apple, when they are both full grown... have issues

9-10-07 f.c.c. to turn innocent hive-mind into some twisted borg thing apple to cut download fee in half, less money for studios to argue with unions about, but the consumers will be happier

9-11-07 looks like they're angling for our government to charge some kind of fee to compensate for the perks canada's offering.. i dunno, could work

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broadband internet interfering with tv signals. kinda funny.

9-12-07 polanski pulls out of pompeii cause he's afraid of possible strikes (which is good cause we don't need someone so fearful directing something so archetypal and heroic... what's quentin been doing these days?)

9-13-07 sag may have to change constitution to allow for new bloc voting sag urging supreme court to allow members to sell image on cans moaning and wailing, why oh why, polansky, are unions so cruel?

9-14-07 i would lose my job if i wrote haikus about todays news. sorry.

9-17-07 sag makes deal on web series "quarterlife", which seems to surprise papers

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evil geniuses cbs won't let critics view screeners (of that horrible show we should all boycott this wednesday at 8) mexico's congress.. (mexico has a congress?) ..nix movie tax breaks

9-18-07 writers are not feeling optimistic, amptp is feeling tricky, (though i don't know what could be trickier than trying to pronounce their acronym)

9-19-07 beaver star sues sag for unpaid royaltease, and verrone west scribe-pres sag condemns kid nation, don't forget to boycott it tonight at 8 on cbs!

9-21-07 according to twelve out of thirteen new briefs, seems rosenberg still pres dga, like the u.s. after england wore down germany, moves writers guild, england, amptp, germany, in this analogy. and...

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poland is the fruits of internet ad revenue, which will be freed... ...but may have to be soviet communist for about forty years...

9-24-07 awful see-o to help aftra lower actors minimum wage ...huh?? writers get ready to put pens behind ears and cross arms over chests ooh! diversity awards! can i apply?? oh..really? ..why not? durning gets the "quick give this man an award before it's too late!" award

9-25-07 f.c.c. wants fake news to come with a warning: "this isn't real news" bonus haiku: don't waste your money "across the universe," the worst movie ever-made, signals the end of sixties movies. they have now been done to death. (then dug up, sewn together, reanimated and then killed again)

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9-26-07 l.a. times just realized online work is "an issue" in hollywood writers guild buckles under the pressure of amptp's tauntings gigantic corporation, defeats the little guy over rights to royalties

9-27-09 congress babbles at f.c.c. about tv, product placement stuff former employee sues sag for wrongful firing (i've no opinion)

9-28-07 malaysian pirates steal eighteen billion from film producers per year "temptation" quality entertainment from the same folks who brought you "the price is right" fired their writers for walking out and demanding better conditions, giving the writers guild something to be upset about. malaysian pirates save film consumers eighteen billion bucks per year

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10-2-07 writers guild calls for strike authorization vote (nothing else is new)

10-3-07 viacom pleads: "please! without international intellectual copyright laws this country has no new worth at all! just junk bonds!"

10-4-07 federal court to decide whether a wrongful firing was racist. talent demands newline pay up, to which new-line responds, "lord of the rings? ..why? did we sign something for those films that we are unaware of? ...a hundred thousand dollar fine for a half a billion dollar film??? ..not only will we pay the ticket! we'll hang our heads in shame! hee hee"

10-5-07 dave brown of vegas call-back news say: "don't put sag eligible on

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resume, put nonunion." and he's the guru of... who is this guy? scribes and producers discussing seriously money and... money vod, or "vcrzod", to stop piracy... "i wouldn't do that, dave"

10-10-07 headline "hollywood readies for possible strike" could be on any rag, any month of any year, in any context, so i'll just skip it. scribes and prods tried in vain to resolve differences with civil discourse. news flash: reality shows, like all the super rich have some great lawyers. aftra president very upset about the article in the front of the new screen actor rag - the one that hasn't come out yet. so i've heard.

10-11-07 some say directors could decide whether or not the writers will strike

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broadway may strike, scribes may strike, actors may strike, could shut hollywood down. at this rate people might start reading books! (..oh wait forgot about youtube..)

10-12-07 the godfather of iatse says he's feeling disrespected by the writers guild. says ships need to sail in the same direction or.. it was unclear.. something about sleeping with fishes.. whatever that means. congress, rather than ending the war, discussing their copyright laws

10-15-07 nothing new, except sridhar pappu, it seems, has italian in-laws

10-16-07 seems "residual resentment" (or "ectoplasm") slowing contract talks rift widens between sag and aftra (don't worry about this, it's been fluxing back and forth for some seventy some-odd years now, means nothing)

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peeved scribes on net-pay heats up on net (i.e. my site two years ago) i can't use the "news you can use" so i'll write one about skipping it

10-17-07 read yesterdays news? good, then you're all caught up. and... ...refrigerator.

10-18-07 sag says aftra is inept, aftra says sag wants to control aftra nothing like a good fight to bring us closer. next comes make-up... merger mark in print! a quote: "models that surround them are changing" ooh! nasty!

10-19-07 sag to receive star from hollywood historic trust. (oh neat. the who?) aftra warns sag with emotionally charged buzz words. what's the big deal? writers start talking again monday. or, writing. or... wait... i'm confused.

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10-22-07 twelve articles with one point: the writers guild may actually strike mainstream hollywood gaining popularity in foreign countries behind seats sideways in pickup.. could someone please come walk on my back?

10-23-07 nothing new, sag and aftra are in it for blood, writers gunna strike... oh, the federal government said no to the unions' request to "investigate the legality" of canada's producers incentives (...i hate when i have to force these things into the five-seven-five mold)

10-24-07 actra says "whew! we were actually worried that the u.s. had the right to come tell us who we can and can't give perks on our own soil..." u.s. heads global anti-astral-piracy agreement... scary?

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10-25-07 the folks who give us the news are all on the street watching the sag star so, for all intents and purposes, there is no news since yesterday

10-26-07 aftra buddies up with the mob (iaste) ..we'll see if sag gives in.. sag offers guidelines in case of writers strike (step one: please stop calling sag and asking what to do in case of writers strike.. step two:) keep on working, audition, when you have spare time, feel free to picket with them. "bad vibes" may be to blame for lack of writers deal, and the aftra thing. if we'd all just sit and breath once in a while, this town would work just fine.

10-29-07 sag is into scribe strike, directors guild not so much, i just don't know... "if scribe strike lasts five months, could be very painful for the consumers"

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oh who do they think we are? that's grotesque.. "it's too awful.. where's my soma?"

10-31-07 writers guild may not go on strike tomorrow.. (may be later next week) increase in writers applying for day jobs as burger king fry cooks networks figure they can run news shows during strike (cause.. those aren't.. scripted.....?)

11-1-07 with all of fox's reality shows, it would hardly notice strike a "scantily clad" "media whore" made waves at f.c.c. meeting

11-2-07 radiation drives the writers to strike, and not pollinate flowers then the aphids die, then the ants, then all life on earth: starting monday (3 hours later) my pre-emptive strike announcement, turns out it was prophetic... as of

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one fifty pm today, the strike is set for monday november fifth. so scribes put up your feathers, sit back and watch reality tv...

11-5-07 notice to actors with time to protest with scribes in front of big four... cbs' main gate, fox' on motor avenue... paramount windsor gate, universal at red-line's end. starts today, nine am, have fun mark says dont forget culver studios gate 3 (from his blackberry) other than the ten articles about the strike there is no new news

11-6-07 isn't stopping work enough without the silly marches with the signs? so jay leno was on tv speaking for the writers, which is odd studios relieved: they could skip the expensive pilot season, thanks

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to this strike... they save money, not having to pay actors, writers, and it's okay because the other networks are not competing with them...

11-7-07 everyone's talking like the writers strike will go on and on and on i, for one, miss jon stewart and stephen colbert. aren't there some smart scabs?

11-12-07 schwartzeneggar seeks to end unionized laborerr.. i mean the strike.. david young proclaims: "strike day five is a success.. we are not working!!" collins and munoz say that steward would say "well played sir" (which, of course he can't on account of the strike) in reference to fox being happy. tv producer norman lear flatters murdock calling him "pharoah"

11-15-07 directors ponder what they'll say, equity goes back to the table

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the mob (iatse) accuses writers guild of being "strike happy" if strike succeeds, pickup line "i'm a writer" may become impressive

11-20-07 picket line outside warner brothers giggling... eating m&ms...

11-21-07 major studios sit and watch the money they save pile up... twenty million per day... day seventeen that's thirty four million... they hurtin...

11-27-07 scribes and studios to meet, discuss terms, high noon, someplace called "the spot"

11-28-07 talking continues, john edwards pontificates, picket lines playing

11-29-07 cbs cancels democracy on account of the writers strike

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economists show producers save enough to buy more christmas gifts for the poor, many of whom are out of work scribes, therefore it's okay.

11-30-07 wednesdays rumor turned out to be false; dan brown strikes again, so to speak...

12-3-07 when actors ad lib, is that "writing"? so they're scabs? ..why is the sky blue?

12-4-07 writers proposing payment based on viewership (concept!) we shall see... "what's entertainment worth?" whatever the adverts pay for your eyeballs

12-5-07 producers: "we don't really need writers." writers: "we all have day jobs" lounging about in talks, eating grapes, no longer playing "i hate you"

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12-6-07 sag foundation (a separate corporation) supports sag in it's supporting of the writers, who are close to an agreement with hens

12-7-07 sag to host foreclosed upon movies auction (not a joke) on tuesday some reporter thinks the strike will be over soon. not falling for it media loves the strike in l.a., media in new york ignores

12-10-07 it keeps going, and going, and going, and going, and going, and...

12-12-07 the only award show granted a waiver, to survive the storm like the bubba-gump shrimp boat after the hurricane: the sag awards (yay!)

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12-13-07 it's been a long long long time since there's been anything new in the news

12-17-07 strike gags the award season, due to the season's touchy gag reflex

12-18-07 in solidaritea with the strike, haikus will be put on hold till there's something, any thing, else in the news besides "no progress on strike"

12-20-07 no writers for the oscars so words flow without direction into cameras who then knows what said will be as thence conundrum plexi fit cow martian dance can can can u do the can can i think i can

1-7-08 some news: writers are going fi-core, now that jay has broken scab ice

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1-8-08 axium payroll closes all it's doors like it's nineteen twenty nine

1-9-08 the fool sayeth: "let's make this more complex, then it will be easier"

1-10-08 sag awards could, if they weren't on tnt, outshine other awards directors guild talk about getting more intense. sounds pretty intense. rumor has it, sag has an internal dispute... but i don't buy it... axium's caput. (someone's just bought themselves a tropical island)

1-11-08 jay "the scab" leno tops this weeks ratings race, but weinstein and ua lead the way toward forcing the big five to sign, by making own deals

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1-14-08 sag and aftra may become two distinct corporate entities, some say... rumor has it, the directors guild may... put on... skirts... and go on strike...?

1-15-08 the grammys: how did they last so long with such a stupid.. stupid name? studios being all: "you can't leave me, writers! i'm throwing you out!" directors making progress in new media talks... i guess what they have in mind is shows in the future with blocking.. but no words or plot..

1-16-08 two obscure lesser unions support the.... why do they call them... grammys? true to their roles, the directors are pointing the way for scribes and actors

1-17-08 writers watching the directors, wondering what they should to do if

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(sources for this news include blogs, rumors, "watercooler scuttlebutt")

1-18-08 directors reach deal with studios directors reach deal with studios directors reach deal with studios directors reach deal with studios directors reach deal with studios directors reach deal with studios directors reach deal with studios (start again at top)

1-22-08 sag warns: do not make screeners into avi's and create torrent sure your ip's masked, no one will ever know, but it's unethical

1-23-08 grammys will likely be okay, and oscars are still limping along guilds and studios agree to an informal fireside discussion writers demand cash for writing scripts for so-called "reality" shows

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polititians aren't concerned with entertainment industry issues (because they know that whatever they say, western block will vote for blue)

2-6-08 there's this article explaining rule one, but it's not exactly news the writers will meet saturday to discuss terms of their surrender article happy someone arrested and killed more chinese pirates

2-7-08 random guy on train even agrees, strike could end after this weekend insert a carbon copy of last weeks new on sag-aftra right... here oscars getting grouchy

2-11-08 sag and aftra renew their vows, just without the "or for poorer" part writers strike "all but settled", got net, papers think cartoons was a loss

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2-13-08 wealthiest actors coercing leaders to not consider a strike why would they care if some struggling actors get fair deals? (hint: they don't)

2-14-08 all todays news is about the stars rushing the negotiations (happy day of the priest that got his head cut off by the emperor)

2-19-08 movement toward counting only votes of sag members with certain incomes sag considers (ouch! my arm!) early contract talks with the studios youtube producers hungry for something that will make them more money

2-20-08 studios made an extra two point five billion off the writers strike dan glickman wants to crack down on piracy down south (buena suerte)

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2-21-08 directors happy, managers happy, some new video game... thing

2-22-08 happy-face wants to keep the sad-face from having the right to vote... ha!

2-25-08 how bout a counteroffer: those who pay dues, vote, and those who don't, don't alan succinctly tells celebrity faction "i'll think about it" james silva pinches self to see if he's dreaming, it's so heart warming

2-27-08 what if we only strike against studios owned by tom hanks and them? maybe all members can vote except for those who make too much money? writers embrace new three-year contract, causing it to get all wrinkled

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2-28-08 hypothetical future sag strike slowing down production again

2-29-08 some say sag new york teams up with hanks and bush to castrate bargaining

3-4-08 sag preemptively sets the indie producers against studios

3-5-08 aftra tells sag to give in, or else they'll undercut them - ha ha ha!

3-6-08 iactor (which is not apple's version of an actor) goes live! wooo! indie film channel (in time for long interim...?) to wed blockbuster

3-10-08 (*whew*) sag and aftra to pass the peace pipe... or joint - agreement.. s'all good aftra makes tv deal, and warner brothers is on the internet

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3-11-08 redstone and murdock wed again, this time they call it huna... or hula...

3-12-08 redstone: finally someone who *should* be worried about the sag strike

3-13-08 studios (who are rightfully terrified at the prospect of sag's potential staying power, still employed by the indie producers, in conjunction with possibly competing with the indies in a broader sense, with the blockbuster deal and all) urge early talks with sag

3-18-08 tom and george don't get why not-rich actors want more than cd-sale crumbs

3-26-08 villaraigosa jumps on the "castrate-union" bandwagon, sadly

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3-31-08 sag and aftra's soap opera makes soap operas look like real life

4-4-08 sag nix's qualified voting sighting: "what the hell were you thinking?? the poor can't vote?? oh brilliant, yeah, freekin' brilliant - it's a union people! not some overt classbased oligarchy! what the hell were you thinking?!?" (i, for one, shall rerefrain from commenting on this heated issue)

4-7-08 guns don't kill moses, natural causes does, so it seems. we'll miss ya.

4-8-08 studios just wrote a letter to sag stating: y'all are gunna strike

4-15-08 conjoined heads looking opposite directions shout: solidarity!

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4-16-08 joint studio/sag statement on first day ends with kisses, but no hugs

4-17-08 dave mcnary gets last month's memo about sag's interim agreement negotiators keep teasing us with updates that say nothing

4-23-08 negotiations committee says: "wait, we're on the clock? ...one more week"

4-28-08 actually there isn't any news

5-1-08 oooohhh... now we know what roberta's text message said, and why the soap-thing was so flimsy: studios say: "no way, go on strike, we will just use aftra"

5-5-08 sag blinks, hollywood breaths sigh of relief, terms of surrender tuesday

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happy cinco! die, french! (till they retaliate the next day) ...party!

5-7-08 sag didn't yield, so studios talking with her sister, aftra (can tell studios, from experience, that that's a bad... bad idea)

5-8-08 sag says "wait! don't hang up!" studios say "aftra's on the other line...." murdock stresses the importance of murdock, and why to buy murdock

5-9-08 no new sag news. far as world news, russians marching parading nukes, oil has run out, all in all it looks like the world is about to end. sweet.

5-12-08 schwarzenegger's still out there, somewhere, grunting about incentives everyone's asking "will sag strike?" we say "dunno," "maybe," "prob'ly not..."

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let's spice things up and say: "i'm not at liberty to say." (hee hee hee)

5-15-08 as previously planned, aftra and studios share a cigar, and studios, (lovingly calling aftra kid) welcome them to the famly. studios invite sag to come, grovel, and cry we dont wanna strike...

5-19-08 aftra realizes the scam is obvious, starts having issues with studios over the net, may not be quick and easy after all

5-20-08 aftra discovers maybe she and sag arent so different after all, and everyone grows, learns a great deal, becomes better people.... (*tear*)

5-21-08 murdock told murdock chip in murdock heads: buy more murdock. murdock wins.

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studios argue the following: pirates are already ripping actors off.. so whats the difference if we are too? ...seriously

5-27-08 aftra talks nearing end, sag talks to resume on wednesday... ...cucumber

5-28-08 aftra reached a deal with the studios... but... we dont know what it is...... gta4 out just in time to clarify where the money is

5-29-08 after sag slept with aftras boyfriend, iatse was all oh my god and, like, was hanging out with the dga and aftra, sag was like still hanging out with the writers guild but they were like not talking to the other group, its all just so... high school, and the negotiations...?

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5-30-08 this just in: second hand entertainment news rags cutting and pasting yesterdays news, and rearranging paragraphs... ...making new headlines...

6-2-08 peter bart wasnt paying attention at all a few years ago roberta got a good deal? great! sag will get the same and alls good.... right?

6-3-08 sags and studs back in proverbial negotiationsaddle again

universal fire sounds metaphoric, but its not. alligator.

6-4-08 its not a waiver we say, a thousand times a day, then some schlemiel

writes an article waivers will keep sag busy. its called *research*, people!

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6-5-08 lots of articles on negotiations start with rumor has it

6-6-08 with the russians on one side, the british on the other... bad example... with the producers on one side, aftra on the other, general fear of industry shutting down... lets just say its getting difficult (and todays the two year anniversary of the end of the world)

6-10-08 a lot of people, writers too, with signs, shouting vote no! yesterday (some protests get a lot of media coverage but no riot gear)

6-11-08 convoluted isnt the right word, but its the first word that comes to mind 6-12-08 someone calls daily variety "entertainment industry trade bible"

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jeffrey korchik speaks: our ships must all sail in the same direction (no news)

6-16-08 alan says likely deal wont be reached by dead-line, dead-line can be pushed critics freak out, say does he want a strike?! missing the pushed dead-line part rick verrier thinks sag new york criticizing sag l.a. is unusual

6-17-08 rigermortis set in prematurely in the tv industry alan challenges reardon to open debate, she says no thank you andrew salomons survey says theyre all cowards so lets just forfit

6-18-08 aftras ballots went out today.. will they vote no? (vote no! vote no!) hypothetical no contract zone starts july; anarchy sets in...

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as if every state was right-to-work and every one has gone fi-core

6-19-08 a call for unity; pretending first date, after a bitter divorce what people dont get is sag tried everything else and it didnt work... ...so we came back in time to try this... just like in butterfly effect... king redstone might break up with his favorite concubine: dreamworks

6-20-08 "strike watch" is sorry for not taking it's very significant role

more seriously, and promises to be more sensitive to the

feelings of all those who's livelihoods are at stake. (but i'm not sorry)

6-23-08 tom hanks, producer, sides with aftra: revealing producers alliance

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with aftra against actors, and against unionized labor in general

6-25-08 two plus two is three, or two plus two is five? you decide. rock the vote. tom hanks?? ahaha hahahahahaha! ...we got jack nicholson

6-27-08 clooney tries to fix sag-aftra divide, like so many stray cats *special bonus mad-lib haiku* (4 syllable witty adjective) (1 syllable proper now) (2 syllable adverb) (3 syllable imperative verb) (2 syllable direct object). ...(5 syllable ironically applicable clich)

7-1-08 today sag reads and rereads the offer, pretty much what aftra got no residuals on made for new media. so.. i'm thinkin' no..

7-2-08 nothing new, far as sag goes, but those thesbians got it goin on!

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7-3-08 say joe-bob hires you, a hundred bucks deferred, for his youtube page youre brilliant, and it gets a million hits a day, joe-bob becomes a youtube partner, rakes in cash, gives you a hundred bucks, are you happy? ...aftra?

7-7-08 sean penn tells people who have already voted to vote no armin shimermans eighth grade thesis paper makes it into newspapers

7-9-08 aftra voted yes. time for sag to discuss terms of our surrender.

7-10-08 producers offer ten million (one hundred per actor?) wage increase over previous deal, sag insists on better deal than given to the american federation of weathermen and gameshow hosts

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7-11-08 producers made new offer, old plus ten, sag said well think about it. thats just what mommy said when she really meant no! producers seemed to say so they went to the press and shouted sag said no! in an echo chamber

7-14-08 schwarzenegger and villaraigosa wonder why debating sides haven't asked them to be impartial arbitrators.. (or why we haven't asked tom hanks.. or bob taft or fred hartley.. or joe mccarthy.. or bush)

7-16-08 an unofficial meeting between sag and the producers today the mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart (fritz)

7-17-08 now hear this! ..secret meeting yesterday was two hours long.. and secret

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dave mcnary of self-proclaimed entertainment industry bible daily variety, called this several hours. not a big deal, just not true (i could go off on dave mcnarys spins for a while, but ill resist)

7-18-08 more of these people, card carrying sag members, but producers, speak out, failing to point out to their public that their income comes from both sides of the table, using their star power to undermine alan

7-21-08 heath ledger really was as good as they say he was, you should see it

7-22-08 labor still has power in hollywood. most notably, in the word: labor. it strikes a chord, you know? people think hoffa... marx. thats about it, though

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7-23-08 theyre actually making a movie out of the sims

7-24-08 ive no opinion on this: the poor cant vote guy challenges alan

7-25-08 hollywood is on location working with kurds in iraq to grow their own movie scene (appropriate considering they both worship peacocks)

7-29-08 britain does not wish to be contaminated by product placement saying would erode viewers trust ... viewers trust? ..what is this, the fifties? sag circles wagons, rifles drawn, demands bannerad compensation the standstill has been broken (literally, not figuratively)

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7-30-08 warring factions are united against current offer, unopposed except by aftra, sag new york, varietys dave mcnary, tom hanks, kevin spacey, and other producers who also have sag cards. in other news, sag asks aftra so... wanna joint negotiate ads?

8-1-08 president short steps down, loeb up, in chicago mob actors union maybe everyone will stop babbling about twenty-twelve now that they are making a movie about it: its mainstream, get over it

8-11-08 sag celebrates its platinum anniversary in nosebleed section in olympics news: he kexin turns 16 (if you use venus years)

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8-12-08 maybe if sag and studios gang up on clickstar and verizon then wed all see some money, and not fear the death of the silver screen

8-13-08 negotiations locked, sag new york complaining, same as it ever was

8-19-08 strength makes clear: we dont want to take away your vote. well, not anymore.

8-20-08 dga claims weak new media contract is their way of letting new media grow and that demanding a share would hinder artists experimentation (and without their weak contract, youtube would just die.)

8-21-08 theres something about canada, and the emmys including cable

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8-22-08 david mcnary refuses to acknowledge that sags refusal would raise the bar for the other guilds and all would benefit, instead he sticks to daily varietys stance beside hanks.. aftra.. new york..

8-25-08 linkedin (that social networking site. no, no, not myspace.. the other one... no, not facebook.. not friendster... not, irc youre way off.. twitter? no.. not plaxo.. no.. not vkontakte... yeah... yeah linkedin. that one.) so.. anyway... linkedin struggles to remain relevant. so... why is this news?

8-26-08 candace lombardi writes objective article based on research, wow!

(mcnary, be sure not to emulate her, or variety will fire you)

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8-28-08 sag and aftra have extended their ad contract, sorkins on facebook (and the haiku news synopsizer had coffee explode in kitchen)

8-29-08 european film sales suffering (..but i thought european films were all these artsy black-and-white films the unwashed masses just dont get and whos values not in income, or ratings, but in the quiet nod of nyu grad students with long cigarette holders and ripped jeans...?)

9-3-08 in a way, blasting sags negotiating tactic, is, in itself, a negotiating tactic. sag says, your final offer is still lame!

9-4-08 writers guild endorse sags actions. that, plus poland, would be two allies

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abu dhabi shares some if its giant piles of cash with hollywood

9-5-08 in two years online viewing doubles for those who feel new media is not worth fighting for, allow me to do the math for you... 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 268, 512, 1024 2048, 4096, 8192....

9-8-08 sag promises to keep confidential info confidential. ..why? the internet and video games are just a passing fad, actors so just take the deal theyre offering, then tom hanks will love you again

9-9-08 the world has ended. lonelygirl15 is on hbo next month.

social networking and multi-player gaming fusing together

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man plays for three days, drops dead. be careful, this is getting more common.

9-10-08 captain obvious say: aftra getting more work on account of scare

9-11-08 no news. *but* on this very day... seven years back... meghan turned sixteen

9-12-08 even batman cant stop paranoid stockholders from selling their shares

9-15-08 ken osmond, you may remember from dead women in lingerie has been suing sag for pulling a writers guild (that is, forgetting to give out to members the giant pile of cash from foreign royalties) in other news, sag claims to be talking with the producers, while the producers claim um.. what? no, we havent heard from sag in a while, which

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leaves some wondering, who are these people who look just like producers?!

9-16-08 out of the murky paranoid seas of prime-time series delays comes one statistic thats kinda neat, if taken out of context: primetime product placement is down fifteen percent this year. isnt that neat? yay!

9-17-08 sag and aftra both support actras standing up to ad industry

9-18-08 point: ninety percent of members polled support sags stance: holding out for more. counter-point: ninety percent of members polled support sags stance: holding out for more?

9-19-08 power shifts from first to strength, white flag should fly relatively soon

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9-24-08 hostile takeover of writers board, backed by tom conflict of interest hanks... oh, wait... mixed that up... writers guild has nice, pleasant elections. alls well.

9-25-08 stalemate isnt the right word... more like, neither side can see a good move so they both just keep staring... forgetting whos turn it is... forever

9-26-08 not much potential for aftra to undercut sag in commercials so, no need to stage some dramatic clash over made-up non-issue so, aftra and sag will joint negotiating the commercials contract

9-29-08 actra may strike soon, if so, aftra will be like forrest gumps shrimp boat good time to buy stock in newmans salad dressing, but sell by friday

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9-30-08 lets talk about this, we want some residuals for new media the offer we made in june remains, there will be no new revisions lets talk about this, we want some residuals for new media the offer we made in june remains, there will be no new revisions (repeat)

10-1-08 in the wake of the yesterdays skipping record, sag will meet today to vote on whether or not to vote on whether or not they should strike.. meanwhile, bollywood just went on strike ...skipping the vote to vote to strike?!

10-2-08 sag votes yes to vote yes or no on whether or not to strike to end amptps intransigence. whoa! check out that word! google it!

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sag will honor james earl jones. ill throw in my two cents: ...and now, your highness we will discuss the location of your hidden rebel base. good stuff.

10-3-08 added producers incentive with bailout.. now how much would you pay?

10-6-08 prodigal dreamworks, his share spent on booze, runs home to paramount mcnary catches up with last weeks news about sag aftra and ads

10-7-08 equity sag and aftra, together in red herring harmony

10-8-08 this adorable anonymous industry veterans quote: they cant even agree what theyre fighting over or if theyre still fighting reveals: not enough television coverage of sag contract news

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10-9-08 amptp states: theres a drought. so why are you all so thirsty? membership states: did you seriously just say that? are you stupid? strength states: actually thats a very good point.. why are we so thirsty?

10-10-08 sag will educate members as to why to vote to strike, then poll them to see if they would vote to strike if asked to vote to strike. then, if it turns out theyd vote to strike if asked to, then theyll be asked to vote to strike. like product placement in the news, dave mcnary writes this article: hollywood dot com, president, hollywood dot com, hollywood dot com. now we all know theres a site called hollywood dot com. thanks dave mcnary!

10-14-08 this just in! sag may or may not go on strike soon! glad thats all cleared up...

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10-15-08 more on unionss coming together, right now, over disabled. holly-reporter adver-tarticle: googles poptub videos

10-16-08 rupert murdock says: im a humble newspaper guy. please dont strike, sag. tv starting to slow down: it takes two days to download the office

10-17-08 dave mcnary wants to remind us of rupert murdocks wise advise oh dave mcnary wed be so lost without you please dont ever change 10-20-08 sag rearranges deck chairs on the... queen mary! its a lovely ship... sag will vote.. to have objective.. third party to... decide.. something.... yeah (some perfect blend of hanks and nicholson.. like a.. bosom.. psychopath)

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10-21-08 sag gets honored for seventy five years agos great accomplishments sag and studios to sit down with federal marriage counselor

10-22-08 michael tells katya if the ukrainian shoe fits, just go with it obama to use interactive media for campain, a first mccain responds by saying .....he did what? twitching.. blinking way too much...

10-23-08 dave mcnary seems happy with the idea of gonzalez stepping

in to mediate between studios and sag, (which makes me nervous) sumner give em what they want redstone (not to be confused with rupert give em right wing brain washing murdock) wont sell his media empire

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10-24-08 captain obvious news for the day: hollywood supports gay marriage. juan gonzalez, the impartial third party, will be having a few drinks, chatting with the amptp, or so dave mcnary has been told by his and amptps mutual anonymous friends, before gonzalez sits down with sag and the amptp. russian production has slowed (no kidding! when did solaris come out...?)

10-27-08 dave mcnarys source was wrong, gonzalez met with sag first. ...or perhaps it was one of those heisenberg things: we read it therefore it changes picture: juan gets a call, or reads variety, says hmm... that doesnt sound good, calls sag, meets alan... allen... then all was a rumor. smart guy.

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10-28-08 some f.c.c. guy will be out of a job soon. anybody care? some guy talked about cutting back on frivolous spending like netflix in short, safe to say, there is no entertainment news at all today

10-29-08 sonys profits are down seventy two percent, but rupert murdocks myspace is the place kids go to watch videos, (and, thanks to old new media contract, all that ad revenue goes to to rupert murdock)

10-30-08 sag to give out unclaimed residuals to a lot of dead people

10-31-08 gonzalez was the same guy who mediated for the writers guild oh great! so was that before or after the strike?? thats not comforting...

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obama supports more regulation of net than mister mccain big deal, that just means better growth environment for hacker pirates (when the whole thing is disneyland as aol the black web shall rise...) ironman two starts shooting next week and, incase you were wondering, all of marilyns unpaid residuals are going to bill gates

11-3-08 australias u.s. money worth more now that their money is worthless budgets increase (sort of) then after sales come in thats more money too. mediator juan goes to sag, sag says contracts unacceptable juan goes to a.m. p.t.p. who says contracts our final offer how much we paying this guy? could have just handed him a newspaper

11-4-08 justice roberts claims: issue with the s and f words is their meaning

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(then should we ban sex and feces as well? how bout poop and making love?) whoa! the stocks all just went way up today... wish i had a time machine...

11-5-08 well, no news today.. except no rain today. oh, and obama won. as for prop 8, let make socal its own state, its capitol: noho

11-6-08 election very popular: a lot of folks watched tv. so, ads gave lots of money to studios. see its all connected.. in the circle of life... ...hip bone connected to the... back bone... (no news today)

11-7-08 iatse, famous for no longer being all about mafia carbombings, blackmail, and embezzling, resumed negotiations

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11-10-08 sag clarifies rule one: if you point a camera at yourself and say, to be or not to be, you are violating membership rule one mgm and youtube, sittn in a tree, k i s s i n...

11-11-08 movie industry conspiring to have nothing in the news for me to compose even remotely interesting haiku-synopseez

11-12-08 so there was lawsuit... and... i am certain that i have no comment

11-13-08 former writers guild staff tracey howze and michelle trinh facing fifty hours community service for stealing seventeen thousand from writers (facebook says i have no mutual friends of friends with either of them)

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11-14-08 negotiations to resume, with gonzelez next week, so they say residuals work like this: if you made a lot, you will make a lot lionsgate taking over myspace as well as youtube.. but making a point to say its not what it looks like ...doesnt murdock own myspace...?

11-17-08 the news today is about sag and studios meeting on thursday" anticipation, same news as last week, on and on, like every anticipated apocalypse, y2k, bird flu, here it comes! 11-18-08 yang, having failed to form an evil alliance with gates, leaves yahoo (and yes: that is the closest thing to sag in the news we have today)

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11-19-08 award winning films arent necessarily the money making films (moviemakers do the voting, not the people going to movies) yahoo and gates forge evil alliance, throwing a red-herring nonsequitur: were not swallowing yahoo whole but, yeah, theyre the same now (everyone biting off pieces of everyone else, like the undead)

11-20-08 with iatses yeah sure whatever where do i sign session finished, all eyes turn to sag. theyre sitting at the table, right now... as i type... the writers guild says wheres our new media residuals? ..so studios say we never agreed on new media residuals... writers guild says you did! we had a strike over it! you guys gave in... ...anyhow, i have the solution to all these problems... studios,

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i know you really dont have the money. heres what to do: make better movies. dont give out screeners, or trust any of your staff with copies.

11-21-08 negotiations update: hours and hours and hours of take the deal... no... youd better take the deal... no... cmon take the deal.. no... please... no... (repeat)

11-24-08 gonzalezs magic wand malfunctioned, soon sag will educate members as to why to vote to strike, then poll them to see if theyll vote to strike, then, if so, theyll call the vote to strike, then, if they vote to strike, theyll strike

11-25-08 variety says that fi-core (shhh! dont say the f-word! ..plug your ears!) with the looming strike, everyone and their dog is calling sag, which is great timing since its a holiday and half the staff is out of state

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nellie andreeva asks: can television take another strike edward answers: no. absolutely not. just watch, every tv will be in a dumpster somewhere, there just arent enough reality shows and reruns to keep the great juggernaut afloat. (...you think im kidding?)

12-2-08 studios say, gee, writers guild, how convenient you complain about your new media residuals not coming right in the middle of mediations... writers say, okay, mister non-sequitur, where the hell are our new media residuals?? their response, i got yer new media residuals right here! ... but you dont.... thats the thing....

12-3-08 amptp says federal minimum wage too high, given

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recession, we should be grateful to get what they pay liberian children in rubberfactories how else will the u.s.a compete? (they didnt really say any of that, just illustrating a point)

12-4-08 producer michael farrell wont vote for sag strike. here we go again. okay all the high profile celebrities turned producers, but who still *technically* have sag cards, yall line up and talk on tv about how youre not like the rest of those greedy actors and how the contract you offered yourself is just fine for you so everyone else who wants to be like you should vote like you. its all so predictable.

12-5-08 viacom will lay off seven percent of its work force very soon

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sumner redstone had no comment on the issue, sighting: i have six gold-plated solid platinum toilette seats, im *not* talking to the press.

12-8-08 sag will hold a town hall fire-side ol country homecookin... thing... tonight 12-9-08 four hundred members enthusiastically support the strike, just one hundred forty nine thousand six hundred more till majority!

12-10-08 the earliest the strike would become possible: late january only other piece of news: some guy named.. lee-no (?) is changing time slots leno.. where do i know that name? oh yeah! something i wrote a year back...

12-11-08 sag strike wont affect golden globes. (lost writers strike popularity)

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whyd the chicken cross the picket-line? his day-job paid minimum wage

12-12-08 if seventy four percent or less vote yes, all goes back to normal and in ten years im an actor will be the worst pick-up line ever

12-15-08 in the future theyll remember the unlucky timing, the contract, the recession, the white flag, the new media contract that put sag on equal footing with every shmoe on youtube, working for nothing.

12-16-08 "patch" producer mike farrell, reno 911 producer danny devito, "bye bye benjamin" producer, rhea perlman, "listen up" producer jason alexander, "wild things are" producer tom hanks "men who stare at goats" producer george clooney, and "sahara" producer

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matt damon, oppose sag strike authorization. i have two questions. one: is there any actor who says "no" who makes his money *acting*? two: do lions get to vote on zebra migration strategies?...why not?

12-17-08 no news. ...oh, murdock says hell use aftra. happy saturnalia!

...national maple syrup day... underdog day wright brothers day... okay, okay, theres *one* actress who says no, whos not a producer..

12-18-08 kloymersht televiz's vertl banitsn aftra. meshaer zayn ibershrekn sag?!?

12-19-08 all todays news is about the sag awards, and a lot of movies ive never heard of, and repetitive echoes on this strike business.

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efenen ekshnuskdik oser valdmentsh vaybl veynerish, oy vey!

12-22-08 this just in! even on days when there is nothing at all worthwhile to report on, news rags keep cranking out words, often articles from the day or week before in a blender, or someones editorial

12-23-08 for those of you who were looking forward to all this being over... surprise! its... gunna drag out for a while longer... ...mid february?

12-24-08 hollywood rags closed for christmas thats the problem! theyre all not jewish!

12-29-08 ed asner is with alan, thats two presidents verses one, ha ha! theres a headline: say cut! to sag strike with a line like that, no wonder

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the author remains anonymous. staff writer. it says here. rubbish. and this: hit the bricks in tough times - are the writers on strike or something?? ahh... dave mcnary... lets see what he has to say... hang on while i read it.... ... ...ah. just that alan met with strength and then postponed the vote. week-old news happy holidays everyone! lets hope the world doesnt end next year...

12-30-08 dumb headlines - take 2, the sequel! here... bracing for strike 2, the sequel! (its an australian newspaper, so... perhaps the wit doesnt translate)

1-6-09 look around... somethings missing... is it the bees? yes... movie shoots? ...that too

1-7-09 sags basic cable deal expired in december? oh... well get to it...

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james earl jones wont take sides on strike issue. (smart! ...let the rest of us fight it out, then ride in like the cavalry and take over the union! ....?)

1-8-09 warner takes twenty five billion dollar hit. (thats an expensive bowl!) dvd sales down... is it the recession?? or combination of hulu, piratebay, speedytv, netfilx, movieflix, and quicksilverscreen?

1-9-09 they say the sides are getting more vocal... but i dont hear megaphones... anymore... perhaps its that the sides are getting more articulate.

its impossible to tell. you really cant hear the words through those things.

1-12-09 good news for any strike supporters: nearly two thousand oppose strike.

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translation: less than one out of every hundred members oppose strike. among them: tom hanks and george clooney, (who, were they hypnotized, might just remember what it was like to be a working actor, trying to get gigs, while supporting themselves waitering, hoping their boss wouldnt fire

them for missing days on those rare occasions they got some minor role)

1-13-09 i read the news, and i have no opinion or comment what-so-ev ...but i look forward to seeing another one of those shiny golden... round things... opening outside these high windows... theyre just so pretty!

1-14-09 no gold parachute! that is, none needed, no one jumping out of planes. a lot of people stayed up all night, but nothing much was accomplished

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(contrary to the rumors spread by that guy who ran for president)

1-15-09 reporters, after a good nights sleep, just cant understand what its like... arguing... for sooo many hours... the smoke... from chimineys... looks vaguely like... bones... mean bones... where am i? who am i? what is this... strange... place?

1-16-09 someone... well call ed murrow or, no... yeah. well... anyhow, mcarthy says... no, these aliases wont work. hard to haiku on certain things without fearing for my job. skip that. in other news, it looks like sag may put the latest contract offer to a direct vote from the membership. (a swiss approach toward democracy, as opposed to the play-doh model)

1-20-09 if i see the words: over 2000 sag members including tom hanks

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and george clooney in a mcnary article one more time im going to bite my own eyes out. in other news, lots of arguing. special bonus editorial haiku: ...the nice thing about back when there was tv, you knew what time it was... 1-21-09 one sag faction puts out anti-strike youtube vid, someone edits it into pro-strike vid, zefram cochrane blames "members", ada says it's not true, it's all very present-day junior-highschool, so at least there's that

1-22-09 zwecker, chicago sun times, dusts off old daily variety and

writes about the doug allen thing as if it was relevant this week, and thinks people will be giving each other looks at the sag awards. sony looses three billion dollars. (didya check your pockets, sony??)

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1-23-09 its amazing how many articles they can write saying nothing

1-26-09 sag awards, winners are! ....my eyes wont focus on such trivial things. but everyone had fun. kate winslet has role in a nazi outfit soon.

1-27-09 everyones saying now that allens fired therell be no strike. well see. (what? nothing about the half a million dollar parachute? ..chicken..)

1-28-09 nothing new in news since yesterday, except that facebook cant handle art and deleted my account, here is the link to my new account

1-29-09 sag to return to negotiating table february third

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so... this is really the final offer? yes ...you sure? yes ....positive?

2-2-09 the last forty-six meetings went like this: yes no yes no yes no yes tomorrow, fortyseven... janus other face gets a turn to speak... 2-3-09 whoa! didnt see that one coming... alan to sue sag for firing doug, talks with producers postponed, a judge could rule as early as today.

2-4-09 no one is immune to these economic hard times. mickey mouse, for instance, so far this quarter, has only made ten billion dollars! its so sad! if you do the math, that means he can just barely afford the fifty-five thousand pounds of white truffles per day that he needs to survive!!!

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2-5-09 hilarious! kay... l.a. business journal is a day behind, fine msnbc is full-on talking about how sag is going back to the table with the amptp this tuesday, thats so cool! theyre like the kid in school whos staring out the window, the teacher says charlie, what did i just say? were you... calling role...? pay attention!!

2-6-09 the la times, the new york times, huffington post, the variety, associated, hollywood reporter, backstage, entertainment weekly, bbc, msnbc, and forbes, all say the same thing. (what? you ask? see yesterdays news.)

2-9-09 a dead horse by any other name, would still smell as sweet... kill it! again!!

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new team calls themselves back to work perhaps its a ruse and theyre really

planning to fight for new media residuals? well, one can still hope...

2-10-09 if at first you dont succeed, try try again, but after thirty tries...? well... tom edison didnt give up. failed, failed, then stole teslas lightbulb... the moral of the story is... theres really no news today. much love, 2-11-09 sag and studios to meet next tuesday (now *that* sounds familiar) with the new (u.s.) president, less hassle of having to write out those lists of gifts from producers we all get, for various reason

2-12-09 sag and studios agree to meet, discuss and not negotiate in the press. (oh yeah?! well theyd darn well better- oh, wait ...am i the press?)

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2-13-09 in these difficult times, is seems many save their pennies, not buying gas, or movies, songs... toast without jelly, that kind of thing, in order to save enough to buy all kinds of video games, and wall themselves in seclusion, with ramen, generic chips, tapwater, and a wii 2-17-09 rumor has it... (*looks both ways*) id never spread a rumor about that...

2-19-09 they say no comment but whats their tone of voice?? ..i, for one, do not know...

2-23-09 negotiations last week ended with the best and final offer which included the extending of the contract to one year after all of the other unions, and the new sag tops, who took over for

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one purpose, that of accepting the deal, met, and rejected the deal

2-24-09 dear fox news: you are all very happy to have peter in charge. -ruppie

2-25-09 fox makes italian web tv service. (oh yeah, i remember when the only allies bush had were tony blair and poland until rupert murdock bought all of italys media in one fell swoop and suddenly they were in favor of iraq, which was certainly news to the italians... so, i guess this italian web thing is the latest thing to unfold out of *that* transaction) yay for newscorp! good work, guys!

2-26-09 film incentives, blah, blah.. writers guild, blah, blah.. netflix to introduce

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cheaper stream only option.. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah (no news today)

2-27-09 la times comes out and says what ive been saying all along: lenos blatant disregard for his union opened the floodgates for wealthy technically-members to stand against their unions. great job, jay leno.

3-2-09 the labor guy at amptp retires at the end of march nobody has a clue what this means or what, if anything, will change

3-3-09 sean penn... heheheh... ...sean penn... in other news: ...umm... yeah, i got nothin

3-4-09 a lot of turmoil today but its all in new york so thats okay

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3-5-09 robin williams is in icu. pray for him, if youre into that

3-9-09 sag seeks an end to contract stalemate (can we go back to the old last best final offer? the one without the twenty twelve expiration?)

3-10-09 hollywood board asks national board to have members vote on whether to accept the last, best, and final offer without recommendation

3-12-09 tom hanks is having secret conversations with himself in private thereby jumpstarting talks between the actors and producers. thanks tom! this just in! no change on actor / advertiser talk... thing. that is all.

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3-13-09 more a-list actors have joined the conversation in tom hankses head between producers and stars. if only working actors had a voice. special bonus spooky friday the 13th haiku: streaming video from the space station doesnt include their bedrooms

3-16-09 sag silent on stars back-room negotiating (ironic, when you remember writers strike when deafening silence came consistently from the stars, till jay leno broke the ice choosing his money over everyone elses, then later, months before sag negotiations, tom hanks was taking out ads in the hollywood reporter telling alan rosenberg to start flying the white flag early, and urging the poor to vote like theyre rich, like so many 80s wanna-be yuppies)

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3-17-09 writers guild to cut a tenth of staff (can we *not* follow *those* footsteps??)

3-18-09 sag and commercials have agreed to news blackout, but anonymous insiders say sag wants adjusted tier payment rather than the old pay per play model, and commercials want to pay twenty million less to pension and health, and that sag may go on strike over this. but, since these are mcnary rumors, best to take it all with a grain of salt

3-19-09 mcnary heard from this guy who said that his friend spoke to alan at protest at cbs and hed said i heard some of my friends were here (can someone get dave a fake mustache so he can get first hand info?)

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3-20-09 obama was with leno in burbank and one hundred sag members were protesting outside. (....obama was there and we could only get a hundred members outside? ...can we organize some kind of phone-tree??)

3-23-09 ad industry says were winning the war against eurasia...? ...eastasia.

3-24-09 captain obvious says: if an actor is told to enjoy a brand

name product, and to be sure not to cast it in a negative light, youve gone way past the bounds of what can be labeled reality tv

3-25-09 sag hardliners to try to get government to bust the studios for their anti-trust violations (forgetting that the f.c.c.

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*loosened*all of those regulations for murdock, and the federal government thinks of the western block in terms of contributions from the big studios and not the right-ness or wrongness of their owning it all or how they treat the multi-various cogs in their machine)

3-26-09 friedman says tvs not dying. reality replies, yes, it is.

3-27-09 about a hundred (wait... is this the same hundred members who were at lenos place?) members rally for government probe (unfortunately as we learned from the vietnam war, even if you have a hundred *thousand* protesting against something the white house gets money from, it doesnt really do anything) of studios monopolizings

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3-30-09 dave mcnary points out the inconsistency between the silence on one hand and the rumors from someone close to negotiations or the janitor on the other. so... no news on ad-talks, but at least that page in the variety has something written on it... and there are five haikus today, despite news blackout. .....five more syllables? bonus haiku: anonymous source says: ....k ...z ....q .....no .....goodbye ....stupid ouija board....

4-1-09 real news! before you hear it from dave mcnary! weve got ad contract! (note: this is not an april fools joke) i was going to say something about mcnarys article today which states that ad talks may drag on a long while, based on his insiders but that would be mean. rubbing salt in the wound and all. no need for that.

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4-2-09 with ad contract solved, sag turns back to the stalemate with the big contract nothing else in news, safe to pick on mcnary a bit two news bits from variety, neither are daves, i do hope he comes back from his vacation refreshed; ready to move forward with some good reporting

4-3-09 okay, cool... dave wrote a nice article, concise, without a lot of sarcastic buzzwords: alan and that same hundred members rallying about how bad the latest final offer is, and the producers response that it is generous considering the economy. (does anyone else remember the good old days when the studios would have some front man actually cry-on-cue and go on about how theyd love to pay ...whats it called? ...residuals? but theyre all broke too...?)

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4-6-09 people close to the negotiations say sag and studios are close to agreeing on a new contract (thanks to tom hanks self-talk)

4-7-09 all entertainment rags breath a hesitant sigh of optimistic but cautious relief as rumors spread wider and wider from some unknown leak close to those whod know whether or not we should be relieved

4-8-09 the rumors arent as optimistic as they were in yesterdays news

4-9-09 okay! news! they got rid of the 2012 date for expiration, so theres good reason to be optimistic now. in other news, they determined that while members receive two and a half weeks of pay when

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forced to stop work due to an act of god, a strike is not a kind of act of god i think franklin and jefferson might have disagreed when they sketched the first draft of what later evolved to become our great seal

4-10-09 yahoo and newscorp... ...whatever, no one uses yahoo anyway... youtube and universal conceive a baby and name it vevo french lawmakers go the way of the danes and the italians? not quite. theyre just not going with a three-strikes law against sight-and-sound pirates to sum up: there was some news today, but none of it was relevant. 4-11-09 film biz takes a dive leaving l.a. with just one cash-crop: taco trucks

4-12-09 an article in variety about an article in sags

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magazine in which alan complains about the moderate takeover, and one about how even if all goes well we shouldnt be relieved because in two years the contract expires again, so... no news today

4-17-09 lots of articles in which authors have taken time to mull over and digest events and write broad overviews, but no real news today

4-18-09 sag board approves the deal, but some say the members votes wont come easy; after all, theres the hundred picketing... thats half a percent right there...

4-22-09 sag to lay off eight percent of staff. i dont want to talk about it.

4-24-09 there are sag members protesting a carwash. im not sure what it means.

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4-27-09 in the wake of sag staff lay-offs at the end of last week, its somber. meanwhile, sag hires a pr firm to persuade its members to accept the deal. in other news, haikuist strives for a more subtle sarcasm.

4-28-09 studios still hold the power... but do bears still shit in the woods?? find out next week in the daily variety! (no real news today)

4-29-09 sag has a plan for ending strike pay flap (ouija board composed headline)

4-30-09 the ballot will be mailed out on may nineteenth (..need six more syllables..)

5-1-09 the canadian actors renew their contract (without splitting in

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half or hiring a mediator or yellow propaganda or getting sued by their president or layoffs or *anything* ...show offs.)

5-4-09 movie piracy: fun for the whole unemployed family! (popcorn not included, and buttered styrofoam is not a good substitute)

5-5-09 no news. cnn has an article on la bamba the movie, related somehow, no doubt, to today being the anniversary of the mexican army's unlikely defeat of french forces at

puebla battle under general ignacio zaragoza segun

5-6-09 disneys income falls ninety seven percent. i know, i thought the same

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thing, but its not a misplaced modifier, theyre at three percent of the hundred theyre used to. so, if you pirate, you should feel really bad: you made mickey mouse cry. the baby mickey mouse. from muppet babies.

5-7-09 may 12th and 14th info about the deal will be offered. it all went down a little like this: 5, final offer 10 5 10 5 10 5, plus we punch you really hard ...9? no.. ...8? no okay.... 5 it is. good. plus we punch you really hard. no! yes. no! well... okay... 5 it is.

5-8-09 dvd pirates growing (for generations who havent worked out how to download things yet), writers guilds whered that huge pile of money come from? case has blown over, and more filmmaking in massachusetts.

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5-11-09 empty husk shell of what was once called axium payroll demanding that actors pay back funds they legitimately earned, which axium had processed, because of some bankruptcy rule which says they didnt have to have paid it, sag recommends to its members to keep their money and they may want to consult lawyers and respond within fourteen days

5-13-09 what sag calls rule one, writers guild calls rule eight, now applies to the web. you may ask, what are writers rules one through seven?? well heres the breakdown... one dont break the rules, two dont break the spirit of the rules, three get it it writing, four i said get it in writing! five see rules one through four six dont work for less than minimum wage or else! seven there are some exceptions to rule six, like if youre just helping, but ask your guild first

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5-18-09 haikuist struggles with not being able to crack jokes about the vote and so... i have no opinion... (*sigh*) its up to you... so... yes or no?

5-19-09 a new, and edgy, actors against the free and clear making of one and all... progress... thing... i think it means if i dont know what it means, but they have a youtube, and stars like it. proceed with caution, if at all.

5-20-09 ah... finally!!! i can say something! because... dave mcnary says... that *other* people say... this: to those voting yes, whereve you been the past year?? its still nothing for internet what would the past fifty years have been like if youd caved in like this on re-runs! ...and now to those voting no... guys... you dont have the monopoly on actors... if you want sag to

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still exist in ten years, you might want to take the deal... after all, it *is* better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick... ...there, i did it! (note: no haikuist opinions were expressed in this news synopsis)

5-22-09 sag approves the ad deal, still torn over other deal (see last years news) 5-26-09 ex presidents and ex presidential hopefuls exchange harsh words in the news: involving the holocaust, youth versus old age, and even, get this, the contract thats being voted on... that was mentioned also.

5-27-09 nothing new. except some robo-calls recordings of celebrities you may find on your voicemail telling you how to vote, alongside the usual: this is the second notice that the factory warranty...

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5-28-09 one of the vote yes guys makes the point that last year hulu made less than seventy million, which batman made on its first day. translation: you shouldnt worry that the internet portion of contract sucks, cause one of the movie sites made less than one of the most popular movies openings. (what a relief! the internet really *is* just a passing fad) besides, several million divided over a couple thousand actors would be (if they got any of it) chump change (if theyre tom hanks)

6-2-09 solidarity once meant opposite of what it means today

6-2-09 vanderbilt, morgan, rockefeller, flagler, and carnegie agree they don't like this new fangled "child labor laws" thing, and neither should you

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6-9-09 votes coming in, you have six hours to go back in time and have mailed yours

gazing into my trusty crystal ball... only a few hours from now... (cue the wavy-dream effect and the harp strumming) the results are in! half of sag... smiling, the other half is sad... see for yourself:

6-15-09 haikuist asks for giveness, *three quarters* of sag is happy, only one quarter is sad. so, the illustration would look a bit like this:

6-17-09 the times clarifies, when they said residuals were less generous they didnt mean the residuals rates went down, they were referring to all the networks putting all past episodes online, rather than rerunning them, to avoid paying residuals. you know, that whole thing.

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6-18-09 one piece of sag news: alan rosenbergs going to run for pres again. writers guild does it. amazing. if you dont earn enough, you dont vote. (you may remember the haikus from april forth, two thousand and eight) 6-19-09 todays sag news is that in sixteen months... that can wait. today, no news.

6-22-09 no news, but for your amusement, jim stern has warned indie producers: work more closely with your financiers, stop taking risks, make movies the banks know will sell, like tight leather and cars blowing up sequels of things twelve year olds like, in short, take in out of indies then you can be dies

6-23-09 kodachrome has retired. (wondering what that is? dont worry.)

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6-25-09 its all digital now. everybodys freaking out. no other news.

6-29-09 studios went to supreme court to try to stop cablevision from allowing viewers to watch things later and skip ads (like tivo does) the supreme court rules: why you wastin my time? and the case is thrown out

6-30-09 every man woman and child on the planet could earn alabamas state minimum wage working for unions so long as one guy who works flipping burgers or something could afford to pay twenty eight billion dollars per hour in union dues (no news today. ...solidarity!)

7-3-09 web of differing opinions about... ill stop there, could be any-

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thing, but before the web teddy ruxbin alone heard them all, and the few voices that made it to glossy print or the news alone were heard

7-7-09 youtube is worried more regular people will be uploading things advertisers arent-oh, nevermind, i really dont care about this

7-8-09 the only news thats interesting is about how child labor is illegal except in entertainment, asks if that should change based on the life of michael jackson... i suppose we could make cgi babies...

7-14-09 no news. just a piece explaining casting sites to the non tech savvy to sum up: avoid craigs list casting calls with no pay but great exposure which use the words: pass the paved road or in the basement or come alone

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7-15-09 no news again.. i cant help but think it must be something sinister

7-17-09 devin banerjee, mercury news, has found the solution! during the great depression everybody went to the movies to escape. so.. if we.. can turn this recession.. into a great depression.. ..people will go to the movies! and.. it'll save everybody! it's flawless! ..except they didn't have hulu in the 30s.. but still

7-20-09 the bill formerly known as the card check bill is now left with: the bill

7-22-09 unemployment rate levels out thanks to rising suicide rate, yay!

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7-23-09 film production drops thirty percent from where it was which was at a sixty percent drop from something, every few days theres another drop of some dramatic percentage without any real explanation as to what all these percentages are based on, ill bet if they were to include all the free and deferred internet production theyd find ninety-five percent of the civilized world are now producers of indier-than-indie movies.. or, at least, cell phone video uploaders.. 7-24-09 kingmaker rupert murdock, international neo-con and media conglomerates next move.. (darth vador theme) ...video games on myspace! (scream) ..aside from that, more complaining about the new contract.. whats the big deal?? just because you can hire an army of ten year olds to plow your

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fields (as long as you film it and put it on the internet) and not pay them (as long as you have parents consent and a teacher on set) ...

7-29-09 associated press just picked up a megaphone and announced what the industry had previously been very quiet about: theres a website called the pirate bay where you can find anything you want

7-30-09 jordan hoffner, whoever that is, states that internet video is still young... i say: true, but, borg nanoprobes work almost instantly, in first contact at any rate, and if youtube were dogs theyd be at least middle aged by now. that being said, in ten minutes, when i-phone comes out with gloves and contact lenses, internet video will be

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a thing of the past, so, five years out of its lifespan could be three quarters of the way to being pass.. you buy that? ...neither do i...

7-31-09 backstage has a piece called the top ten mistakes (that) actors make when they sign a contract heres a synopsis: read it, talk to a lawyer, check exclusivity, check sag status, dressing room size, moy-chindizing, use a loan-out, check expiration date, pay or play and perks ...boring so heres my top ten mistakes actors make: failure to cheat-out, mouthing gibberish (there *are* people who can read lips, you know), un-called for bad british accents, not matching the voiceover to footage, failure to eat carbs, and, finally, failure to adequately answer my fan mail.

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8-3-09 backstage answers the top ten sag questions: do i need an agent? yes! like cartman says, you just do all the singing, all the performing, all the entertaining, and leave the rest to us. how do i join sag? let me transfer you to membership. how do i find a photographer? borrow a digital camera, pick up glossy paper at staples. graduate school? im sorry, i thought these questions were about acting? whats the difference between a manager and an agent? one is pretty much useless, the other... you know what, there is no difference...

should i really use this headshot? no, spend hundreds of dollars instead. which online casting service should i sign up for? iactor! what does it mean when they say good job? is this really a question? pass.. how do

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i work full time and pursue acting? dont know, ask that guy...garon? whats the best way to network? show up at everything paris hilton goes to.. no, no.. no networking. just go to all the workshops and things.

8-7-09 newscorp might charge for their websites - oh please do, i think i saw myspace still twitching. it would be a mercy killing, pull the plug! pull the plug!

8-10-09 for those of you who havent been paying attention, and dave mcnary, this is news: aftra is in no hurry to merge with sag (which, on one level, is sort of like the awkward ugly kid in school saying hes in no hurry to date the homecoming queen, but then maybe im biased)

8-11-09 lionsgate profits jumped, so well be seeing more residuals... right?

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hollyweporter: mann orders chinese take-out oh, thats right, racial slurs dont count if its entertainment related. i forgot. finally, hofler challenges mcnary for most clueless variety scribe award with latest headline: showbiz not always recession proof

8-12-09 jay leno cleared of strike violations (the ten million witnesses to his writing and performing material during the writers strike was considered circumstantial perhaps? no, he gave them money. but who can really put a dollar value on the damage he did? no celebrity before him took a stand on strike issues. once he opened the floodgates, making the bold statement: screw my union, it seems quite a few stars took the same position in that and other union

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matters. how much are we loosing with the web deal? thats how much he owes)

8-13-09 barack obama, hollywood, and china, are all pretending that everyone doesnt just download movies and, if they want to, burn them on dvd themselves, and are putting energy into busting those bad guys who burn and sell dvds illegally. who on earth would *buy* a burnt movie from a pirate? has anyone ever known or heard of anyone ever doing that? *why* do they waste their time with it? while were at it, we should spend tax money going after those imposters who *pretend* to be the pony express, because they the steal profits from the *real* pony express, am i the only one who feels this way?

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8-14-09 controversial tweets. whatever. in other news, msnbc points out that with games its feast or famine. heres what to do if your day job is video game voiceover: appoint officers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land in the seven plenteous years. and let them gather all the food of those good years that come, and lay up corn and let them keep food in the cities. and that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, that the land perish not through the famine. other than that, no news today, really.

8-18-09 brad durrell of bridgeport news just realized that sag has a new contract now every newspaper in the industry has been writing about some idiot casting director twittering from her cell phone during

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auditions. oh well, no news is good news.. but theres a whole lot of it.. china to appeal world trade organisms ruling that they just stand aside while the u.s. sells stuff there, when asked gee, wto, dont you think thats kind of a double standard? the brick wall replied: ......

8-19-09 dave mcnary wrote a clear, concise, relevant article today

8-20-09 so, the twittergate controversy (ironic reference to how big of a deal it has become when its freaking twitter.. i hope) is over. equity told the casting director to stop twittering. the motion picture television fund has laid off a hundred elderly patients, and the teamsters saying what!? thats just... thats sick!

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and in video games theyve determined that the thirteen year old are getting bored with the scantily clad women and shooting of nazis so to make things more interesting theyre going to **** *** ***** * *** **** **** with little propeller hats and ***** **** **** which, obviously, is sick twisted and wrong, but they think it should help with sales

8-26-09 are the emmys still relevant? oh, never mind, its not important. what is i am pwd? something im not comfortable haikuing about. paramount to give redbox a spin (ok l.a. times, we dont want to hear all the sordid details of corporate demon coupling rituals..) and michael kostroff rips anonymous women a new paradigm

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8-28-09 dave mcnary thought he found a way to take a sarcastic jab at sag for telling its members not to work on a film that has no deal with sag, the comment being sag asserts that even though they didnt have jurisdiction of footage which also happens to be in the film, that they do have such over their members working on a non union project. well, dave, johns rent-a-clue called and wanted to tell you... they do! ...did sag hurt you as a small child is some way? dressed as a clown refused to make your balloon animal or something? or is it just that all your friends are in the amptp and you have no business calling yourself an objective reporter for the entertainment industry bible as theyre so fond of calling themselves? just wondering.

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8-31-09 if mickey mouse fought wolverine whod win? wrong! walt ate marvel comics

9-1-09 writers seem to be eating themselves alive and shooting themselves in the foot over and over.. ahh... reminds me of when we were their age

9-3-09 sick. sick and wrong. so very wrong. how could they? are they just plain evil? shall we do the math and see how many didnt need to be laid off?

9-8-09 youtube thinks we should try to be more like netflix (then all the news rags wrote pages about it, then i summed it all up in twelve syllables)

9-09-09 survey shows nearly a quarter of the country watches tv shows

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on their computers (and the other three quarters left the survey blank)

9-11-09 in the past three years three point five millennia of video has been uploaded to youtube, supply and demand equivalent to saturn and pluto. does anyone still say that production is down?

9-14-09 hulu will destroy television, which is bad for those whose incomes depend on tvs not being destroyed and all, and would be good for

civilization except that the people are still watching hulu

9-15-09 producers busted for bribing film festival in bangkok. but.... why? more blockbuster are closing down making more room for more starbucks with

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wi-fi so you can illegally download all your favorite movies from the comfort of your own quad grande mocha halfskim soy latte

9-17-09 media buying less. if our economy is so dependant on ads, why dont we restructure it so that its not, like we did when the country became addicted to a wartime economy in world war two? what? we never did that?? oh. ...save the ads everybody!!!

9-22-09 its a horrible thought the headline for the death of television. fifties sci-fi scribes would laugh themselves silly, till you explained *why* its such a horrible thought. then theyd ask why did sag accept the contract?

9-23-09 nielsen, formerly the creepy big brother org that watched everyone,

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has, in recent years, been outcreepied by every ex-boyfriend with a facebook account. so, nielsen has decided to start using facebook

9-25-09 ken howard, new pres. he is? ...there were elections? ....whos ken howard?

9-28-09 tivo type things are penetrating *way* more than before, says paul bond

9-29-09 l.a.u.s.d charge two thousand per day to crowd real students in gym while fake students film shows in real classrooms, and the money goes... where?

9-30-09 so... diversity awareness month. be aware of this: if you make a nine hundred k movie, you have to pay the actors five hundred... unless they are of a minority, then its only two fifty.

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does it make sense? did it ever make sense? one day, will all our members be equal? i hope so. because the way it is now is just... so... wrong.

10-1-09 unions upset that michael moores going non-union for his newest film (thats yet *another* thing he has in common with schwarzenegger)

10-2-09 writers guilds case of the gee whered that huge pile of cash come from could mean chunks of change for the writers, from foreign levies. warner decides not to eat nbc. abc and cbs join the haikuist in boycotting jay the scab leno but for a different reason, but the enemies of my enemy are my friends. we go way back.

10-5-09 hulu is thinking about making people pay to watch things for free

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(go for it, hulu! then theyll start watching tv again! thanks, hulu!)

10-6-09 starting december 1st: blogger paranoia (thats not a movie) if you get money from someone, and you write on facebook, or something, about something thats related to the people you get money from, you could be forced to pay eleven thousand bucks to big-brother sam

10-8-09 sag staff to join march in washington dc. (wait, what? when?? ...should i pack?)

10-13-09 tivo things improve ratings for shows during games, cause now they watch both! (not that thats news or anything, just the closest thing to it today)

10-14-09 chinese government cracks down on the internet, filtering out the

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things it deems to be inappropriate (tenzin gyatso, for instance)

10-15-09 todays news: lots of percent signs, despair, whining, and pessimism

10-16-09 rupert murdock say: business can no longer be supported by ads alone. i guess hes ready to move into fox news telethons..?

10-19-09 howard and white (best known for not having anything to do with the clusterf*ck that went on over the past couple years) are in charge now

10-20-09 the mpaa, to avoid being mistaken for pans lost boys, have changed term antipiracy into content protection ..pointless? and in other news, cassel suspended for being bit too.. old fashioned

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10-21-09 okay, writers guild, if the police need a search warrant to use a smoking gun found in a locker as evidence, you cant use a hacked email account to prove that jonathan prince was a scab (which he was)

10-22-09 california and sag pass bill to stop those talent scouts who hang

around malls giving their cards out to young people with great potential

10-23-09 hulu announces that it will shoot itself in the foot at some point. f.c.c. to craft net neutrality quite similar to the original purpose of the f.c.c., to be sure that no few big rich guys would dominate the tv and air waves, before they decided to just take bribes and crusade against red herring bad words.

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10-27-09 roberta uses clever words and emphasis speaking on aftras video game deal: millions for thousands (two million or so for one hundred twenty thousand members thats less than twenty dollars each) swertlow has advice for child actors. i have some advice too: stay in school, play with your friends, take drama when youre older, then go to college

10-28-09 court, again, nixes alans appeal of allens having gotten fired. tv composers, tired of short ends of sticks, just might unionize soon hopefully we wont loose all the video games to aftra this week

10-30-09 will having ten bestpicture... oh nevermind, it's about the oscars.. steve waldman is the new f.c.c. guy in charge of the internet

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el gremio de actores de doblaje ms busca espaol

11-2-09 dave mcnary talks about anxiety in industrys healthcare (48 years its been the same, file this under daves sag-in-the-olds) sag shoots down game deal, urges aftra to do the same. sounds familiar.

11-3-09 hollyweporter: ten, count them, ten are up for the top oscar.. this changes everything! (except for everything else besides the oscar) writers guild to feds: need more money to write news more verbosely!

11-4-09 diverse news men: from irish to english, german... all kinds of white men the parents tv council generously gives gossip girl some good free advertizing, declaring war because of a teenage threesome

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(ahh... i remember those stupid teenage threesomes... when is this show on?)

11-5-09 the fcc and mister potato go head to head over sap.. ..forget it. seems the only sag news is: happy birthday flux capacitor! 11-6-09 the industry is slowly coming to terms with the internet, like a death row inmate coming to terms with his own mortality yet still hoping, in vain, to somehow twist it, make death work for him. its sad.

11-9-09 theres nothing funny about amptp head dying friday. i swear there isnt. and even if there were, its too soon. so.. peace, nick. now, comic relief: pakistans film industry isnt doing well

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11-16-09 someones surprised to hear the french word for shower on television (still, however, there are no french ads involving people in showers)

11-17-09 david mcnary insightfully digests what he ascertains and

produces a fresh new nugget of wisdom for us to learn from

11-18-09 screen writers are still largely white males, since no one can see, and therefore congratulate, their employers on being so diverse, so then the writers guild had this contest, which gave twenty jobs to minorities, so the writers guild patted themselves on the back for a job well done.

11-20-09 dave mcnary says mocap confuses sag. i say... what is mocap?

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oh, motion capture! ...i cant keep up with all the orwell speak, sorry...

11-23-09 miss apodaca just goes and publishes an article that, while it may be useful for an individual, is bad for the group!

11-24-09 this just in! nineteen forty nine oscar winner... ...are you serious? (no news today)

11-25-09 nielsen and the ad association having arguments. who cares? well... according to nielsen: white males thirty to fifty who live in sherman oaks and drive mitsubishis, smoke hookahs, have girlfriends they met through work and/or on the internet, and golf no less than once a month. for the rest of you reading this news, sorry to have wasted your time

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12-2-09 the paparazzis say some local actors ate turkey recently (no news)

12-4-09 nbc-comcast merger sets a new tone in universe: b flat no, really. if you can find snow on a tv, use a tuning fork. ...it did that before? ...the hollywood reporter is lying to us?!?

12-7-09 i do voiceover for games - happy to have you dating our daughter (this never happens)

12-8-09 the academy is going to have to confront shankmans tweeting ways.. actor asks why theyre being punished for earning less than, say... tom hanks answer: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, love it or leave it

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12-9-09 i just heard the news, someones selling bootlegged disks. dude, this ones for you: the nineties are through and done with, by almost a decade now. hit up a search engine to find out what all youve missed, or team up with those guys who sell those unlicensed reel-to-reel movies, cause your ass is obsolete.

12-10-09 but... what if the brink of disaster is the verge of recovery...? ad companies are making ads... which should trickle sideways to us...

12-11-09 happy chanuka! chanukkah? ...hanuka? ...i think it's hanukkah.. hollyweporter, billboard, and other hollynews rags are being clumped into one big conglo-ministry-of-information which has shady undisclosed associations with the son of rupert murdock

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12-14-09 leno is number (ford) one when it comes to (pringles) (mcdonalds) product (mikes hard lemonade) placement (doritos) (roger vivier black sandals)

12-15-09 study somewhere shows: people in 2009 are nostalgic for those old tvs things, where 2008 folks were %6 more into watching everything on computers. that, or its overpopulation. in other news: the sag awards are coming up. isnt that something?

12-16-09 entertainment is happy that feds just gave foreign governments thirty million to punish pirates in their own special foreign ways, which may or may not be cruel and unusual, but hey... the founders never said *not* to pay foreign governments to punish themselves, so...

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12-17-09 theater cleaners may go one strike (man, everyones got a union now. well, except for, obviously, a union protecting workers who are also the employers of others of their same union from conflict-of-interest law-suits they dont need their own union, they can just pay off whoever they need to, buy billboards and backs of magazines using star power to sway the votes of those who liked them in forrest gump)

12-18-09 sag loses hope on game deal. (there was hope?? how come nobody told me?!)

12-21-09 this is the decade that changed the industry (like the 80s with tapes and the 70s with cable, the 60s with color, and the.. well.. everything but the 90s) surely nothing big could happen to the

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industry in between twenty-ten and twenty.. right? ...holodeck-contract?

12-22-09 commercial jobs are up, so at least theres that. (needs six more syllables)

12-23-09 pull up your stockings, put on that tree, its all a bit blurry after some mistletoe tea......

12-28-09 basically, a lot of articles which have nothing at all to say except for: gee, what a decade we just had or gee, i wonder what the next decade has in store for us and other predictable fluff.

12-29-09 an article why do filmmakers put their work online for free? ill answer that with another question: in an age where all it takes to make a film is a hundred dollar camera and a computer,

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why is this even a question? do you assume that all the zillion filmmakers are in it for the money? these days its like asking why people wear nice clothes and not expect to get paid for walking down the street; self-expression is a natural, ancient motivator that has nothing to do with trade, barter, survival, or profit. so, now: why do filmmakers put their movies online for free? because they can. ( edward-reib.com ) 12-30-09 the fcc (could it be true? theyre doing their job?!) moving toward figuring out how to ask, require, and check up on search engines and their favoring those with money over those with relevance those with money cry out youre hurting us! much the same way the pioneers would have cried out if there had been a rule about which tribes they can or cant

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slaughter to build their condos on their graves. those poor, poor corporations.

1-4-10 variety, since they have to print something, says that two thousand ten is likely to bring some changes to tv. yes. it probably will. (also, the sag awards happened.. or are going to happen.. or something)

1-5-10 sandra bullock will give lifetime achievement award to david white. ...betty! sorry, the headline didnt specify; i misunderstood.

1-6-10 guild fetes publicists. i think that means something.. bad? i really dont know.

1-7-10 french fete bump in ads rev (which i think has something to do with cheese)

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1-8-10 clooney and something about the directors guild, and yahoo ads, and they might move leno back to eleven thirty, and the la times is kissing the head of the afl-cios ass. boring... boring news.

1-14-10 in the midst of all the leno david swapping, articles about production being down, side by side with those which say productions up, there is one small piece of news we can really use... wii games on netflix!!!

1-15-10 net neutrality, entertainment unions say: sounds good, but be sure to censor all the astrally copyrighted stuff and, also, start teaching abstinence to all the stray dogs in the world. then levitate.

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1-19-10 haikuist to will stop being so cynical: sag awards! yay! and... yeah.

1-25-10 okay, so... i saw part of the sag awards, with those whod died. i cried.

1-27-10 haikuist retires until theres something in the news worth haikuing

2-1-10 under the current administration, relations with others are much better than they were before last year. (oh, thats about sag, by the way)

2-2-10 five ways that lost changed television one: it was the first time *ever* thered been a show like that for people born too late to have watched twin peaks. two: it described state of mind of most viewers in the title. three: ...uhhh...

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2-3-10 motion picture and television fundraiser: where are the spielbergs? where are the jolies? asks the wrap . meanwhile, the less unheard-of news rags had this to say on the subject: ... and then went on to say, oscars, oscars. ...oscars? ha ha, yeah... oscars.

2-4-10 cynicism in the news, heres my bit: having moved on from that whole healthcare thing, congress discussing the nbc deal. ..priorities?

2-5-10 congress democrats miraculously grow spines when it comes to the nbc deal. see, theyd hate to see the other tv companies get hurt or injured without universal healthcare... ...poor corporate undead

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2-8-10 the superbowl... wait... isnt this *sag* in the news? oh, right, commercials...

2-9-10 writers guilds gee, whered that huge pile of cash come from? case still an issue london times having trouble adjusting to the whole avatar thing (like hollywood will one day have trouble with the idea of the moons virtual subconscious interactive post-new media)

2-10-10 unto the fourth and fifth generations of them who shoot themselves in the foot over and over... (the pilots are all still going aftra)

2-12-10 new york castings says: no, taft hartley waivers dont expire. once again, sag says: they are not waivers. oh, the media. youre just so helpful.

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2-16-10 nielsen says: red looks good on you today. not that anyone can see it. hollyweporter says: those ancient rich guys are seeing revenue, which means you will too, because of the reganomic trickle-down theory. daily variasays: theyre making a movie in russia. thanks, nick!

2-17-10 the british have a great word for unpaid product placement: prop placement the feds (who still think burning tons of grain per year to keep prices up is a neat idea) are starting a task force to hunt down the pirates

2-19-10 someone paid nielsen to tell them that people dont like paying for things. if i wrote the title of william shatners new show, this email would be flagged, and i would be reprimanded, or worse, but if youre curious

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its the title of an article in todays hollyweporter

2-22-10 the boston globe says george clooney is the new jack nicholson, to which reality replies by rolling its eyes and not dignifying such an absurd statement with a response. other than that, no news today

2-23-10 if youve happen to be on psychedelics right now, enjoy the news: cablevisions rainbow to give pillsbury doughboy his own tv station

2-25-10 ad spending dropped nine percent in two thousand nine as usual, a lose for the business, and a great victory for civilization

3-1-10 sag and aftra bury the hatchet, and not in each other, for a change

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3-2-10 sumner redstone has regained the strength he had lost. (now hes one of the most powerful men in the world again. before, he was having some trouble making his payments on a few of his man-made islands in the shape of his face, and populated by goldplated girl-robots)

3-3-10 stewart and colbert (both owned by redstone) pulled off hulu, (which isnt really news because hulu doesnt play on our droid phones anyway.)

3-4-10 so.. sarah palin? ..really? well, better than rush, i suppose. whatevs.

3-5-10 (in honor of dads would-be seventieth, here is todays haiku) turn off that goddam glowing brainwashing machine and go play outside!

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3-8-10 if you care, then you already know who won, so i wont waste your time

3-9-10 hows this for weird: murdock, in abu dhabi, urges the arabs to end censorship. so... just whos side of what is who on anymore?

3-10-10 time warner being hypocrites (variety calls it irony. like this: i can sleep with other people but you cant. how... ironic?)

3-11-10 more comedies than usual on tv. ..you spose that means something?

3-15-10 summer b.o. to profit from sequels (unless its air conditioned)

3-16-10 disneypixar to create a whole new kind of surround sound in a

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desperate attempt to make spending money more fun than pirating 3-17-10 blockbuster may go down soon. also, the pony express went bankrupt.

3-18-10 viacom is still metallicaing youtube like it was napster 3-19-10 rumored: spring chicken time warner considering eating one of its aging ancestors, corporate demon metrogoldwyn meyer... inc

3-22-10 google cant stand the heat, getting out of china. humidity too.

3-23-10 access, lionsgate, and time warner are bidding to eat mgm. warner brothers to try to save blockbuster by letting them be the first to rent out a movie called "the blind side" a movie about an

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a student who rearranges her schedule to spend more time with... (*yawn*)

3-24-10 someone paid off the f.c.c. again: one guy can own everything

3-25-10 hollywood reporter, nineteen fifty four: "sag and aftra should merge" ...wasn't that today's headline? dj vu... but they really mean it now. also, hollywood writes obama demanding more microphones up people's internet activity, in the name of delaying the inevitable extinction of profiting from entertainment

3-26-10 the mpaa, old enough to remember the depression, is opposed to trading futures to the chagrin of two youngster trade corps. more on push toward preventing the person-toperson exchange of

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files by internet, saying it should go: person, murdock, *then* person

3-29-10 its not that we are afraid we have no current identity, its just that studios are distancing themselves from all the cars in neutral hurling down hills with idiots on top on youtube by sticking to what is familiar and comfortable: remaking hit eighties movies...(..?)

3-30-10 vultures with vouchers nice title. simply put, ask sag: these guys legit? two producers to be eaten by creditors in court. nature show. mcnary rumor, probably true, godzilla comes out in two years 3d is the key; the bourgeoisie cant download it yet, pirate-proof

3-31-10 mgm holders (sentimental about not having their lion

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eaten by warner (and sister dot)) are letting it slide one more month 4-1-10 19th century think-tank (thats generous) in washingtons worried about what kind of central vault type thing, or film, paper, reel-to-reel, tape, or phonograph cylinder theyre not going to be able to keep digital originals on, since every copy is identical to the original. okay guys, i know they just thawed you out and all, but dont panic, just go with it things will start to make more sense in time. (special thanks to the daily variety for emphasizing just how important this is... apples really arent oranges anymore)

4-2-10 todays news is: the exec types worried people wont watch much tv in january. so.. theres absolutely no news today. at all.

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4-5-10 women in film fetes foursome (dont know what it means, but it caught my eye) the wrap gives you the top twenty five people to follow on twitter industry falling over itself trying to get shows on ipad

4-6-10 post 300 first, they mean b.c. second, they mean 2006

4-7-10 aftras got the urge to merge - with sag. i shall now start holding my breath.

4-8-10 janus smile replies: yeah, baby! and frown replies: cant we just be friends?

4-9-10 sag accepts aftras proposal. pinch me, i must be dreaming. (...ouch!)

4-15-10 blockbuster still has some hope, (that some doctors will keep using leaches)

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will try to rent out movies the same day walmart starts selling them (as long as it is a sequel, and doesnt make you think, or get naked)

4-16-10 dvd rental down (beta rental even further down), whats up? the rest of the news reads pretty much like tv guide. (whats on tonight?) 4-19-10 dragon a surprise b.o. winner (hopefully the prize is speedstick)

4-20-10 entertainment is trying to make piracy an issue for homeland security whos job is preventing things from getting blown up should we also have the bomb squad make sure people dont hack their dvrs?

4-21-10 feds approve more junk bonds to help entertainment in the short term, but

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danny elfman and some less familiar sounding names teaming up with the teamsters, sag, and the writers guild, to create composers union

4-22-10 senate says whoa whoa youre doing what?!? no junk bonds. not now, not ever. happy earth day! if you recycle one thing this year, do it today

4-23-10 o this modern world all so new and different (no real news today)

4-26-10 no one went to the movies this weekend ..maybe this friday? ..freddy? (till then the starving corporations will just have to subsist off of the ad revenue from reruns of tv shows on the internet. gold bath!)

4-27-10 a relative new comer published in backstage says guilds should train thesps

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because thats what guilds (check a 16th century dictionary) are supposed to do. (and elvis presley, by virtue of his last name, should be sweeping the floors of an anglican church in exchange for a bed) dear relative newcomer: sorry, but its just not realistic

4-28-10 according to the research tv shows gather to custom make shows, teens and parents get along these days, like in the 80s and 50s

4-29-10 viacom gaining in tv, loosing in films. (that remote control is still easier than illegal downloading, for the time being) directors contract up soon, talks with amptp (thats three syllables) begin november. come on guys, lets raise the bar a little shall we!?

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david robb of the hollywood reporter says sag should give lifetime achievement award to nancy reagan, since she was basically the courtney love to the antichrists kurt cobain. good enough reason. (also remember 18 years ago when the city was on fire?)

4-30-10 nielsen heralds a new paradigm, no longer concerned with channels will stop using the word and henceforth simply spy on your everything

5-3-10 everybody went to see freddy on friday, saving hollywood and for you mayancalendar-huggers, not to worry: batman will come out in july 2012, a full six months before the world ends

5-4-10 the old writers guild gee whered that huge pile of cash come from case could be

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over soon.. (long time haiku-followers have read those same words before) arizona has actually, nevermind boycott arizona!

5-5-10 average ticket price jumps eight percent, in violent rebellion against the laws of supply and demand, common sense, taste, and cause and effect, hoping that the same few people still going to movies wont notice. (dark crystal sequel?? ooh! ooh! whens opening night!? ..ill have to save up..)

5-6-10 george clooney to try to save motion picture fund by removing the one million dollar a year cap on membership dues, anne marie takes back her donation on account of this, sends to saint judes place instead

5-7-10 f.c.c. trying to figure out how to milk those who seem to run

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the internet for all their worth. (restriction? no restriction. just some?) actors unions are ready to walk down the aisle (odd considering theyre referred to as sister unions wonder which state *thats* legal in) the men with the stats have written you a script, goes something like this: mom and the kids will see babies this weekend, while dad watches ironman

5-10-10 mgm asking for an extension on their debts. and so am i.

5-11-10 too early for a merger? 50 years after the first talks of one? reset your clocks, were on geologic time now! next stop, the ice age! you see, actors are like burgers, and unions are like fast food joints, and the producers are like the consumers, whod rather pay eighty cents for

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a burger than a dollar. that makes sense, right? so why change it?

5-12-10 cable worried that apple or some other thing will get money too, and viacom and buddies disney, nbc universal, and warner brothers try to kill youtube for standing on their street corner

5-13-10 if you saw private ryan on blue ray and the sounds off, its not you. call triple eight, three seven oh, eight six two one, theyll fix it for you.

5-14-10 sag blasted newsweeks jacket () saying no casting directors dont typecast

5-17-10 law and order has been canceled, anything goes people, stock up on cans and guns, board up your doors and windows.. ohhh! ..the *show* law and order

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5-18-10 sheen and gidget are coming back, law and order might not go away, cbs cancels miami medicaid, on accident it spilled, and some other series we all love, or at least have heard of once or not.

5-19-10

seventeen thousand people joined the facebook group save law & order (which is clearly newsworthy; thats almost one tenth the population of facebook groups like stop inviting me to your stupid facebook groups) and the new robin hood doesnt steal from the rich and give to the poor, because, in these hard times (for the poor), best not to give people ideas. however, kids like robin hood, so it should sell. thanks, universal!

5-20-10 lost finale to air in the u.s. and in europe, at the *same*

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*time* (thanks to the transatlantic cable..?) congress chastises russia, china, mexico, spain, and canada for having other things to deal with besides busting down doors of people who use file sharing networks

5-24-10 remember when they made that second teen wolf and everybody said why? why would you do that?? well, guess what. theyre going to re-make teen wolf.

5-25-10 both faces agree, lets merge. in other news, the euros weak. and stuff.

5-26-10 afl-cio (thats three syllables in this context) president, mister trumka, what do you think of the sag and aftra merge? trumka replies: dont you think thats a nice shade of beige? gazing at the wall. well.. yes, the media replies, but why are you evading the question? to which

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trumka replies well thats all the time we have for questions, thank you all.

5-27-10 if you find yourself arguing with a loved one about whether to see prince of persia or sex and the city, you are a statistic. studios are all converting to 3d, so as horrifying as it is watching your kids with the glowing screen all day, enjoy it while it lasts cause the grandkids will be up all night lurching around in dark rooms breaking things saying, go away! im trying to slay the dragon!

5-28-10 youtubes got backup in the fight with viacom and its cousins, hope someone does a great cartoon depicting that cause im too lazy to

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6-1-10 families across america, after a brief discussion, shrugged i guess we could see shrek,..but then decided not to see a movie. how jeff bewkes is changing time-warner: when i was young, i was not jewish.. gee, that sounds like quite an interesting article. skipped it.

6-2-10 in the seventies it became popular in cinema to be associated with the indie underdog, proudly displaying its logos, meanwhile toning down references to the more mainstream popular things. like sag, for example. and theyre just noticing. its official: joint meetings commence in two weeks. (is it sativa?)

6-3-10 equity, like the ghost of morrison still strung out in the desert,

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shouts: im okay! ..now.. guys. its wearing off.. i can see, sort of.. ..hello?

6-7-10 sumner redstone has become what rupert murdock used to be before he started dating that hippi girl. viacom has defined selling out in a message sent to all its employees: basically, think tom cruise in the firm. im tellin ya, its up to us to take the power away from these giants, at least murdock had a goal, viacom just feeds people the tooth rot brain candy they crave, i sure hope we all evolve.

6-8-10 theres two ways i could write this, so ill do both. so here goes the first one: at congress hearing, comcast-universal deal *slammed*, called plantation, outed for bribing, and being the biggest and worse merger *ever*! wooooooo!

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okay, now for the second one that wasnt our representatives, it was joe shmoes like us talking *to* congress. that, and even if it *had* been congress that wouldnt mean anything since its the f.c.c. that makes the call, and they have a history of not actually preventing the air waves from being dominated by the rich and powerful few, as long as they get a cut. now pretend you didnt hear any of the second part of that, and lets keep celebrating: wooooooo!

6-9-10 if you love disney, and are neutral about jim henson, great news! theyre making a new muppet movie. (i, for one, love jim, but not walt) and an insiders look into indie film: bob scratches himself, whilest larry picks his nose, says i forgot the camra and then they get high.

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(personally, ive seen classier filmmaking with zero budget)

6-10-10 mall surveys all say: remake goonies. people will complain about it, but then theyll see it anyway. meanwhile, someone, somewhere, has a new idea. good luck! wrong decade, though, im afraid. try writing a novel.. pirate party to team up with greens to write bill of rights for the net. (might be easier to write a bill of wrongs, but good luck enforcing it)

6-14-10 the press is flooded with miramax rumors. who cares? well.. you, if you get residuals from anything miramax. so far, though, nothing has actually happened, so.. not to worry. ill keep you posted.

6-15-10 they approved the boxoffice futures?! oh man, thats priceless like the sands

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of the hourglass, sos the great kafka-youtube truman-show of the eyeball-click-driven robotic advertizing junk-bonds of our lives

6-16-10 the stocks going down, click the ad! click the ad! ..its not working? well, uh.. mask the i.p. then click it some more! well save the economy yet! (no news, really. xept murdock just ate another big piece of the world)

6-17-10 3d bottleneck at box office (who cares what it means? great headline!)

6-18-10 no news today, have a great weekend everyone! talk to ya monday.. 6-21-10 f.c.c. asks: should we try to keep competition alive? i mean, weve failed you all so far, so egregiously, so flagrantly, over

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the decades, such that the whole purpose our being has become moot: four guys own all the air waves, websites, billboards, tvs, satellites, papers, and so on so why keep nagging us to stop it? we cant, theyre too strong, and, after all, they line our pockets and, well, were in bed with them, and we always have been. cant we just keep with the badwords thing and thats it? dear the f.c.c.. yes, were all in agreement. just kill yourself.

6-21-10 a whole new, and nicelookin, professional form of piracy, in 3d if youd like, and looks so nice kfc and netflix gave them ad space, based in those naughty places like russia, columbia, and germany. streams right to your tv! and when they bust you, you can say we didnt know and theyll believe you! (im out a few days, see you mon.!)

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6-28-10 it looks like they might ban horse-n-buggy i mean box-office futures trading after all, thanks to a very cautious mpaa (whew!)

6-29-10 people are a bit more aware than usual of the odd turns of history which made it okay (legal?) for kids to endure trauma of various kinds under a spotlight, and on billboards, for years yet its illegal (and wrong?) for them to sew things for a living weird, huh? republican state of california to make reagan holiday you know he once led the screen actors guild quite well someone points out, to which cartoon-bad-guy anthony adams replies, nobodys perfect

6-30-10 in sag and do voiceover? call sag foundation, theres this great new thing.

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world cup didnt hurt box office as much as they thought it would (the last time they had one, fans couldnt watch it on their droids while in the theater) cabret: not a remake of cabaret. i know, i thought the same thing.

7-1-10 feds don black suits, dark glasses, and raid (send strongly worded emails) and *shut down* nine of those new pirate sites (who will now have to find new servers). u.s. attorney bharara says the pirates stories will not have a happy ending, (to which the haikuist giggles, but doesnt comment)

7-6-10 there sure is a lot of news on some days when theres no news at all.. the highlight, i suppose, is mgm pleading please dont eat us! again 7-7-10 fox writes f.c.c.: were tired of you badgering us for our lewdness

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f.c.c. writes back: yeah?!? well were tired of you and your flagrant breaking of every word of the communications act of 1934 and we *demand* in the name of the people of this country that you cease and desist, sell off 85% of your media empire or we will divide you into five like standard oil, or shut you down forever. no, we do not need your bribe money, rupert. youre finished! caput! done! out of business! hung out to dry! canned! (well one can dream)

7-8-10 billionaire tutor one step closer to building a future. well, if he can *almost* do it, the rest of us are screwed! whos writing this stuff??

7-12-10 dtv (that is, tv broadcasted to your phone directly) put

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on ice for another year. free, or paid? seems a silly question since the whole playing fields changing so fast. id say, if theres dtivo involved, paid.

7-13-10 its all about the l.a. times today! firstly, an article on movies about kids leaving home for the big world and the emotions these movies trigger. reads like a seventh graders essay got published. but, a brilliant article, in the same rag, about inception and warner going out on a limb and making a movie thats not a remake, sequel, comic book, or some eighties nostalgia could it be were finally moving out of this awful conservative rut?!?

7-14-10 more on f.c.c. and comcast. skip it, itll only frustrate you.

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instead, lets pick on the daily varietys headline: fox offers traditional fall schedule - those guys need something to write about.

7-15-10 mgm gets sixth debt extension. (if only human beings were treated as well as billionaires banks and metro goldwyn mayer inc)

7-16-10 box office futures trading officially nixed outside of vegas (variety seems vaguely sad about it, which means its a good thing) (oh and *love* this headline: daytime soaps circle the drain as it should be!)

7-19-10 teamster transports may strike (and in *that* union tom hanks taking out ads on the backs of rags doesnt change their minds). solidarity

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7-21-10 fx to air salt late 2012 (yet another example of big media using jolie to distract us from the mayan apocalypse)

7-22-10 california told to reduce runaway production. says dv. (told by whom? some group. why? productions decreased. why? too expensive here. solution? tax breaks for producers shooting here. and that will make it cheaper than eastern europe, new zealand, and new mexico? well no)

7-23-10 variety points out the absurdity of having only one word for blogger when there are clearly so many different kinds of bloggers (rs, agp, phila, and storg, to name a few..)

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8-3-10 comcast nbc merger approved by a house democrat in an elaborate, but effective, ploy to get the haikuist to throw up his hands and give up any remaining shred of hope that our government might could actually do something useful someday. (sigh) his caveat, to gain support from half awake dimwits nodding at their tvs, was that the viewers should have the same quality tv theyve grown accustomed to. seriously. thats whats going on today.

8-4-10 after everyone just mortgaged the souls of their unborn children to afford 3d tech, we fickle moviegoers just arent that into it. time warner resolved the paradox: ever notice how you cant get it to stop at the right place and you go back and forth trying to skip the ad

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without skipping the show? well, time warner has just saved advertizing.

8-5-10 time warner (what a clever little corporate demon, aww so cute) wants to determine exactly what the value of mgm is (but who could put a price on that lion in the oval archway thing?)

8-10-10 google writes seven page proposal laying the foundation for what our great grandchildrens brainchip-world will look like.. you dont get a vote, but dont worry.. the f.c.c. is looking out for our best interests..

8-15-10 newspapers split on whether hollywood is split or not on the whole f.c.c. and net neutrality thing. but they all dont like pirates.

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mgm chooses spyglass to have honor of eating mgm (why? asks a creepy german want ad. i, for one, do not want to know)

8-16-10 sags please dont call it a gee whered that huge pile of cash come from case, cause weve been pretty up front about it piling up over here case closed

8-17-10 uk government tells ukfc to stop scaremongering and get back to what they were meant to do: to unite all the fried chicken

8-18-10 ernest borgnine gets screen actors guild lifetime achievement award

8-20-10 the variety needs to look up the meaning of the word nix cause one needs to have some kind of veto power in order to do it

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really, its like a news piece about a closing argument titled: verdict found, larrys guilty when the jurys still out; its just not news

8-23-10 doug mcintyre, in his article about the safety of actors at award shows, ends with a non sequitur rant about illegal aliens crashing the greatest red carpet event of all, the united states (yet neither doug nor dave will be fired because the variety does not enforce any kind of quality standards)

8-25-10 apple close to a deal with disney, thus bringing down tim burtons coolness factor another couple of notches (itunes to stream abc)

8-26-10 ex disney head guy eisner applies for head guy job at tribune co.

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(where they could really use a micromanager with experience turning studios into soul-less companies which crank out box-office flops)

8-27-10 stan brooks fires back in dave mcnarys exciting new article his weapon?! i dont have enough money to pay the residuals i owe ohhh snappp! he totally just told those unions where they can shove it! daaaaang! pow!

8-31-10 michael riley is now the already been chewed family president

9-1-10 amazon wakes up, says what? ..who??, and turns into another netflix. ever drive like a maniac to try to snap a photo to sell to celebrity gossip rags? you could go to jail! as of tuesday!

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(should deter any paparazzis who arent some kind of thrill seekers)

9-3-10 labor day weekend: 3 films coming out, all of them showing their **** f.c.c. says all options still on the table (power$ are winning)

9-7-10 unions utilize twitter to promote unions, so says the paper (for those still using the telegraph: did you get my text message *stop*)

9-8-10 newer articles about different twittering in todays papers. google ceo, nicknamed antichrist (by me) to offer, in his magnanimity, worldwide internet tv for everyone in the world! (then, even the starving can watch movies of the grain we burn rather than give them, since wheat doesnt come with builtin verizon ads)

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9-9-10 suffice to say the people who work for the ones who didnt like the deal they got didnt like the deal they got and thats bout all i can say. in other news, the haikuist really didnt intend to come off as scathing or as venomous or as mister grumpy yesterday, only to keep on pointing where he feels more of us should be looking. (perhaps then, one day, the world will have some basics, and not just more porn)

9-10-10 facebook gets more hits than google. (but google makes a lot more money)

9-14-10 sag and aftra have decided what theyre going to ask for, but they arent telling anyone. (which is a better plan than last years cluster-love)

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9-15-10 bbc staff strikes over pension. (guess that stuff still works over there.) sag agrees to have foreign levies audited. (sounds kinda dirty.)

9-21-10 jar jar, and all the rest of the senate, rally behind palpatines anti-privacy bill, which is purportedly designed to protect entertainers from being seen or heard for free, without commercials.

9-22-10 richard verrier must be new. that or they told him to scare people. so, not to worry, aftras reps arent going to go on strike. settle down.

9-23-10 dayan, teamster, felt aftras management tactic yesterday was quite unbecoming of a union. (naivety, or idealism?)

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9-27-10 the hobbit, in the tradition of all three lord of the rings movies, to go non-union in new zealand, only *this* time the unions arent letting their members work on it. (is anyone gunna boycott it?)

9-28-10 the old lady that britney was talking about in oops i did it again passed away at the age of one hundred. nothing else is new.

9-29-10 the rags seem to side with the hobbit producers against the so-called unreasonable demands of unions, those being: pay the actors, and also pay into their pension and health. oh, and fly them all first class. australias union now claiming jurisdiction in new zealand, which our entertainment rags seem to think should be framed as a hostile act.

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other news also predicable, inane, but mildly amusing.

9-30-10 amendment to the anti-inevitable bill: rather than just shutting down sites which host copyrighted content, theyll try to also adhere to the first amendment a bit too, and to get warrants first.

10-1-10 ill try to put this as delicately as i can, since it involves some readers of these haikus: aftras teamsters got a better deal than sags teamers did. so, needless to say, they are not going on strike. remember when we all used to be able to point and laugh at the chinese government restricting its citizens ability to view certain websites? well, the u.s. is about to do the same thing.

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10-4-10 can hollywood get google to support the new piracy bill? so says the headline. if all the studios can put verizon just a bit higher on their ad rotation than the other carriers, than sure! (keep quiet what youre doing, though pretty sure thats illegal) hobbit producers: what is wrong with you? you have hundreds of millions to work with and, what? you cant handle dvd residuals? cant afford $800 per day per speaking role? well?? bunch of cheap bastards

10-5-10 for those of you whore already making plans for what tv shows to watch next february: the oscars will depend on the nfl. and for everyone else: congratulations! youre not a complete waste of skin (10 minutes later)

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i apologize.. i didnt realize that there actually were such people.. and so youre not a waste of skin. youre awesome. .. okay? (hugs)

10-6-10 union for actors invests time and resources on chasing after an anonymous internet heckler because his site was written about in a news rag. similarly, dentist called in sick to stay at home trying to interpret a dream he had about daffodils.

10-8-10 - 10-18-10 a new precedent is being set down under, and its a good thing. (haikuist returns from his weeklong honeymoon on oregon coast)

10-19-10 bbc may face %26 funding cut (which is why they should stop making us wait a year and a half for dr who episodes)

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10-20-10 you heard it here first: new zealand has it under control, so feel free to accept work on the upcoming blockbuster: tolkens the hobbit

10-21-10 cablevision and fox lobbying and spreading commercials about each other, like some sick cybernetic alien lovers quarrel a lot of people are upset that new zealand has joined the rest of civilization in not standing for actors being exploited by producers like they were in hollywood pre1934

10-22-10 l.a. times needed to fill space, the article not worth mentioning. dear warner brothers, to say: dont forget rule one is not a boycott new zealand fights like hell (offers tax incentive) to keep the hobbit.

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and varietys insiders say itll be shot in new zealand

10-25-10 dave mcnary thinks its odd that sag hasnt told anyone what theyre talking about in their confidential meetings which arent finished. for the rest of the news, check last weeks haikus, and those of last march

10-26-10 dave mcnary heard a new statistic that made him write about how sag has lost a lot of tv shows to aftra two years ago. news? no. warner brothers are shaking down new zealand for more tax cuts. ..gangsters writers guild plans to be tough. after last time, we know theyre serious. now lionsgate wants mgm. makes sense, what with the lion and all.

10-27-10 no more hobbit news for a while: its official, to shoot in new z

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youview jumps on the burst? hell no, this bubbles just gettin started! train

10-28-10 an article in the hollywood reporter glorifies child labor seventeen percent of foxs pod-people woke up and stopped watching

10-29-10 s.c.l. formed, to gradually re-define society the way sag has with guild a word which once implied the learning of a trade. (congratulations to the composers and the lyricists, well done) and it seems the whole new zealand thing didnt work out in favor of civilization after all, they paid warner for the privilege of castrating their own right to demand fair pay hopefully they will catch the bus to the twentieth century by the twenty second

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11-1-10 several states realize the tax incentives arent so good in the long term. california is upset about the sects and violins in games (say games: thank you for continuing to beat that old puritan drum, new generations would have nothing to rebel against without it) "i wouldn't compare video games to shakespeare," memorable quote

11-2-10 ads are shorter now

11-3-10 were not looking to replace cable, google says, we are looking to

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replace the recall function of the human brain with our hive-mind chip

11-4-10 dave mcnarys friend (who could be in the meetings then breaching the whole secrecy thing, or could be the janitor in the building theyre in, or could be the spouse or imaginary friend of a producer) says the meetings could be over by friday. (the opposite of news)

11-5-10 dave mcnarys friend also talked to the wrap who then spread same rumor. i think theyre bailing out mgm now, like so many banks (but theyre not making them stand in line at unemployment with all the creepy threatening posters of people who filled out the forms wrong going to jail)

11-8-10 dave mcnarys leak was right! (or it was just a wild coincidence)

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you might notice an increase in pay next year! (if youre counting pennies)

11-9-10 one lone voice echoes a complaint from two years ago, on divisiveness (like a man waking in the night in the eighties shouting out: charlie!) profanity on tv has increased sixty nine (hee hee) percent, and warner brothers just ate a british movie studio. yummy.

11-10-11 to be fair, if youre counting sixteen dollar per day increments youll notice the raise, but we traded the first class flights for that. cest la vie.

11-11-10 & 11-12-10 directors likely to follow actors lead and not rock the net boat. in other news, should celebrities have to tell their real age? (no news)

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11-15-10 if three parties are in a meeting, and the news says smaller, secret, meetings determined the outcome, but none of the three parties confirm, by definition it is a conspiracy theory not news.

11-16-10 electronic arts is trying to establish a precedent: using an athletes name and likeness in a video game should be free speech (if they succeed, all thats left is to expand the definition of athlete to include everyone, then make all entertainment interactive and *poof* no more actors, no more contracts: no paychecks)

11-17-10 the directors and the producers have begun their secret meeting; three weeks of media speculation. (insights from dave mcnarys friend)

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shining a bandaid idea on sexism in cartoon movies (things like ariels outfit not looking as good on a guy, i guess) "watch out google, visa, and the domain name system, congress has all of you in its sights." (isn't that sweet?? you're just never too old to make believe..)

11-18-10 fbi warnings now with more substance: if you host one of those big extravagant sites where people download movies, look out! the server might shut down your site. but if youre on the sly, dont worry too much yet. in other news, more sexism: ladies, not to worry, thanksgivings movies are all aimed at you! ..since we know youre not that into football..

11-19-10 no news today, just repeat-articles about the piracy bill

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11-22-10 comcast jumps on the warner brothers trend: that is, intimidating talent, in this case writers, into working nonunion, to save cash. the mpaa is upset about people saying the film tax incentive might be a bad idea (dont want to pay talent, dont want to pay taxes, dont what their stuff pirated, whats next? free ice cream??)

11-23-10 hollywood cares taxdeductible donations allowing soldiers to phone home for the holidays. (thats the nice thing about terrible circumstances, they give hollywood a chance to show off its goodness)

happy thanksgiving!

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11-24-10 warners celebrate the harvest: deathly hallows doing well (saw it)

11-29-10 all eighty two of your favorite pirate sites just got taken down the credit union has more money than it can loan out, so if you celebrities can move your money elsewhere that would be great, since the interest on loans is their source of income (and my overdraft fees!!!)

*** FIVE FULL YEARS *** (of sag-in-the-news haiku)

11-30-10 to sum up, if youre using comcast, switch. they charge for streaming netflix.

12-1-10 regarding comcast fcc is now saying: blah blah blah, freedom, america, blah.. yes, comcast shouldnt pick on legal streaming like

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netflix but it can pick on *all* streaming, and charge you more if you use more bandwidth by say streaming netflix. (but you have to squint and read the statement three or four times before its clear that that is what theyre saying)

12-2-10 a group opposing comcast-nbc merger mutters complaints to brick wall time warner scratching head, talking to media about how they dont think netflix model can work in the long term. (nice old cable giant, always looking out for its competitors in this changing world)

12-3-10 the piracy bill delayed till next year, since the elephants hath said: no bill shalt pass till obama lets the rich get richer. childish. (if only this news paper racquette was correct in implying its

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because of some deep ideological thing about how the net needs to be allowed to grow wild and free like some protected forest)

12-6-10 new tv contract ratified, actors making slightly more, airlines making slightly less, (producers breaking even) more for p&h dave mcnary asks the janitor whats going on with directors, janitor replies, thats confidential.. ..why are you hiding back there?

12-7-10 an article on stopping future wikileaks with things like code, (the enatersay is ncompitentmay) compares forced honesty to leaking nuclear bombs (just pretend everyone but you is psychic) viacom remains committed to paramount, (..touching, isnt it?)

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and dave mcnary outs sag for pulling a writers guild type oops!

12-8-10 directors have their deal, no one knows what it is, but dave mcnary has some masterful speculation based on a lot of statistics. words of wisdom from fighters of piracy (old seaboat captains with pipes and tattoos and wise words? no: lawyers talking about maintaining the old models of entertainment in the face of a world which has long since passed them by) in short, the 3D imax thing cant be pirated.

12-9-10 okay, here it is: directors got the same deal the actors got, plus directors of high budget basic cable shows get their own new tier. in an age of wiki leaks and pirates, FCC chairman doesnt want

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to tell anyone his proposed idea of net neutrality cause if it got out, it might encourage this plague of transparency

12-10-10 ted johnson thinks we dont get piracy, and that he does. then he ties in wikileaks. the problem is diffusion of responsibility: individual desire not to pay a buck, dismissed as a tiny part of a greater parasitic harm (just like driving or buying plastic packaging shipped and trucked passively - nay actively supports, in small ways, great harm to the earth, just to make a few bucks. on second thought maybe its just the opposite of that all that. im not really sure.)

12-13-10 a great article about the economic shell game: hollywood

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ballots went out, its your call.. (the union suggests yes this time around..) the sag charity auction begins. (oh those guys at sag are so nice..) and, yes, reagan was a snitch - but everyone was in those days.. (except, of course, for those on the blacklist; their careers ruined by finks like reagan)

12-14-10 moriarity tells governments hes worried about proposed deal between lex luthor and skeletor. (viacom, comcast, nbc) theyve just announced: ads around LA to promote filming in LA (to bring in more films with ads for ads, as well as for films with other ads)

12-15-10 a voice from yesterpowers clarifies what should be obvious: the deal was made out of fear, and a desire for things to be mellow in

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hollywood, not out of some courageous desire for a strong contract

12-16-10 the oscars snubs sag awards nominates, no room in rags for news

12-17-10 oscars, oscars, sag awards, oscars, sag awards, oscars, oscars, TRON!!!

12-20-10 anticipation of the fcc being useful never gets old, after all these decades. (in other news, a moral: if you steal a quarter of a million dollars, you could get fired from your job.)

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12-21-10 the fcc hath proclaimed: net providers shant rip people off for watching legal things like netflix, unless they be proles using wireless. MGM, some five billion in debt, had bake sales and stuff and raised half a billion so all is forgiven. (really? thats how that works? can i just pay fifteen cents and get a grande drip at starbucks? thatd be great)

1-3-11 (if youre a paparazzi, or celebrity, look up that new law)

1-4-11 mildly amusing drama between lions gate and someone named carl some things happening next week, some things havent changed. (no news is good news.)

1-5-11 weinstein just ate some of starz media, who will now distribute them

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mgm lauches classic shows (all its really got going for it) comcast now streaming sitcoms to tablets, apple and android (wait theyve got android tablets already? why havent i heard about this yet?!)

1-6-11 is everybody holding their breath till sag and aftra merge? thats good. ultraviolet: soon we can stream from it while it gives us cancer. and my beloved youku has gone hollywood. is nothing sacred?

1-(7,8,9 &)-10-11 this movie beat that movie, awards coming up, fox did something (fin)

1-18-11 sag and aftra have have ratified the contract, ninety three percent voted yes (and the other seven didnt cast their vote based on fear). nothing left to do but start worrying about the writers contract.

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1-19-11 directors took the deal, and more old movies are on DVD now

1-21-11 verizon tells the FCC that if they dont not allow people (like verizon) to interfere with neutralness, thatll interfere with the freedom of companies to interfere with the net, new things, and innovation. the the FCC replies: youre messing with my mind!!

1-24-11 todays news same news as march of twenty ten, and nineteen fifty four. that is, aftra and sag are ready to merge now ...aaaany minute now

1-25-11 oedipus rex won best picture two thousand five hundred years ago; so, oscars, how will history remember two thousand eleven?

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for those of you who stream netflix, and feel you need more polygamous vampires popping through other dimensions, and new jersey, as well as the kennedys and stuff, netflix doing its best to get HBO

1-27-11 sag launches foreign royalties tracker (no more oops! whered that huge pile..)

1-31-11 when captain picard himself says unity is strength at some award show yesterday well, just imagine it. and there. you have todays news.

2-1-11 according to the hollywood reporter, some unknown number of either randomly, or otherwise, selected americans, like to watch TV. but they have other articles that are good sometimes.

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2-9-11 disney profits up fifty four percent. why, i wonder. end of line.

2-17-11 youtube soon to start hiring celebrities to make shows for youtube (as a reptile tries to devolve into a fish and swim back in time)

2-18-11 the republican house has blocked the FCCs net neutrality (reason being, if comcast cant charge extra for watching netflix, how can they bleed enough money out of the people to line their pockets enough for some of that money to trickle on down to the people?)

2-22-11 the unions are all rooting for the unions in wisconsin these days. which of emperor ruperts children will rule the media empire

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when he dies? (whoevers psycho enough to kill the other five, i guess.. ..what century is this again? how much power do the murdocks have?)

2-24-11 imax profits soar (since they stopped being a kind of theatre and started selling their name to other theatres who have a big screen) blockbuster is a little in debt (are they going to bail them out too?) studios cranking out sequels of things that sold, faster and faster (meanwhile, serious filmmakers still have youtube to distribute through)

2-25-11
oscars coming up. theyre saying its the whitest oscars in ten years.

3-1-11 celebrities shied away from talking about union issues at the oscars (which is standard, until jay leno starts being a scab).

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scott walker is still pushing for what the rich guys paid him to push for.

3-2-11 palins solution for wisconsin: instead of unions, we should all stand together and bargain.. for what on earth is she talking about??

3-9-11 for three dollars, you can stream batman on facebook (which is a brand new runner up for the most ridiculous thing in the world award)

3-10-11 time for wisconsin to start drafting fitzgeraldwalker reports. (then, in sixty years, theyll wonder whats it mean to get fitzgerald-walkered?)

3-16-10 my second favorite galaxy quest crewman speaks out in wisconsin. old man paramount congratulates itself for being hip enough

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(and cheap enough) to air their latest movie trailer on twitter.

3-25-11 we really might merge (and many many other syllables as well)

3-29-11 conservatives in the movie industry feel discriminated against by all the california types that seem to be in charge here

3-31-11 todays news is all nudity racism and pirates. boring stuff.

4-6-11 roberta reardon says: "entertainment and news media have a responsibility..." to something or other (thought you could use the laugh)

4-12-11 the lastest oops whered that huge pile of money go doesnt implicated

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a union! aftra is suing morgan chase for losing three million.

4-13-11 some ex big wig named tutor has been a very very naughty boy

4-15-11 those pesky masses are playing the free online games again darn it

4-20-11 the video on demand controversy: when you save money, we don't earn as much as we would if you wasted it all on DVDs

4-22-11 how will the future generations know what this decency thing is without FCCs unconstitutionally vague decency rules?

4-25-11 the LA times just realized that others besides netfix are streaming