From Reuters
WASHINGTON - Israeli and Palestinian negotiators neared an agreement on Monday on a peace agenda as President George W. Bush launched a new drive to restart long-dormant talks to create a Palestinian state.
LOS ANGELES - At 10 a.m. Monday morning, union scribes and studio suits will touch gloves and resume their sparring over terms of a new film and TV contract.
Industryites scoring this latest round of negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers hope the parties keep things sporting and avoid the bloody spectacle of 17 previous bargaining sessions.
These stories have a lot in common. For one, I don’t particularly trust many of the parties involved in the negotiations - they’re not only “too close” to some dearly-held issues and prejudices, some of them are the same people who made the poor decisions and disingenuous arrangements that got us all into this mess in the first place.
Look, we all know that both sides in both these negotiations are probably never going to love each other. Their worldviews are far too different, and they both believe they have much more of a moral and legal right to the property that they’re fighting over. Age-old wrongs need to be addressed, but somehow everyone has to keep in mind that this is really a fight over what’s going to happen in the future.
If I take any comfort in this - any at all - it’s that there’s a peace process in the news that is harder and will take much longer to resolve than the one that I’m involved in. And that the Republican executive nominally involved in helping with MY conflict is at the very least… competent. I don’t envy the Palestinians and Israelis trying to get their negotiations rolling under the hopeful eye of Captain Underpants. I’ll take the Governator any day.
That’s right, you heard it here first - Writers strike: Not quite as bad as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Fanny Roborat
21 comments
Linkmeister
November 26, 2007 at 4:44 pm
1What’s the writers’ equivalent to “right of return?”
Hot Tub Tommy
November 26, 2007 at 5:45 pm
2To all those stick-up-your-ass, know-nothing DC pundits that say I no longer have control over what happens in Washington - to those asswipes, I say HA!!!!!
The photo of a shirtless Trent Lott with the shit-eating grin, the cigarette dangling from his lips, and his arm around the farm animal he refers to as “My Pet Goat” - I finally threw that photo over Mitch McConnell’s transom this past weekend and “Surprise, Surprise” - Trent Lott is resigning from the Senate.
Nice to know I’ve still got it! Oh! And Dick Cheney’s heart troubles today? Well, I’ll just let you guess about that for a while.
SeattleDan
November 26, 2007 at 10:34 pm
3Hey, Captain Underpants is a bestseller around these neck of the woods, pardner. Ohh, wait a sec…that Cpt. Underpants. My bad…
just plain Jack
November 27, 2007 at 5:01 am
4I heard on NPR yesterday that President Bush would not be injecting any of his ideas into the discussion at the Mideast Conference. Good. My bet is that Condi made him swear to Hell to keep his damn mouth shut while they were in town.
Dale
November 27, 2007 at 5:29 am
5Know why Captain Underpants is a Captain?
Cuz he keeps the Privates in line!
(Pardon me, I´m on lots of codeine…)
Scooby
November 27, 2007 at 7:26 am
6Are any of the writers strapping bombs to their belts yet?
That would certainly escalate things…
Bits
November 27, 2007 at 8:40 am
7Bombs? No, that’s the stand-up comics.
It's Pat!
November 27, 2007 at 2:56 pm
8Dale, I’m not on anything, and now I find out I’ll never make captain. Thanks a lot.
gillian
November 27, 2007 at 4:53 pm
9Tuesday night - the beer is cold and the night is young. In this week’s adventure, Sparky finds out that there no point in arguing with a conservative. I could have told him that.
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/11/26/tomo/
David
November 27, 2007 at 6:38 pm
10Dale, you just have to rub it in, don’t you:
“(Pardon me, I´m on lots of codeine…)”
Actually, when I was in grad school, I had to have my wisdom teeth extracted. Dental surgeon allowed me to have a prescription for five, count them, five codeine tablets. All they did was stave off the desire to kill myself. Still not sure how I survived the pain from the extraction of the abcessed wisdom tooth which had to be broken in half to get it out. Talk about the pain of a traumatized jawbone.
Dale
November 27, 2007 at 8:02 pm
11That´s exactly what I had done, David, but it was just a regular molar (and it shattered into more than two pieces–I was hoping to use each one for a different gift from the tooth fairy, but Mr. Grinch Dentist wouldn´t give them to me.). He only gave me 15 codeines but five days later and still looking like Orr in Catch-22 (and sounding a lot like Yossarian) I returned and refused to leave without another prescription and antibiotics. Fortunately the latter is making the former unnecessary, and I can save the good stuff for a rainy day (or a good price).
So, how about a summer camp where writers´ and producers´ children play soccer together?
Boomer
November 27, 2007 at 8:11 pm
12Broke a molar? Sorry to hear that, Dale, but didn’t they put fluoride in the water down in Texas when you were a kid? Or are you still into jawbreakers and eating ice?
Dale
November 27, 2007 at 9:18 pm
13I didn´t break the molar! The damn dentist did! (And no, they didn´t have fluoride in the water in Arkansas. Once a week in school the fluoride lady with her little tray of Dixie (what else?) cups and we all had to rinse. I only lived there for one year, but I think I might have been absent on too many fluoride days.)
hedera
November 27, 2007 at 9:53 pm
14There is no pain quite like the pain of a bad tooth - good luck with it, Dale. Glad the antibiotics are working.
Landis
November 28, 2007 at 9:00 am
15When I had my wisdom teeth out the office manager told me that my insurance only covered local anesthetic, but I could pay an additional $160 and get a general. First question I had was would I feel anything under local anesthetic. Response: “You shouldn’t feel any pain, but there will be loud crunching as the dentist breaks the tooth and lots of yanking as he pulls it out, along with blood everywhere.” Next question: “Who do I make the check out to?”.
It went really well though. I even went to class that night. I don’t think I accomplished much, but I kept a good attendance record.
Yann
November 28, 2007 at 9:02 am
16Mr Felber,
first I must say that this comment has nothing to do with the article you wrote, altough I read it and found your point quite interesting. I am posting this comment because this is the quickest way to get in touch with you–the people at randomhouse are not much of a help. I’m French and I’m doing a translation Master’s degree and I need your permission to make a NON-COMMERCIAL translation of an excerpt–rougly 100 pages–from Schrödinger’s Ball. It is for academic purpose, it will not be published, only three copies will be printed, it will stand as my Master’s thesis. If it’s ok with you, we could discuss this more in details–I could provide you with ID, evidence from my university ans so forth–through emails.
Sincerely yours
dee
November 28, 2007 at 12:48 pm
17I bet Yann didn’t even have to hold down 14 keys to make that ‘ö’.
Adam this could be your big break. I bet even Miss Edith hasn’t had her books translated into French!
Dale
November 28, 2007 at 1:35 pm
18You know you’ve made it when you spawn an academic subspecialty! I can’t wait for the opening of the Felberian Studies Departments across the nation. Congrats!
Landis
November 28, 2007 at 1:44 pm
19I’m gonna go ahead and guess that the excerpt includes the more exciting sections about Deborah Johnstone. I know I’d excerpt those. If I could translate.
Murray
November 28, 2007 at 5:16 pm
20And I thought that getting my Masters on the “Colony Size of The Lake Michigan Diatom Astereonella Formosa during nutrient limitation” was knowing everything about nothing.
As far as the negotiations, we can only hope that your guys are bringing everyone to the table. The W team is excluding Iran and Hammas because they don’t like them. Sort of like having The Paris Peace Talks and excluding the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.
W’s tawks are nothing but a photo op for a desperate and dying presidency.
Landis, it is pretty disturbing to have the dentist go at your teeth with a hammer, chisel, and pliers, but I got a real discount by letting the Dental Prof demonstrate the procedure to his class.
Yann
November 29, 2007 at 3:27 pm
21Indeed, Deborah Johnstone’s sensory adventures WILL be part of the translation! Although it will be a non-commercial, academic translation, I hope to propose it for full translation to a French publisher after my Masters because I think the book is funny and well-made–and I’m sure it would sell pretty well which is what publishers are primarily interested in. Anyway, anybody knows who Adam Felber’s agent is? Maybe I should try contacting her or him. Thanks everyone.