Category: Smashing the State

Arise, ye pris’ners of … Hollywood?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

The New York Times is a little short on May Day news, surprise, surprise.

Other than one piece about the French, who remain pissed off about having their retirement-age goalposts shifted two years (To age 64! Zut alors!), I found exactly one labor story on the website.

It concerned the struggles of — wait for it! — screenwriters.

Screenwriters?

Now, I don’t mean to make light of screenwriters’ issues. They remind me very much of the issues Your Humble Narrator faced as a free-range rumormonger. So, up the rebels, etc.

Nevertheless, it seemed appropriate to make today’s singing of “The Internationale” the version from the 1981 Warren Beatty-Diane Keaton vehicle “Reds,” which I have liberated in the name of the people from YouTube, which is owned by Google.

The writers credited for the flick are Beatty and Trevor Griffiths, according to IMDB, which is owned by Amazon.

And you’d better hope Apple TV flogged Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly, Bill Lawrence, Jason Sudeikis and the rest of the writers room into cramming a shit-ton of “Ted Lasso” episodes into the can. According to Mother Times:

Absent an unlikely last-minute resolution with studios, more than 11,000 unionized screenwriters could head to picket lines in Los Angeles and New York as soon as Tuesday, an action that, depending on its duration, would bring Hollywood’s creative assembly lines to a gradual halt. Writers Guild of America leaders have called this an “existential” moment, contending that compensation has stagnated despite the proliferation of content in the streaming era — to the degree that even writers with substantial experience are having a hard time getting ahead and, sometimes, paying their bills.

“Even writers with substantial experience are having a hard time getting ahead and, sometimes, paying their bills.” Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

Just chillin’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
Weather, outside, frightful, etc.

Sorel, God of Cold Feet, paid us a surprise visit last night.

Hard to believe the glider boyos were cruising the friendly skies just the other day.

The day before Halloween Herself and I saw three gliders working the thermals near the Menaul trailhead.

But Halloween has come and gone. We “fall back” on Sunday, and then slide at high speed into Thanksgiving, winter solstice, and Christmas. It ain’t always sandals-and-shorts weather, even in The Duck! City.

I’m not ready. I never am. I used to race in this shit? When? Was I still on drugs?

Herself is made of sterner stuff. She bundled up and sallied forth with a fellow Democrat to distribute campaign literature.

Comrade Eeyore is likewise on the hustings, telling The Guardian that Democrats “have not done a good enough job of reaching out to young people and working-class people and motivating them to come out and vote in this election.”

Hey, comrade, Herself is no passenger in this garbage scow. Ain’t her fault the officers are all rumdums.

Being of the Vanguard, I was needed here at Headquarters to propagandize over hot tea and a Taos Bakes bar. Arise, ye prisoners of starvation, and fetch me another mug of tea.

While I await the Revolution I’m also baking a loaf of bread so I don’t have to stand in line for it like the proles.

Here in a bit I’ll go for a run, if only because I never know when I might have to. It’s all this weather is good for. You can’t ski in it, or make snowballs with it, so you might as well pound ground, keep the muscle memory sharp.

The forecast for the day after Election Day is not encouraging. We may be feeling the heat, but not in a good way. I’m thinking of feet held to the fire.

When will it be Labor Day?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
The late, great Gahan Wilson.

We never hear of Capital Day, not because Capital has no day, but because every day is Capital Day. The struggle in which we are now engaged will end only when every day is Labor Day. — Eugene V. Debs, Labor Day 1903

It’s still Capital Day. For now, anyway.

At The Guardian, Douglas Rushkoff recounts his chat with a secretive group of super-wealthy dudes “preparing for a digital future that had less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether.”

In short, they’ve grown tired of our sniveling about their shitting in our shared sandbox and wonder whether they might be able to dispense with us altogether.

Writes Rushkoff, a self-described humanist and Marxist media theorist who writes about the impact of digital technology on our lives:

Their extreme wealth and privilege served only to make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us.

One of the capitalists’ main concerns centered on how to control their security people after The Event — “their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.”

Yep, that could be risky. A SEAL might grow weary of barking for fish from the plump, well-manicured pinkies of a plutocrat. How to get away from it all when you need to take a few of “them” with you?

What happens when Labor Day finally comes around for real?

Look for the union label

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
One big … union?

Hee, and also haw. This just in: Outside‘s editorial staff wants to unionize.

“Since the start of @outsidemagazine almost 45 years ago, we’ve been providing intrepid coverage of those who dare to push the limits of what we think is possible. So today, we are proud to announce that the Outside magazine editorial staff is forming a union,” 15 of 17 eligible Outside workers wrote in a tweet, according to the NewsGuild-Communication Workers of America.

You won't find this item in the Outside+ catalog.
You won’t find this item in the Outside+ catalog.

They will become part of the Denver News Guild Local 37074.

The Outside crew is asking Outside Inc. to voluntarily recognize their unit, according to NewsGuild-CWA. Yeah, good luck with that. You fuckin’ aroun’ in Robin’s ’hood, son.

Frankly, I can’t see that the Guild has had much luck over the years when it comes to saving the scribblers at the Rocky Mountain News, The Denver Post, or The Pueblo Chieftain from a vicious diddling at the plump, manicured hands of the robber barons.

Personally, I would’ve signed with the International Workers of the World. At least the Wobblies get to sing.

Still, up the rebels and all that. Damn the Man, full speed ahead!

Wot’s all this then?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Officer Friendly is here to rifle through your Google user data.

“Probable cause? We ain’t got no probable cause. We don’t need no probable cause. I don’t have to show you any steenkeeng probable cause!”

Zachary McCoy was Just Riding Along™, not unlike thee and me, when the John Laws came calling for his Google user data. According to The Guardian:

McCoy later found out the request was part of an investigation into the burglary of a nearby home the year before. The evidence that cast him as a suspect was his location during his bike ride – information the police obtained from Google through what is called a geofence warrant. For simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, McCoy was being investigated and, as a result, his Google data was at risk of being handed over to the police.

No thank you, please, and fuck right off with that noise, Officer Friendly. How’s the song go? “Let me ride through the wide open country that I love / Don’t geofence me in.”