King for a lifetime, fool for a... lifetime...

So this meeting last night at the Writer's Guild (WGA). It may sound petty to gripe about having a fun job in television, but the fact is that not being granted access to the union severely hurts us in terms of pay, health care, screen credit, excessive overtime hours with no compensation, time-off, etc, etc, etc. The list goes on forever. The guy running the meeting works for the WGA and is, by trade, a union organizer. Negotiations between the network/movie execs and the WGA are currently underway and one of the WGA's sticking points is that reality tv writers be covered in the agreement. It's been on the table for years now, but people are really starting to crack. I'm making pennies compared to what I'm entitled and my bosses know it. And the 30+ people who showed at the meeting are going through it, too. Which in a way makes me feel a little better that I'm not the only one trudging through these poor conditions. Some of the stories I heard there... true horrors. Working 40 days straight, 18 hour days (unless you're in production, this is outrageous) So we've got a grass roots movement in the works. There's support in numbers and that's the only way our demands will be met. It's funny, the guy heading the meeting kept drawing all these parallels between us and garment workers. It's sad how accurate those analogies can be, given that we're engineering the biggest craze in the most profitable industry around and only getting a sniff of a sliver of the pie. It is on. It is on like Donkey Kong.

But its cool. They put up a picture in one of the bathrooms and gave us ice cream today for some reason. That'll make it all better... monsters.

By the way, how the hell did I end up in this situation? One second I'm smoking a bowl, the next I'm banging my fist on a board room table arguing about labor negotiations. Oh well... Shit happens and then you become an activist.