INDIGNITY VOL. 3, NO. 69: Writers bloc.

MR WRONG: Don't Scrimp on the Scripts!

SO THERE’S A Writers Strike and it is affecting the vital industry of Television, which is one of my favorite religions. Personally, I don’t watch enough fresh television to be sad about the Content we’re gonna not-get and errbody’s always talking about how there’s so much teevee that they never get a chance to watch it all, but c’mon, you’re always gonna find a way to watch all the stuff you wanna watch, so that sorta seems like a way to make the Writers feel bad about themselves and break the strike, eh?

I guess somebody’s gonna make an Artificial Intellect doing the monologue for one of the Later Night people, or at this point a whole A.I. garbage late-night talk show, which will be terrible and creepy, and you can A.I. your own joke about Late-Night Television here and blow it out your Snappy-Insta-Tok for everybody to “like,” unless it’s Twitter, and then I don’t know what happens, sorry. Where do the Tweets go anymore now, with that dodo in charge? Twitter could use some writers in the Management dep’t., eh? Hiyo!

This Writers Strike might not seem important, but this is all part of The Economy. There are a lotta people who depend on the fresh flow of Television to make a living, you know? There is even a whole economy of writers who write about the writing on the TV shows!

The Show Business publication Variety has a list of all the culture that will be in stasis until the writers get some respect (money), and people seem to be worried about how the last time there was a writers strike we ended up with Reality Television, but people enjoy Reality Television, or they enjoy to say it is garbage, and then that’s a sport in itself, and you can consume the vapid swill and elevate yourself above it and say you are a Critic, so it’s valid or whatever, but it’s Television, and you are watching it. Nobody cares what level you’re trying to say you’re on, you’re on the couch with the rest of us. So, like, what are we gonna get this time, because of the writers strike? Somehow, it will be more Television.

The Artificial Intellect thing is gonna be used by writers the way you use spellcheck and stuff, so I am not real worked up about how an A.I. is gonna write the next Snowfall or It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. I think an A.I. could def write all the setups for Reality Television, though. It’s mostly getting a buncha damaged dipshits in some sort of confinement/habitrail and getting them drunk so they will say bad things about each other and act up, or making them think they are in a Competition where they need to eat raw bugs and offal to survive on a nude camping show or something. Is there a nude cooking show? Anyway, if they let it do its own thing, A.I. is gonna totally get some people killed behind some “prompts” and stuff, it’s gonna be bad. And people will watch.

Another way the A.I is also totally gonna ruin everything is you’ll be able to pay to get yourself inside a movie, and errbody will have their own Directors Cut, and it’s all just gonna be a mess, so look, we gotta support these Writers while there's still some writing to do! Hollywood hogs, get your money up, this is the final Golden Age!

No offense to any Writers out there, but the thing about writing is it’s a cushy gig, seriously. I don’t care how long you went to college. Do you know how hard it is to work construction? Did you ever get up on a 30’ ladder and paint a house? Fast food is no fucking picnic! I’m glad we’re trying to get them paid more to sling burgers and pizza and it’s good for workers to get into Unions like the Writers so they can stand up for themselves and bargain in a Collective and force The Man to share the wealth. Use the Force!

Give the Writers more of your dough, you greedy Hollywood hogs! In the words of Selina the Catwoman, talking to the Secret Identity of Batman, in the major motion picture The Dark Knight Rises, in words that were written by a Writer:

SELINA
There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little to the rest of us.

Mr. Wayne might as well be a Hollywood hog! I have a small sidebar about that Batman movie, because I thought it was gonna be a kickass movie about Class War, seriously. I thought it was gonna be Catwoman blowin’ up the system and Batman’s alter ego having to face up to the realities of his inherited Wealth, but it just degenerated into two turgid bozos in Halloween costumes bopping each other on the head like pro wrasslin’, which also has Writers!

I think one of the big Strike issues is that the Writers wanna wet their beaks a little more in The Stream. The Hollywood hogs are making zillions of dollars on The Stream! Why else would there be so many streaming things? You gotta let the writers, who are the ones aiming their writing-trickles into the big Entertainment tank, get their fair taste from the resulting money spigot!

Writers need the protection of a Labor union because really good writers, the kind of writers who write Comic Book Movies and Situation Comedies, they pretty much can’t do anything else, and most of ‘em aren’t strong enough to work Construction, they are writers living their life of the mind, dig? I can relate, though, I’m delicate, I’m fallin’ apart, got the misery in my back, so I can’t dig post-holes for decks anymore, or scramble up a scary-tall ladder to paint a house. If I returned to one of my former gigs of delivering pizzas, it’d take me 20 minutes just to climb outta my Pontiac Vibe with the pies, my customers would starve and so would I!

In conclusion, Writers should totally have their Job Action and not that you asked, but I support the Strike, good for them, even though Writers all the time want to talk about how hard they write and how many words they pooped out. Some of ‘em even have a hashtag on Twitter, #amwriting. Har! Here’s one I’m sure I didn’t invent, and you probably shouldn’t click on it because it might not be as scatalogically juvenile as I want it to be: #ampooping, OK? You gotta be kidding me about how hard writing is. For example, the Mr. Wrong Column is written by me, so I am a Writer, harrrr-de-har-har! Of course I didn’t say anything about being a good Writer, right? But I write the writings, or at least type them into words!

In furthermore conclusion, for the record of Full Disclosure, the Mr. Wrong Column is a Content-Product, written by Yours Truly, so I am on the side of the Workers, who control the means of Production. Thank you.

The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly wherever it can appear. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com

WEATHER REVIEWS

New York City, May 3, 2023

★★ Stubborn clouds slowly separated into higher and lower layers, yielding to some sunlight for a while. Nothing about the day resolved itself except the steady coolness of the air. The brilliant blues and dark grays didn't look as if they belonged in the same sky together. A long, scuzzy-looking rat, with a russet patch at the nape of its neck, loped across the path, crossing from the playground into the shrubbery. A little deeper into the park to the south, by the new construction fencing, a red-tailed hawk flapped up into a tree, with another rat dangling in its grasp. It took off again, settling in an elm just below the construction zone. It hunkered down and began tugging at the rat, against the dim green canopy of leaves. Robins kept piping at the hawk in alarm, and the hawk ignored them. The reopened bottom of the park, busy the day before, was close to empty again.

EASY LISTENING DEP’T.

INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

Indignity Morning Podcast No. 60: At-risk youth.

Tom Scocca • May 4, 2023

Listen now (4 min) | The Indignity Morning Podcast is also available via the Apple and Spotify platforms.

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The Indignity Morning Podcast is also available via the Apple and Spotify platforms.

SANDWICH RECIPES DEP’T.

WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches from More Recipes for Fifty, by Frances Lowe Smith published in 1921, found in the public domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.

HOT CHICKEN SANDWICHES
4 quarts chicken diced
2 quarts peas cooked
1 can pimentos
2 cups butter or fat
2/3 cup potato flour
2 quarts hot milk
2 quarts hot chicken broth
4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons paprika
3 tablespoons lemon juice

Cream butter or chicken fat and flour together; add hot milk and broth, stirring until smooth. Cook thirty minutes in double boiler; add seasonings. Cut chicken carefully in half-inch cubes or pieces; reheat in sauce, and serve on bread which has been toasted on one side.

GREEN PEPPER AND PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICHES
Chop sweet green peppers, celery, and onion very fine, in any desired proportions. Mix with Peanut Butter Mayonnaise*, using about one-third green pepper mixture to two-thirds of Mayonnaise. Spread between thin slices of buttered bread.

* PEANUT BUTTER MAYONNAISE
1 pt. Mayonnaise Dressing
1 pint peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tspns. French mustard

Beat about one-fourth cup water into peanut butter; there should be enough to make it about consistency of Mayonnaise. Add gradually to Mayonnaise, beating hard with an egg whip or Dover egg beater. Add salt and mustard, and chill before using. Mustard may be omitted.

If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, kindly send a picture to us at indignity@indignity.net.

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