Tag: metric system

  • ODDS and ENDS: UNION!, American Folklore, and Ice Cream

    (Casey Jones you better watch your speed!)

    Oh, shit! The actors joined the strike! Yup, SAG-AFTRA is on the picket line with the WGA, and now no one gets pretty new movies and shows this Fall! I hope you’re happy Studios! Both sides will make their case over the next few weeks, seeing who can build up the bigger public support, and then the real negotiations will begin. The truth of the matter is that the delivery of entertainment has changed. The traditional way for studios to earn income (movie theatres, cable, and ad tv) has declined and streaming hasn’t closed the gap, though that’s how everyone wants to get their entertainment. But I will also point out there are only five media corporations in the US, and it’s been that way for a very long time, so if they aren’t making money, that’s on them. It’s not like there is a ton competition out in the market. Media is an oligopoly so they are in control for how it all works. The studios could solve this tomorrow; stop paying your C-Suite hundreds of millions of dollars. Sorry, but CEO’s can only have two mansions, one Learjet, and one yacht from here on out. We all will have to make sacrifices to survive.

    And when was the last time you thought about American Folklore? Like, Casey Jones, Paul Bunyan, and John Henry. They don’t teach that stuff in school anymore. I asked my daughter about it, and she has no idea what I was talking about. I can’t prove this, but I have this weird feeling that schools were teaching American Folklore as a form of propaganda, to get us kids to believe that there was a mythology to American development and enguiniety, instead of teaching us that our past was a whole lot more about exploitation and exclusion. I can’t prove it, but these people who pushed the Folklore might have been the same people that killed teaching us kids the metric system.

    Ice cream really is the best. Doesn’t matter the season, ice cream is perfect.