My laptop passed away last night. Can you say "bad timing"? I think that you can.

WATE 6, ABC affiliate out of Knoxville, Tennessee

AOL Money and Finance

WNEP, ABC affiliate out of Pennsylvania

WTOL 11, CBS affiliate out of Toledo, Ohio

PC Quote

JRJ.com (this one might take a while to load because it has to translate the page from Chinese. Yes, Chinese)

WASA live (scroll down to see the listing)

Inform.com (also scroll down)

Speeple

ADVFN (scroll down)

And another "Holy Crap" moment: Forbes.com

Apparently there were a host of other eastern TV stations that ran it, as well, though I can't find the links for them now. And again, I can't quite understand why all these financial sites picked up the story, though I'm still not complaining.

KRISTV.com, the NBC affiliate in Corpus Christi, Texas and KAIT, the ABC affiliate out of Jonesboro, Arkansas. Come on, CBS and FOX, you're falling behind!

So Wednesday I got an email from John Goodwin at Galaxy Press, the publisher of the Writers of the Future anthology, asking if I'd seen all the Tut buzz that's been in the news since Monday, when Zahi Hawass had a little press conference show and tell to announce the moving of the Tut mummy into a sealed glass display case. I had seen the story, of course, being the news junkie that I am. John then asked if I could write up a couple of paragraphs about what inspired me to write "The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom" because he wanted to send out a press release about it since, as you all must know, King Tut is "Sun God"'s protagonist. Sure, I said and jotted down a few lines, not thinking it would come to much. (I am soooo jaded.)

Well, guess I was wrong. As of this morning, the press release has been picked up and run by several online news sites such as Yahoo Finance, Indiana ABC affiliate KLFY, Investor's Business Daily, Nevada NBC affiliate KRNV (GO NBC! Oh wait, they're about to fire me. Scratch that,) Individual.com, Earth Times.org and Egyptology News. And then, the one that made me go "Holy Crap!": Washington Post.com lists it as the third article under King Tutankhamun stories.

Now, this is all totally cool and all, but aside from Egyptology News, I'm really scratching my head as to why these other venues picked it up. I mean, Yahoo Finance? Investor's Business Daily? I don't get it.

Not that I'm complaining. Nope, no complaining here. Just a bit of...puzzled smiling.

I've been getting a lot of email this week asking about the strike, what's going to happen to me and my job, etc so I thought I'd give everyone an update.

The news isn't good. Negotiations have essentially broken down, writers and producers are no longer talking. From what I understand, Sunday night there was an exchange of "fuck you's" and that was that. Everyone walked away from the table. And judging by the glum faces I'm seeing around the office, it looks like this strike is going to be a long one. January at least, I think, though I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

For me personally, the consequences of this action by the guild are pretty dire. In our production meeting Tuesday, the staff was told that at the end of next week, if the strike isn't resolved or if the show doesn't go back on the air sans writers, then we're all fired. Yes, fired. And right in time for Thanksgiving and all those wonderful December holidays, too. Great. Thanks so much, everybody.

So after next week, I don't know. Unemployment, I suppose. I'm told Cobra insurance is crazy expensive here in New York, so I guess I'm just going to have to hope neither Mike nor I gets sick or hit by a bus.

Now, the one big worry I have--and it's pretty valid, apparently--is that if NBC does fire us and then the strike ends, they won't hire us back as employees but as freelancers, which means that my good GE health insurance is gone, replaced with a tinker toy, pick-a-doctor-from-a-list-of-guys-who-got-their-medical-license-in-Bolivia type HMO. Vision and dental--gone. Life insurance--gone. 401K--bye bye. I can't begin to tell you how depressing this all is. I fought hard to be made a GE employee. I've worked at this show and been loyal to this network for nearly 12 years now, and even the idea of being asked to return as a freelancer is insulting.

But the most depressing thing here is that, from my perspective, what this strike really boils down to is a bunch of rich guys fighting a bunch of other rich guys over 6 cents. 6 cents! Now, don't get me wrong, I know from experience that each and every television network and production company is its own little den of thieves and any TV or film exec worth his salt would screw over his own mother to post a profit. But let's face it, people, TV and movie writers make a lot of money, too. The production staff on any given film or TV show...doesn't. In fact, many of us make only minimum wage, and yet these people--young, earnest kids working long hours in often thankless jobs--these are the ones this strike is going to hurt the most. And that, my friends, is the definition of unfair.

Bottom line, America: everybody cut the crap so we can all get back to earning a living.

Poor Tut, still being trotted out for the tourists. But I have to say, 3000 years dead and still in the news is pretty impressive. Wonder who his publicist is.