Genoa Salami

I suppose if I had let this collection of sausage links age any longer I'd have to call this entry "Blutwurst" or something like that. Unscheduled kiddage, sickage, and other lifeage. Not to mention spending time and effort on other writing stuff. In any event, let's start slicing!

• It's not just the US that's extending copyright terms. Japan is also considering doing so (hat tip to Professor Patry; I was aware of this, but hadn't found such an admirably clear and relatively balanced explanation). Of course, it's even less simple than it seems, in light of Article 15(c) of the Treaty of San Francisco that formally ended Japan's status as a combatant in the Second Thirty Years' War.

  But in any event, we can actually blame the French for this mess; it was French demands for the "rule of nondiminishment" in the Treaty of Rome that really led to all of this copyright term extension nonsense having any real impetus.

• The WGA strike:
  • The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., supports the strike. One wouldn't even know there's a strike from the front page of The Author's [sic] Guild, although if one were a Wobbly the NWU's largely content-free announcement of "solidarity" would sound rather comforting.
  • As anybody with half a brain could probably infer, Variety is anti-strike and doing its very best to avoid reporting on the substance of what is at issue. For example, consider this bit of whingeing that rank-and-file writers aren't giving on-the-record interviews. Perhaps there is a bit of failure to communicate by the WGA... but the irony that Variety is itself quoting the Warden's language — and in a rag that itself does an egregiously outstanding job of failing to communicate through its slanginess — seems to have slipped right by. It's just a hand of nothin' ... sort of like late-night TV (although, with the exception of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, I'm not sure one would be able to tell anyway).
• There's other Hollywood stuff, too, such as the distinction between "talent agent" and "personal manager" now in front of the California Supreme Court. Now if only they'd extend their regulation of agents to include literary agents, too; there are several notorious, high-end screenplay agents that make up for being regulated over screenplays by really, really screwing their clients on book deals.
• Then there's the political value and context of writing. The irony that Pahmuk had to come over here to say this ... well, it's not ironic; just sad and all too typical.
• Here's an interesting item that doesn't quite go far enough in pointing out that there is no monolithic Publishing Industry with uniform practices, let alone uniform profitability. This story on US publication of manga in Wired is even less perspicacious in this regard.