Dead Letters (Not ON Sticks)

I STARE OUT my window at a wall of white and I can't help but think of picketing writers in NYC today. Good Luck, you hardy, frozen scribes. When the ice age comes and the mole people rise up with the hungry polar bears flanking south in a pincer motion to decimate Manhattan, it is you who will be the loyal resistance and last best hope for humanity. Word.

Now, see, sometimes the Sticksville Post Office gets letters. I am reliably informed that many of these communiques come through that famous series of tubes known collectively as the Interwebs. Naturally, we can't answer the, oh, tens of thousands of queries that come through (thanks to some tidy linking from Kung Fu Monkey on a previous post. Thanks John!) So sometimes we try to take care of them here. Let's get to it, shall we?

Don't you love it when there's a new exec that's brought in on a show and they want to "mix it up". That's so fun. Why do they do that?

I know it can sometimes seem like a mystery. But the answers you seek are all there in the Good Book. I direct you to Chapter 21, Verse 3:

And so The LORD sayeth unto the scribe,

Your work pleases me. And your honesty and your creativity
celebrates me and all my works.

So lo, today I send unto you, this fucktard.

They will fix what is unbroken,
And stir that which is polished.
Verily, they shall challenge the premise that thy hast sold
And the jokes thou hast giggled over.


As the bounty of grain has its locust
As the flower has its putridity
And the dove that nasty white poo stuff
So too shall you endure my trials.

And yea, it shall make thee stronger,
Thy skills shall multiply a hundred times
And a hundred times again
Betwixt the force of their banality.

And in the times to come, you will
Have the basis for a new character,
And the fucktard shall go home and
abuse their cat. Who totally hates them,
By the way, and spends every moment
of every day trying to figure out a
way to kill them and keep the food coming.

And the fucktard shall never know
The joy of my love.
For I do so love you, scribe.

It's a little hard to swallow, I know. But look on the bright side. At least he/she didn't ask you to cut the baby in two. Thanks for writing. Next!

First of all, long time reader, some time poster and all around fan of the
blog.  But as much as I appreciate what you put out on the web, to make as
much noise as you did on the slim possibility of a Canadian series being
sold to the US and what you'd label the writers of such a series, only then
to close the comments of a post that deals specifically with those issues -
whether you're friendly or not with the creators of such series - is very
lame.

What you do, while hard sometimes to admit, is important to the dialogue of
Canadian production.  I understand that blogging is only posting your
opinion.  However having read you consistently, I believe you take your
opinion seriously.  As such, I think you owe to those who read you a further
defense of what you've said in earlier posts or to retract your previous
comments.

Okay. Um. Wow.

First of all, I think perhaps you've flattened and squeezed out any of the nuance in my written and quoted position.

But of course, that's not the meat of the issue here. So let's talk a bit more about what I do here, and how I do it.

There are those who have taken me to task in the past, throwing around the contention that I hide behind the, "I'm just a blogger" thing sometimes. I think that's an unfair charge, but that's fine. I can take it. It does also happen to be true.

What standard do I hold myself to? Saying what I believe to be true. That's it. That can change. It can evolve. The reason this blog took the turn it did a little over two years ago was because I thought the reportage of Canadian media was insular and deadly. It was full of single-sourced stories that reflected, almost totally, a corporate agenda. For a long time, Antonia Zerbisias seemed to be lone voice in the Toronto Star actually approaching Canadian media issues from something other than a business perspective. John Doyle tries, but he is constricted somewhat by the fact that primarily he's supposed to be reviewing TV.

So I started blogging about what I knew. About the things that were being said everywhere I went inside media circles; about the truths that seemed to be common truths -- but were never disseminated.

But here's the thing -- as I've said many, many times before -- it's never been the whole truth. It can't be.

You seem to want to hold me to a journalistic standard. That's rich, because of course it speaks to the very reason why I started. Believe me, I see the irony. But I'm the first to say that this blog, and what gets written in it cannot ever be considered as a journalistic source, or as the full truth in anything. And this is for one simple reason:

I always have a conflict of interest.

I try to be even handed. I try not to settle scores. I dare to go so far in speaking about issues -- and I think it's a problem that there are so few voices that are willing to go as far as I go, in saying the crap that everybody thinks anyway.

But you cannot both be in the industry and outside it. I can't divorce my personal and economic interests from the work I do here. You can't take me as an objective source because I am never objective. I do have a dog in the hunt.

That doesn't mean I don't have an opinion. It just means that I'm not always willing to share that opinion with you. This shouldn't be a surprise. I've written about this before.

So in this case, as in others, if I say I won't comment on something, it's not because I don't have an opinion. I'm just not gonna share it with you. You think I owe it to you? Mmm. Okay. That's an interesting viewpoint.

I tend not to agree.

Now, the price I pay for that is that you get to speculate and think whatever you want about why I won't comment or talk about something. I can't help that. That's your right. The reason why it doesn't drive me crazy is because I know my reasons, and I know that whatever you imagine those reasons to be is very, very far removed from the reality.

I'm comfortable with my personal integrity on this issue. I won't be losing any sleep.

If you want to explore the issue, there are plenty of other people willing to talk about it. There's a discussion on Facebook, at Karen Walton's Ink Canada Group. You can go comment on Brioux's site. Hell, maybe you could, you know, read up on what the official voice of Canadian writers, the Guild, has to say.

I am not such an egotist that I think if I don't weigh in on a subject, that subject goes unexplored. I am simply not that important in the grand scheme of things -- and every cross that comes up is not mine to bear, no matter what you may think.

As for retracting what I said. Why? I still believe every word I wrote on the subject. I believe what I said in those interviews. I think every Canadian writer has a duty to explore how they feel, and what they're willing to do, especially since, you know -- it's going to happen again. (It already has, in fact.)

I'm already on the record. I don't feel the need to say any more. If you do, then by all means, find a way to do that. Step up.

One more thing. I've been thinking a lot in the last little while about what the most useful course of this blog might be in the months ahead. I don't know if I have an answer. I have been exploring and thinking of other ways in which I could help my industry and have a voice that's not related to the blog. That might evolve things here.

One thing I'll promise, though, is this: one day I'm probably going to stop. I'll either get too busy, or I'll decide that my off time is better spent writing a book or something. This thing has always had a stale date. We haven't reached it yet. But when we do, the conversation will continue without me, I hope.

If you don't like them terms, then I'm afraid my only recourse is to offer you a full refund.

Goddamn, that's a lot of snow.