Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

We Smart Bitches wish you many wonderful novels in your stockings (or on your eBook reader, if you and Santa have that spunky digital connection - nudge nudge wink wink) and a peaceful, warm, and very Merry Christmas.

First, from Janet Mullany, this is so not what I am singing to the neighbors:

And second: each night Freebird and I drive around our neighborhood looking for lights. For a two year old, lights on houses is the coolest thing ever, especially when they come in funkass colors. So, from Freebird & me: funky houses with funky lights from across the US. Thank God they don’t live next door:

We’ve been talking a lot about sexism and women, feminism and romance in the past two weeks, so this week, we have Joss Whedon’s speech from his award from Equality Now in 2006.

Of course, someone posted it in the comments to an earlier entry, so in case you’ve already seen the Whedon Whonderment, here’s a bonus video.

Thanks to Anonymous M (similar to Tenacious D only more anonymous and further down in the alphabet) for this link - I have not laughed so hard at a movie preview in a long, long time.

Happy two days after Hanukkah.

Note: I fully expect this trailer to disappear for violations of whatever-the-fuck, so lemme know if it’s all gone too soon. 

Here in the US, the Writers Guild of America is on strike and has been since October 31, 2007. Their strike affects American television and movie production. If the strike isn’t resolved, most American tv for the coming season will be reality shows which don’t require WGA writers to script as they are “unscripted.” Yeah, they’re about as unscripted as WWE wrestling matches. Also, I intensely dislike reality television. But this isn’t about me.

The issues forcing the strike are the amount of money generated by online sales of television shows and movies, and increasing the residuals generated by television program and movie sales on iTunes or any other online vendor.

The WGA strike captains have started uploading YouTube videos to highlight the issues behind their strike, and an unreal number of actors have started making videos highlighting the importance of writers for the “Speechless” campaign to support the WGA. The Screen Actors Guild, The Teamsters, and several local outposts of the Service Employees Union, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the United Auto Workers union, and the sister guilds to the WGA in Canada, Greece, Australia, Great Britain, and New Zealand all support the WGA strike.

Our Friday Videos this week demonstrate support for the WGA strike, and to support the work of the writers behind the scenes of much of the entertainment I enjoy. 

You can see all the Speechless videos online at Speechless Without Writers.

Friday Videos, to send you and yours out into the weekend wonderment with one simple, comforting thought: How did we survive without YouTube?

First: from Jennie, Martha Stewart opines about nuts.

There is a longer version here, wherein a guy in the audience at about 0:21 seconds in has to hide his laughter. HA!