Hollywood’s striking writers and major studios have reached the outlines of a new employment contract, resolving key sticking points over how much writers should be paid for work that is distributed over the Internet, people familiar with the negotiations said Saturday.

A final contract could be presented to the Writers Guild of America board as early as Friday, according to three people close to the talks who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential.

The 3-month-old strike is expected to end once the board approves the contract.

— Los Angeles Times

Mama mia, we had us a storm here today, brothers and sisters. Santa Barbara is even getting mentioned on the Weather Channel, with 4 inches of rain, don’t ya know.

I love rain. This affinity runs in the family; my Dad is a minor rain deity; specifically, a Quasi Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer (cf, Rob McKenna, a minor character in So Long And Thanks for All The Fish.) And I especially appreciate it now that I live in a place that cannot possibly flood. I live in a second floor condo on the side of a concrete and asphalt hill, 60 feet above the level of a creek about half a mile away. So in order for water to reach me, as I may have explained here before, US 101 would have to be under water to the height of a five story building.

Which is a nice change from where I used to live, and dread the pineapple express rainstorms that sometimes blow across the eastern Pacific from Hawaii. Over there, I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to find my living room had an inch of water in the carpet. Just bloody lovely.

Anyway, we had some heavy lightning and thunder today. I had to unplug the computers. At one point I was down near the beach, about to unlock a dead-bolted solid wood door, when the thunder hit. I saw the door rattle in its frame from the sound waves. That was cool. But the best thing was just after sundown, when the clouds lifted just a little from the low coastal hills, revealing a dusting of snow.

Snow! It’s not bizarre; these coastal hills are around 2000 feet high. But it’s still very cool. Especially during the day. Usually, if we get snow on our hills it’s at night, and we wake up to it, and it melts by noon. So to have a nice white cloak during the day is special. Maybe I can get pictures in the morning.

is just emerging from the hedgehog’s fog of a cold, and not an hour too soon. There is so much to do and think about.

— Heath Ledger is dead? He was talented, and born the year I graduated from high school. Sad, sad.

After that, the news just gets bleak. No fault of mine. Here’s a picture of Happy. She has updated her blog, by the way. And speaking of movie stars, that hedgehog is a personal friend of Happy’s, as you can see here.

[click to enlarge]

Have you been wondering what’s happening with the writers’ strike? Me too.

“Facing mounting pressure to limit the economic havoc on the entertainment industry, negotiators for writers and major studios met Monday in an accelerated effort to end a strike now in its fourth week.”

Sometimes these numbers were presented in the aggregate. Sometimes they were reported for particular fires, names of which also became part of the common litany, the Witch and Harris fires, the Grass Valley, the Santiago, the Slide.

The tone of the public information officers and radio announcers who passed along the numbers, providing updates with the regularity of rush-hour traffic reports, was one of awe and reverence. After a certain point, of course, the numbers blurred together and, as informational reference points, lost their power.

[LA Times]

A truer concept has not been expressed by the media in the course of this ordeal. Words like devastation, destruction, and war zone, become meaningless. Numbers far more so.

Perhaps Sympathy will still stand.

Southern California is burning. At least 13 fires are burning from Santa Ynez, northwest of me, to the Mexican border. And it’s not burning just in backcountry, but in and around many communities. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.

It started this morning in Malibu, and now there are major fires burning in LA and Orange Counties.

I’m worried for the people and the animals.

This isn’t normally a political blog, but I would love to know what my readers think about the tasering of a college student at John Kerry event in Florida. I’m linking to a posting on another blog, which has two versions of the video. Please leave a comment here, or there, with your reaction.

BBC NEWS : “Forty-five aircraft are involved in the search for the missing millionaire who disappeared on Monday while flying alone in his small plane.”

I’m a little surprised they can’t find something like a small plane using satellites. Maybe satellites aren’t as precise and focused as they’re rumored to be.