The Minifie lecture on Wednesday night was awesome. I met Mike there just before it started and I had a great time, even though it went longer than I expected. I thought Evan Solomon was a great speaker and seemed to be a great guy, the kind of guy you would want to go out for beers with on the weekend. Basically, his talk was about something that I've been looking for for a long time - he discussed defending the media as a relevant and important institution. My feelings have always been that journalists are people that for whatever reason, whethey they didn't have the courage or the brains, could not be movers and shakers in this world, so they decided to cover it instead. It is in this covering of events that they try to make their mark in this world, through their biased coverage to fit whatever personal agenda they have. Evan did a good job of explaining why the media is very important because of the functions they serve in society. I'm really not doing it justice, but it was a good presentation. I especially liked what he had to say about new technology forcing old mediums to find efficiencies. The one thing that he didn't touch on, though, was that no matter what virtues the media might have, 95% of "journalists" out there are not helping the cause, but hurting it. I think what he had to say was right, and important, but he didn't justify why no one out there is doing it nor did he talk about any ideas to change it. I actually got up and asked a question about what he thought the impact of weblogging is having both as part of the media and just part of society. He basically thought that while you can get some unique stuff in weblogs, it will never be a mainstream part of society's information gathering, rightly pointing out that the proliferation of the Internet has only given rise to more centralization, rather than the opposite.
There have been a lot of things going on lately that really piss me off, and some parts of the lecture reminded me of that, namely the two crazy people who got up to ask questions. One guy was some kind of conspiracy-theorist who thought he had an earth-shattering story that everyone needed to hear when really the reason no one would take his story is because he had obvious mental problems. The second guy quoted stuff most people haven't even heard of before, so you'd think he was smart, but he just raged at Evan over something that Evan didn't even say and when Evan explained it, he got even more mad. It was surreal. The bottom line is, there is a significant amount of the population that has legitimate mental problems and for some reason I seem to run into them all the time. Whether it is people losing their minds over Janet Jackson or people reacting like The Carillon raped and murdered people when all they did was print a harmless and perfectly legal (albeit "tasteless" - whatever that means - it's usually the people who find things "tasteless" that have their heads up their ass the most) article, I seem to run into these types daily. The message I am trying to give you is this - if you spend your life worrying about what other people are doing to your society's sensibilities or your personal space, then you fall into one of two catagories: 1) you have serious mental problems or 2) you have way to much time on your hands. Grow the fuck up - this is life, not academia - people like me who can get through the day without losing it don't need your bullshit.
Anyways, Mike and I went out after the lecture, and it was a bitch to find somewhere to go! It was St. Patty's Day, so, of course, every place was packed full. We stopped at like 4 places in the south end before we finally decided to wait 20 mins at BP's for a table. We were both starving but afterwards I think I had eaten too fast because I wasn't feeling too good - it was time for bed and I didn't even enjoy a green beer or a Guinness!
Thursday nights' union meeting wasn't too eventful. Today I worked from home as there were guys here in the morning to start work fixing the blinds on the solar-arium that weren't working. They had to order some parts so hopefully they'll be fixed within the next few weeks. I went to Laval tonight for supper with Azure-Dee for the "Cinq a Sept" (5-7) as they call it. We had some great food for cheap and talked in French the whole time. I'm really looking forward to getting involved with this French conversation group to brush up, because, boy, do I ever need it!
Otherwise, I don't have anything planned for this weekend. I've got work stuff to do and some personal computer-type fooling around and I just want to lay low. I have never been closer to personal bankruptcy in my whole life so I'd like to lay low. It's for all the right reasons, and it's nice to relax and save some cash!