Legalization of Marijuana

Marijuana should be decriminalized, I don't see a problem with that. How can you disagree with Willie Nelson? ha ha. 4.5 million Canadians endulged in 2004 according to Statistics Canada and according to MP Keith Martin, the government would save $150 million in court costs each year if they went forward with legalizing it to a degree.

"Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue." That quote is from Senator Pierre Claude Nolin in 2002 when the Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs released its final report. He also thinks anyone convicted of possession should have their records wiped clean. I completely agree with that. 600,000 Canadians have a criminal record because of marijuana possession according to Justice Canada. Why? What is the point of having a criminal record for that. It unfairly constricts people in things they could possibly do and jobs they could possibly get.

When I lived in Winnipeg, one of my roommates was a big pot head. He and his friends would be over regularly hanging out and toking up. And there was nothing wrong with them. I got to know them a little, partied with them on different occasions and they're just normal people. It's not like just because they do a lot of weed they're hardcore drug users who are gonna beat you up if you come across them. Bottom line, they were cool people, I miss seeing them. good times lol.

Prohibition really doesn't work. You can see that from the amount of people who don't care that marijuana is illegal and do it anyway. Attempts at the prohibition of alcohol were just as succesful. If it's outright banned, that makes people want to do more. If it was decriminalized, it wouldn't be as much of an issue. In response to people who claim that it would lead to calls for other drugs to be decriminalized and the downfall of society, get a grip. The same things are said about alcohol and it's not to illegal to drink. The same things are said about sex and the kinky add-ons there in. One thing doesn't necessarily lead to another.

Podcast Idea outlines

So I think Jill meant for us to outline the idea we're going to do for the podcast project. I can't really do that right now so I'll just describe a couple of the ideas I have.

1. Moving Out

What was it like the first time you moved out of your parents house and lived either on your own or with other people? How would you describe that experience?

2. Road trip

The open road. Everyone ( or at least I do) enjoys a story about a fantastic voyage somewhere. Like driving to Saskatchewan in the middle of the night to pick up and tow a friend's car which had broken down. Or travelling to Wisconsin by Greyhound bus.

3. Steeltown Pro Wrestling

I'm helping out with the debut of SPW on the 19th. This could be like a documentation of the set-up for the first show. This one would be the most interesting, clip-wise. Getting audio and nat sound from the show.

Shirts and Skins

The discussion this morning in Media Writing was on a controversial t-shirt a woman developed and is distributing with "I was raped" on it. I believe people should be able to wear whatever they want, no matter what's on it. It's about what the shirt means and conveys rather than what it says. Jennifer Baumgardner, the creator of the shirt, says it's supposed to be empowering for women. I can see how it could be but I can also see how some people wouldn't wear it. For example, a shirt with Hitler on it might be construed by some people as offensive, while at the same time other people would wear it.

The comments section is always an interesting place. You get a lot of people who try and seem like their opinion is more important or more correct than other peoples' and that their the high ruler or whatever of them. Some people truly just don't get it though and make a point of being retarded idiots. For example, Mr. Chuck Adkins I think was a little off the money in comments. What do you expect though from far right wing nuts. He thinks she's doing it just for the money and that she looks like "some two bit whore." He makes a point of saying women should dress less provocatively. Since I'm a guy, saying he's wrong about that might be misconstrued as just me wanting women to wear less clothes. Honestly, I'm not gonna deny that does play into it. However, some women feel empowered by dressing a certain way. Strippers are thought to be dirty and sinful but some women do it because it gives them confidence and empowers them. Bottom line, this isn't the 1800's and you can't control what women wear.

Basically I think this boils down to freedom of expression and the only people that are against that are individuals that don't want to think for themselves.

I really don't like news stories

So Shawn and myself were supposed to shoot a news story yesterday. I was weary about doing it since Shawn hadn't done his last 2 stories. He was the reporter on the story and thus it was his job to come up with the idea and set something up. We decided to do a story on the indoor golf place at the Town Centre and I emplored Shawn for 4 days to call the guy and set something up but of course he didn't until Monday afternoon. So we found out the place is already closed, which was just the first kick in the nads that happened. I had read a story about Manitoba debating whether or not to ban cell phone use while driving so I put forth that idea. Another idea was a story on violence in tv and videogames but we decided to go with the cell phone story.

It started out alright, getting a shot of a cell phone ringing and Shawn answering it while we were driving around Brandon in his Nitro. I had to do the shot handheld of course, so it was not steady at all and pretty much sucked. We continued on shooting any b-roll we could think of, which ended up being not very much. Shawn playing with his GPS navigator while driving, shot of the outside of a cell phone place, shots of the cop shop, low angle shot on victoria of cars driving by.

Things basically went to shit when we attempted to get some interviews. We went to the police station and asked if someone could give us a comment but apparently the guy who handles questions from the media only works till 4 and it was after 4 by this point. So yes it was pretty stupid. We went to the small police station by Shilo, but no luck once again. We were told they can't comment on anything until it actually becomes a law. Street interviews worked no better. We could not get an interview to save our lives. Friends of Shawn wouldn't help out. One guy outside Shawn's apartment building gave us a b.s. excuse that he wasn't from Brandon so we would be better off getting someone else. That was at least polite, unlike some people. We were running out of ideas so we went to the mall. We got the attention of a middle aged woman in the parking lot and she basically freaked out. She looked like a spooked yak. She yelled at us, "What!, What do you want? I'm busy." Shawn managed to get out 3 words before she shot us an evil and abrupt "No!" I just thought, that was remarkably rude. It was 6 pm by now. We had been driving around entire the city for 3 hours trying to do this and then decided to try at ACC not expecting to actually get anything.

We ended up dejectedly sitting in Shawn's nitro in the parking lot trying to think of what the hell to do with this news story. We finally decided to give up, and see what happens with the media mistresses of the news story, Greg and Diane, the next day. Some how I don't think their gonna be happy.

Tuition thaw

I don't think the tuition freeze being lifted is a good thing. College is like $12-13 000 a year including rent and other costs and it's even more for university. The government is adding millions of dollars in bursaries but that would only help if everyone qualified for bursaries. What happened to the saying, you can't put a price on education?

Podcast

So (I seem to start every blog like this) maybe I'm overthinking this podcast project, I doubt it though. I can't think of anything to do for it. I'm not one of those people who go all out and put 150% into the work I do, I don't have the ambition for that, but I don't want to do a crappy half assed project either. I searched on google for podcast topics and I didn't really find much. I read a list of 20 great podcast topics that listed tips for how to best do a podcast rather than give topic ideas like the name alluded to. I want to involve other people, getting their opinion, but people don't like doing that it seems. hmm maybe movies, except I'm not sure in what respect I would do that for 15 minutes and have it be mildly interesting still. Suggestions?

Dexter

So there's this show Dexter. It's about a Miami police blood splatter expert, Dexter Morgan, who helps catch serial killers while at the same time, he's a serial killer. The only person who knows (his father) passed away a couple years ago. Dexter's father was also a cop and he was instrumental in helping Dexter figure out his "urge" I'll say, for lack of a better word, to kill things. He taught him how to do it right and use it constructively to help society by only killing people who deserve it, who are hurting other people.

It originally ran on Showtime, one of those premium pay stations like HBO, but CBS bought the distribution rights to show an edited version of the first season Sundays at 9 pm. I started watching it and it quickly became one of my favorite shows. It's the combination of people being killed along with sporadic moments of dark humour. It's really a great show from top to bottom. It's well written and it's got great actors in it.

Michael C. Hall does a really good job of portraying the main character. An adopted boy, who knows he's different from everyone else. He doesn't think or feel the same way as most people do so he has to work at faking it. He's also got a girlfriend on the show, as he likes to say "she's perfect because she's just as screwed up as me." She's still getting over her previous husband who was abusive. It makes it interesting to watch the interactions between them with Dexter trying to figure out relationship stuff. That's part of one thing I really like about the show. It has a lot of depth and the characters have many different layers to them. I can relate to the show. Feeling like you don't fit in, like you don't understand other people or how to act. Doing the small talk and all the little pithy every day things people do.

Death has a Camera

I think the first question I would have if I was talking to the person who did the before and after death pictures would be, how do you come up with an idea like that? That's the difference between me and artists. If I thought of an idea like that, I would think it's too crazy to do.

Looking at the pictures, which is a great way to spend the first part of morning, I mean it just lifts you up and gets you ready for the day, is interesting. You feel a combination of many things since the different people have different outlooks and attitudes. I seem to have a bit of a morbid fascination in dark things, so this project intrigued me.

One Red Paperclip

It's all about the story. That opens up more doors than you'd think because everyone is impressed by a good story and it lets you get your foot in the door. Something like this is the perfect story for the internet. It's not quite news enough for tv news, but it's the kind of thing that spreads like wild fire on the series on tubes that is the internet. Isn't it great how people don't have to actually work hard or do something to become famous?

I'm Running out of Children

So has anyone else checked out this web comic Amazing Super Powers? It's fairly twisted and weird but some of them are really funny. I'll give you an example. When I first read this one, I laughed my head off and then immediately thought, there's really something wrong with me finding that so funny.

The Ruins

So there's this movie coming out next week called The Ruins. It looks interesting and like it could possibly be really good.

Check out the trailer for it here: http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/film/1591


The summer movie madness is coming soon, I love it.

Foo Fighters Concert!

So I went to the Foo Fighters concert last night and it was frickin wicked. The first band wasn't too bad, you couldn't really hear what they were singing though. It was fairly generic opening band type material.

Against Me was the other opening band and while I'm not a big fan of them, they have my respect. It was a fairly good performance, lots of energy and rock and volume. So kudos to them.

Things really picked up when the Foo Fighters came on stage though. The stage set-up was interesting too. There was a walkway attached to the stage that went past the half way point of the building and then had this circle structure attached to it but more on that later. You could easily tell from the second Dave Grohl stepped on stage that he had the entire crowd in the palm of his hand. The place erupted in screams if he so much as looked to one side of the crowd or the other. They had a cool screen wall behind them as well. It consisted of 4 screens that changed position depending on the song. So they started playing and it was very loud and Dave Grohl did his thing of mixing actual singing with screaming. That's one thing that impresses me, that he can go from soft acoustic vocals to screaming at the top of his lungs in a second. I'm not gonna give you a whole set list but they did a bunch of songs from their most recent album as well as all their other big hits in addition to some awesome other stuff. Remember that circle structure I mentioned at the end of the walk way? Well about half way through the show, they lowered a second mini-stage and the band performed from their for awhile. Where I was sitting, Section 119 row 6, was just about right across from it. That's probably the closest I will ever be to Dave Grohl.

In addition to the regular members of the band, they had a guy on piano and keyboard, a woman on strings, another guy on guitar and a guy on triangle. As Dave Grohl put it, "this ain't no grade 5 triangle player. This is the professional, Los Angeles based, $5000 a week shit." A good example of how much people love Dave Grohl and do anything he says is when he got the crowd cheering like mad for the triangle player. He even did a triangle solo! Which was pretty awesome. Drum solos, blues jams and dueling guitar battles rounded out the 2 hour main event which I'm sure everyone would agree was well worth the price of admission. I caught bus back to Brandon and went to bed at 2:40 am after having been up since 6:40 am. It was a long day.