NEWS Review

So yes I'm reviewing the NEWS, figure that one out. The word news consists of the letters N. E. W. S - each letter representing a different direction, respectively North East West and South, so how on earth I ended up watch a 25 minute segment on the weather and a further 10 minutes on lawnmowers last night I'll never know.

I got pretty angry about it, I wasn't in the best mood to be watching the News anyway. I wanted to see if they were talking more about Top Kill, and thankfully as of this morning it seems like the whole procedure has worked. It is funny, as soon as I read the article in the paper I imagined there must be a room full of BP executives high fiving each other and sipping champagne. There is a lot of work still left to do, but stopping the oil pump leaking is certainly a great first step.

Anyway back to the NEWS. In Canada it is not uncommon for the weather to become news, and I kind of understand it when it is snowing. Snow can create traffic and road closures, people can freeze to death or slide of the road, I get it, it's news, but hot?! Last night someone was paid to walk around and ask people what they though of the 31 degree weather, and you will never guess the responses they got. It was the most ridiculous montage of people saying it's hot I've ever seen. There was a jogger who thought it was hot out, a man who worked at a dry cleaner who thought it was hot out, some students who thought it was hot out, and some old lady who was walking her dog in the park, she also thought it was hot out. What a waste of f*cking time.

I happen to know the police are in the middle of a shootout in Kingston, Jamacia because they want to extradite a drug lord, I know there is a war going on in the middle east and England is having problems with it's new coalition government. I know that the G8 and G20 are starting plans for their upcoming conferences, and that there were new terror threats in India. I am also abstractly aware that behind closed doors corporations are doing evil things to further control of the population, and government officials are using our non-transparent system to spend Canadian Citizens money on bigger houses, yet when I want to get informed I've got ten idiots picked off the street agreeing with eachother that it's hot outside.

Yeah, I think you can tell I wasn't happy, there is a specific section for weather right at the end of the news where I would have happily watched muggles embrace the heat, but with so much going on in the world I can't understand why they would fill the opening slot with fluff? My disposition took a turn for the worst when they put the lawnmower segment before the oil spill. I was calming down about weather-news because I assumed they would be talking about BP straight after the break, but they didn't. Instead they had a man mowing grass, in the city no less! They put a comparative grass segment before reviewing deaths in Kingston, to steal from Ricky Gervais 'I just don't get it'.

My poor roommate once again gave me a pitying look and asked why I was still watching, but it's honestly because sandwiched between all the stupid idiot news there are stories that I've been following. Plus I haven't seen such a stupid evening of news in a while. The last time I got this angry the newscasters were following the story of the building in Toronto whose roof lit on fire, but they were reporting on it a week later after it had been put out and nobody had died. If news isn't current then it's no longer news, it's history.

As I just mentioned, and on a more positive note there is no more oil gushing into the Gulf, so I'm going to take this small success and realize getting all hot and bothered about Toronto News is silly. The News is pretty regulated now so I don't exactly imagine they will have the expose stories of old, fluff is kind of the only thing they can do without someones say-so and even that I'm not so sure of.

The Internet is a better source for information it may be inconsistent but at least it's still free media. Not my blog obviously, it's the ramblings of crazy person, but under pressure I could find fifteen people in my office to agree it's hot - voila I'm a professional.

Meryl

PS: Bonus point for anyone who can tell me where the image at the start of this blog is from

Clue - Scorchio.