I think I'm going to try to spend a week without watching the news. It's not that I don't want to know what goes on, but I think maybe my news consumption is getting to be a bit much, and it gets so depressing that I feel like I'm in danger of turning into Theodore Sturgeon's protagonist in "And Now the News..." (he reads the news saying "evry man's death diminishes me" until he goes insane and goews on a shooting spree to "diminish mankind right back"). And I don't just watch the normal new usually, either. No, I watch mansbridge one-on-one with Romeo Dallaire, I watch the field reporter's hour long special of the life of Sudanese refugees. It goes on. Why? Because I really do want to try and understand the madness that is this world. But I think I need a break. So for the next week, I'll try to live without:

• channel 26, CBC Newsworld
• and all it entails: the hour, anything with Mansbridge, passionate eye, and so forth
• c-pac (yes, someone is watching)
• other crappier TV news
• a daily paper
• the guardian, the tyee, al jazeera, cnn, the bbc

I'm hoping this will mean more free time, since I'm now a week behind in my English class from writing the paper and final for my anthro class. I'm also hoping I have the willpower. Bodget votes, confidence votes, G8 and Live8, upcoming civic elections, pot legalization, terrorism, famine, and more will all just have to go on without me for a week. I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh, and okay, I won't be completely newsless, since these I shall not give up (hey, they're mostly entertainment):

• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• TCW
• The Straight

I'll let you know how it goes. In the mean time, it's back to homework if I want to preserve any hope of popping down to the Commercial Drive Festival this afternoon (unlikely - ed.)