Category Archives: PopCulture

28 Books You Should Read (If You Want To)

I’m probably one of the worst people for loving all of those “50 Books To Read Before You Die”, “10 Books Every Child Should Read”, “17 Books for a Summer Holiday” lists. I mean, they *do* comprise two of my most favouritist things in the world – books and lists. However, I think this list […]

Music Monday – “Begosh and begorra/Ev’ry Irish son and daughter/Ev’ry good old Irish name and his relation”

Thanks to community radio for bringing this song to my awareness a couple days ago. Useless trivia: the song doesn’t mention “Murphy” in the long list of Irish names it features even though “Murphy” is the most common surname in Ireland. Happy St. Paddy’s everyone! “It’s A Great Day For The Irish” – Judy Garland

Suggested Reading Times on Books – Yay or Nay?

Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, did something fairly unique with his first book, “Without Their Permission” by including a “suggesting reading time” logo on the back cover.  This logo estimates the book would take about five hours to read and that this is the equivalent of a cross-country flight from New York to San Francisco. […]

How Pro Wrestling Prepared Me For The 21st Century

As I may have mentioned on this blog before, I grew up watching professional wrestling. When I was around 7 or 8 years old, it was pretty amazing to see heavily-muscled, fantastically-named guys like the super-heroes I read about in comic books – whether good guys (The Dynamite Kid) or bad (The Mongolian Stomper, The […]

Music Monday – “There’s a light/And I can see it in your eyes/There’s a memory of/The way you used to be”

Hard to believe but yesterday marks one year since the most recent NDP Leadership convention where Ryan Meili lost to the eventual winner, Cam Broten, by just 44 votes (less than 1% of all votes cast). As a cathartic process after the loss, I’d compiled a list of “44 Reasons We Lost” in my personal […]

Saturday Night Live Cast Members Through the Years

Wikipedia summary of cast members with timeline Another list of casts by year on a fan site Cast photos by year (via Reddit) Probably like a lot of people, I feel most strongly about the casts I watched when I was in my formative years circa 1989-1991 or so – Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Phil Hartman, […]

Friday Fun Link – Who Owns The Copyright to the World’s Most Retweeted Photo?

Ellen Degeneres arranged a “spontaneous” selfie with some heavy hitters at the recent Oscar telecast.  After tweeting it, it quickly crashed Twitter, became the most re-tweeted photo of all-time eclipsing Obama’s “Four More Years” tweet many times over, and becoming ripe for parody. But it also quickly led to a question about who owned the copyright to […]

What Are The Best Mentions of a Book Title Within That Book?

A great question from Reddit’s /r/books sub-reddit.

Music Monday – “Music loud and women warm/I’ve been kicked around/Since I was born.”

Bruce Springsteen has been covering songs by local artists during various stops on his Australian tour – INXS, AC/DC and Lorde. Oh, and this one… “Staying Alive” – Bee Gees (Bruce Springsteen cover)

Music Monday – “The UK has the monarchy/The US has the money/But I know that you wanna be Canadian”

I bookmarked this song a long time ago but don’t think I ever posted it. Seems appropriate in light of Canada’s recent success in the Winter Olympics. “Canadian Please”.  (If memory serves, this was made by students at UWO where I did my MLIS.)