Category Archives: PopCulture

Music Monday – “Every night, I say a prayer/In the hopes that’s there’s a Heaven.”

I don’t think Pace has a theme song for his grade eight grad today. In my hometown, I went to elementary school until grade six then to high school in grade seven and I didn’t have a grade six grad theme song either (that I remember.). But it’s got me thinking back to my own […]

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – Sask Book Awards/Alberta Book Awards (multiple years from 1997 to present)

Tonight was the 2021 Saskatchewan Book Awards and I also recently found the 2021 Alberta Book Awards on social media. I spent nearly a decade in the literary non-profit sector and both served on the board of the SBA for a few years (as well as a frequent volunteer doing everything from taking tickets to […]

Music Monday – “There’s a great hot desert/Down in Mexicali/And if you don’t have water/Boy, you’d better not go/Tequila won’t get you/Across that desert/To Evangelina/In old Mexico”

“Evangelina” – Colter Wall (Hoyt Axton Cover)

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – “Trump Trips Up” (~May 1991?)

I was going through some old papers in a box under the stairs recently and came across a folder of articles I’d clipped and saved, long before most articles from popular magazines were available online from databases or from the magazine’s own web site like they are today. Had to chuckle for a couple reasons: […]

Why Bo Burnham’s “Inside” Is So Good

Maybe because, like “Nanette” by Hannah Gadsby, it totally deconstructs what a “comedy” special is? Or maybe because it’s one of only a handful of truly reflective, unique artworks created during Covid that capture what this past year has been like? Or maybe because I’m pretty sure he does this by not mentioning Covid once […]

Music Monday – “Whereas some of us weren’t always fair/To the Native kid on borrowed skates/Chippy Goolies and Ukrainians/In the corners with our elbows up”

Goolie was originally a derogatory term referring to people of Icelandic descent who settled in Manitoba. The derivation of the word remains a mystery. The most plausible origin I encountered while researching When Falcons Fly was that the first Icelandic settlers had thick Norse accents and pronounced the word “goalie” as “goolie.” Interestingly, the word […]

Secular Sunday – An Addiction Model May Explain A Lot of Our Current Societal Issues (That Don’t Normally Seem Like Addiction Issues)

This is a fascinating thread which encompasses a lot of interesting ideas – tribalism, how people get sucked further into wilder conspiracy theories, and even whether QAnon is showing signs of moving from a fringe political theory into a full-fledged religion. it’s conceivable to conceptualize political tribalism (& perhaps even cultism), through an addiction model […]

Friday Fun Link – Fair Dealing Decision Tool (Maybe?)

Somebody sent this tool around at work so I thought I’d post it here (though if you know how I feel about copyright, you’ll know that I’m also not the best person to ask about whether something falls under copyright or not as I have a *very* generous understanding of what constitutes “fair dealing”!) 🙂

Music Monday – “Let’s get friendship right/Get life day to day/In the forget yer skates dream/Full of countervailing woes”

“It’s A Good Life (If You Don’t Weaken)” – The Tragically Hip with Feist

Amazon Prime Is An Economy-Distorting Lie

I’m trying as hard as I can to avoid buying from Amazon as I’ve grown to *really* dislike their business practices – from how they treat workers to resellers engaging in fraud to simply the fact that Jeff Bezos does not need one more penny of my money. I mean, Wal-Mart is a shitty employer […]