Canada - Fewer Twits Per Square Mile

Hey, Yanks, don't go calling Canadians a bunch of twits. You know not of what you speak.

There are times I think I spend too much time on the computer. I spend considerable time on this blog, at HumorBloggers.com and reading the blogs of friends and cyber-colleagues as well as managing my Facebook page, listening to blip.fm, watching You Tube videos, sending and receiving e-mails, and sending and receiving "tweets" or Twittering.

Now I find Twitter kind of cool. You can follow colleagues, sports figues like NBA star Shaq, movie stars like Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and Kevin Spacey, recording artists such as John Mayer and Weird Al and late night talk-show hosts like Jimmy Fallon. You can even follow the musings, er, ah, tweets of...

Seems, however, that in the Twitter universe, at least, I'm a minority.

The Globe and Mail newspaper reported last week on the findings of a recent survey by the polling firm Ipsos Reid. They found that 1 in 100 Canadians use Twitter.

Moreover, said the Globe, the study polled 824 Canadian adults online and found that while 26 per cent of respondents are aware of Twitter, only 6 per cent of them had "actually spent some time coming up with witty 140-character messages". (Yeah, and if you ask me, considerably less than 2 per cent actually succeed in demonstrating how witty they are!) Astoundingly, this figure translates into about 1 per cent of the Canadian population. Amazing.

Now 824 people isn't much of a sample size. Nevertheless the survey would seem to portray the majority of Canadians as a bunch of techno-pesants. Six per cent of those polled had actually used Twitter? What provincial backwater, hole-in-the-wall are these people from? Have they been living under a rock? Don't they watch TV, read newspapers, browse the interwebs?

Say what? They have lives? Oh, never mind.

My Back Pages - October

Well, folks, I read seven (count 'em) seven books in October. One I didn't finish but even at that I hit the magic number 50 I estimated for myself by the end of the year. The six books I successfully waded through were, firstly, What Happened, Hillary Clinton's book on her bid for the Presidency. I''m a bit of a political junkie so I get off on this stuff but still it kinda struck me as one long whine over losing. Next up was the excellent Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and Music of Laurel Canyon. Laurel Canyon was the fabled area outside of Los Angeles where many musicians and artists lived. Known as a 60s enclave, the book takes a look at just who lived there over the last 80 years. A fascinating read. Next up was Lightfoot, a biography of Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot. He may have been responsible for some iconic folk songs but he was also quite the womanizer and boozer. Enough said. Then I read Dan Brown's new tome Origin, the fifth ...

The Polka Dot Door

A long time ago, when I was 22, my first child was born. That kid grew up on a little Canadian kid's show called Polka Dot Door, produced by the TV Ontario network. And Dad, more often than not, sat through those shows with his little one. Nine or so years later when a brother, and a year after that when a sister came along number one son was moving on to Knight Rider and The Dukes of Hazzard. But there was a nice overlap where his siblings picked up where he had left off with Polka Dot Door. And Dad was right there to welcome them. So you're looking at a Polka Dot Door veteran. The show began in 1971 and ran to 1993. I didn't watch the full run but I did get in my fair share. The formula was pretty simple. A young male and female host, which seemed to change every week, sang songs, told stories, made crafts and generally did their best stimulate little brains. The show opened as follows... Imagination Day! Oh boy! ...

30 Days of Photos III #4 Sour

Check out Ziva's Inferno for the rest of today's photos.

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