When Love Actually came out in theaters, I had just turned fifteen years old. My friends and I were slight anglophiles who worshipped accented singers like Robert Smith and Damon Albarn, and watched period pieces after school. The star-studded cast of Richard Curtis ' Christmas film made a screening a no-brainer. Colin Firth? Hugh Grant? Alan Rickman? Emma Thompson? I mean, come on. All the big names. It was mandatory. We had to see it, so we did and boy, did we love it. Sure, some of the plotl…

Bloody brilliant content

As time goes on, I've found there are not enough adjectives out there to describe memes adequately. Sure, memes can be funny. They can be random. They can even be dank if you will. Most memes fall into very easily describable categories when looked at individually. However, when presented with a large group of memes, that is a different story. I can't just call a huge conglomerate of memes funny across the board! Usually, at least one of those memes is not funny. To call them all “funny memes”…

I love an art museum : I always have! My mom likes to tell this story about when I was three and visiting the Art Institute of Chicago. Allegedly, I turned to her and said my life had changed forever after visiting that museum. I don't remember saying that, but I do remember that going to museums was an absolute highlight of my childhood. The hard thing about going to museums as an adult is that everybody has different expectations for what you're going to do while you're there. I am a loser wh…

Don't tell King Charles

It's been a wild couple of months in the UK, to say the least. British people got a new Prime Minister, they lost a queen, they got a new king, they did a bunch of mourning, and finally, the brand spanking new 47-year-old Prime Minister resigned in disgrace, all in a period of under 50 days. There's only one way that this situation could get even crazier…but for the sake of fans of the royal family, I will refrain from speaking it out loud. The resignation of Liz Truss did not come as a huge sh…

Today is October 11th; the birthday of our favorite red-headed twins (sorry Fred and George) Hallie and Annie. They discovered they were twins through finding out they had the same birthday and connecting a picture of their mom and dad, but somehow not through looking at each other for 10 seconds. Lindsay Lohan is truly the queen of October. Mean Girls Day happened October 3rd and October 11th marks the birth of both of the characters she so masterfully played when she was just a pre-teen. Thes…

Woah

As a former English major, I feel like I can easily scope out a “fake fan” of literature. I don't care to do so on a regular basis because I have a life, but put a so-called bookworm in front of me and I can scope out their vibe easily in less than a minute.

God save the Queen

If you're online right now, you know that Queen Elizabeth II has died at age 96. There were several things that signaled her death would be announced before the news officially came in. The BBC website changed to black, BBC on-air presenters changed into black attire, and BBC One cancelled regular programming until 6pm. Many believed these were the signs that she has already died, and they were correct. One of the telltale signs that the Queen's condition was quickly deteriorating is that the R…

She's lived long enough to earn some crown jewel memes.

I must start this off by saying that I am not a person of the British persuasion. While many Gen-Z Americans get their knowledge of British culture from Harry Potter or Doctor Who, I got mine from a far more embarrassing source: Season 2 of RuPaul's Drag Race UK. Before then, I had no idea what Greggs, Pantomime, or Eastenders was, but now I've finally seen the light. The spin-off of the American drag competition show stars British contestants, two British judges and airs on the BBC, but it sti…

As a nearly-constant internet user, I often wonder how much reading I do that's just on the internet. Sure, I might not read as much daily as I did when I was an English major, but these tweets and Tumblr posts have got to count for something, right? Allegedly, we read completely differently when using technology versus merely reading on paper. According to research, we skim more when reading online than in a paper book, even when reading e-books or PDFs of scanned book pages. I will admit that…

British people get a lot of slack from Americans online. They get roasted for their teeth, food , and accents in ways that nearly always come off as hacky. Like we get it, Brits put peas and beans on foods that are largely incomprehensible to the Yankee mind and stomach, but can we let it rest? British culture through the American lens can lean somewhat limited. Personally, my primary outlets for learning about British culture have been heavily influenced by memes and internet pop culture: Harr…

They seemed to buy it too…