What's a Bieber?

I find it funny how much of the whole pop culture and internet memes I missed out on. While away on my trip, I couldn't really tell how much of the collective consciousness I had been cut off from, but let me just say that I'm only NOW hearing the name Justin Bieber. I just saw him in a clip in the UK a few minutes ago and said "What? Why is he on this show?" A bit of a back story on how this monumental storm of pop-ness missed me.

The first time I ever saw this kid was on Funny or Die maybe 2 months ago? and saw a couple of his videos. There was this joke about making the site Bieber or Die, with a bunch of people having backgrounds with his face or hair... I honestly thought he was just a kid who made funny videos and that taking over the site was a joke that had become a popular meme. So then to suddenly see him come on a random British show, and have these girls absolutely screaming their heads off, well... I was a tad confused.

Hop to Wiki and I find out he's Canadian, well points for him... and he's a singer? And then I see the all important phases. Discovered in the fall of 2009 with a cd out in November... riiiiight about the time that I was traveling through the outback and we were not listening to radio or watching tv. I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I'm also incredibly happy that THIS is the thing I missed.

For some reason, when I'm out of contact with news sources I return to find out horrible things have happened. Like the Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti disaster and most recently the huge oil spill. Usually in a very confused manner people will be talking about it and I'll be left in the dark. The weirdest sensation I have ever had was finding out about the Tsunami and thinking that everyone must be making a joke. Things like islands disappearing just don't really enter my scope of the probable. I left my city for about 5 days this spring, only to be driving back into town just as a swat team was evacuating people from a hotel on the street I was driving on. Its like the world goes mad when I'm not watching it.

So yeah, bizarreness.