Popular Culture References
In the Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures series, it was revealed that the Eighth Doctor's enemies, Faction Paradox, a cult of time-travelling voodooists who worship paradox, have established a base in the eleven days that were missing from the calendar after the change-over, the Faction exploiting their manipulation of perception and contradiction to take the days that everyone believed were missing and make them 'real'.
The lost days feature in the plot of Robert Rankin's book The Brentford Chainstore Massacre, where a monk from the borough of Brentford made such a protest about the lost days after the change-over that the Church eventually decided to award Brentford two extra days a year if they were really wanted. The scrolls containing this proclamation were subsequently hidden for centuries until they were discovered by the protagonists of Jim Pooley and John Omally, the two men using the extra days that Brentford has accumulated over the years in order to celebrate the Millennium two years ahead of schedule, allowing the mysterious Professor Slocombe to perform a ritual that will bring about peace on Earth if the appropriate celebrations take place at that time.
The lost days are also the subject of conversation in Episode 19 of Thomas Pynchon's novel, Mason & Dixon.
Read more about this topic: Calendar (New Style) Act 1750
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
—Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)