Sadly, the Fringe is over for another year. And more sadly, this year's Fringe did not feature Gwen Stefani doing a one woman burlesque show, as she did in my dreams last night. You know you have a strong marriage when you can say to your wife, "I had a non-erotic dream about a nude Gwen Stefani last night." She was doing a Marlene Dietrich/ Betty Boop sort of thing. Unfortunately there were some guys at the show who didn't respect the Fringe's etiquette and were harassing Miss Stefani, so I had to teach them some manners and I missed most of her show.
Also, I dreamt about Slipknot again. They were unveiling their new generation masks, which were ultrahigh-tech and featured all kinds of lasers and stuff. So cool!

We saw two plays today. Yay! And one of them was even free! Yay some more! We were walking around with our Fringe program in our hands when two guys came and offered us tickets to their show, "Journey to the Center of a Doughnut" for free. Since that was right neighbourly of them we took them up on it, and enjoyed a funny, possibly philosophical but more likely just nonsensical romp involving doughnuts, nothingness and lots of crazy characters.
Also we saw The Breast Show, created by and starring Bridget Ryan and Shannon Tyler, two well-known Edmonton media personalities, and it was excellent. Both a hilarious musical and a touching tribute to women who have or have had breast cancer, it is definitely aimed at women but I found it highly enjoyable, so all you bears (and men) will enjoy it too. A portion of all tickets sold goes to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.
Oh yeah, and a festival I forgot to mention yesterday that is coming up Labour Day long weekend is the Edmonton Tattoo Festival. Make sure your speakers are turned down low before you click!

Festival festivallus!
Have you been out to the Fringe yet? Michelle and I are going tomorrow. As always, the hard part is choosing just one or two plays out of the many that sound interesting. I think I'm due for a dud, since so far I have always been really lucky. We'll see.
A couple of weeks ago we went to the Folk Festival for a couple of the nights- the highlight was seeing Loreena McKennit. She sounds even better live than on her CDs, Selkie! Just amazing. Steve Earle the next night.
And Symphony Under the Sky is coming up in a couple of weeks. Beethoven's Overture to Egmont is on the itinerary so we are definitely going to try and get to that. Wanna come?
On a smaller scale, but just as exciting, is next Sunday's G-Arts festival at the Gathering. Third Annual, no less! I will be reading some poems and a story that first appeared right here in the Woods! Always a good time.

It snowed all day at work today. And I banged my thumb when a very large metal pin fell on it. It hurt. Then I fell on some rocks and banged my knees. Also I got wet from wading in mud all day, and I dropped my backpack in some of the same mud. But on the plus side- orange sherbet for dessert when I got home.

Edmonton's been kind of chilly lately. So I remarked to Michelle, "It's cold as hell!"
To which she replied, "Hell is cold?"
"Well, Dante had a level of hell that was freezing."
"Was that for the really bad people, or . . . "
" . . . or the people who were kind of nice?"
"Yeah, like the ones who just got in by the skin of their teeth."
This sounded like a good excuse to pull out Nirvana Unplugged to hear their version of "Lake of Fire":

"Where do bad folks go when they die?
They don't go to Heaven where the angels fly
They go to a lake of fire and fry
See 'em again till the Fourth of July"

But that didn't really warm us up.

The envelope was addressed to "Mr. H. Bear". Mail for him? Yay! The polar bear waved a massive paw at the departing mailman, whose snowshoes were crunching softly in the Arctic snow. Eagerly, he went back into his den to see what the mysterious package could be. The last time he got any mail was months and months ago, when Cousin Berg sent him a postcard from New Zealand.
He used a sleek sharp claw to slice the envelope open. Inside was . . . himself! A picture of him, surrounded by a yellow border. He was on the cover of a magazine! He was making his best menacing snarl, a pretty scary sight for sure. Attached to the magazine was a sticky note that read, "Hey man, thanks for being such a great model! My first cover!", signed by that nice photographer fellow he had met over a year ago. He had forgotten all about that guy. Now he was doubly glad he decided not to eat him. It had been fun taking all those pictures, posing and making faces. He had no idea he would make the cover of National Geographic!
There were more pictures of him inside, in the article on polar bears and PCB contamination. Yuck. He knew all about that, so he flipped through the rest of the magazine. A story called "In Search of the Giant Squid" caught his eye and he began reading. It was so interesting- this article said that squids have blue blood, since they use copper rather than iron to bind oxygen. And they have ammonia inside of 'em! Yuck! Almost as bad as PCBs. But the most intriguing thing about giant squids is that no one had ever seen one alive. Well, the article mentioned one guy in New Zealand (maybe Berg knows him)who caught a few larval ones, but no one had ever seen a big one. No people. And no bears either- until now! Mr. H. Bear decided to go and see a giant squid that very day.
Grabbing his goggles, he headed outside. Judging by the position of the sun in the sky, Bear estimated it was not quite midnight, so there should still be a few more hours of daylight. Plenty of time to go to that lead he had passed the other day, where, if he was lucky, that pod of whales might still be hanging around.
The lead, a large swath of open water that remains ice-free year round, was a short distance away, an easy walk for a polar bear. When he arrived, he was pleased to find some whales lounging about, feeding and resting. They were big, much too big to worry about being eaten by a bear, so Mr. H was able to approach without frightening them away. Selkies, seals and even belugas would never let him get so close.
"Hey there!" he called. "Hallo?" Most of the whales ignored him, or maybe just didn't realize he was talking to them, but one swam over to him. "Hi!" she said in a sort of whistly voice. "Who are you, silly bear?"
"I am Mr. H Bear."
"Well than I am Miss C Tacean. Esquire." She giggled. "What can I do for you?"
"Have you ever seen a giant squid?"
"All the time! Why, you don't want to eat one, do you?"
"No, I just want to see one. Will you take me to see one?"
"Well, since you have such nice goggles, I guess I will! But mostly I see squid around New Zealand or Newfoundland, not up here in the Arctic. And you have to go pretty deep, and it gets pretty dark and cold down there, so I doubt we'll see one today. But it'll be fun to look! Hop on!"
And so Mr. H carefully climbed on Miss C Tacean's back, just behind her dorsal fin, and took a deep breath. Although he swam pretty much every day, he had never dove much below a couple of meters. He was excited. "Ready?" C called.
"You betcha!" H answered, and down they went.
The water was cold, but of course polar bears aren't bothered by that. At first, it was clear, blue and familiar in the way the sunlight diffused into straight edges. He could hear whale song, and see vague shapes nearby. But as they went deeper, the water turned black, and Mr. H could feel the pressure increase steadily- his goggles seemed to be trying to suck his eyeballs out. He kept them open, though, not wanting to miss the hordes of giant squid he felt sure were down here. Still they went deeper. And deeper.
Deeper still- farther than any bear had ever gone. His lungs felt like they were on fire, and the pressure was threatening to turn him into a furry snowball. With one last look, he scanned all around, but couldn't see anything. Finally, he tapped Miss C Tacean's fin and she started the ascent. Slowly, so he wouldn't get the bends. It was agony, but Mr. H didn't really mind- what a great adventure! Even if it was a failure.
When they broke the surface, Mr. H rolled onto the snow, gasping for breath. He looked like some exotic new species of drowned Arctic rat, and Miss C Tacean laughed. "Are you alright, silly bear?"
"Yeah," he said, between breaths, "I'll be okay. Did you see any?"
"No, there weren't any down there. Just us whales."
"Oh well. Thanks for the ride! I'm going to go home now. Bye." And he turned for home. Despite not being successful in his quest, he was still excited to learn more about all the crazy things in this world. He loved that there were still things on Earth that no one had ever seen. Maybe someday he would be the first to meet a hitherto-unknown species. Wouldn't that be exciting?
Miss C Tacean watched the funny creature walk away. One of the calves in her pod of Longman's Beaked Whales swam up to her and asked, "I saw you underwater and there was some white alien or something on your back!!! What was it?"
"A polar bear. I bet as long as you live, you'll never see anything like a deep diving polar bear again."
"Wow, cool."

The Shoks are a great family, and they sent me a polar bear t-shirt for a wedding present!
Also Selkie and her sister Evil-lynn sent us a card.
I love you guys.