I know most of you aren't really Oilers fans so I will spare you my grief and angst. And since you're not Oilers fans I find you all, as a form of life, to be at least as strange and fascinating as squids.
Did you hear about the Colossal Squid they caught in New Zealand?
Kind of looks like something from Hellboy. Have you seen the new animated movie? I haven't, yet, though it looks kickass.
Well, I have one more day of work this week before I can go home so I should obtain some rest.

Crash Course In Brain Surgery
So yeah, along with Battlestar Galactica I've been getting into Grey's Anatomy lately. It's pretty good- I still haven't figured out for sure which character is the Cylon agent. My money's on Sandra Oh but it could just as easily be that McDreamy guy- he's just a little too perfect if you ask me.
I know it's a TV show, but one thing I appreciate about it is how it makes brain surgery look so routine. They're like, "We need to cut out half of your daughter's brain and we need to do it in the next five minutes or the Cylons will destroy the Earth she'll die!" And then they go and do it. Easy! There's no sense that operating on someone's brain is this crazy hard thing to do, it's just a normal part of their day. Which makes sense- they're brain surgeons! They say to each other, "This isn't exactly brain surgery you know. Or actually, that's exactly what this is but no problem- that's what I do."
Which sets my mind at ease as my sister goes in for a little brain surgery on Tuesday.

Remember that prison planet in Star Trek VI where Kirk and Spock get sent for murdering those Klingons? Actually I think they were framed for the murder, but the point is, Kirk got to smoke a joint with Iman, and then kiss her. Only she turned out to be not a Sudanese supermodel at all but rather some sort of wookie-like shape-changing monster.
No wait, that wasn't my point at all. Uh, my point was that the coal mine where I work was just like that planet this week. Minus the faux-Sudanese supermodels and angry Klingon prison guards. But there were plenty of blowing snows and raging blizzards and deep pits and treacherous ices and stuff. And I didn't even really mind- my active imagination just transported me away to that far-off penal colony and I was happy. Though the illusion was repeatedly broken by my buddy Robin who kept saying how warm it would be in Cuba the next day when he went there on holidays. Bastard.
Oh well. I covered for him as pumpman last night and just drove around checking all our pumps in different pits. Had some moments of worry when some of the pumps failed to work. And there was another moment when I very badly wanted to punch my foreman in the nose for shutting off a pump without my permission, thereby royally screwing it up. Ice gets all clogged up and can very quickly ruin your night if you don't catch it in time. But I did, and after a little sledge hammering and tiger torching, I spent the rest of the night watching Grey's Anatomy on my PSP.
I bet Kirk didn't get to do that on his little prison planet.

PS- speaking of Star Trek, one of my favorite actors was Michelle Forbes (she was briefly on Next Generation). She kicked ass. And she kicks ass even more in Battlestar Galactica as an Admiral.

LGJ got busted into again. Same window as last time. And like last time, nothing was taken. Well, a couple of loonies and pennies and such. What a pain. It was parked vernight at an IGA where a bunch of us miners park to catch the bus- actually I ride with some friends but my Dad drives down to the IGA. So me and a bunch of others had windows smashed. Stuff was strewn around but nothing beyond change was taken- probably $1200 worth of windows broken for less than ten bucks worth of change.
Well, I still have more nightshifts so I have to go. Someone's gotta earn money so others can steal it, right?

Gotthammer Mike created a fantasy Fantasy Metal band called, well, Gotthammer. Homie Bear gets to be a vocalist with death metalish growls. That's cool. Did you know Gotthammer's real band, Seven Devil Fix, already has a song called Hey, Hey, Hey Homie Bear? Yup, for real. There's probably even an mp3 of it kicking around somewhere.

Just as bears represent the pinnacle of vertebrate evolution, cephalopods (squid and octopi and such) are the very height of invertebrate evolution. I know we tend to think of them as squishy tentacle monsters, but really they are quite astonishing animals, with a surprisingly high level of intelligence. Alien, tentacled, squishy intelligence of the unfathomable depths, maybe, but intelligence nonetheless. Check out this footage of a Dana octopus squid with glowing arms. Pretty freaking cool. If you can't see the video, the National Geographic news article about it can be found here.

In the tradition of last year's Love Poem, With Robots, I give you a brand new ode to the most beautiful woman in the world. I call it

Homie Bear Versus the Sasquatch

Homie Bear was trying to write a poem for his Mrs
A ‘Be Mine, Valentine’ with lots of hugs and kisses
But writing unbad love poetry isn’t very easy
It’s hard to avoid the clichés that always makes them cheesy
Suddenly a scary creature broke into the house
Ignoring Homie the monster went directly for his spouse
It grabbed Michelle and left the house, leaving Homie in it
Total time for this shocking crime was well under a minute
Homie was stunned- “That stupid sasquatch just came and stole my sweety
“In clear violation of the Bilateral Bear and Bigfoot treaty!”
Homie Bear immediately stopped working on his sonnet
His wife would need a rescue promptly so he got right on it
He ran outside and there in the snow was a talking Cupid’s Arrow
It said to Homie “Follow me I’ll keep you on the Straight and Narrow”
He climbed a mountain and swam an ocean and ignored some wild horses
Who for unknown reasons tried to make him go off on wrong courses
Eventually he came upon the secret sasquatch cave
Where he fought the biggest Bigfoot there by being very brave
He roared and growled and clawed and bit
Until the sasquatch had enough of it
It cried and panicked and ran away
So ole Homie won the fray
He hugged his wife and took her home
Where he read to her his poem:
Roses are red and violets are blue
I’d fight a savage sasquatch for you!

The only thing I have to say about Anna Nicole Smith is The Hudsucker Proxy is one of my favorite movies. She has a scene or two as "Za Za", total screen time maybe ten seconds.
The vampirical nomadical ex-pat has a good post about actual screen queens right now. Maybe she can also help me remember the name of a movie we watched in the Woodsy Crypt about mail order brides. I promised a guy I know I would bring him the name of that movie, and in return I intend to make him promise me to watch it before he does anything crazy.
And since I don't want to break my little run of Battlestar Galactica posts, I need to tell you that my friend Crogdor is Dr. Gaius Baltar's exact doppleganger. Exact. It's uncanny. And Crogdor's wife likes to go by the screen name of Troi but really she looks exactly like movie Jean Grey. A very attractive couple, those two.

It was Michelle's birthday not too long ago so I got us tickets to the Barenaked Ladies concert last night. The Ladies are Michelle's favorite band. And they remind me of our honeymoon- we tuned into Live 8 on our wedding night while waiting for room service, we danced in broad daylight on Main Street in Antigonish to their song One Week, and I bought her a copy of Maroon in North Sydney while we waited for the ferry to Newfoundland. So you can see that tickets to the show was a pretty brilliant birthday gift.
What a great show, too. I'm used to the Rexall Wall of Fuzz, where bands like tool or System of a Down turn up their amps to 11, so the singers sound like the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Mwah mwah mwah mwah. But BNL just played at a nice, mellow volume and I could actually hear all the instruments. And I could understand the between-song banter, much of which was about Battlestar Galactica. Another reason to love the Ladies.
My favorite BNL song is Pinch Me, which also reminds me of our honeymoon, driving all around the Maritimes in our rental car Seamus, yelling out "Under where?" after every line. That was their first encore song and they nailed it.
Michelle says "I cannot articulate it any better than 'fucking awesome!'"
You can read the Sun's review of the concert here.

Brain function is always a little slow coming off nightshift. Today I went to rent some movies and decided to take up Jason's recommendation. We had been discussing musical biopics, agreeing that Walk the Line was really excellent, so Jason said I would also really like the one with Jamie Foxx. But damned if I could find it. Luckily I remembered that his name was "Ray" and not "Roy" before I went and made a fool of myself by asking if they had it.
I also rented some more Battlestar goodness. Did you know that my shovel at work has joysticks almost identical to the ones in the Vipers? Yup. Only instead of firing tracer bullets when you press the buttons, you just set the brakes, or honk the horn, or trip the bucket door. Though, to be sure, dropping 80 tons of rock on a Cylon Raider would crush it pretty good. So long as you could convince the Cylon to park underneath.
Finally, two headlines that caught my eye in today's paper: "Mercury and Lead Not as Safe as Once Thought"; and "Astronaut Charged With Attempted Kidnapping".

Michelle always kisses me goodbye before she leaves for work. Yesterday I woke up just as she approached, and I must've been still dreaming or something because for whatever reason I freaked out and went, "Aaahh!" Not exactly a scream, but definitely a yelp. I startled her so she yelped too. Kind of embarrassing- scared of my own wife.
I don't normally scare that easy, unless you're talking sasquatches. Well, not so much anymore. When I was a kid, though, as long time readers might recall, ole Bigfoot kind of gave me the heebiejeebies. But I'm looking forward to a good scare when Viper Comics releases Sasquatch in April. Check out its promotional blog, showcasing artwork from the 250-page graphic anthology, which features the work of David Hartman, Otis Frampton and many others.