The new Harry Potter book won't have any quidditch in it, as apparently Harry and Voldemort have taken up frisbee.
And the Battlestar Galactica guys are having a fan-film contest! They're providing music, sounds and even some visual effects for you to do up your own episode. I should talk my friend Crogdor the Baltar-lookalike to learn a London accent so we can enter. Who do I know that looks like Tricia Helfer?

We pretty much had the fire under control, though it kept flaring up again so Robin and I kept spraying our fire extinguishers on it. That gunk doesn't taste any good at all. We'd been driving by the ready rail, where all the spare equipment is parked, when I noticed flames coming out of the wheel motors of 32 truck. "Whoa! Truck on fire!" So we sprang into action, like the highly trained fire-fighting coal miners we are.
I thought we were the only ones there but after a while I noticed the truck's operator on the other side of the truck. "Tim! Your truck's on fire! Your truck- it's on fire!" Tim was looking at me funny- like I was being dumb or something. But he wasn't hurrying over to help. He just stood there, so I kept telling him the obvious. I could tell he wasn't scared- people who get freaked out by these kinds of fires are easily recognized by the fact that they are running away. Tim was just giving me that weird look like he was embarrassed for me. Finally he pointed at the other wheel motor, the one he was standing by, and said, "Yeah- the fire's over here!"
It turned out both motors were on fire. So we put the other one out too. We hadn't seen the fire over there and Tim hadn't seen our side, so it created that bizarre discontinuity between us. Tim was wondering why were shouting about the fire but weren't doing anything about it and we were kind of wondering the same about him. Ah well. No harm done. Except for the wheel motors, I guess, which were steaming piles of molten goo. At first we thought it was the brakes that had caught fire- a relatively common occurance, but they both kept flaring up time after time so it was likely an electrical fire.
Anyways, if you look at this picture I added a little note to show where the wheel motors are.
Later on, I was on the water truck and it was all frozen up so we had to thaw it out with a tiger torch- basically a big flame thrower attached to a propane bottle. Which, if you think about it, is kind of ironic.

I only have a few seconds before heading off to my last nightshift of the week, so just go look at this: Steampunk Star Wars. Wow.

Yar! I think I'll go drink rum now.

You know the Oilers have fallen on hard times when you go to a game and the highlight is the national anthem. Actually, it was a pretty good game, but they still lost (or rather, failed to win) their 11th in a row. It was the first NHL game Michelle's ever been to. She grew up in Calgary so you can understand why she never cared much for hockey. We had a pretty great time, though. Good seats. Michelle was really looking forward to seeing Paul Lorieau sing, but instead a young girl came out dressed in the robes of a First Nations princess and sang the anthem in Cree. So that was cool.
Raffi Torres got the Edmonton goal.
Final score: Vanpoover 2, Edmonton 1

Digging Some Rocks
I took some video with my digital camera yesterday at work- I never tried that before so you'll forgive my amateurity. Anyways, here's a minute in my life at the mine. Multiply that by 760 and you have a whole shift!



So that big blue thing is my shovel, and the trucks it's loading are 260-ton trucks. For some non-pixellated still images of my job, go here.

My sister had her neurosurgery and is recovering well. She was sent home today, actually. We visited her yesterday and she looked great. The incision in her skull was pretty cool looking, with all the staples and stuff, and surprisingly long. I thought she kind of looked like one of Saruman's orcs but I decided to keep that observation to myself- I would take it as an immense compliment but she doesn't always see things the same way I do. She told some funny stories about being high on codeine, asking her nurse to hand her the Wiimote so she could turn off her drooling.
Anyways, I thought I would write her a little story to cheer her up:

Zach woke up feeling confused and disoriented. There was a septic smell, and he realized he was in a hospital. He sat up in alarm. Nightmarish, incoherent images flitted through his mind- but the only thing he clearly remembered was the ambulance. Pushing these thoughts aside, he took stock of his body. Three fingers on his right hand were missing, and he was pretty sure they had been there before. His head was wrapped in a big bandage, like a mummy. Perhaps most alarming of all, there was a very large discolored patch on his left leg.
A nurse came into the room. "You're awake!" she said. "How are you feeling?"
"What happened to me?" Zach asked.
"You had a very close call but you're going to be alright."
"Okay, but, what happened?"
The nurse stopped fiddling with his EKG and IV drip, and looked at Zach. "It's best if your doctor tells you directly. He's on the floor right now doing rounds so he should be here soon." She smiled at him. She had a nice smile, gentle and pleasingly assymetrical. Zach found her attractive and decided to trust her.
A distinguished looking gentleman entered the room. The nurse introduced him. "Zach, this is your physician, Dr. Moon."
"Hello Zach," Dr. Moon said.
"Doctor. Can you please just say what happened to me?" Zach didn't fail to notice the quick glance Dr. Moon exchanged with the nurse, whose name Zach realized he didn't know. She coughed and excused herself, and Zach wanted to call out and ask her her name. Anything to get her to stay. But he said nothing.
"Zach, you had a very close call, but you were lucky. I believe you will make a full recovery. Undoubtedly you've noticed your missing fingers- I had to cut them off. It seemed the best option. With your leg, we felt we could save it with some aggressive treatment, and it seems to be responding well. The vitasticizing regions are shrinking, and the Streptococcus pyogenes we applied are stabilizing the affected area nicely."
"Vitastisizing . . . I don't even . . . why won't anyone just tell me what happened?"
Dr. Moon sighed. Finally he said, "Alright. This will be hard for you to believe. Zach, you were exposed to a consecrated substance. Holy water. You were attacked by nuns."
"Nuns? That's ridiculous! There's no such thing as nuns. You're just messing with me, right?"
"I'm afraid not. A whole convent of nuns attacked Deadmonton yesterday in full daylight. They managed to resurrect and convert several zombies and vampires before they were contained. Your grave was one of the ones exhumed, but we were able to save you."
Zach tried to absorb this crazy news. His defingered hand went up to his brow, and touched the bandage there. "What about this, then? Why did you operate on my brain?"
"A CAT scan showed some activity in your cerebral cortex. We think you were exposed to a crucifix. We decided to lobotomize it to be safe. We saved some grey matter for you if you like, sometimes our patients like to celebrate their recovery by snacking on their brains."
Zach nodded, the enormity of the news still not totally sinking in. Brain snacks seemed like a minor matter compared to everything else he had learned. He looked down at the skin-colored portion of his leg, in such stark contrast with the greenish hue of the rest of his body. It was probably just his imagination, but it seemed like he could almost see the flesh-eating bacteria munching away. A beep sounded from across the room, and Dr. Moon excused himself to check on the other patient in the room. For the first time, Zach realized he wasn't alone. The zombie in the other bed looked to be in even better shape than he was, the poor bastard. His EKG beeped again. A third time.
Dr. Moon erupted into action, pressing the alarm button to call for help. "Code Blue! We have a heartbeat in 313."
In the flurry of activity, Zach took comfort in his own heart-rate monitor, which showed a nice, comforting flat line. In a world with nuns running around bringing zombies back to life, Zach was just happy to be undead.
THE END

Anyways, in keeping with the zombie theme, here is a zombear I asked a Deviant named FunkYeti to make for me. You might remember my Homie Bear poem, Lair of the Zombear. So there you see the Zombear in all his horror.

The Edmonton Art Gallery (or Art Gallery of Alberta as it's now called) is doing a cool thing- before they close down for major renovations they opened their exhibit halls up to the general public. By that I mean they let anyone who wanted drop off some artwork for display. Michelle and I went and browsed the art yesterday- there were some pretty impressive pieces on display. Actually overall the quality level was very high, which isn't really surprising given the high-level of arts participation in this city. I was expecting a bunch of stick figure drawings (like what Michelle wanted us to bring) but it was real art. You should check it out if you have a chance, it's free to enter until March 24th when they shut down.
I have no art of my own to display so instead I'll show you what my current desktop wallpaper is:
Lil-Red vs Wolf-Dog by Enrique O. Rivera

It's still a few months till POTC3 (and shouldn't there be trailers for it by now?) but I decided to go back to the Pirate Bear to celebrate Planet Karen's one year anniversary! It's quite an accomplishment, so congrats to Karen and here's to many more years of four-panel brilliance!
And I just want to see if it's possible to scoop the vampirenomad on anything Gina-related- Gina Gershon wrote a children's book called Camp Creepy Time. Did you know that, gabby?
And here's something that almost escaped my radar- KoRn has an unplugged album coming out on Tuesday! With Amy Lee singing backup! Last week on Sonic I heard this weird, something-about-it-was-totally-familiar-but-I-couldn't-place-it vibe. It was Freak On A Leash. Waaay different, yet still faithful to the original. You can hear it on their site.