Have you ever read Harrison Bergeron? It's about a guy who is smarter than average in a society where being equal is the most important thing, so he has a thing implanted in his brain that blares an excruciatingly loud noise every few seconds, to prevent him from developing any sort of train of thought.
My work is a lot like that- it is next to impossible to carry on a decent conversation with coworkers as you are constantly being interrupted by customers. Damn customers! Today I had the kernel of a poem in my brain, and started to compose it a bit but of course it was immediately blown away like so many leaves on a windy day by the voracious hordes. So I will try and reconstruct it sometime soon, and get the gist anyways, but it just won't be the same. Oh well.

Time for Some Introductions
Yesterday I mentioned my coworker Erika. She's really cool. She grew up all over the world and knows all kinds of interesting things. I was asking her about some Chinese stuff for my Plasma Dragon story and when I told her where she could read it, if she was interested, she said, "Oh do you have a blog?" She thus became the first person I had ever met outside the blogosphere that knew what a blog was. (This, from the Dawn of Time, is the more normal reaction.) She knew because she also has one, and it's a good read.
In fact if you go there, you will be introduced to another coworker of mine, the indomitable Cass, who has fired each one of us innumerable times, and is full of spunk and sass. Plus she could kick your ass. You want your coffee in a glass?
Anyways, I have many other great coworkers but these two you can go and meet for yourself.
Oh yeah, and speaking of people named Erika, I have a question for my friend Erica the chemist: Is titanium dioxide poisonous? I'm guessing not, since it is listed as an ingredient in one of the powders we use at work, but I have to admit I am a little concerned about drinking the stuff now.

Meant To Live
Last night at work I was singing a song with reckless abandon, but it seems I had the words wrong. The song was Switchfoot's "Meant To Live", which I had heard before but never really noticed, but it finally clicked for me yesterday.
"We were meant to live with someone else!" I was singing, and this made my coworker Erika laugh. Since she had just gone to a Switchfoot concert, she knew whereof she spoke when she said, "That's not how it goes! It goes like this, 'We were meant to live for so much more.'"
Which, when I thought about it, made much more sense than my version, which seemed to be about a guy who is unhappy with his room-mate situation- something I certainly don't identify with, that's for sure.
But yesterday was one of those "living for so much more" kind of days for me- unforeseen adventure, my favorite kind. The day started with my morning routine of stopping in at my place of work for a coffee and to read the paper. I didn't have to work until 5PM, so I had the whole day in front of me to relax. Then another coworker/friend showed up, who was on her way to Calgary en route to overseas for a few weeks. Next thing you know I was going with her, as far as Red Deer, anyways- and we listened to Switchfoot the whole way, hence my newfound appreciation for those guys. I decided I could go with her halfway and hitch-hike back and still have plenty of time before work.
And indeed, 25 minutes is plenty of time.

I so called it.
And while we're on the subject of movies, I highly recommend The Bourne Supremacy, and I am really looking forward to The Village this week. And I would like to be the first to say that I think Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow could easily be an unintended sequel to the Iron Giant. At least, that is how I choose to look at it. Probably won't have an "I'm Superman" moment, but that's alright. There will be plenty of "I'm Angelina Jolie" moments to make up for it.

My Oozian friend Addai is a font of esoteric Middle-Eastern religious knowledge. Recently he poosted a thread about a fascinating people group I had never heard of, called the Yezidi. They are unique in that they worship an angel they call Melek Taus. We would call him Lucifer, but in Yezidi lore he is the Peacock King, and he has been either rehabilitated by God or is still evil and revels in that evilness, depending on which source you read. Anyways, the Yezidi don't eat lettuce or wear the color blue, among other things.
I told Addai that was the most fascinating thing I had learned all week, and there has certainly been some competition as far as that goes- this is the week where I learned about the mother Pope and the oldest surviving family-run business in the world.
So, what is the most fascinating thing you have learned this week?

Tyrannosaurus Rex vs Smilodon the Saber Toothed Tiger
By Little Homie Bear

Tyrannosaurus Rex was the king of the dinosaurs! He was the most fiercest predator to walk this earth. Rarrgh!! he would roar before taking a chomp of Triceratops. His teeth were so sharp that it would probably take a lion and a shark and a bear together to equal the sharpness of his teeth. Tyrannosaurus lived in the Mesozoic Era, the Age of the Dinosaurs.
Smilodon is what scientists call the Saber Toothed Tiger. He wasn't as big as Tyrannosaurus, but he had teeth that were pretty much as sharp. And he could run fast and he liked to eat mammoths and cavemen. So he was pretty tough too.
I think in a fight you would think that Tyrannosaurus Rex would win, but really if you think about it, I think actually Smilodon would win. Here's why. Because even though T Rex is so big and mean he actually has these most eensy arms you've ever seen. They are pretty much only good for picking bloods and guts out of his teeth after a meal. So when Smilodon the Saber Toothed Tiger attacked first he would dodge T Rex's dagger teeth and then he would climb on and chomp his big saber teeth into T Rex's flesh there would not be much that King of the Dinosaurs could do, except maybe roar some more. Rarrgh!! Get off me!! He would say.
No way I am eating you Tyrannosuarus Rex king of the dinosaurs!!! is what smilodon the saber toothed tiger would say. Because most scientist think that the tigers were more smarter than the dinosaurs.
So that is who would win in a fight between the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex and the uncanny Smilodon Saber toothed Tiger.

I think I learned the value of research from a report I had to do in Grade 4. The unit subject was birds, boring birds like sparrows and swallows and stuff. It was killing me- I would way rather do another report on who would win in a fight between T Rex and Smilodon, or a science project on my findings on whether I had any inherent Jedi abilities or not (sadly, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't levitate objects with the Force), but my teacher was forcing us to learn about birds. Back then no one had considered the possibility that birds might be descended from dinosaurs, so I didn't even have that intriguing datum to spur me on.
I was assigned some strange bird I had never even heard of. It was called a shrike. Trudging to the library to look up 'shrike' in the Encyclopedia, I discovered that the shrike is probably the most kickass little bird ever invented. For one thing, they're predators, eating not only worms and insects but other birds and small mammals. But the kicker is what they do with their prey- they impale it on thorns and then peck away at their leisure. Vicious.
So, even though I've never seen a shrike, I've always felt an affinity for them, not because I'm some sadist little Vlad wannabe, but for helping me realize that the world is full of fascinating things you would never have known about if you just stayed inside your own little shell.
Anyways, I bring it up because an entity called the Shrike figures prominently in the Hyperion Cantos, and here are some cool pictures of it.

Not coming from a Catholic background, I was always a little naive about catholicism. I thought the Papacy was a hereditary position, like being a king. It only made sense to me that John Paul II was John Paul Senior's son. Turns out, of course, that the Popes don't tend to sire offspring, and new popes are actually elected, as discussed previously.
There is some fascinating history surrounding the office of the Vicar of Christ- it seems that a few popes actually did reproduce. Pope Innocent VIII was not that innocent and fathered several illegitimate children. Pope Julius II had a couple of somewhat notorious children- Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, whose various lovers, spouses and rivals had a tendency to die unnatural, untimely and violent deaths.
Perhaps most intriguing, if not 100% historically certain, is the story of Pope John VIII, who ruled from 853-855 A.D. John's abbreviated reign was due to the birth of a child. What makes this one so notable is that it was John who gave birth. "John" was actually a woman, and is sometimes called Pope Joan.

Did you know that when a new pope is elected, that event is signalled to the faithful by the burning of the vote cards? The resulting white smoke which can be seen in St. Peter's Square is called the sfumata.  This is just one of the many interesting things about the Catholic Church I have learned by rereading the hyper-brilliant Endymion half of Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos.  I love these books.  I just started reading Rise of Endymion today.  I once wrote a paper on the Hyperion half of the Cantos, and got the only perfect mark I ever received in university- I wrote it from the point of view of a private eye, like Brawne Lamia in the books.  In fact I poosted the essay over at the Cave a few months ago.
Anyways, the reference to the sfumata was just a throwaway thing, but I wanted to learn more so I googled it, found a german page and got google to translate it for me.  The result:
 
"Sfumata is called the black or white smoke, which ascends after a Papal election of the burned voting cards from the Konklavesaal and which spectator at the Peter place in Rome of the respective conditions of the tunings informs."

I guess it's not your lucky day cause I had the best poost ever, but now that the thunder god is mad again, time to unplug the unsurge protected computer.
Seriously- best thing I ever wrote.  BUt now I don't think I'll get around to it. 
Have a good night!

Viewed from space, the terminus is a sharply defined line, separating night from day, light from dark. This half of the earth has the Sun shining on it, this half does not.  Here on the surface, however, there is no sudden wall of blackness- it is a much more transitional, phasic shift.  We call these gradations "dawn" and "twilight".
I think the coffeeshop where I work, and this neighbourhood as a whole, is on the terminus between rich and poor, haves and have-nots, ghetto and glitz.  The demographic sample is . . .  highly varied, and that makes life interesting sometimes.   For the most part, everyone gets along fine.  I like to help some of the street people out, let them use our washrooms without purchase- I know how much of an inconvenience not having ready access to facilities is.  Sometimes, though, there are clashes, and we have to ask people to leave.
Today I went in to work to collect my paycheck, so I wasn't actually on shift, and the ladies working were a little concerned about one of the guys outside bothering customers- he was drunk and asking for money, but not very nicely, judging by his invasion of their space.  So I thought it would be best if I went out there to see if I could do something about it.
He was a native guy, quite drunk and hard to understand, and I said, "You know you're not allowed to panhandle here- you're welcome to sit down and have a coffee but you can't bother the customers."
So we argued for a bit, but I was pretty intent on getting him to leave the premises.  At one point he mentioned that he had "killed men for less" and then we had to have a staredown, which is rarely a good situation.  I kind of thought I might be getting into a fight- bad for business, and very bad for me keeping my job.  And not really a fair fight, either, since he wasn't at full capacity.
But then, like the Sun suddenly shining after the terminus lifts its veiled curtain (had to work my opening metaphor in somehow), one of the customers who had watched the confrontation, a nondescript white guy, started barking at my friend in Cree.  Seriously, it was a classic Deus Ex Machina, one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.  The native guy, startled, replied weakly in Cree, and the white guy got up and more or less chased him off.  Turns out he was a cop. 
So that was kind of cool.  Later I went home and sat on the newly finished balcony (yay!), watched the street life below, watched the Sun oh-so-slowly recede here in our Northern sky, and reflected on the nature of termini.

I missed out on Stage 13- sounds like it was quite the party. One person died in a fire, there were ODs, and an unconfirmed report of another body found with cause of death undetermined. My coworker Allysa was telling me that her sister went, and that "Despite all the horrible tragedies she had a really great time."

Gravity- It's the Law!
My last job was really great because I could sit and read books about bears, or write poems about bears, or watch movies about bears, and every now and then someone would come in and I would help them. But not enough someones came in and so we went out of business and life goes on. My new job is not nearly so laid back. Moments of quiet reflection are few and far between. Though I did have opportunity today to explore a metaphysical question: if gravity was a person, what would he or she be like? What caused me to wonder was, I got a little pissed off at gravity and found myself wishing he was there so I could punch him in the nose.
I was making a blender drink (already the subject of a recent poost)and trying to get the resultant sludge to come out of the blender and go into the cup. But the stupid stuff always sticks to the bottom and you have to tap and hit them on the counter to make them come out, and invariably they will suddenly fly out and spill all over your hands and the counter and splash up into your face. "Stupid gravity!" I said, shaking my fist.
Anyways, I was tempted to anthropomorphize gravity as a tyrannical dictator, because he prevents us from flying; he kills us if we should happen to fall, even if accidentally, more than ten or twenty feet; and he does unpleasant things to old peoples' bodies.
But then I had to grudgingly admit that he does some good things too. Without him everything would just fly off the earth into space, probably. And, umm, he makes orbiting possible somehow. There wouldn't be much life on earth if we weren't orbiting the sun. So that's good, I guess.
Therefore I decided that gravity should join Father Time and Mother Earth in the Family of Concepts Much Bigger Than Us, and take his place as Grandpa Gravity. Crusty, a little mean, but ultimately looking out for all his grandkids.

The Suicide Girls Burlesque Show was fantastic! Fun fun fun. I loved it, all except the whiteboy rappers who opened for them. Remember that scene in Reservoir Dogs where Michael Madsen cuts off the cop's ear while dancing to "Stuck in the Middle With You"? One of the best scenes in movie history, right? Well, it's even better when the parts are played by Suicide Girls and instead of cutting off ears they just take off bras, and kiss. Anyways, I found this on the Suicide Girls website: the biomass of squid exceeds that of humans.
Speaking of marine biology, I gave a talk at the G tonight- I spoke about the accumulation of PCBs in polar bears, and love. I thought I would share with you some of the research I did.
Polychlorinated biphenyls, as you may know, were industrial chemicals used as coolants and in transformers and stuff. It became evident that they were very toxic, and so the US stopped producing them in 1977. Most everyone in the world followed suit, with the exception of Russia, who continued to use them up until 1998.
PCBs, once airborne, tend to become concentrated in the polar regions, where the cold causes them to precipitate, landing them in the ocean where they enter the foodchain. Phytoplankton, fish, seals, and finally polar bears absorb the PCBS, with an increase in concentration of up to 500% with every link up in the chain. So obviously the polar bears wind up with alarming levels of PCBs in their fatty tissues- between 10 and 100 PPM, depending on which side of the Arctic ocean the bear is on (the Russian side has higher levels). As if that wasn't bad enough, polar bears actually live off their reserves of fat (they go without eating entirely) for up to 7 months of the year.
The PCBs have an adverse effect on the bears' immune and reproductive systems. An alarming number of hermaphroditic cubs are being born in the Svalbard Islands.
Anyways, there isn't a lot that can be done at this point. Now that the Russians have stopped producing PCBs we can only hope that, over time, contamination levels will decline. But more research is needed to explore the precise effects PCBs have on polar bear populations.
The sad thing is, PCBs aren't the only pollutant that accumulate in the Arctic- all airborne, and many oceanic toxins will eventually gravitate that way, and stay there.
Here's a link.

Regardless of how many Klingons may or may not possess, I am pretty sure that cows do not have four hearts.

;)

Pretty Little Death Songs

Every time I say "Suicide Girls", my mind tries to find the right song to sing. But it falters, since the phrase isn't from a song, it just sounds like it should be. In fact it is derived from a Chuck Pahlaniuk book.
For the last little while, though, I have been listening to huge heaps of The Headstones, a dark and punky rock band from Canada that those of you from NotHere may never have heard of. A lot of their songs are about death and suicide (though with a lot of gallows humour). Sample lyric, from Teeth & Tissue:
"Thinking of swinging from a thread
coiled tightly around my neck
Will an exposed pipe hold the weight of fears?"

Sharing trayspace in the discplayer is Alice In Chains' Dirt, the title track being one of the coolest, darkest songs ever, with a twisty, twisted riff that gives me shivers sometimes. Especially when you think Layne Staley died of the heroin addiction he was singing about.
"I want to taste dirty, a stinging pistol
In my mouth on my tongue
I want you to scrape me from the walls"

I've never really been in that headspace, but it's a common enough one and I think these songs are healthy in a weird way- it's cathartic for the writers to let it out, and it gives kids who are despairing the realization that there are others who have been where they are, and maybe lends them the strength to persevere. I don't know. It's tough, because I don't want to be insensitive to those who have loved ones who have ended their own lives- I recently lost a relative to suicide myself.

Like everyone, I get down from time to time, and that's okay. I know there will always be better times to come, and I always look forward to tomorrow- who knows what it will bring? I'm especially looking foward to today's tomorrow, since I will be seeing the Suicide Girls Burlesque Show. Yay!

(Link not necessarily appropriate for work, or those offended by nudity.)

On the shores of Lake Kootenay in British Columbia, by a ferry terminal, there is a little ice cream parlour. I was there for a Geology Field School one year. We all took advantage of the opportunity to break the monotony of field food- granola bars and the like, with a taste of real ice cream.
"What kind is that?" I asked the lady behind the counter.
"That's Worms and Bugs ice cream," she said.
"Really? It has worms in it?"
"Well, they're just gummi worms and pieces of cookie dough."
"Oh." I was sad. "Well, I'll have some anyway, please."

I have no reason for sharing this story, I just had a hankering for some ice cream. You know, I never really liked that orange and black ice cream- Tiger Tail or whatever it's called, but it could be because I am a bear. And because I generally don't like licorice flavour at all. Do bears have their own flavour? I don't know, but speaking of tigers, gabrielle wrote a great piece on white tigers. My advice to you is go read it, and maybe have some ice cream. I have to go get ready for work- I think tonight I will design a new kind of drink, and call it a Wormalatte, or maybe a Bugiamo.

The other day my Dad took me out for lunch. Tagging along was a distant relative from BC who turned out to be very cool- a 20-year-old kid who came to Edmonton for a Clutch show. As we tried to ascertain how we were related, we had the following conversation:
Me: "So, who are you? My first cousin twice removed?"
Cousin: "Yeah, or something."
Dad: "No, he's my cousin's son, which makes him my first cousin once removed and your second cousin twice removed . . . or something."
Me: "Is your last name Waddell?"
Cousin: "Yeah"
Me: "Good enough for me."
Then we talked about how rarely you run into members of the Waddell clan- it isn't a hugely common name. I don't think I'll get any wrong numbers from sweet old ladies wondering if she had reached the home of Craig Waddell the famous hockey player.
However, there was one famous Waddell sports star- but he was a baseball player whose heydey was a century ago. His name was Rube. And he was an . . . interesting fellow.
Rube was a pitcher, playing most of his career under the legendary Connie Mack for the Philadelphia Athletics, and he was good enough to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame. Which is all great, but what's really cool about him is how strange he was- strange in a Homie Bear kind of way.
Apparently it was difficult to keep his mind focussed on the game. He was known to leave the pitcher's mound mid-inning to chase firetrucks. He had a penchant for going AWOL mid-season to go fishing- once showing up after five days, his team in the midst of a pennant-race, bearing catfish for Connie Mack. Sometimes he could even be found under the bleachers shooting marbles with the kids, drinking in a bar, playing in a park or leading a parade.
Rube was also known for pretending to be an autonomaton in store windows, long before the advent of living mannequins. He once wrestled an alligator. And he even is said to have saved a number of lives- one from a fire, and some others (no one seems to know for sure- 13 is one number but that's likely exaggerated) from drowning.
One time he poured cold water over his pitching arm, so that the heat from it wouldn't set his catcher's glove on fire. Speaking of his catcher, Ossee Schreckengost, one gets the impression he was a long-suffering sort. It's said he refused to renew his contract with the A's unless Mack made Rube stop eating crackers in bed (they roomed together on the road). But he got a measure of revenge when Rube, drunk, jumped out of a second story window and wound up in the hospital. "Why didn't you try to stop me?" Rube asked Ossee.
"And lose the hundred bucks I bet on you?"
Anyways, I don't know if we're related or not, but we have the same last name and that's good enough for me.
Rube Waddell's Hall of Fame page.
And someone wrote a book about him: Rube Waddell: The Zany, Brilliant Life of A Strikeout Artist

I know I like to poost strange little nano-stories and snippets of dialog that have nothing to do with anything (for example). But the following conversation actually took place- gabrielle and rustyangel both were witnesses.

The phone rings. We ignore it the first time, not recognizing the name on callerID. The second time I decide to answer it- could be a coworker looking to trade shifts or something.
"Hello"
"Hello," said a sweet old lady voice. "Have I reached the home of Craig Simpson?"
"No, uh, no . . . you mean . . the former Oiler?"
"Yeah! Are you him?"
"Well, no . . . I'm not an Oiler." I regret not impersonating an Oiler just to see where the conversation might have led. Luckily, she is in the mood to talk, and we converse for a while further.
"Well, I'm just trying to find him. I'm a little worried that all the rain may have flooded his basement."
"Yeah, not even former Oilers are immune to water damage."
"Anyways, you're not him?"
"No, sorry."
"Okay, I'll keep trying. Bye!"
"Bye."


Craig Simpson's career statistics:
_______________ GP__G__A__Pts_PIM
Regular Season__634 247 250 497 659
Playoffs________67__36__32__68__56

Fucking Canada Day
Why does July 1st mean "everyone gets liquored up and smashes stuff"? What does that have to do with the anniversary of Confederation? At least there wasn't a riot like three years ago. This morning as gabrielle and I went down for the daily drive to her work, I discovered that some asshole had smashed one of the windows of my car. They didn't even take anything! I know that would sort of be worse, but in a way it's more of an insult- wanton destruction was their only motive. Fuck. Did I say that yet? Let me say it again- fuck!!!!!
Now I have to pay around $175 200 to get it fixed.
I was pretty pissed off, but I think I am over it now. Mostly. As gabrielle pointed out, it could be worse. At least I'm not dead like Marlon Brando. Always putting things in perspective, that vampire nomad is.

PS- Canada Day is still a good day.