Everyone say happy birthday to my girlfriend Michelle! We went and saw Emm Gryner and friends play at the Sidetrack tonight and it was amazing. Besides Emm (make sure you spell it right with an extra M in Em. heh) there were five other singer/songwriters, none of whom I had heard of, but all were excellent. Maybe one weak link but I won't single him out. They were touring as the Bluebird North Tour, and they were arrayed panel style, each performing a song in turn, though often helping the others out.
We went because I had read an interview with Emm last week and it mentioned that she recorded a disc of metal/punk/heavier songs accoustically and called it Girl Versions, though I was unable to track the disc down in town (I got her new one instead which is really good). I decided it would be cool to go to the show, not knowing there were five others sharing the bill. One guy, Andy Kim, was well known with the older patrons, and when they played that Sugar, Sugar (Candy Girl?) song we realized why. And another guy played a couple of fun songs- one about the Monster Mash, which was kind of clever and insightful (the point being, he might have been a one hit wonder but at least that guy had a hit) and The Last of the Red Hot Fools.
So it was a great night, much different than we expected, but all the better for it.
Almost makes up for missing out on Slipknot a couple of weeks ago. Make sure you say to Michelle Happy Birthday! It's actually Friday, and I am a bad bearfriend because I have to miss it since I will be working.

"What did you guys do with the lake that was here?" asked Lord Chamberlain Vivvle, with a fair amount of astonishment, alarm and anger in his voice as he looked down into the huge gaping chasm that had been a beautiful pristine lake just yesterday.
"You said we could use it for the moat," said the foreman, or rather, foreorc, pointing towards the construction site, where two frost giants had placed the lake, along with its foundation, off to the side to await completion of the moat. The giants had frozen the lake to prevent it from sloshing while they moved it, and now they watched lazily as two iron-jawed dragons excavated the moat with their mighty mouths.
Vivvle stomped his steel-toed boots and threw his hardhat on the ground. "I meant you could use some of the water to fill the moat, not rip the lake off its hinges and pour it all in! Put it back immediately!"
The foreorc, whose name Vivvle could never remember, said, "Well, alright, but it will have to wait till tomorrow now- Gront and Biphk are going home- they already put in a couple hours overtime moving the lake over there. Had some problems with the feeder creeks. Got it all sorted out now, but I guess that doesn't matter . . ."
Inwardly, Vivvle rolled his eyes. For the millionth time he wished he had heeded his predecessor's advice about always hiring the second cheapest bidder. Monster Construction worked cheap enough- preferring livestock and land concessions (as long as there were villages to plunder) to gold, but they needed close supervision. Stooping down, he picked up his hardhat, which he thought was stupid and made him look like one of the king's soldiers rather than the Lord Chamberlain, especially combined with all the other safety gear he had to wear to tour the construction site- steel-toed boots and safety gauntlets. Worst of all were the strips of phosphorescent moss he wore as a safety vest-the Occupational Safety demons brought them up from their subterranean lairs, but didn't have to wear the stupid things themselves since they already glowed in the dark supernaturally.
He moved on to the actual castle lot, ignoring the hundreds of small fire-lizards busily welding support girders for the interior. The first of the stone trolls were just arriving on shift now, since the sun had set. Obviously the troll masons could only work the nightshift since they would be turned to stone themselves if they were exposed to the sun- and Vivvle had no desire to have a bunch of troll statues littering the king's new castlegrounds. All statuary was already subcontracted out to the faeries anyways- Vivvle would have liked to hire them to do the whole thing but they can't wear any iron safety gear.
Suddenly there was a commotion- one of the trolls had tripped and knocked another one down, and the two had started fighting. One was sent sprawling into some scaffolding, knocking it down. Vivvle's stomach lurched as the huge latticework teetered and began to fall- "Please don't knock down the wall please don't knock down the wall" he prayed . . . to no avail. Ogres and harpies scattered as the whole thing crashed to the ground. Vivvle was apoplectic. But the foreorc was already cussing out the trolls, firing the clumsier one on the spot, and so there was no one to vent his wrath upon. Deciding he had seen enough for the day, he asked one of the workorcs to fetch his chariot.
Vivvle had more than professional interest in making sure the project went smoothly- if the king failed to reutrn from his silly battles, Vivvle would get the castle, at least until the whiny brat prince came of age. Not that he was a treasonous fellow- just very pragmatic.
A workorc interrupted his musings to sheepishly inform him that one of the dragons had eaten his horses.
"Fine." Said Vivvle in a strained voice. "Just . . . get the castle done." And he turned and walked towards the village. He never got there, however, as Gront had realized he had forgotten his lunchbox and had come back to get it, and accidentally stepped on the Lord Chamberlain.

Some months later, when the king had returned from his campaigns abroad, he was absolutely delighted with the end product, which had been finished on time and under budget, and gave Monster Construction a healthy bonus. He did have one question, however, which he put to the foreorc.
"What did you guys do with the lake that was here?"



(This was inspired by a question I heard at work today, which became the first and last sentence of the story.)

According to my young friend (who is four or five years old) I was hanging out with at the Gathering last night, Spider-Man is not real.
"Yes he is!" I protested.
"No!"
"Yeah!"
"No! He's really a boy named Peter who just dresses as Spider-Man."

The other planets in our solar system are named after Roman gods, which is way cooler than some numbering system in Latin or German or something like that. There's something about those cold, aloof jewels spinning around out there in space that seems very regal and god-like. Jupiter, mightiest of the planets, is named for the god king. Venus, the goddess of love, gets a beautiful, bright, yet deadly planet in her honor, or maybe in her worship. And Mars, so aptly named with its blood-tinged hue after the god of war.
Then there's Titan. Saturn's largest moon has always fascinated me- just shy of being the biggest moon in the solar system, it's actually larger than Mercury or Pluto, and it's even colder than Edmonton. Titan was named after a whole class of god-like beings, the titans, who preceded the gods and warred with them. So, it's like having a bunch of goldfish named Dracula and Frankenstein and Casper and then having one just named Monster. Titan is the primeval archetype of bludgeoning brutality and power. He doesn't even need a proper name. Just titan. Cool.
You probably heard that Huygens landed on Titan and has been sending back the first pictures of its surface. Really cool.

I didn't really do any Top Ten lists this year, but for sure my favorite CD of last year was Slipknot Vol. III (The Subliminal Verses). One day in Wellington I thought I saw a Slipknot flyer on a lightpost across the street, so I crossed over to get a closer look, taking my life in my hands once again since I would invariably look the wrong way before crossing in NZ, especially when excited by the possibility that Slipknot might be playing in Wellington. Sadly, it was for some other band with a similar font. But in fact they ARE playing in New Zealand, next week at Auckland's Big Day Out, along with the Beasties (!!!) and System of a Down and lots of other great bands. Oh well. One day I'm sure, Slipknot will come here. Turns out that day is four days hence, or, more pertinent to me, four nights hence. Since I am going to go on night shifts tonight, that means I will be on my last shift on that momentous day, and once more it will be SlipNot for me.
Last night I had a dream that I was at the show, though there was only three of them there and they weren't wearing their masks (still best show ever!!!!) and in the middle of Vermillion Pt. II, a song I doubt they would play live, #0 was stopped in his tracks by a girl in the audience who was messing with his head, and she left for the parking lot and he went after her. Then he came back too torn up to continue, and I had to exhort him with his own lyrics- "I won't let this build up inside of me". I think he felt better after that. But if I had a mask on right now it would be of a sad face.
But ringwraiths can cheer me up, here's a picture I took last night in Mordor.

Today was the day I told my girlfriend I would be coming home from New Zealand, a blatant and deliberate lie, since obviously I came home a month ago. It was getting kind of tricky keeping the web of deciet going for a while there, a lesson that bears and people should just stick with being honest. At one point I had to convince Michelle that the reason I needed her to be home on the day I was actually returning had something to do with volunteering for the Department of Conservation (so I had to call her that day rather than the day I usually called her). "Oh really? That's cool- what is that about?"
"Uhh, you know . . . saving, like, the kiwis . . . or something . . ."
"Well, couldn't you call me the day before?"
"Oh, um, no, because . . . also . . . saving kiwis that day . . . "
Anyways, it all worked out and I am pleased to say that my lie went unpunished. At least by her. Maybe God will still have something to say.
No lying, everybody, okay?

Last week at work my Dad handed me a book and said, "Here, you'll like this one." Since a good book is worth ten times its weight in coal out at the mine (there's lots of coal, not so many books there) I thanked him, till I looked at the cover. It was sort of a "new old-timey" picture of a woman with flowing red hair, and the book was called Rose. Since guys will sometimes leave a romance novel sitting around, I thought my Dad was just joking so I tried to hand it back to him but he said, "No, really- it's about coal mining." Turns out he was right- your basic mystery novel, but set against the backdrop of an underground coal mine in England in the 1880s. Makes me glad that I am an open pit miner, though.
Speaking of underground miners, did you know that more than 5000 Chinese coal miners were killed on the job in 2004?