Working in a coal mine can be kind of crazy sometimes. I'm pretty good at what I do but occasionally even I make mistakes. Yesterday I pulled away from the water fillup with my water truck still attached to the fillup. Hoses and water everywhere, but amazingly I didn't break anything, just pulled everything apart and it was easily fixed. But as I was down on the ground contemplating how best to go about that, I looked up to watch two 260 ton trucks collide- 34 started to slide sideways because of the mud, clipping 32's mirror with the back of his box. The damage was mostly cosmetic. Both drivers had special instructors from Fort McMurray with them. Which is kind of funny when you think about it.

Since Jon (Darth Wildious in this incarnation) asked so nicely, I will give you some thoughts on Revenge of the Sith. Have you heard of it?
It was a lot of fun. Yeah it had some cheese and some bad acting, but so did all five other Star Wars movies, so no suprises there. When I see a Star Wars movie, I see it in full-on Little Homie Bear mode. I go back to when I was three years old seeing Star Wars for the first time, or when I was five and I didn't know there was an Empire Strikes Back till my parents took me, without saying where we were going, and being in absolute awe at the tauntauns, Walkers, Yoda, Darth's stunning revelation . . . and the three long years of speculation with people such as Darth Wildious as to whether Vader was lying or not, and what would happen to Han, all encased in carbonite like that. So I forgive the weaker aspects of the new trilogy, because it means so much. I just enjoy them for what they are. And Episode III had much to enjoy- the climactic duel is stunning, and surprisingly wrenching.
Having said all that, there are some things I wish had been a touch different- General Grievous was way cool, but his cowardliness kind of undermined him a little, especially since he was portrayed as having much more class in the Clone Wars cartoons. Oh well. He had four lightsabres so that makes up for a heck of a lot.
Anakin's seduction to the dark side was handled fairly well, though if I were to summarize it, it came a little too close to this:
Palpatine: Hey Anakin, did I ever tell you that I'm a Sith Lord?
Anakin: Really? You are? Can I be one too?
Palpatine: Sure!
Finally, the last thing that made me wince a bit was Lucas' ill-advised homage to Frankenstein at the end, which marred an otherwise brilliant and darkly beautiful scene.
Anyways, minor points. In Little Homie Bear mode, these things hardly matter. And if there is the nagging suspicion at the back of my mind that perhaps it could have been written a little better- perhaps even, forgive the hubris, that I could have written it better- it is only because Lucas himself helped awaken the immense powers of imagination and sense of wonder in me and my generation. May the Force be with him.

(Photo copyright 2005 al.ma;
used with permission)

The small girl
asks her father
what she sees
His answer
astonishes her
and even though
she isn’t quite sure if she should
believe him
her amazement
outweighs
her doubt


I suppose this could be seen as a companion piece to "Little Boys" that I wrote a few weeks ago. I hope you like it.

I wish I could have been the one to utter this sentence from a conversation I had today:
"He was holding a robot in his hand."
A sentence I am quite pleased I was able to utter today:
"Did you know your old church blew up?"

The Mystery of the Sasquatch
by Little Homie Bear

My report about mammals is about sasquatches, who are giant apes or cavemen or something that lives in the woods and mountains of North America. Also their cousin the yeti who some people call the abomable snowman who lives in the Himalayas mountains in Nepal and Tibet, which are two countries very far away from here where they have Mt Everest the tallest mountain in the world.
Anyways, there is very little known about these mysterious denizens of the primodial forest. Some scientists even claim that there isn't a such a thing as a bigfoot (which is what some people call sasquatches because of their big feet). But I don't know how they can say that when they also say that they have an uncertainty principal. But what IS known about the sasquatches is they are undoubtedly very big. Hopefully they eat plants and berries and not bears, but I think they don't because otherwise we would see more of them I think and have more fights. And I don't want to fight with these mythical beasts who might be from the Ice Age. Other animals that are from the Ice Age are the woolly mammoth, and I bet that the sasquatches rode on woolly mammoths.
The End

The mystery of the sasquatch fascinates me- I even wrote this touching paean to them. But I'm not one to get too excited about the latest "Caught on Film! " exclusive scoop of fuzzy, out-of-focus blobs that are probably either a bear or a guy out walking his dog. The latest example has been getting some coverage in the media, though I don't know why- it isn't that impressive (and I am being generous). But at least it has gotten me thinking about the subject again. Obviously a large primate prowling undiscovered in our backyards is an intriguing concept. But it's always something that's larger than life, you know? Aliens, Loch Ness monsters, angels, . . . maybe some or all of these things are real, and that'd be great if they were. I'd love it if someone proved there were real sasquatches. But since you can't prove that something doesn't exist, there will always be rumours, even if there is no such thing. Why aren't there ever rumours and fuzzy videos of a new species of rodent- maybe a polar porcupine, say, or a brown skunk or something? These things just aren't enough to incite the public imagination I guess.
In the meantime, though, there are all sorts of astonishing things happening out there- just last week they found an ivory-billed woodpecker after they were thought to be extinct for the last 40 years or so. Pretty cool. Or a new species of dinosaur that seems to show an evolutionary transition from carnivore to herbivore. Not to mention that whole Homo florensis discovery in Indonesia.
The other week at work I saw a grizzly, probably the closest I have ever been to one (aside from looking in the mirror I guess ;), and that was pretty damn cool. My point? If there are sasquatches out there, fantastic. But the world has more than enough wonder in it even without them.
(art by gloriouskyle, used with permission)