Homie Bear's Year in Review
(In which he gives a brief account of his year, and then humbly offers you his choices for best music, books and movies.)

2005 was a pretty good year for Mr. H Bear, that's for sure. It started off with me still shaking off the effects of traveling all around New Zealand, a country that insists on driving on the wrong side of the road. It took me a surprisingly long time to readjust- especially since the coal mine where I work also uses left-hand drive. Speaking of the coal mine, I got a shovel oiler bid in February, fulfilling my lifelong dream of finally being an oiler. I have yet to score my first goal or meet Raffi Torres or any of those guys, though. But I did learn how to operate this sucker:

Also in February, I asked the most beautiful woman in the world to marry me, and she said yes! Holy smokes! Here we are the night of our engagement:

And here we are on our wedding day, best day ever, sending you some love:

On our honeymoon we went to the Maritimes and Newfoundland, and had an amazing time. General Grievous was good enough to join us for part of it.

We were camping and hiking and kayaking and whale-watching, driving Seamus, eating lobster, all the things you do in that beautiful part of the country. Here is a puffin, also known as a living Quidditch Snitch.

After that, we did a whole bunch of fun things. And worked a lot. Now we are happy to say that we are eagerly awaiting approval on a mortgage so we can actually buy the beautiful house we put a down payment on a few weeks ago! Happy New Year to you all! The best is yet to come.

Top 5 CDs of 2005
1. Get Behind Me Satan, The White Stripes. Jack and Meg are the best, hands down! Michelle doesn't like them, but I like them enough for the two of us! Choice cut: Red Rain
2. Mesmerize/Hypnotize, System of a Down. SoaD's frenetic nonsense invective is the musical equivalent of one of those wild-eyed speed freaks that you meet downtown who constantly mumble and mutter and occasionally yell their delusional paranoid theories to whoever is in the vicinity. And not the harmless kind, either. Michelle likes them! Choice cut: Holy Mountains.
3. Guero, Beck. Beck at his best! He starts it all with a Beasties beat on E-Pro and ends it with some kind of Swedish yodelling girl, and in between nothing but great tunes. Choice Cut: Farewell Ride
4. Superbeautifulmonster, Bif Naked. Born in India, raised by missionaries, resides in Vancouver, but in reality the incarnation of some sort of Hindu goddess of rock and roll. Choice cut: That's Life (with me)
5. Demon Days, Gorillaz. This CD, as well as Bif and Beck, were the soundtrack to my honeymoon, as Michelle and I drove Seamus (our rented Chrysler 300) around the Maritime provinces dreaming of robots, puffins, whales and lighthouses. Choice cut: Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head

Honorable mention to KoRn's See You on the Other Side. Great album, just too new to have really wrapped itself into my 2005.

Top 2+0+0+5=7 Books of the Year (not that they were necessarily written in '05)

1. Ilium, Dan Simmons. Any book that combines Mars, the Trojan War (complete with all the gods), robots, little green men, dinosaurs and Shakespeare has to be the best book ever written, right? No contest. And it has Voynix. Whatever those are.
2. Half-Blood Prince, You-know-who. Grrr! Rargh! Damn you Snape! I owe you for a punch in the nose!
3. Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, Will Ferguson. A cool Canadian travelogue in the style of both Cahill and Bryson, but not a ripoff of either. Plus he's from Alberta too! The chapter on St. John's is worth the cover price alone.
4. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clark. I'm reading this one now- not quite done, but I can't leave it off the list. Still, this book is not for everyone- the 19th century language and sensibilities, as well as meanderingness will put off some readers. But I love it- it is often hilarious and quite dark. Surprisingly dark at times, as Clark is keenly aware that the original connotations of Faerie were sinister, malevolent, and had a curiously innocent way of being wickedly selfish.
5. A Game of Thrones, George RR Martin. This guy excels at writing very vivid, lurid scenes full of mayhem and murder. Hard to put down. My only complaint might be that I devoured the second volume and then realized afterward that hardly anything had happened to move the story along. But all those crazy twists and turns made up for it. Martin will be in Edmonton January 11th at Greenwoods, in support of Volume 4, btw.
6. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson. Fascinating and funny, well researched and very readable. Bryson at his best.
7. Across China, Peter Jenkins. A friend of my Grandma's moved to Hawaii and left us some books by this guy who walked across America back in the 70s (she also gave me a bright orange hoodie for some reason). Then he went to Tibet and China in the 80s, and wrote about it in his easy, conversational style. You feel like you were there with him, and he made me want to go back.

Top 5 Movie Guys of 2005

1. General Grievous. Did you notice that he has FOUR arms? And a lightsaber wrested from the cold fingers of a slain Jedi for each one.
2. Batman. Only two arms, but two batwings to make up for it, as well as a very stern countenance.
3. King Kong. He's the giant gorilla spawn of gollum. Nuff said.
4. Willy Wonka. He made me laugh. "Ha ha ha ha. You're really weird."
5. The White Witch. Somehow she convinced two polar bears to pull her chariot for her. Too bad she forgot to ask them to protect her from Aslan.

What a great list! It's strange that General Grievous is the only new-to-2005 character on it, and even he is from a 28-year-old franchise.

Merry Christmas everybody! Twenty-four more hours and I can join my beautiful wife for our first merry married Christmas. Good thing her name is not Mary. Mary Bear. Hehe. Anyways, here is a poem from my archives.

Homie Bear was in a mall doing some Christmas shopping
Pretending not to notice how everyone's jaws were dropping
Whenever he left his lair people always stared
His very beariness tended to make them fairly scared
But when he saw Mr. Santa Claus he felt a little jealous
Of all the looks of love he got from the small gals and little fellas
Homie was so happy to see all the beaming smiles
That he started dancing right there in the aisles
But all the children screamed and then the children scattered
And Homie Bear went home alone feeling sad and shattered
So the next day he asked a Salvation Army Santa
Who said "I'd like to help but I'm actually from Atlanta
"I dress up every year to help a worthy cause
"But you'll have to go up North to find the real Claus"
So Homie Bear set off on a trip fraught with many perils
Luckily for him he was wearing his favorite Merrils
He finally arrived at the North Pole feeling kind of freezing
Shivering and snorting and coughing and wheezing
He told his troubles to Santa who offered a solution
To Homie's undesired emitting of scaring-kids pollution
"Ride with me as a reindeer pulling along my sleigh!"
So Homie hitched himself up and off they went away
But Homie felt a little airsick and thought that he would vomit
And he started feeling hungry so he sort of ate some Comet
So I guess dressing as a reindeer was a bit of a mistake
So Santa put him in his workshop and taught him how to make
Toys for all the girls and boys who were "Good" on Santa's list
But Homie felt a little bad for the ones that Santa missed
He made fireworks for the naughty kids who like to play with fire
This made Santa none too pleased and roused up all his ire
"Homie Bear you're a hopeless cause even for Santa Claus
"You make bad toys and then you put my reindeer in your jaws
"So you can go on back to your den and quit making this mess
"And furthermore I hope you have a very unmerry Christmas"
So Homie was sad again and trudged back to his lair
Wishing he was soft and cuddly and not a fearsome bear
But then he thought "I'm not a reindeer and I'm certainly not an elf
"I am a big bad burly bear and I'm proud to be myself!"

Ursulast!

Bog Unicorn
Are your Digger pages ready months in advance or are you up late on a Wednesday night cursing the tuesday/thursday schedule? Do you write the Book of the Gear entries and put them up, or were they already written long time ago? (Will there be more????)

*grin* They're ready about two weeks in advance. I'm never up hammering them out the night before--I may occasionally curse the neccessity of hammering them out during a busy week, but I'm under contract to Graphic Smash, so I have a set schedule--Tuesdays and Thursdays, the first order of art business is to get Digger roughed in, Wednesday and Friday I'll take a few minutes to polish the roughs, over the weekend, I pop in the text. As long as I break it into small chunks, it's not an overwhelming task.

The Book of the Gear is different--I write it when I'm inspired. So I might write four or five entries in an hour or two, and then nothing for a week or so. It'll definitely be back, never fear, but the holidays tend to frazzle me a bit. It's one of those things where I really do have to be inspired to get it to come out, so it's kind've erratic at times...

Okay, I think that is plenty. Thanks again, Ursula. Ooh- one last question- I am trying to talk my wife into naming a future daughter Ursula (because it means bear!!!!!!!! Yay!!!!) and she is not convinced. What is the best thing about being named after the mightiest of all mammals?

Well, the best thing for me is that people are usually going "What an unusual name!" and you tend not to get confused with a bunch of other Ursulas in the same room. *grin* On the downside, people are always trying to spell it with an E.

Peace!
Ursula

To see more of Ursula Vernon's art, or to buy prints, go to Metal and Magic.

Ursula Some More! (part 3 of an exclusive interview with Ursula Vernon)


Sir Bunny vs the Wockwurm
Do you have a day job or are you able to just create whatever you feel like? What does your typical day look like?

I no longer have a day job! Woo! For many years, like a lot of artists, I did work a Real Job, but these days, art's where it's at.

A typical day for me would be to get up, bleary-eyed, at around 8:30, when my husband has made breakfast and coffee. Then I sort of sprawl at the computer, randomly hitting keys, for about an hour until the coffee does its work. Then I check my e-mail and reply to it all, and set up the art for the day. Around noon, I kick off for lunch, then I work a bit more--I may go out for coffee with a friend, or I may take a nap. (Working at home is so decadent!) Then I get back up and get back to work until mid-evening. If I'm really cooking on a painting, I've been known to work until 1 AM, but usually I kick off around six-thirty or seven, play some computer games, have dinner, etc.

As a newlywed, I'm personally interested in knowing how you balance that creative side with your spouse (Here I went into some personal detail to explain what I meant, but it is a little awkward for this blog . . . )

*laugh!* My spouse is really quite wonderful about this sort of thing. His mother was an artist, so possibly he was just raised to understand this sort of thing, but he never complains about having me call in the middle of the day and say "Come home for lunch! I need the car! I'm having an art supply CRISIS!" I suspect I'm lucky in that regard, in that he takes my art very seriously (even when it's small animals with party hats!) and treats my occasionally erratic art-related behavior as just kinda the way it goes. So to that extent I can't really offer any advice--I was lucky!--except that if your spouse has some overriding hobby or interest that they really love, to be equally supportive, and perhaps you can trade off that sort of thing and come to a kind of mutual understanding.

Be sure to check out her brand new illustrated short story, Little Creature (or Dream Deer)

More Ursula!


Zebra Egg
You have a very whimsical style, very fun and playful, which I think would reflect on your personality. How do you cultivate that quality in your life? How do you protect it?

Heh! Actually, I think that may be the thing--I'm a sort of snide, dour individual in real life. If you've ever seen Spongebob Squarepants, I'm basically a vertebrate Squidward. I am full of fascinating and often noxious facts. (Well, actually, that may tie into the sense of wonder. I find great wonder in, for example, the idea that vampire bats live on an entirely liquid diet, and since weight is a major concern, with flight, they have to urinate nearly the entire time they're feeding. Knowing this disgusting little tidbit strikes me as deeply wonderful. I've never figured out how to work it gracefully into a painting, though.) A few other people I know who do very cute stuff have a similiar tendency to be kinda cynical and snarky in real life, and then all the cute comes out in the work. Actually a lot of things are probably like that--I have a buddy who writes these billowy, sentimental romance novels who's got a wonderfully black sense of humor. Perhaps the art winds up as an outlet for these tendencies.

Then again, I dunno, I'll "AWWWW!" over a baby hedgehog as much as anybody, so take my armchair psychology with a grain of salt. *grin*

Anyway, because of that, I don't really worry about protecting my sense of whimsy--it seems pretty durable, and since people really like the whimsical art, it gets a lot of positive reinforcement. If I lived in the middle of a warzone, or something, it'd be different, I'm sure, but for now, not really a problem.

What kind of things do you do to recharge your creative juices? What books and music do you absorb?

Well, I read a lot. Mostly fantasy, with a broad and indiscriminate appetite, the occasional mystery, horror, or thriller. Music, not so much--I know a lot of artists are very musically inclined and really require music to work, but probably because I'm tone deaf, I tend to stick to NPR. Of course, occasionally they get off on three days of senate hearings or something, so I have to dig out music--my tastes are pretty eclectic, and range between heavy metal and folk, with very few stops in between.

And I take walks, and I feed the birds out in my backyard, and occasionally I go to the zoo. Animals are really delightful, so I enjoy watching them. (Animal Planet's usually on in the evenings.) The internet's also a neverending source of inspiration, too.

An Interview with Ursula Vernon (part 1)

Frog Tribe
Here is a special treat for you- an exclusive interview with Ursula Vernon, the crazy genius who makes art such as you see above, as well as single-handedly produces Digger twice a week. More to come in the next few days.

I saw on your Metal and Magic page that you really didn't start drawing seriously till you were 17. Did you have other artistic or creative interests as a child? Or did you have more of a creative "awakening" as an adult?

Actually, for a long time I wanted to be a writer. So I wrote a great deal as a kid, much of it mercifully lost to posterity. As an adult, I still like writing, but art turned into my main field.

Did your parents or teachers help you keep that sense of wonder that is so easily lost when we grow up? How can teachers (and parents) help cultivate creativity? What's the artists' role in that? Do you get invited into schools and stuff ever?

Well, my mother's an artist, and I imagine that helped! I don't know if I had any teachers that worked specifically to address a sense of wonder--I may simply have been lucky on that count!

"Wonder"'s a pretty nebulous quality, so I'm hard pressed to say what, specifically, an artist's role is in cultivating it. I think it may be hard to do intentionally. Kinda like attracting butterflies. You can make butterfly gardens, you can provide a spot for butterflies to show up, but you can't put teeny weeny little shackles on them and keep them chained around the house.

Of course, now I'm just thinking of people with vicious guard butterflies on chains, so hell, maybe you could...*grin*

I don't get invited to many schools, I think because most of my fan base is through the internet, and I'm not terribly active in the local art scene, so the schools in the area don't neccessarily know I exist. It's probably for the best. I'm awkward around children, and however well developed a sense of childlike wonder I have, I also have a tendency to swear under stress, which is not what you want in your guest speaker. *grin*

"Winnie the Pooh" and "rebranding" are not words you want to see in the same article. Poor little Pooh. Did no one learn from Poochy?
But, uh, if you have to rebrand the Hundred Acre Wood, allow me to humbly make the following suggestions:
1) Less Winnie, more Pooh
2) Tigger should try harder to devour Piglet
3) Christopher Robin should be replaced. Oh. Right.
4) Eeyore should show less ass

While you digest the theology of the great god Wuurr (please read and comment! I'm quite pleased with it), here are a few links for you:
I love to take the opportunity to remind you that Sarah How is the wonderful artist who drew the bears for my two blog templates. Make sure you go look at her beautiful rendering of Lyra Belaqua astride Iorek Byrnison, the mighty Panserbjorn.
And though this might piss Philip Pullman off a bit, I loved the Narnia movie! Of special interest was the final battle, filmed in and around Kura Tawhiti, where gabrielle and I spent a fun day playing last year. We had been looking for some LOTR locations, actually, and came across the eery monoliths of Kura Tawhiti more or less by accident. We had passed a big, secretive film crew earlier with a bunch of security guards looking dour, and convinced ourselves it was for Narnia. Turns out we were right, eh, been? Here are the pics.

Here is the first part of that dualism mythology story I promised the other day. I'll keep the "episodes" short and readable, to hopefully keep your interest. It's a little darker than, say, Homie Bear vs the Killer Whale, just so you know.

Uuuw’erruu awoke with nightmarish images fading from her consciousness. She had fleeting impressions of a dried and desiccated Wuurr, cast off by a gloating Krurk. Still groggy she shuddered and looked around. Dark, silent. As it should be, except . . . where was Rweruree? Alarmed now she grabbed her spear and jumped from the branch into the pond below. Her young scattered at her intrusion, then regrouped behind her. They seemed to be unmolested. Though, there was a faint trace of . . . she cursed. Goblin piss. Goblins always defiled birthing ponds. And if there were goblins around, then Rweruree’s absence was all the more ominous.
She followed the scent trail to land, where it was easy to pick up several sets of goblin footprints. She ran her spearhead over her venom glands, and took a deep breath to calm herself. Then she plunged into the jungle.
Before long she came upon a goblin corpse. Maybe Rweruree was alright. She kept going, and came to a clearing, all dark shadows and gloom. Scattered around were a few more goblin corpses, and Uuuw'erruu saw one living goblin bent over something she couldn't quite make out, though she knew what it was without seeing. She drove her powerful hind legs towards the goblin, letting out a furious wartrill as she propelled herself up over the startled goblin's head. The goblin swatted at her, but she twisted and released her spear just before she was sent sprawling. She landed softly, at the same time as the goblin thudded to the ground, her spear embedded in its eye.
Rweruree lay on his back, his throat sack inflating and deflating slowly. His breathing made a gurgling sound, and as Uuuw'erruu came closer she saw that his belly was open, his insides spilled on the ground. "Uuuw'. . . ," he rasped, but there was really nothing to say. Uuuw'erruu sat with her mate, crying, as his brilliant blue and yellow skin slowly faded, and he died.

Wuurr and Krurk Part 2 of 2

Uuuw'erruu took Rweruree's body up into a tree, where it would be absorbed back into the jungle away from the putrid goblin corpses. She strongly considered pissing on those, but didn't want to stoop to their level. Once Rweruree's body was as safely hidden as she could make it, she climbed up to a higher branch to mourn, and to sing, and to pray.
The sun started its ascent, a slim sliver tinting the green canopy with a pinkish hue. Uuuw'erruu was deep in the Frogsong, transforming the notes of the melody Rweruree first sang to her as a mating call into a funeral dirge. She slowed the tempo, changed major keys to minor. Where Rweruree's song was bright, playful, and enticing, Uuuw'erruu's was dark, mournful,and aching.
She began to weave prayers into the song. Prayers to Wuurr, to lend Him strength and offer Him protection against Krurk's vile followers. She affirmed her dedication to serving Wuurr's cause, as the great bullfrog god continued his eternal struggle to swallow Krurk into Himself. The goblin god could claim a victory tonight, perhaps wresting his head a tiny bit out of Wuurr's relentless maw, but it would carry a heavy price, as Uuuw'erruu promised Wuurr to exact a fierce and bloody revenge.
The sun was no longer a sliver, but a sphere, and Uuuw'erruu arose. She inflated her throat sack to its fullest, blasting a terrible trumpet call of defiance, and went to serve her god.


(There! A dualist mythology. I had a dream the other night where I was fighting all these goblins, and for no reason at all there was this big frog thing swallowing a goblin. The goblin's head was in the frog's mouth, but the goblin was still struggling, trying to get free. The image stayed with me, I worked it a bit, and came up with this. PS- this is the kind of frog Uuuw'erruu is. A poison dart frog. Pretty.)

The new KoRn CD kicks ten tons of ass, obviously. Michelle and I have been listening to it nonstop, and I have been regaling her with kernels of KoRn knowledge.
"Did you know Jonathan Davis has a son named Nathan? Same as my name. And he has another son named Pirate."
"Why did he name his son Pirate?"
"I'm not sure, I bet because he really loves pirates. I really love robots, can we name our son Robot?"
"No."
"C3PO?"
"No."
"How about Charles the Third Peter O'Gilvie?"
Suspicious silence- " . . . why?"
"Cause then his initials would be C3PO."

Did you ever notice how bizarre myths are? Partly because they are so old, and partly because they are from an entirely different culture than ours. I love the weirdness of them- Athena being born by bursting from Zeus' head, for example. Or this one, picked more or less at random:

Nohotsakyum and his wife Nainohotsakyum and all the good dead people live in the sky where there is land with roads and trees like here, but no animals and no chickens. When the world comes to an end by being eaten by the big jaguar, everyone will go up there and live like them, and work in the corn patches, smoke cigars, and eat tortillas and beans.

Yum, tortillas. Anyways, the reason I bring it up is because, I thought of my own cool cosmology- a study in dualism. When I get home from work and have some time, maybe I will fashion it into a little story. Your assignment, if you want to exercise your creative juices, is to come up with a pantheon/ mythology/ cosmology of your own, and either poost it on your blog (but let me know in the droppings!) or send it to me. Sound like fun?

I got to hold Littlehammer today! He's so little! But you can't really use him as a hammer. Also, Craig, Deb and Phil, (known collectively as We Three) performed at the G tonight. They played a song I requested two years ago, and then had to miss because my uncle passed away. So, though it took two years to hear it, their rendition of 2000 Miles was absolutely lovely.
Wow, two years. Time just keeps pooing along. In fact, it was a year ago today that I got back from Kiwiland. Crazy. I sure never expected the vampirenomad to survive a year on her own! I thought she would have been eaten by a moa way before now. Just kidding Been! Congratulations on a significant milestone for you.

Congratulations to Marilyn Manson, who married Dita Von Teese the other day in Ireland. Feel free to ask me for marital advice, Marilyn, during our next conference call. The Dalai Lama can't really help you there.

Together at Last!
It must be Christmas- two of my favorite things, Slipknot and Star Wars, are finally brought together (for no particular reason at all), as #8 discusses his lifelong love of that galaxy far, far away. Yay for scary men in masks! I heard Darth Vader, Boba Fett, General Grievous and some stormtroopers formed a band called Sithknot.

Your Guide to the Canadian Election
I very rarely delve into poolitics- there are more than enough blogs that do. But Michelle was reading all the miillions of articles in the paper, and she said she wished there was just a simple little chart to sum up all the parties and stuff. So I made her one.

I have some sad news- Stan Berenstain passed away the other day. He was 82. He leaves a rich legacy, and even had a little to do with my great love of bears. In tribute, please take a moment to read your favorite Berenstain Bears book (mine was The Bike Lesson -or was it The Big Honey Hunt??? The one where the giant mosquitos chase them and try to eat them), and then hoist a beer in the direction of Ursis Major, where I am sure Stan is keeping watch over all us little bears.