So did you have a good year? I did, though it wasn't too eventful, really. Not like last year when Michelle and I bought a house or the year before when we got married. The only real drama was at work- earlier in the year there was a pretty strong possibility we'd be going on strike, but we didn't. And there was that time I almost killed that guy. But I didn't. So I guess it all worked out at work.
I ran a few 5 km races this year- hence the bright red shirts and red sweaty faces in the above photo. I had to take a break from running when I hurt my ankles (from chasing grizzly bears! Sort of.) but hopefully this coming year will see me run in some 10 km races. But I think the highlight of the year were the two roadtrips Michelle and I took- to Southern Alberta and to Western British Columbia. Oh yeah and hiking the Tonquin Valley with my buddy Robin.



So, what was the highlight of your year? Got any goals or plans for 2008?

Usually around this time of year I talk about my favorite movies, CDs and books. Except I don't know if I saw a single good movie this year- not to say there weren't any, just that I didn't get out to see them- Bourne Ultimatum being one exception. There was lots of good music this year- but if you look at my top 7 track plays on iTunes (admittedly it's skewed since I only got the iMac in August) it shows only one song from 2007:

The Park, Feist
Ghettochip Malfuntion (Hell Yes Remix), Beck
Black Eyed Dog, Nick Drake
Sabotage, Beastie Boys
-Human, Metallica
Biko, Peter Gabriel
Resident Evil Theme, Marilyn Manson

I do recommend these 7 albums from this past year, though:

White Stripes, Icky Thump
Loreena McKennitt, Nights From Alhambra
Marilyn Manson, Eat Me Drink Me
KoRn, Untitled
Feist, The Reminder
Corb Lund, Horse Soldier, Horse Soldier
Radiohead, In Rainbows

As far as books go, I read over a hundred this year so I have lots to choose from. Again, only a few were from 2007 but that hardly matters with books. My favorite 7 books I read this year were:

1. Boy and Going Solo, Roald Dahl. Alright so that's two books but they are basically part 1 and 2 of his autobiography. They have just as much whimsy and adventure as any of his fictional works, but they are true. The more amazing because of it. Did you know he was a fighter pilot in WWII?
2. The Silverwing Saga, Kenneth Oppel. Cheating again by including an entire trilogy. Books about bats and bat gods by a Canadian author. What's not to love? In fact his airship books, Airborn and Skybreaker are also fantastic.
3. River Town, Peter Hessler. He went to China with the Peace Corps, and then wrote about it. If you ever do that you are guaranteed I will love your book.
4. Ballad of the Whiskey Robber, Julian Rubinstein. I love true stories of larger-than-life people. Especially when they are goalies in Budapest who take up bank robbing as a day job.
5. Calculating God, Robert J Sawyer. Gotta represent the Canadian writers! This one is a sci-fi book set mostly in the Royal Ontario Museum. An alien comes to Earth to investigate mass extinctions.
6. A Feast For Crows, George RR Martin. I don't usually go in for multi-volume fantasy sagas but GRR is not a JRR wannabe but a separate and unique voice. Bring on the next one already!
7. The Secret Life of Lobsters, Trevor Corson. I think marine invertebrates are about the coolest form of life ever (if I had a top 7 lifeforms-other-than-bears list of 2007 marine invertebrates would probably take 5 of the spots) so a whole book about lobsters really should've won the Pulitzer. But I grant it and all the books on this list a Poolitzer! Cheers.

So I almost got a Wii for Christmas- I told my buddies at work who already own one that they had been recalled. They were very dismayed to learn this, especially only two days from Christmas. I told them I would gladly take their Wiis into Edmonton for them to sort out the problem, and that's when they told me to go play with my wiiner.
But that's alright since I got some great stuff anyways. Like Chris Jericho's new book- A Lion's Tale- Around the World in Spandex. "But Homie Bear," you say, "in five years of blogging you have never once mentioned any sort of interest in professional wrestling!" It's true, but a few weeks ago Michellle and I were listening to CBC's Q and Jian Ghomeshi was interviewing Jericho. If you listen to Q you know it is a fairly highbrow pop culture show- he's always featuring ballet dancers and French film directors and transgendered indie rockstars, so we were surprised he would have a rassler on. But Chris was very engaging, funny and personable and we agreed it was one of the best Q spots we'd heard. He was promoting his book so Michelle got it for me. I love it- it's hilarious. He's really self-deprecating and shows himself to be just a regular Canadian kid who got to do what he loved for a living.
Also, I got a beautiful Emmylou Harris boxset- nearly five hours of her angelic singing. It has duets with everyone from Johnny Cash to Beck to Chris Jericho.

It was almost disappointing when my foreman let us go home early this morning. Don't get me wrong- I gladly jump at any opportunity to escape the pit. It's just that I was so ready to scheme and plot and destroy to get out early. I wore an old pair of shoes to work that I could leave in my locker for the next few weeks if necessary. I wore my old pair of steel toes so if I had to bring them home it wouldn't matter. I even brought my pants with me to the shovel. But then Steve just let us all go at 3:00. He even gave me and Jason a work truck to use to get to the parking lot on the other end. No rhyming and stealing involved! Not like last year's epic Christmas escape in which we hid our hardhats in a supposedly-derelict kaltire truck which we then got accused of siphoning gas from.
Oh well, there's always next year.

"Although it is not in the nature of flowers to leave monuments, the music of Nick Drake is the hippie vision made permanent . . . Listening to music so beautiful you are shamed by the ugliness of the world."
-Arthur Lubow, in the liner notes to fruit tree, the collected works of Nick Drake.

For proof just listen to Fly, Cello Song and Black Eyed Dog,which is also slightly harrowing. Reading the rest of the notes which serve as a biography of Drake, I kind of wonder if he was on the autistic spectrum?
Speaking of which, a few weeks ago I was reading Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake, a brilliant off the wall book which I think might have got left behind in the wake of 9/11, and I wondered the same about Vonnegut. That in turn reminded me of a Peter Gzowski interview I had heard years ago on CBC with an autistic woman who had written an autobiography. Some quick googling came up with the name Donna Williams, who wrote Nobody Nowhere and Somebody Somewhere. I read the first and found it, well, beautiful and more than slightly harrowing. And in fact she now keeps a blog.

It's here! Frog Tribe! You know how I love frogs! About two years ago I started the process of purchasing some original artwork by one of my favorite artists- and surely one of the most unique, inventive and fun artists around- Ursula Vernon. You might recall I did an interview with her around the time I first contacted her. Anyways it feels great to have such a vibrant piece in the living room- you can see the Deviation of it here.
I also got some artwork of the tattooine variety on my leg this weekend but it is still too bloody and scabby to show you yet. It is not of a frog, though maybe next time, eh? Lucky for me one of my buddies at work is a tattooist when he's not a coal miner. If you like you can check out one of my older tattoos which I got in New Zealand to commemorate that most kickass of trips. Once this new one heals I'll put up some pics. Maybe even of all my tats which now number five.

I would just like to be the first to write a poem dedicated to the newly discovered species of glyptodont.

O Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis . . .

never mind.

We Need a Name For This Genre
This morning Michelle and I were having our morning coffee and reading on the couch. She says, "You would like this book, it starts with a bear possessed by demons attacking people."
"Nice. That's how this book starts, too."
Technically, the bear in my book is possessed not by a demon but by the astral spirit of an evil man, but let's not split hairs here.
Michelle is reading Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver, and I am reading Stormrider by David Gemmell.
The only time anything similar happened to me was when I was attacked by the dread Zombear.

I imagine it's pretty rare to have the occasion of your car breaking down be the catalyst to a pretty great day. Especially when your car breaks down after you get off nightshift and you're heading back home in -25 degree weather. But that was the case for me today. Luckily I recognized that LGJ was feeling sick before I headed out onto the highway. So I pulled over just in time- my little car's alternator decided to retire after 352,000 kms. Fair enough- I would be tired too. So I called my buddy Robin who lives nearby and also just got off nightshift. No answer. But Tim is home and has not yet jumped in the shower to wash off the night's coal dust, so he comes and tries to give me a boost. No go so he drives me back to my Hinton home where I make arrangements with a repair shop and towtruck. But then Robin calls and says he saw my car and knew I was in trouble, and would I like a ride to Edmonton? Hell yeah!
Turns out he and his wife and little baby were going to Onoway for the day, so Robin comes gets me, hooks up a spare battery so we can get to the shop, and off we go! So I spent the day hanging out with my good friends.
Even though Edmonton is hardly a big city it is still a different world than Hinton, and there's nothing like hanging out with some Hinton folks in Edmonton to remind you of how different. Robin and I overheard the following snippet of a conversation: "And then it was so cold I had to warm my hands with a venti macchiatto when all I really wanted was a grande somethingorotheratti."
Anyways, if you are reading this and you are married to me, you must stop reading now. Everyone else can continue by highlighting the invisible text.
So, Michelle told me what book she wanted me to get her for Christmas so we went to the bookstore to get it for her. Robin bought some books too and he was telling me what they were about. Then he asks me what the one I bought was about, and since I had no idea either I
flipped it over to read the back cover. "It says here it's about this woman who had everything a modern woman could want- a great husband, a beautiful home and a fulfilling career. But she still wasn't happy . . . and . . . uh . . . "
I trail off and look at Robin.
"Uh oh," he says.
Anyways, these are the things I love this weekend:
1. Friends like Robin and Tim
2. Firefly and Serenity. Actually Michelle and I had a huge Firefly marathon last weekend. What a great show and why did no one ever tell me about it before?
3. The Park by Feist and Fly by Nick Drake
4. NOT shovel 5!

You might have heard about the new Yeti prints that have turned up in the Himalaya.
I've been reading The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen, which is a travelogue of a trek in Nepal that the author undertook in 1973. Mainly he wanted to catch a glimpse of a snow leopard, as the title implies, but of course he pondered the mystery of the yeti since he was there. Here are some brief excerpts:

The yeti is described most often as a hairy, reddish-brown creature with a ridged crown that gives it a pointed-head appearance; in size . . . it has been likened to an adolescent boy, though much larger individuals have been reported.

The Nepal government takes yeti seriously, and there is a strict law against killing them.

. . . on this brushy slope, a dark shape jumps behind a boulder. The slope is in bright morning sun, but I glimpse the creature only for an instant. It is much too big for a red panda, too covert for a musk deer, too dark for a wolf or leopard, and much quicker than a bear. . . All day I wonder about that quick dark shape . . . though I shall assume it was a musk deer it is hard to put away thoughts of yeti.

Anyways, in a serendiptious amalgamation of snow leopards and yetis, my friend Phil is done the third page he's made for me of my yeti story which some of you have heard me read.

The Snow Snake
"Grandpa was there ever any dangerous animals around when you were growing up?"
"Of course. You had your tyrannosaurs and brontosaurs . . . "
"Grandpa, dinosaurs went extinct millions of years ago."
"Right. Well, we DID have snow snakes."
"Snow snakes?"
"Yeah. They were hard to see since they were pure white and blended into the snow real well. But you had to keep your eyes out for them because if they bit you you would be paralyzed. Then you would freeze and the snake could munch on you all winter. You would be like a popsicle."
"Eeew! Did you ever see one?"
"All the time! There was one that lived in a snow tunnel outside. It would follow me to school every day, but it knew better than to try and bite me."
"Why?"
"I always had my special anti-snow snake device with me."
"What's an anti-snow snake device?"
"A polar bear."

I think it's way too early to be showing the Grinch on tv, and any other Christmas special for that matter. And I say this not because I am personally a grinch but for just the opposite- Christmas is a good time and the best way to ruin it is to make us all sick of Christmas before it's even December!
But I have to admit I have already purchased a copy of Josh Groober's Christmas CD. Why have I done such an insidious thing? Because I am married and that is what married men do. I get to be redeemed somewhat since I bought myself the brand new Corb Lund. Nary a Christmas song on that one.

Some time tomorrow you should be able to head over to The Science Creative Quarterly to read my story about squids. But why wait till then? There are many many great scientifically creative essays and poems and stories and such to read over there. Hardly any poems dedicated to Eotriceratops, though.
UPDATE- the story fell off the main page and can now be found here.

The world famous Royal Tyrrell Museum is only about three hours away from Edmonton. When Michelle and I went there this summer we were kind of surprised at how quickly we got there. So there's no excuse to not go there at least once a day! Okay, well at the very least maybe once every few years or so. Especiallly now that they are displaying the world's only specimen of Eotriceratops xerinsularis, a huge proto-ceratopsian discovered not far from Drumheller in a previously dino-free stratum. Cool, eh? Check out this photo of the skull. Just imagine how that would look in the garage next to your Jaekelopterus rhenania.
I will now write the world's first ever poem dedicated to Eotriceratops.

Eotriceratops xerinsularis, can I call you Ted?
You're a horned dinosaur with a gigantic head
I wish you were still alive and not quite so dead
O Eotriceratops xerinsularis, whom I call Ted.

When I was a kid I had scads of the original Star Wars figures, and my next door neighbour Dan had just as many. We would have these huge epic battles with elastic bands doubling as lasers and rolled-up socks doing asteroid duty. Not too many secret rebel bases survived the old asteroid bomb. Sadly I sold them all and have been crying ever since. Well, I saved three figures. A busted-up Snaggletooth, Bossk, and Hammerhead. Not exactly the mainstays of the series but I always liked the aliens. So I was pretty happy to find a Roron Corrobb figure yesterday. He was an Ithorian Jedi featured in the Clone Wars animated series. Here he is enjoying a family reunion.

This round of nightshifts was fairly boring- for the first three nights I was digging rocks on the shovel. Boring. There was a brief moment of excitement going home one morning when our bus driver nearly plowed into the back of a parked haultruck at 80 kph. Yeah it was dark but the truck is big as a house and hard to miss. Plus it had its backup lights on. And the only reason he didn't slam right into it was because a busload of miners was yelling at him to swerve. I don't think he'll be our bus driver anymore- that wasn't even his first incident, just the one that required the most changes of underwear.
Last night was also pretty boring except my friend Robin showed me how to find Ceres, the asteroid now classified as a dwarf planet. It's not bright enough to see with the naked eye but if you have binoculars it's almost visible. And by almost I mean not really at all. But it IS up there! And hopefully, that's where it'll stay.
Also, I changed my mind about the trilobite fossil- I'd way rather have one of these.

I finally found some trilobite fossils today, at West Edmonton Mall. Pretty nice specimens, and going for a pretty penny too. So I didn't buy one. But at least there's some news from the dinosaur world today. Is it still news when the specimens in question are 110 million years old? National Geographic has a cool (somewhat) interactive flash site up about unusual dinos. My favorite is the Epidendrosaurus.
Wanna win a children's book about squids? Well, you won't be able to, since I'm going to. But you can always try, right?
You know what's a terrible movie? Rise of the Silver Surfer. Lucky it was a freebie from the library. Seriously, it was extremely unfantastic. Oh well.
Also, I discovered that my wife doesn't like it when I use her toothbrush. And she likes it even less when I say, "But you never even noticed all the other times!"

Have you ever seen that Galactic Heroes line of Star Wars figures? They're fun. My friend Zimmy made a drawing of one today:


Little Imperial Guard by *zimeta08 on deviantART

And here is a photo I took:



I sometimes wonder what will happen when I have children and they want to play with my toys. . .

Yesterday I came as close as I ever want to get to killing a man at work. One little flick of my wrist and 1800 tons of machine would have ended my friend Neal. Luckily I felt this very slight shudder and stopped swinging. I had pushed a 70 ton bulldozer 6 meters and hadn't even felt it till it wedged up against my tracks. Neal had to kick in the window of his dozer to get out. If I hadn't stopped, or if I had been swinging even a touch faster . . .
That kind of thing can really shake you up. And I did everything right. That's actually worse than if I had been somehow negligent- it means shitty things can happen for no reason. Neal wasn't hurt, and he kept telling me not to feel bad, that it wasn't my fault, but I kept thinking what if. But you know, what-ifs are a kind of mental virus. There is no what-if, there is only what happened, and nothing you can do about it. In this case what happened was we both got to go home alive at the end of the day. Therefore, instead of feeling terrible, we should feel elated, excited, alive.
At least that's what I'm trying to convince myself of. Today I think I lost that battle. But tomorrow I'll go have a beer with Neal and we'll toast life and laugh, and not worry about what-ifs.

The Canadian Finals Rodeo is in town for its annual eviction of the Oilers from Rexall. You know what that means right? It means you should go watch KoRn's rodeo-themed video for Hold On.
And look- Ursula Vernon's children's book Nurk is almost out! Why don't you buy me a copy?


Did you ever wonder what you would look like if you had antlers, walrus tusks, crab arms, elephant legs and polar bear ears? Wonder no more!



Scientists have discovered a solar system with at least five planets! That's cool, though I think the opening sentence of the article could have been written better: Star 55 Cancri became the only star aside from the sun to have five planets . . . I'm pretty sure there are plenty of stars out there with five or more planets. And I like the part where it says the new planet is full of gas. Me too! Ah well, I pick at nits here. The important thing is that 55 Cancrians will soon be sending their gaseous space spoors to conquer Earth!

My friend Robin kind of amazed me the other day. He sat down next to me on the bus to work, a pile of astronomy magazines in his lap. He told me how the night before he noticed this weird new smudgey star in the sky where there never used to be one. None of his star charts, including the most current for November, showed anything in that region of space. It was kind of a mystery. Of course now Comet Holmes is all over the news for its anomalous brightness- it cracked or blew up or something so it went a million times brighter than it should've been. Which is why Robin was able to pick it out of the sky with the naked eye. The amazing thing to me is that he was able to recognize one star as being out of the ordinary.
So last night we took advantage of the perfectly clear sky to inspect Holmes, and admire Mars which is beautifully bright this month. One advantage of nightshift.
Anyways, Robin would like to enlist your help with something. He wants a telescope. Really really badly. More badly than you do. So here's what you can do- first, go to Astronomy Magazine and enter their win-a-telescope contest. Secondly, win a telescope. Third, give it to Robin. Okay? Okay.

I often think life would be so much easier if I could draw worth a damn. When I saw Lerms' fake movie poster for Attack of the Viking Zombie Babies I wanted to do something similar. And throw in some White/Rob Zombie goodness to boot. Basically, I wanted to make a Sideshowmonkey video (he did Rob Zombie's American Witch and Lords of Salem videos, among others). But I am not Hartman, I am Homie Bear, so instead I give you

Astro-Creep VS The Space Pumpkin

Streaking past the Oort Cloud in his '65 ThunderJeep
The undead dude with an attitude, the bastard called Astro-Creep
Comes flying past the Harvest Moon, screaming and careening
to reap a crop of little kids who go out Hallowe'ening
Ground up bones and pureed guts and sludge blood laced with sucrose-
the ghoulish fuel Astro-creep needs to terrorize the cosmos
But on Olympus Mons a red light turns on
threat detected by Trick-R-Treat-O-Tron
The Space Pumpkin leaps up, he knows the drill
He grins at the thought of a mutant to kill
He blasts off from Mars and heads for the stars
With his jetpack he's faster than a hundred squad cars
He jumps out in front of Astro-Creep's path
and launches an arsenal with a maniacal laugh
Solar spiders and asteroid bats rocket through the ether
Exploding on the ThunderJeep, above and underneath her
But Astro-Creep was far from beat, though he lost his cool
He shoots back nano-slime, laser snot and even robo-drool
Down below costumed kids see aurora borealis
Unaware 'twere an omen of freakyzoidal malice
But the Space Pumpkin was on it, he pulled out some tricks
With Vakuumquats and Saturn Squash and a whole gourdal mix
Orangish melons smash and micronovae explode
Greenish ones burst open and black holes implode
Astro-Creep was forced to retreat and knew for the first time fear
but with skull sockets blazing he swore revenge for next year
The Space Pumpkin laughed and said you can try
I'll use your brains to make space pumpkin pie
The children below are NOT yours to eat
Their souls are mine, they're MY trick or treat!

Astro-Creep, of course, is in reference to Astro-Creep 2000 and the song More Human Than Human. Did you know that song is very loosely about Blade Runner? That's where the title comes from.
Anyways, Happy Hallowe'en! For more Hallowy goodness, click on the halloween tag below. And my new blogbear, which is me dressed up as a panda, and offers a respite from the unremitting horror of my poetry, was done for me by Madison, aka Heartsmackingboombox.

You know what they're having over at the Space Science Center (or Odyssium or Telus World of Science or whatever it's called these days)? How about a whole slew of Star Wars Lego? And I foolishly forgot my camera. Again! When will I learn? Lifesize Chewie, R2, Vader and Jango Fett all made of Lego. But even better, scenes from the movies recreated in Lego. The Battle of Yavin. The Battle of Hoth. The Battle of Endor. The Battle of Genosha. All sorts of battles and all sorts of little Lego guys. It's great and you should go check it out. Oh yeah and then there's a bunch of scientific things there too you can look at while you're there.
I have Star Wars Lego for my PSP. It's a lot of fun but to be honest I hardly ever play it. Just not much of a gamer. But if they made a Star Wars Kenner video game I would be so into that- all the old school original action figures. That would be really cool.
One thing that sucked is that the gift shop at the Telusseum didn't have any trilobite fossils!

Have Some Ice Cream!
So today is the 5th anniversary of Pooing in the Woods. Free ice cream for everyone! The only catch is, it's poo flavoured! Haha, okay that was gross but I had to return to my roots, even if just for a second. It's been about four years since I felt obligated to make a dumb poo joke with every post. Ah the good times.

Gime? What's a gime? Oh, gime!
Shovel 8 was down all last night with electrical problems. It wouldn't propel, which is our fancy way of saying it wouldn't move forwards or backwards. The shovel operator, Happy, was telling me about the frustrating night he and the electrician had trying to fix the problem.
"I kept getting this turn-on flooj problem. Do you know what a flooj is?"
"A flooj? I never heard of that one." Since Happy has been running shovel for at least two decades longer than me and he didn't know what a flooj was,I didn't feel bad for not knowing. Still, that was a weird one. "How do you spell it?"
He screwed up his face and recited perfectly from memory: "F-a-i-l-u-r-e."


Anyways, coming home from work I realized Pooing in the Woods will be five years old this week- Monday or Tuesday. If I had been more on the ball I would've come up with some way to commemorate. Like a Lulu book of Homie Bear poems! Oh well. Instead I think I will admire these beautiful underwater photos. And I will listen to Ghettochip Malfunction which is the brilliant remix of Hell Yes on Guerolito. It's the one remix I would say is better than the Guero version. By a nanohair, maybe. The Hell Yes video is better than the fun but seizure-inducing Ghettochip. And who doesn't love this Nausea video? He uses those puppets in his live show, you know! Beck and his band play and the little beckets are dressed the same and play along.

Yay for stuff!
I went to the library to pick up a Kenneth Oppel book- Airborn, and I also found a Beck CD, Guerolito, which is a remix album for Guero. Guero is one of my top ten all time CDs. Sweet! How I missed Guerolito when it first came out I don't know but whatever.
Also I had an Amazon order come in- Mouse Guard and Otis Frampton's Oddly Normal graphic novels. Sweeet!
And although I still haven't obtained any trilobite fossils I am just as happy with my new tree frog magnets. Sweeeet!



I just finished reading a book called The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor. The back cover reads "You think you know the true story of Alice in Wonderland? Well think again." It's one of those books that takes an established story and retells or reimagines it. The trouble is, rather than treating the source material with the respect it deserves, he poos all over it in the first few pages. Alice, or rather, Alyss, sees a copy of what Beddor calls 'Alice's Adventures Underground' and calls it a "stupid, nonsensical book". To me that's not cool. Why not just make up your own story in that case? He already changed Alice's name to Alyss. He made the Mad Hatter into a paramilitary Wolverine-type named Hatter Madigan whose top hat is actually a dervish of blades. The White Rabbit gets replaced by an albino tutor with extra sensitive Wolverinish ears named Bibwit Harte. The Cheshire Cat is now an assassin named The Cat who possesses the Woverine-like ability to regenerate- nine lives, of course. Anyways, the book wasn't terrible, though I've read better for sure, and it will appeal to boys- I think Michelle's grade 7s would like it. I just think if you're going to borrow from the classics you shouldn't show such contempt for them.
Oh well, here's another picture of my sweeeeet frog magnets:

This morning we made our getaway. It was a 5 km run in the River Valley in support of Cops With Cancer. It was fun- the idea was, everyone was supposed to dress like an escaped con. Only thing was, Michelle and I were the only ones who did! But that's okay, we won the Running Room gift cards for best costumes. It was a good time.

Then a friend of Michelle called us up and invited us to go to a book reading. Kenneth Oppel, whom I had only vaguely heard of, was in town reading from his new book Darkwing. So even though we've never read him, we thought it would be interesting to go- especially since Michelle as a grade 7 teacher has marked umpteen million book reports on Silverwing and others of his books. I'm glad we went- he was a charming and personable guy and I think I will really enjoy his books- we bought all the Wing books, which are about bats. Should be cool!

I was sitting in the oiler's chair having a bit of a snooze yesterday morning when Vic, the operator, suddenly jumped up and told me to take over because he had to go. Shaking off my drowsiness, I let Vic down off the shovel and swung around to load the next truck. But the next truck wouldn't make his turn and instead sat there looking at me. I honked my horn to wake him up, and he made his turn, but still failed to back up. Now he was holding up production and I had no idea why. What he was doing would be the equivalent of, say, a bagboy at your grocery store just staring at your groceries. Finally I had to call him up on the radio, with my sternest shovel operator voice- "32 truck- are you broke down or something? Why aren't you backing up?"
"Because your bucket's empty," he said.
Which would be sort of like, say, the referee at a hockey game barking at the players to faceoff when he didn't have a puck.

Anyways, I took a bunch more photos. Sadly I didn't get any pics of the two bears I saw the other day.

Does anyone know where I can find a good triobite? I want one. Here in Alberta there aren't too many trilobite beds that I know of- most of the fossils in this area are of the less glamorous and more obscure family of beast known as dinosauria. I just want a nice Phacops or something!

I think my dayshifts start too early. Actually I KNOW my days start too early because when I woke up this morning at 5:20 I had overslept by half an hour. Damn! So I had to drive all the way out to the mine (50 kms or so) rather than take the sleep bus. And I really had to speed, too. It didn't help that in the dark I took a wrong turn on a road that didn't exist last time and wound up driving in circles in some new subdivision. Tearing off LGJ's catalytic converter in the process. That's twice in less than a month that driving to work has caused battle damage to my peaceful little Civic. Grr!
But the rest of the day wasn't so bad. I had to run shovel 5, which is almost as old as I am and in not nearly as good shape. (But then, what is?) But what I was doing was low on the priority list so my foreman took away my trucks at about the halfway point in the shift, leaving me with 6 hours to doze and read. I finished off a 70s SF novel called The Overman Culture and got a hundred pages into another 70s SF novel called Enchanted Pilgrimage, by Simak. Sweet!



Anyways, for walking machines that aren't 30 years old and decrepit, check out Zooillogix for some amazing vids.

Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm thankful that I have an extra day off today. I'm thankful that the Oilers are 2-0 so far in this young NHL season, and I'm thankful for:



Most people think of squids and octopi when they think of cephalopods (and well you should since they kick ass) but I think my current favorite foothead is the cuttlefish. CBC recently showed an amazing documentary on them (on The Nature of Things) which showed their amazing variety and surprising intelligence. Did you know they have a ring of brains inside their head? More likely a ring of neural ganglia but still that's pretty cool.

.Cuttlefish. by *Andoledius on deviantART

Here's just one of many cuttlefish vids on YouTube.
To further celebrate Cephalopod Awareness Day, visit the Cephalopodcast.

A Winnipeg man just donated a huge science fiction collection to the University of Alberta. Thanks for not giving it to the University of Manitoba! I'm pretty sure there will be some Fox B Holden in there- he of the Woman-Stealers of Thrayx. Those letters to Conan creator Robert E Howard would be fascinating to look at.
I've read some excellent sci-fi lately, including a superb anthology of shorts from the early 50s- the pre-Sputnik optimist period. I love that era. This particular anthology was Robert Silverberg's Worlds of Wonder and included stories like "Hothouse" by Aldiss (about the far future when plants are the dominant life form on Earth) and the more subtle but very powerful "Light of Other Days" by Bob Shaw. And then I read a book by Silverberg himself, Roma Eterna which is an alternate history in which the Roman Empire never fell, and Jesus never rose.

More Mandalore:


Clone Wars by ~panoramacon on deviantART

Here's Boba Fett discussing a bounty with the nazgul. Also, check out this JimSmash post with a great battle sequence that we never got to see in the movies.
Oh yeah and I was in Blockbuster earlier today and was tempted to rent Transmorphers. Except, no I wasn't.

Happy Life Day!






Well, I have no idea if it's Life Day on the wookie world of Kashyyyk or not, but I am the proud child-like owner of three new Star Wars action figures that hearken back to the old school- a Darth Vader done up like Ralph McQuarrie's concept art, and two Boba Fetts, one the original concept and the other the version that was in the Star Wars Holiday Special, which I remember with such fondness but which was actually really really bad. Still, the animated part was kinda cool. Especially when you're four.



Oh yeah and Happy Sputnik Day too! The Wookies salute the Soviet Space Program! Werrarrrgh!

Remember that tiny story, Godbear, I wrote for a contest a while back? Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings is holding another one, this one with a Hallowe'enish theme. Great prizes. You should enter- though I wrote mine last night at work (I had all sorts of time since I was operating a broken shovel for some mechanics- every now and then they'd need me to swing around or something and the rest of the time I was on my own) and it's pretty good. 100 words- and no word used twice- you can do it!

I hope it's a beautiful day in Vancouver because Bif Naked is getting married. She can sing this at her dance:

I love my spouse today
not like yesterday
back then
he was
just my fiance
uh huh

So my best fanboy wishes to her and her new hubby, Vancouver Sun sportswriter Ian Walker.
Update- Here's a brief and non-intrusive article from the CBC about the ceremony.

Of course the concert was amazing. In the program guide there was a quote from Loreena that says:

The education of self through travel can be a journey that knows no end. As I look at history and cultures through the prism of other eyes, it feels like a search, or even an excavation, for some connection between the past and present.

Growing up I was like any other kid in that history was something that just didn't penetrate my awareness- it wasn't even "there" enough to be boring. Especially growing up in small town Alberta, a town that only recently celebrated 50 years, there just wasn't any history around me to affect me.
Travel of course opens your eyes, but even then it can take a while for the message to totally sink in. I remember gazing at this incredible monument to all these old Hungarian kings in Budapest. I wish I could recall its name. It's called Heroes Square. All these kings on pillars, arrayed in a semicircle. The inscription was almost apologetic because it "only" went back to the 11th century. That kind of blew my mind a little.
It wasn't until after the first time I went up to the Yukon, my dad gave me a book by Pierre Berton called Klondike that I finally realized that just doing a little bit of reading about a place you're going to can enhance your experience tenfold. That book was so amazing I had to go back and hike the Chilkoot Trail, which I never would have known about without reading that book.
Luckily I learned my lesson and was able to stand in Tiananmen Square, whitewashed as it is, and think of the people who died there not so long ago. Or explore the Potala Palace and know exactly why the Dalai Lama no longer lives there.
Hell, I even learned some pretty interesting things about New Zealand- like, did you know there was a special Maori battalion (the 28th, 2nd NZEF) that fought in WWII? The Maori were exempt from fighting, so Sir Aspirana Ngati, a member of Parliament established the 28th, made up entirely of volunteers. The National Geographic article where I read this claims that they performed a haka before their first battle and that this caused the Nazi soldiers to flee. That part may be apocryphal but maybe not. Cool, huh?
Take my advice, next time you travel read up on the history of the place beforehand.

Tonight both Loreena McKennitt and KoRn are playing in Edmonton. Although normally the chance to see KoRn, even a KoRn with only three remaining kernels on the kob, is something I'd jump at, Loreena supersedes all others. In five hundred years they'll speak of her in the same breath as Beethoven. In fact, I'm pretty sure if Fieldy, Munky and Jonathan knew Loreena was here tonight they'd cancel their show to go see her. Ooh- can you imagine if they joined her onstage? That would be amazing! Jonathan could play bagpipes and Loreena would arrange Freak on a Leash all celtic-worldly, sort of how it was done on the Unplugged album. And then the guys would reciprocate by doing a super-heavy version of Marco Polo, which is already pretty heavy. I'm crossing my fingers for that!

Here's a video I took today when I was waiting to jump aboard my shovel- those tires are twice as tall as I am, to give you an idea of scale:



National Geographic has some stunning footage of an Orca attack on some California Grey Whales.
And how would you like it if someone just started using your Flickr photos in ads and other, even-less savoury uses?

These are the things that I am excited/learning about this week:
-Snmashing my car oh wait that's not one.
-the loonie hits parity with the US$. Now if only we could actually pay less for American goods. And I know it's a mixed blessing with our exports- I work for an exporting company after all.
-lobsters. Seriously, they're just so cool. But contrary to what I've heard, they don't actually mate for life. In fact the closest human analogy would be to wife beaters. Only, polygamous wife beaters. Anyways, you can learn more from Trevor Corson's Secret Life of Lobsters.
-Steve Biko. I've always loved that Peter Gabriel song, Biko, though I had no idea what he was saying. What's a biko? Turns out Biko is an anti-apartheid martyr who was killed thirty years ago this month. Maybe you've seen the biopic starring Denzel- Cry Freedom.
-Sébastien Chabal. I'm not much into rugby (though I'll cheer the All-Blacks when the chance arises, like that time in Waitomo drinking Tui beer) but when i saw this deviation portrait of a French Rugby player, I wanted to know more about him. Turns out he's a monster. An All-Black-crushing bipedal bulldozer.

I snmashed up my car on the way to work the other day. Hit the ditch after some loose gravel sent me fishtailing. It wasn't really damaged too badly- a couple of big dents and the tire ran off the rim, but nothing that cost money to fix. Some work buddies c came along and pulled me out. Now I just gotta listen to their smartass remarks for the next 25 years.
As if that wasn't bad enough, later in the night I snmashed a guy's truck with my bucket. Wasn't really my fault, my camera was showing a mirror image so it looked like there was no one there, but still, I felt pretty bad. He wasn't hurt badly enough to go to the hospital but he did go to the first aid room for a few hours. I know I've posted this video before, but it sort of shows how I can see to my right really well, but not so well to my left which is why we have cameras.



PS- Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Ten years ago today I embarked on a Cross-Canada hitch-hiking trip just for the helluvit. I sometimes think that was the most extraordinary thing I ever did, at least in the sense of being both hardy and foolhardy, but on the other hand all it took was a thumb. Heh get it? A thumb on the other hand? Never mind.
I headed east- from Edmonton to Saskatoon the first day, to spend a few days with friends there. Then to Winnipeg to visit more friends, and from there across the huge Canadian Shield where I eventually made my way to Kingston, again to visit friends. Eventually I made it all the way to Cape Spear, Newfoundland, the Easternmost point in North America- it's really considered that even though Newfoundland is an island. That felt pretty good. Heading home I got as far as Ontario when I gave in to the November cold and bought a VIA Rail pass, using it to go up to Churchill to look for polar bears. I only saw one, from the train, but that was just as well since I did most of my polar bear hunting on foot. Remember what I said about foolhardy?



Well, I suffered no harm on that entire trip, though there were some interesting moments for sure- then and on subsequent hitches I did. I'm retired from hitch-hiking now, though. Marriage (surely the ACTUAL most extraordinary thing I ever did) will do that, but obviously hiking of the non-hitch variety is still an option. But I'm glad I did it- and proud. It takes guts to do something like that, and when you're a suburbanite with a mortgage it can be easy to forget that you ever had guts.
Well, thanks for indulging me in my self-aggrandizing reminiscences. I'm off to my sister's wedding to celebrate with her as she embarks on her extraordinary adventure.
I leave you with this- what is the most extraordinary thing you ever did?

As it happens, today is Jasper's 100th anniversary. Jasper National Park was founded on September 14, 1907. It forms part of an extensive UNESCO World Heritage Site of 22,900 square kilometers, along with Banff, Kootenay and Yoho National Parks, and Mount Robson, Assiniboine and Hamber Provincial Parks in BC.
There is no finer place in the world to poo in the woods- they even provide these loos with a view:



they come complete with Lumpy, a pooey mascot who provides helpful instructions for changing toilet bowls:

I told ya you should've come with! What a great hike- perfect weather, amazing scenery, and the fish were even biting:



We met some fellow hikers who saw a grizz on the trail where we were headed but we never ran into him. It rained/snowed the second night but we stayed nice and dry in the tent. So really, it was el tiempo bueno the whole time.



I made a couple of quick video blogs, in which you get the distinct impression that I was making Robin do all the work. That's cause I have him all trained up from the coal mine.
Anyways, here's the Flickr Photo set of the whole trip.

I'm heading off to Jasper to hike the Tonquin Valley with a buddy, so I should be back on Wednesday unless we get eaten by bears. But I am a bear so I doubt that will be a problem. Snow might be a problem, though, it's been snowing off and on all week at work.
In the meantime, here are some beautiful recent deviations I have been drooling over.
Also, a two-headed tortoise celebrated its tenth birthday last week. Almost as impressive as my own impending 33rd. Though if I had been born with two noggins I doubt I would have reached my tenth birthday.

Here's a vessel, probably the only one in the world, that is actually cooler than the Jaguar Shark: the Proteus.

And here's some video I took at work- you might want to turn the volume down- that loud noise is actually the pump I was standing next to and not the backhoe which is relatively quiet.

The Invasion of Canada by Nazis in 1943
An armed German Unterseeboot landed on Canadian soil to install a weather station back in WWII. You didn't know? That's alright, neither did anyone else until 1981 when some historians, acting on information from diaries and photographs, were able to locate an old weather station on the coast of Labrador (60.4N 64.23W if you want to go there in Google Earth). U-537 made the excursion on October 22, 1943 to install the station.
You can read more about it here.
And don't worry- I have a retaliatory mission planned- I'm going to crew the Jaguar Shark with water bears, and send them over to Germany so they can poo in the black Forest.

The Voyage of the Jaguar Shark
I built a submarine today- I named it the Jaguar Shark in honor of Owen Wilson making a speedy recovery.


You can make one too- here's how.

I took it down to the nearby pond- I didn't really christen it since I figured breaking a bottle over the bow of a bottle probably wouldn't work that well. Anyways, the maiden voyage was not quite what I hoped for- it didn't exactly submerge, even though I played with its buoyancy a bit by adding varying amounts of water.




And actually the propeller system, though brilliant, didn't work as well as I had hoped. Oh well, it was still fun.
Thanks to Craig at Deep Sea News for the link.

First of all, do yourself a favour and immediately go get Loreena McKennit's Nights from the Alhambra concert DVD/CD. It's beautiful- I'm almost in tears from it. Seriously.
Michelle and I have tickets to her concert later this month- at the Jube, not exactly as pretty as the Palace of Charles V but that's okay. Anywhere she sings is automatically heaven.
Would you think you were in hell if you saw a bunch of chupacabras running around sucking blood from chickens and cows? That's what they're saying in Texas- and one woman even has a severed head to prove it. Though to me the head looks kind of like a pitbull/bullshit cross.
Also in Texas, you might have heard about the social spiders who cooperated to spin a massive web. I never knew some species of spiders exhibited social behaviour- in fact, I thought it was an invention of Vernor Vinge in his excellent book, Marooned in Realtime- he has massive colonies of social spiders who live atop jungle canopies, harvesting silkworms and pooing green mycotoxins. The spiders actually are just an interesting detail- the book itself is a sci-fi murder mystery. Vinge just won a Hugo or his latest book, Rainbow's End.

You know what I'm really into right now? Marine invertebrates. They're just so cool. Did you know that sand dollars can crawl? I don't even know what a living sand dollar looks like but apparently they're all covered in spines. Why don't I live by an ocean?
One of my friends from work goes home to Newfoundland as often as he can, and uses my house as a waystation for airport access. He brought me back an issue of Downhome, a local digest, which had an interesting article on seashells. There's a type of sea urchin in Newfoundland which is locally called a Whore's Egg. Apparently its radula, or tooth, is called an Aristotle's Lantern.
And you may recall from my poem 'Pyrite Pirates' that a shark egg is also known as a mermaid's purse. Sharks, of course, are marine vertebrates, or as I like to call them, ininvertebrates.
A couple of months ago in Honolulu they pulled up this weird cephalopod that looked sort of like a squid/octopus hybrid, though the photo looks pretty squiddy to me. Judge for yourself.
Other things I'm into right now include the new KoRn, Heroes Season 1 DVD, and ScienceBlogs.

My house is starting to look like the legendary electronics graveyards of old- all sorts of bleached bones and tusks sticking out of the sub-Saharan soil. Well, between my old camera (drowned), my old CD player (worn out) and the old desktop (honored retirement) it seems that way.
Michelle got me an early birthday present yesterday- a new Olympus Stylus 770SW, waterproof to 10 meters. It's got me itching to take up diving again, that's for sure. Also, it's shock-resistant, to the delight of the salesman who kept telling me in his Swedish accent how you could drop it and throw it- but he was no longer allowed to show me since the boss had recently forbidden demonstrations. He seemed very sad about this.
Anyways, the old FinePix was a fine camera and I found a great photo I took with it that I forgot all about- it's a shot of Abel Tasman National Park in New Zealand. I saw orcas that time, too, actually. Here, I'll let Elrond point it out to you on a map:

Remember when Krusty the Clown unveiled Poochy to his television viewers? He was wearing a tux and he gave the following address:
“Once in a great while we are privileged to experience a television event so extraordinary, it becomes part of our shared heritage. 1969: Man walks on the moon. 1971: Man walks on the moon, again. Then for a long time, nothing happened. Until tonight.”
Although he was talking about the history of television, I often think he was also kind of talking about the history of space exploration. In recent years, of course, lots has been happening. Nearly all of it done by NASA. Until tonight. Well, not exactly tonight. But still, Canada is getting in on the space race- we're sending a mission to Mars in 2009! The mission is called Northern Light, and it's mostly a partnership between universities and corporations- no government involvement. And the total budget is around $20 million. In terms of space exploration it's practically free.
What is free is Google Sky, the new universe portion of Earth. Earth and Sky, get it? 100 million stars! Wow. You can read about it here or just go download it from Google, I'm sure you know the way.
Speaking of exploration, NG has some pretty cool photos of a recent excursion to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Glass squids with polka-dot eyes!
All these robot explorers remind me of another Simpsons quote- when Bart and Lisa graduate from military school the principal or general or whoever runs it says in his commencement speech, "The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."

More New Zealand herald stuff: Lord of the Rings technology being used in hospitals. I thought maybe rings of power but actually it's more digital in nature.
Just yesterday I mentioned how promising it is that a pod of blue whales was seen so far north (for the first time in 50 years actually) and then today comes news of an oil spill that affects 60 orcas, some of whom swam through it.

Well, it's back to normal for me after a pretty slack summer. Including the next four days of work, I'll have worked only 17 of 62 days in July and August. But now I go back to my normal schedule.
So, pretty much randomly, here is a blogger from the NZ Herald (I loved that paper when i was there and Harvey linked to it today so I was browsing around) who talks about the etiquette of reading other peoples' emails. When I was in China I often found a crowd of curious onlookers brazenly reading my emails over my shoulder so I guess the issue doesn't bother me as much. Also, I am not secretly maintaining a mail-order bride on another continent.
I've been enjoying a Flickr renaissance with my new iMac, since I now have a monitor large enough to see whole photographs! Here are two of my recent favorites : a poison dart frog of the Dendrobates azureis variety (I typed that from memory so see if I was right!) and the arms of a giant pacific octopus.
Did you hear that pod of blue whales was recently spotted near the Queen Charlotte Islands? We only saw orcas when we were there a few weeks ago but maybe some day we can go back to see the world's largest animal, possibly ever. I did have the privilege of seeing the largest toothed whale, the sperm whale off Kaikoura in New Zealand:

Yoda on Facebook
I had a funny dream last night where Yoda was checking his Facebook during Revenge of the Sith. His friend status updates were full of the usual-
Obi-wan Kenobi is fighting General Grievous. 36m ago
Chewbacca is wrreeeerrraarrghhh! 2h ago
Padme Amidala is pregnanter every day. 3h ago
But Yoda made an alarming discovery in his News Feed:
Anakin Skywalker and Darth Sidious are now friends.

I have crossed over to the light side- I bought an iMac today. The new models are coming later this week so the old ones are being cleared out. Actually there really aren't that many left. Yay! Freed from the tyranny that is Windows!
And now, a moment of silence for gabrielle's old PC which served so faithfully for so long. It wasn't its fault that Windows sucks so bad.

Most . . . Illogical



So Spock was actually an elf from Rivendell? Who knew? I certainly didn't, until I rented Ringers: Lord of the Fans, which is a funny little documentary about LotR and Rings fans, narrated by Dominic Monaghan, that hobbit from Lost.
To make up for searing your eyes with that misbegotten horror, I present to you some of the beautiful sketch cards Otis Frampton made for NewLine.
Reminds me I still have to read Children of Hurin- and speaking of which, here is a beautiful pencil sketch of Fëanor.
And, completely unrelated, did you hear about the polar bear who was found wandering around 300 kms south of where polar bears normally hang out? Maybe she was the mother of that grizz/polar hybrid and was looking for her old paramour.

Siroi Yami No Naka
. . . is Japanese for I have no idea what. I think it means crazy catchy Japanese rap, what House of Pain might have sounded like if they had emigrated to Hokkaido or something and managed to have a career. Anyways, it comes to my attention because I mentioned to someone on deviantArt that the bounty hunters from Cowboy Bebop, the best anime I've ever seen, should've tried and go for the bounty on Vash the Stampede of Trigun, the second best anime I've ever seen. And sure enough, someone had already thought of it and made a mashup video with Siroi Yama No Naka (by ShakkaZombie, btw) as the theme music.
So even if you don't know anything about Spike, Jet or Vash, just watch this video for the great tune:


Also, the best American anime ever is finally going to have its third season, and you can see the trailer here if you like.

I know of at least two guys who have been on my crew in the past three years who've been convicted of knife-related crimes. I was riding with the foreman in his pickup truck with a fellow oiler yesterday, discussing one of them. I had a hard time believing the rapsheet they were attributing to him since in my opinion, he's a perfectly normal, nice guy. I told them they were full of poo. The guy in question just happened to be ahead of us in his haultruck, and he gave us the signal that it was okay to pass, so foreman zoomed around him directly into the path of an oncoming haultruck. Narrowly escaping death by ascrushxiation, we swerved back in line to our own lane. "See?" Charlie crowed, triumphantly, "He just tried to off all three of us at once!"
The labour shortage in Alberta has meant there has been a lot of turnover at the mine, and we joke that the company has a recruiter stationed at the jail to offer jobs to new releasees. But even aside from the criminal element, the constant influx of new employees means that the minesite is crawling with rookie operators doing their best to keep 500 tons of rock and steel on the road. It can be a gongshow out there.
Mere minutes after the incident I described above, we were waiting at a stop sign when we saw 34 truck come sliding down the mud directly towards us. Charlie screamed that it was Kyle, a new driver who had no idea what he was doing and that we better get out of there. Foreman's face had a funny expression of concern mingled with concentration as he managed once more to get us out of harm's way.
I shook my head and said, "I love that we're terrified of our coworkers."

I was able to recover the last photos taken with my good old FinePix before it passed away. The rest of them are, as always, here.

I entered a writing contest over at Stainless Steel Droppings- the object was to write a Tiny Story of exactly 100 words, without using any word more than once. The story could be about anything so long as it actually was a story and it followed those two guidelines. I tied for third! Yay! You can go to his blog to read all the entrants- I especially liked the winning entry, "Father". 

Also, I wrote a poem for my DeviantArt friend Zimmy, (aka Emily Weber who has done some artwork for me in the past and whom I interviewed here) since she made me some giftart. You can read the poem where I bust up her characters' wedding day for no good reason here.

One of Michelle's friends told us about this one, a battle between water buffalo, lions and even a crocodile:



I can imagine a similar scene played out in the Cretaceous between T-Rexes, Triceratops and Mosasaurs.

Today is Harry Potter's birthday. I think he'd be 27 if he hadn't been cruelly struck down by Voldemort in the prime of his youth. Oops, sorry. No spoilers here! And actually it's also JK Rowling's birthday, so happy birthday to her and thanks for the great birthday present- I really enjoyed The Deathly Hallows. Loved it, even.
Anyways, here is a video interview with her in which she reveals a few things that weren't in the book. And a print interview where she talks about what she's up to now, post-Potter.
And of course, deviantArt is full of HP fanart right now, here are two of my favorites, neither of which are spoilers: Bellatrix Lestrange, and some headshots of a whole slew of characters from all seven books- can you name them all?

We're back from Prince Rupert. Our trip to the Grizzly sanctuary was cancelled, unfortunately, due to a broken boat. But the rest of the trip was great fun, we saw many eagles and orcas- even some little frolicking youngster orcas. We didn't see any robots, though, since they were busy on the East coast finding new creatures such as Dumbo-eared octopi.
During our trip out to see the killer whales, we got thoroughly drenched, and, sadly, my trusty little Fujifilm FinePix may have been inadvertently sacrificed to the sea gods. It was dripping yellowish water, which in the case of electronics, is nearly always bad. There's still hope that, once it dries, I may be able to get the pictures out of it. I guess I need to make supplications to Neptune and Triton and all those guys.

The original plan was to go to the Queen Charlotte Islands. But due to some ferry troubles, we decided to hang out in Prince Rupert instead. I think it's turned out alright- there's more to do here. Yesterday we went sea kayaking, today a little hike, tomorrow whale wathcing and the day after that we are going to the grizzly bear sanctuary!

I didn't get to start Ragnarok today, but I DID get to meet Fenris. Or one of Fenris' offspring. It was the weirdest thing, actually- we saw a wolf hanging out with a coyote. My theory is that the wolf is an orphan or somehow kicked out of its pack, and hooked up with the coyote. The wolf is twice the size of the coyote, and still not full-grown. I got some really good pictures (it wasn't a shy wolfy by any means) but my USB cable is at home so I will have to post them later

My job today was to be a troll under a bridge. Some sections of our haulroad are bridges over creeks and public trails, and we had a backhoe doing some repair work on one of these. I had to be stationed underneath, near the entrance to the tunnel, so I could guide any hikers or horseback riders safely through. I was looking forward to fangloriously devouring some tourists but none actually came through in the few hours I was stationed there.
I've had a story I've been meaning to write about trolls and their bridges, but why are trolls associated with bridges in the first place?
Tomorrow I hope my job is to be a Frost Giant who starts Ragnarok.

Summer Camp!
Technically I'm at work this week, but since the mine is in a two-week shutdown we are just running a skeleton crew so it is a lot like summer camp, only at MY summer camp you get to go and play with machines that are not quite Transformers. Yet. Get me one of those cube things or whatever it is they did to zap that cellphone to turn it into a transformer and we'll be good to go. Seriously, I'm pretty sure one good whomp with this bucket would give Megatron a headache, to say the least:

Anyways, because I'm out here it means I won't get to read my copy of Harry Potter which will be arriving on my doorstep tomorrow morning courtesy of Amazon. So no spoilers okay! Or I'll whomp YOU with my bucket. Although I'm pretty sure I know what will happen- it will be revealed that Voldemort is a Decepticon.

The proprietor of the frog store seemed innocent enough. Maybe even TOO innocent- he was only four years old after all. But the deals he was offering were too good to refuse.
"How much for a frog?" I asked.
"Ten for five cents," he said.
"Well then I'll take ten." I handed him a shiny nickel.
"Thanks!" he said, and pocketed the five cents.
"Where's my frogs?"
"Ummmm, I'm just getting them ready."
Just then a beautiful blonde entered the establishment. "I want a frog, too, please."
"Okay here's a pink one!"
"Thanks!" she said.
"Hey!" I said, "Why does she get her frog for free and I don't even have any frogs?"
"Because her frog is pink."
I wasn't really satisfied with his logic, but at the same time, I couldn't help but notice that the so-called "pink frog" was actually invisible. The woman sat down, and I decided to get acquainted. I sat down next to her, nice and close.
A loud and piercing wail ruined the moment.
"You just sat on her pink frog!!!!!!!" said the proprietor.
"Sorry sorry sorry!" I said, wiping off invisible pink frog goo from my pants.
I beat a hasty retreat.
But I didn't get any frogs, and I didn't get my money back. Never trust a four-year-old shopkeep.

Baby Mammoth Remains Found
One of the best preserved mammoths ever found was recently unearthed in Siberia. Even her eyes are intact, though her tail seems to have been bitten off.
So now there's talk, again, of cloning a mammoth. The article seems to be saying that, given viable DNA from the specimen which is not guaranteed by any means, we now have the technology to produce a hybrid mammoth/elephant, if not a pureblooded clone. But there are ethical questions- should you resurrect extinct prehistoric animals? The mammoth is about the only one we could, since they are the only ones who were thoughtful enough to be buried in ice. Where would the mammoth live? Personally I would love to see a living mammoth- it would be amazing. But would it be right? I don't know. I suspect that if they do it, though, it will mean there is an associated ethical imperative to resurrect as many of the extinct modern species that have died off due to human intervention. So that would be a good side-effect.
A good book on the technology (though now out of date) and ethics of this issue is Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant, by Richard Stone.
Anyways, here is a great mastodon sketch Travis Hanson made for me a few months ago:

Have you been watching the FIFA Under-20 World Cup? Yeah me neither, though I do know Canada was knocked out of it without even scoring a single goal in the whole tournament. The soccer tournament I wished I had seen is the Under-20 millimeter Nano Cup. Played by nano-robots. Nice.
Someday soon there will be little nano-blacksmith robots hammering tiny metal swords and guns to do battle with other nanobots. But in the meantime it is up to people like Cory and me to keep the art of blacksmithing alive. Check out what we made with his forge the other day- he made the Legolas leaf, and I was proud just to do a simple hook:

Speaking of metal, did you hear that James Hetfield was mistaken for a Taliban terrorist at a British airport? They thought his beard was suspicious. Seriously. Sidenote: as much as I admire the New Zealand Herald, I have to question their spellcheckers. Taleban?

We're back from a fantastic trip to the southern tip of the province. Actually we went to Drumheller, Medicine Hat and Waterton Lakes National Park. Growing up just twenty minutes from Jasper National Park, and spending most of my life in Edmonton, pretty much the geographical center of Alberta, I've tended to neglect all that area south of Calgary. Which is a shame since it's beautiful down there and worth seeing.
Plus that's where my old friends Cory and Lauren live, and there's never a dull moment when you visit them since they do things like shoot guns and bows, and even blacksmithing.

Happy Canada Day!

Michelle and I ran our race, it was fun. Georges Laraque was there, I'm pretty sure I beat him. But then again, I would need to put on almost an extra me worth of muscle to make it a fair race.

Remember those red panda cubs I told you about yesterday? It reminded me of the cutest YouTube video of all time. All time. Thanks to Lydia for the link.

As of 7AM this morning I'm on holidays for the next twelve days! That's the coolest thing ever. Here are some things that are tied for second coolest thing ever:
1. Little red panda cubs born at the Valley Zoo. Help me cheer on my little cousins as they struggle to survive their first few months.
2. Many dinosaur fossils just down the road a ways from my place. (The actual location is secret to protect the site.)
3. Tomorrow I'm running my first race! Happy Canada Day Race. Yay for me! Join me in cheering me on! And Michelle too but she is an old pro at races and our little 5 KM race is just a cakerun for her. In fact she was the 5 K run clinic leader for the past few months.
4. This: and this: arrived in the mail for me this week from my internet pal Travis Hanson, the most excellent illustrator and print-maker. It joins the other print I already have and never ever tire of looking at. You can order your own prints or his books if you like over here.
5. Monday is our second anniversary. Yay for me and Michelle!
6. Bears. Or maybe they should be the coolest thing ever and everything else can be tied for third.

I did a little writing exercise on the weekend- deviantArt's Kuroitora posted this painting of his character Bianca, and said the interpretation was up to us. So I came up with this.
It was fun. makes me want to do another one, maybe with some of you as a little challenge or something.

Homeless Eskimos
Poor old Edmonton has been suffering one blow to its self-esteem after another. First Chris Pronger demands to be traded because his wife supposedly hates Edmonton (and then he goes on to win the Cup in Anaheim). Our infrastructure is crumbling under the increased traffic caused by the boom, and because of that boom the city can't even get someone to bid on a contract to fix up a section of the Whitemud. And construction costs for planned projects are skyrocketing. The housing market is through the roof, and the rental vacancy rate is in the 0.x% range. It's causing a homeless crisis so bad that even our city's professional football players can't find a place to live.

I was sure the new Harry Potter book was coming out this month- June 21st. Turns out it's July 21st. Oh well, I choose to display the glory that is my new Quidditch Bear anyway, done for me by a talented deviantArtist called Stonewalker. Note the HB on his collar, and the salmon-shaped snitch.
Want to be in the movie version of Half-Blood Prince? I don't think I would want to since I would always be punching Alan Rickman in the nose. And I'm sure Alan Rickman is a perfectly nice guy and doesn't deserve to have me punch him in the nose all the time. Uh, but if YOU want to be in the movie, in the roles of either Lavender Brown or Tom Riddle, check out this article to learn more about the open casting call.

I actually had my camera out yesterday when that backhoe caught fire, but rather than take a bunch of pictures I chose instead to spring into action. Some of the guys thought I should've let it burn and got good photos. Anyways, the reason I had the camera out was so I could take some pictures of the catastrophic failure suffered by 32 truck. Luckily no one was hurt. Basically it broke in half where the nose cone joins the frame but a few bolts on the suspension and some hoses held it together. It's hard to tell from the photo, so you can look at some more here if you're interested.
Come to think of it, this is the very same truck that caught on fire a few months ago. You can read the epic retelling of that incident here.