I remember in grade 7 it was so cold outside that I would deliberately misbehave so I would get detention and not have to go outside for recess. Also we would forge detention slips. That trick doesn't really work at the coal mine, unfortunately. Or maybe it would but I my work ethic is a little better than my old school ethic. I'm not sure why- they docked us 2.5 hours pay for leaving early the last night before our Christmas break. A month ago they were like "Here's a hundred bucks for your Christmas bonus- enjoy!" and now they're "We have deducted 107.83 because you left a little early." Never mind that we were following orders in shutting the equipment down so early in the first place to
park them in maintenance bays or plug them in, and it was our foreman who let us go (he got in lotsa trouble too). What can you do?

Happy birthday to my wife!!!!!

I was kind of kidding when I said no one noticed that physicist's theory- I'm sure academics around the world are studying it and testing it and puzzling over it. Mostly I meant my coworkers, my crew of coal miners didn't really bring it up in casual conversation, and when I did I was met with surprising indifference. But that's alright, coal miners mine coal, they don't do physics so much. Just so long as your head of state is getting the latest science news from his National Science Advisor, right?
Wrong! PM Stephen Harper fired his science advisor. Or at least let him go, eliminating the office rather than firing the person in it. I'm not a political blogger and I have no desire to be (which is not to say I don't follow politics in real life) , but I kind of have to shake my head publicly on that one.
I will continue to advise you on science news- for example, no need to worry about the asteroid zooming by the Earth tomorrow; but really I just check National Geographic, ScienceBlogs and Quirks and Quarks. Stephen Harper probably doesn't.

Today is a two toque day. Normally I would have had to drive to Hinton tonight for work in the morning, but luckily I took tomorrow off on account of my wife's birthday. My beautiful wife who pushed LGJ out of the snow when we came back from her birthday dinner. But anyways, talking about the weather is boring enough who wants to blog about the weather? Still- two toques!
Far more interesting than blizzards is Unified Theories of Everything. At least, you would think so. Especially when said theory only needs three spatial dimensions and one temporal one, instead of 11 or 12 like in String Theory. Some surfer dude who has a PhD in physics came up with just such a UTE a few weeks ago, pretty much the Holiest Grail of physics,and hardly anyone noticed. Don't worry Surfer Physicist Dude! I noticed! Your UTE is a beaut! Although I have to admit I don't understand the physics at all, even the dumbed-down newspaper summary. That shape that has 248 dimensions is a little tough to visualize.

Fanart Friday: Lost

Lost by laFada.

For the first and probably last time I am all caught up with Lost, having watched Season 3 over the last couple of weeks. Season 4 premieres on Thursday night but I will be driving home from work that night so no spoilers after today okay? I wish someone would tell the newspapers that rule too since they often ruin things in a tricksy fashion, printing articles about actors who say offhandedly that since their character died on Lost they were ready to try new things.
Anyways, let's start the art with a great caricature set from yohan2 and Robcamp1000:



Then there's this lovely Season 1 onesheet from Nighttimesymphony. And a faux comic cover from Grantgoboom. Plus my favorite castaway, Kate, portrayed by fellow Albertan Evangeline Lilly and portraited by BillCorbett. Don't forget our other favorite castaways! (By jarrodceg.)



For no particular reason I feel like paying tribute to Charlie. It took Michelle and I a long time to stop referring to Charlie as Little Hobbit. The first Chobbit is from the late, great Mike Wieringo. Then a photo-quality painting (I guess of Dominic Monaghan rather than Charlie per se) by Silentautumnrain, and a fun pic of him and his buddy Hurley by fizzgig.



Finally, I leave you with a link to some funny and spoilerish Lost cartoons by Buuya. his descriptions are great too- "I love 'Lost.' Things always fall from the sky. Or are blown up by John Locke. Or both."

This is how much I loved China Mieville's Perdido Street Station:

I took the book to work. I get to do a lot of reading at work, but coal mines are hard on books, so I usually only bring tattered paperbacks dredged from the used bookstores. But the urge to read PSS overpowered the desire to keep it mint, so my copy is now slightly soiled. On the plus side, I made an absurd amount of money reading about the bizarre denizens of New Crobuzon!
What should I tell you about said denizens? The less, the better, I think. Part of Mieville's genius is his ability to continually startle you with new and outlandish imagery. I don't want to rob you of that pleasure. But I sure look forward to discussing the Council's avatar with you, for example!
Some books you read and you think, I could do better than this guy. Other books you read and you almost want to give up writing at all since you will never be worthy. There was a bit of that latter when I read PSS but I decided to channel that energy to a positive direction instead.
So there you go- read this book! Tell me what you thought of it. And see if you can guess what tomorrow's fanart feature will be. Hint- the pic a few posts below is the only Perdido fanart I know of so your first guess is wrong.

Heath Ledger just died??? How crazy is that?
Since I am currently living in the exile-like nocturnal world of nightshift I really don't have much else to say. Other than, you know, it's dark outside. And cold.
In a weird synthesis of these two topics, check out Teemunkle's Knightshift.

Special bonus fanart feature- since I'm off for another round of nightshifts* I figured I would leave you with one piece of art (actually a commissioned professional piece for the now-defunct Dragon Magazine) by nJoo based on China Mieville's novel I mentioned and which I am now 28 pages into and loving it up.


* That's assuming LGJ will start. I had some trouble this week, sounds like my battery corrections are corroded and not really connecting so much anymore. I sure hope it;s that and not my brand new $500 alternator. It may be time for the Jellybean to go to that great green bean heaven in the sky. Maybe when it does I'll do some fanart for it.

About a year ago my mom gave me a book- Nick Sagan's Idlewild. Other than noting the last name of the author and wondering if he is related to Carl (yes- Nick is his son) I didn't really pay too much attention. It went on the stack of unread books that keeps getting bigger no matter how many I read. But when I saw John Scalzi specifically thank Nick in the acknowledgments of Old Man's War I figured I should go take another look.
It started off as one of those "I have amnesia and I have to figure out what's going on before they kill me" books. What genre is that called? Luckily he brought in some Lovecraftian nightgaunts just as I was about to close the book for good. That's when you realize you're not reading a normal amnesiathriller. Without giving away too much I'll tell you it's descended from Ender's Game and the Matrix (which is in turn descended from everything from Neuromancer and Snow Crash to Hyperion and Terminator) and worth a read. It takes you a while to figure out what exactly is going on and just when you think you do you discover you really don't. There's actually a whole trilogy and Idlewild has just been released in paperback- in fact I saw it and the others facing out on the sci-fi shelf at Chapters today.
Yeah, I was buying more books today for the stack. Good ones too- Scalzi's Ghost Brigades and another Scalzi-recc, China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. About twenty pages into that one and already it's right up my alley.

Fanart Friday: Kaiju

Thanks to Cloverfield there is renewed interest in giant monsters, or kaiju as the Japanese say. The granddaddy of all kaiju is Gojira, the mighty Godzilla! And no one loves the Godzilla mythos more than GodzillaSamurai ! Check out a sampling of his kickass kaiju:


Then there's Kaijuverse!



Finally, here are some of VegasMike's kaijuesque horrors:

The rampaging kaiju bear you see there to your right was created for me by Marc Anderson in the few moments he had before being crushed underfoot! Well, he did it superfast because I only had the idea yesterday, and I'm pretty sure no artists were actually harmed in the creation of the artwork.
An interesting fact I learned just now about Odette Yustman, who stars in Cloverfield- she was in Kindergarten Cop! It's not a tumah! It's a giant monstah!

So we're having a safety slogan contest at work again this year. The prize is a stay at Jasper Park Lodge which is a pretty good motivator. Last year I submitted some good ones but unfortunately a plagiarized platitude won. The ones I submitted received plenty of votes but they were ultimately deemed too . . . macabre to win. For example, there was "Safety- because being dead sucks."
"Remember, in a coal mine the only soft and squishy parts are you."
"Leave the pancakes to Aunt Jemima- stay away from moving haultrucks."
This year I submitted some more, but I think they will receive the same criticism:
"Work safe- because your wife would make a hot widow. You don't want me hitting on your widow do you?"
"Work safe- or leave your truck to me in your will."
"Wear your PPE to protect your peepee, eh!" (PPE stands for Personal Protective Equipment.)

I make light mainly to drive home the point with something memorable, since safety is not a laughing matter. When accidents happen you feel terrible, even when no one is hurt. Remember that one incident I told you about- here's a contraband (and not very good) picture that you can't tell anyone I showed you:

Must have been a slow news day since the top story on CBC Radio 1 news for the last few hours while I drove home from work was this. Which is interesting and all, but when they kept repeating it over and over it really sounded to me like they were raising the alarm: "There's way more Indians than we thought!" The irony is everyone knows the CBC is actually a very pro-First Nations institution.
And CBC, if you're listening, breaking into programming every half hour to inform me that you are making changes on your antenna to serve me better does not serve me better.

Fanart Friday- Avatar The Last Airbender



Michelle and I were talking about cartoons we watched when we were little and I came to the conclusion that most of them were just extended commercials for toys and cereal. Did they make Go-Bots toys or were they just Transformers ripoffs? Anyways there certainly were very few cartoons back then of the quality of Avatar, which is right up there with BSG on my favorite TV shows list. The idea of the show is martial artists can "Bend" the elements to their will. The Fire Nation has taken over and being all oppressive to everyone else, except the Air Benders who are all dead. Except for Aang, the last airbender and, as you can deduce from the title, also the Avatar who is sorta like the Dalai Lama. Aang needs to master all four elements to save the world. His friends Katara, Sokka and Toph, as well as his flying bison Appa and Momo the lemur are doing their best to save the day.


Aangs by: Oddabeish, Wenzmaster, ElDeppressio and mek0.


Katara by Artavias; Sokka by Tyshea; Toph by Nokomento; Avatar _ Street by Dustsplat.
Top image, All Avatar Issue Cover by NotThePornStar
Oh yeah and don't forget Avatarlie Brown by Homie Bear!
Avatar (c) Nickelodeon.

Be sure to lift a pint of Tui Beer to Sir Edmund. One of the true gentlemen passed away today.

A while ago at Stainlesssteeldroppings, Carl mentioned a book with an intriguing title- You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop To A Coffeeshop- Scalzi on Writing by John Scalzi. There was even a link to this Scalzi character's blog. Sadly I learned the book had a limited run of 500 copies but I also learned Whatever is a great blog. Eventually Scalzi authorized a second run of 500 copies of the book so I scooped one up. I read it after Christmas and it was great. So I bought two of his novels. At the same time I picked up a copy of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, thanks largely again to Carl who recently reviewed it glowingly.
All that is a long-winded way of saying that I read Ender's Game and Old Man's War this week and loved them both. On the surface they have similar plots occupying opposite ends of a spectrum- one is about a little child (Ender) thrust into training for war, and the other is about an old man who joins the army at 75.
Ender is a sad book and you really feel for little Ender who really gets put through the ringer, deliberately, in order to make him a better military leader. Does Ender want to be a better military leader? Of course not, he just wants to be left alone to be a kid. So you sympathize with him and watch in horror as he is turned into a monster. I won't say much more if you haven't read this classic (came out in 1977 same year as Star Wars) but I will say the ending is one of the best endings ever. And I mean the very end, not the climax, which is also good. Oh yeah, and another thing which was cool was how close Card (or do you call him Scott Card?) came to getting the internet right.
Old Man's War is meant to be much more fun, and it is, but I will also admit that I teared up in a few places with this one whereas I didn't with Ender. Mostly because marriage has turned me into a big softie and I cry whenever someone loses a spouse on tv now. Don't tell anyone. And Old Man's War is predicated on the old man joining the army because his wife is dead and there's not really anything else to do. Luckily there's lots of fantastically weird alien baddies and fast-paced action since I'm pretty sure that military SciFi is not known for its tearjerker qualities.

I'm back from being the brains of the giant robot. Of course it's not really a robot, just a huge machine that could give King Kong a run for his money. Or maybe that new Cloverfield monster. Earlier in the night I was operating a much older shovel, which is 33 years old and really really run down. But as much of a pile of crap as it is, it can still dig. It's basically the exact same technology, just without computers. In fact, the principle of power shovels has changed little since Fred Flintstone's time, and hardly at all since Mike Mulligan's time, just that now, instead of steam, they are powered by electricity, or in some cases, diesel. We're getting a hydraulic diesel shovel in a few months, that will be cool.
I often think it wouldn't really be that hard to adapt shovel technology to make a working AT-AT. I couldn't do it, but maybe you could. I know where there's a supply of 33-year-old parts you could scrounge.

Winter holidays is almost over for me- only one more day of lazing around like a bum. You'll be happy to know that I accomplished not a single productive thing in the past 11 days and I'm pretty sure tomorrow will be no different! But the day (or rather, night) after that I have to go back to the pit and start producing coal. Actually, my job is more to move the rocks that are sitting on top of the coal out of the way so that we can get to the coal. I do this with the aid of a giant robot whose brain I control. And then, according to the 6-year-old girl who won the coveted front cover of our annual shift calendar, it is a simple matter of shipping the coal by train to Japan where it can be turned into cars! What could be easier?



In other news, my credit card was accidentally left at one of the poshest restaurants in town a couple of weeks ago, and when I went to retrieve it I discovered they thought it was their tip. Merry Christmas! Actually, they are merely closed until January 9th for post-New Year's holidays. So I'll need to borrow your credit card until then, okay?

Happy New Year!



The best thing about having a beard is letting it get all frosty when you go for a run! I keep trying to talk Michelle into growing one so she can share in the fun but for some reason she never listens.