I've been stuck in a Hobbit reverie for days now. At supper Michelle and Pallas were apparently counting to ten in spanish and they asked me how they did and I was like, "Uh, sorry, I wasn't really paying attention. I was in Middle-earth." But uno dos tres they did it perfectly the second time around.

A Twitter discussion led me to go get my copy of Unfinished Tales, a book I've had nearly as long as The Hobbit. I got it from my Grandpa's store, which was (it's still around, actually, my Grandma still runs it) a health food/ insurance agency/ Christian bookstore. When I saw this book I was so excited, expecting another tome of high adventure, though little ten-year-old me was sorely disappointed as it was nearly impenetrable. It's kind of got the same vibe as The Silmarillion (which I finally did read while tramping around New Zealand) though it is more just scraps and stuff covering all three ages of Middle-earth.
One of the briefer sections is an account by Gandalf of how he came to be part of the Dwarven company and why he convinced Thorin to recruit Bilbo Baggins. I thought there might be a little back-story for Thorin regarding the name Oakenshield. If you haven't seen the movie yet I won't say anything more, but I just wanted to see if there was a Tolkien provenance for what was shown onscreen. Well, it wasn't here but there was a brief mention of the orc Azog so that was cool.
Yeah, all this info is freely available on the internet but sometimes it's fun to pull a book off your bookshelf and look it up yourself. I knew I saved that book for a reason!

It was 29 years ago this Christmas that my Grandma gave me that copy of The Hobbit, with hundreds of stills and sketches from the Rankin/Bass animated feature that came out in the late 70s or early 80s. It pretty much changed my life forever. Not to put too fine a point on it. I was already a Star Wars nerd but the thing about my generation is that we didn't have the ability to watch our favourite movies whenever we felt like. The VCR was still a couple years away, at least in my house. So the only thing a nerdling could do was read books. (And comics, of course.) I even memorized the poem Sam tells Strider and the other hobbits when they're camping out by the stone trolls- the one that starts "Troll sat alone on his seat of stone/ and munched and mumbled a bare old bone/ for many a year he had gnawed it near..."
After the Lord of the Rings movies came out I could pretty much die happy. Though I had the better idea of going to New Zealand and visiting some of the sites where scenes were shot. Like Hobbiton:



So all I really wanted was for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey to be at least as awesome as this:



It was! And so much more. Especially since Sherlock and Watson are such key elements (though Benedict Cumberbatch doesn't have anything to do with this first movie).
We saw the 3D but not IMAX. As far as Frames Per Second goes, I don't really know what we had. Michelle asked me if it was the 48 FPS and I told her I only counted 36.

Merry X-Men!

Kiss was never really my kind of band, I was a little too young. Death was more my style. The band Death that gave us the whole genre of death metal. RIP Chuck Schuldiner. Death did a cover of a Kiss song, back in the day. It was called God of Thunder and it's a pretty kickass song. Chuck does this amazing deathy growl of the chorus where he goes "God of thunder! . . . and rock and ro-o-oll."
Oh man when that song first came out did I wish that rock and roll part wasn't in it. It just cheesed up the whole song. Well, actually the song is so awesome that it was able to withstand the cheesy onslaught. But come on, as if Thor needs more in his portfolio than just thunder. Because what's more awesome than a thunder god?
The Marvel Now series Thor: God of Thunder says the answer to that question is nothing! Well, maybe one thing. We'll get to that in a second.

As someone who happily professes a love for death metal, maybe it comes as no surprise that I've been a fan of Thor all my life. That most Frazetta-ish of Marvel superheroes was also one of the most versatile, since he could be hanging out in Asgard with his fellow immortal Norse gods battling trolls and frost giants, and then he could hop over the Rainbow Bridge to Midgard* to fight Kang the Conqueror alongside Iron Man and Captain America. Then the next issue he would gladly take to space to aid Beta Ray Bill in stopping Galactus from devouring the planet Poppup.
Jason Aaron prefers to play a more god-like, heroic fantasy take on Thor, and Esad Ribic is the perfect artist for his interpretation. We are treated to no less than three different Thorian eras, or Ages of Thunder if you will. We get a young, brash Thor who relishes leading vikings into bloody battle. Current Marvel Universe Thor off gallivanting in space, and a far-future Thor who looks an awful lot like his dear old dad Odin. Not necessarily a good thing.
In each of these timelines Thor faces the menace of something known as the god butcher. A monster that goes around butchering gods of various pantheons. Thor, being a god from some pantheon or other, is square in the god butcher's sights. Not that Thor has any intention of being butchered, but he might not have much say in the matter. Because this guy butchers gods. That's what he does.
Having established that in the first two issues, I'm now curious to know why. I can dig it, and accept him as a worthy foe for Thor, I just hope there's an intriguing origin or motive for ole GB. We get a hint of the anger and contempt he feels for gods in this sequence:

SO bring it home for us, Mr. Aaron! What's more awesome than a thunder god? A god butcher, apparently. But I say thee nay! Thor shall prevail. What's a god without someone to have faith in him?

*Midgard means Earth, as if I needed to tell you that, true believer!

Another Owie Badguy commission! This one by Zimeta, who is MistyTang's sister. Surely one of the hardest working artists around- she's accomplished the pretty much unheard of feat of updating her (current) webcomic , May The Rain Come, once a day for well over a year. And she even found a few minutes to squeeze in some quick commissions so I hit her up for her take on ole Owie.



Badguys Beware! by *Zimeta on deviantART

So I was all set to talk about Deadpool tonight but then I get home and jump on Twitter and discover that Gail Simone has been email-fired from Batgirl. Which pretty much sucks. I got the first New 52 Batgirl Hardcover that just came out and loved it. A lot, actually. Since I'm in Hinton right now my copy is 300 kms away, and kind of stuck in storage anyway since we are getting our basement finished at the moment. So I can't really flip through it again for purposes of review. But trust me, it's great.
Gail Simone will be fine, I'm sure. Thanks to Twitter and other online arenas, she has much more of a devoted following than many other creators. Arguably she may be the biggest name in comics. She's up there anyways. Frankly it's hard to see why DC would treat someone who is truly an ambassador for comics this way. DC loses. Gail loses. And we the readers lose. Again, Gail will land on her feet just fine, but poor old Batgirl is probably going to suffer.
I've never met Gail or even tweeted with her but I've definitely been Gail-adjacent. She was out to Happy Harbor, our local comic shop for FCBD a few years back, and she was on a panel at  SDCC when we went- about writing LGBT characters. And just the other day I swear to god she tumbld this photo of mine so if that doesn't make us bffs I dunno what would. Here is another photo I took of a cosplayer from Calgary bringingthe Barbara Gordon love, a fitting tribute:

Comics being the visual medium that it is, it's easy to be drawn in by a particularly striking image, such as the cover to Thunderbolts #1. I lobe the reds and the white background, and other than the Punisher, I am a fan of each of the characters. The actual comic didn't do much for me, but again, being the first issue, it was mostly just setup. General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross has in recent years found himself as the thing he hated most in all the world- a hulk. But red! Anyways he decides to gather a team of other red guys and gals to be the Thunderbolts. I guess we're lucky his name wasn't Stormin' Norman otherwise this comic might be called the Stormins.
Actually the Thunderbolts name has been used in various guises for a long time in the Marvel Universe, usually as a team of super-villains being rehabilitated by working as a team on the side of the good guys. This incarnation is actually a little different in the sense that all of these characters occupy the shadowy in-between state of being neither villain nor hero, exactly. Shades of grey, more. Or red, in this case. Red Hulk, or Rulk as his buddies call him, has actually lately been an Avenger so he's solidly good. Which is why he's leading the team I guess. Elektra is an assassin  but she's not a bad assassin. Venom, (Flash Thompson, not Eddie Brock) is actually an army operative and Deadpool and Punisher are basically psychos with guns but for the most part they prefer to shoot bad guys. So really, not super-villains. I might pick up issue #2 to see how they actually work together as a team. Deadpool is always good for a laugh, and the Punisher is famous for his sense of humor too. Oh sorry, that sentence should have "utter lack of a" in front of "sense of humor".
The parallel on the DC side would be Suicide Squad, the first trade paperback collection of which I read and enjoyed. Any team with Harley Quinn on it is one I want to be on, though the explosives implanted in your brain part would kind of suck.But how else do you insure that such a collection of super-criminals toes the line? Plus, they have a bipedal shark! So I might give DC the edge in a head-to-head tussle of the bad-guys-working-for-good-guys genre.

Marvel decided to do something similar to DC's New 52. Rather than rebooting their whole universe, though, they just sort of established a new status quo within the regular continuity.  Marvel Now they're calling it.   Lots of new series launches, though the primary focus seems to be on new creative teams taking on characters they haven't really been associated with before. So, Brian Michael Bendis who wrote like a thousand issues of all the different Avengers titles, is now writing All New X-Men.
Marvel Now has been rolling out since September but we are definitely right in the midst of it. I've been trying out a lot of the titles and mostly digging it.
Appropriately enough, the first Marvel Now title to launch was Fantastic Four (the original FF was the first true Marvel Comic back in 1961 yo. As if I needed to tell you that.) Matt Fraction is writing both Fantastic Four and FF. Wait, what? FF stands for Freedom Force. No, that's not right. I just read it too, what was it? Oh yeah- Future Foundation. The Fantastic Four, of course, is Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards, his wife Sue Storm-Richards the Invisible Woman, her brother Johnny Storm aka the Human Torch (back from the dead) and Ben Grimm the ever-loving Thing. As Fantastic Four #1 opens, Reed has discovered that the unstable molecules that form his stretchtastic elastic body are decaying. And there is no cure in the entire known universe. Luckily he knows where there are all sorts of unknown universes so he decides it would be cool to grab the other Three of the Four, as well as his kids, and go on a year-long educational trip through the Negative Zone and whatever other alternate dimensions they feel like exploring. Which is a great setup for Lost In Space-type misadventures, which I love. I like Fraction's writing so I know he'll have some good stuff in store. Issue 1 was all setup but you can bet the fantastic fun will begin in earnest next issue.
Reed sets up his little time machine dimension hopper gizmo to return them precisely four minutes after they leave, in subjective time. No big deal, right? But in case something catastrophic happens in those four minutes (and catastrophes happen about every three minutes in the Marvel Universe) he asks four friends to step in for those four minutes just in case. He recruits Ant-man, Medusa, She-Hulk (yay!) and um, Ms. Thing who is apparently Johnny's girlfriend in a Thing-like exoskeleton suit. FF #1 is also all setup, though a lot of fun while at it. I'm guessing issue 2 will go something like this:
Reed Richards: Thanks for covering for us while we're gone, Ant-man.
Ant-man: Yeah no problem. See you in four minutes.
Reed waves
Ant-man waves
Four minutes passes
Reed: Hi!  That was so much fun!
Ant-man: Cool! Alright I'll catch ya later.

I was hoping, but failed, to snag the Arthur Adams' (one of my favourite artists from waay back) variant cover for FF#1, a fantastic homage to Fantastic Four #1:

Pallas will regularly announce to complete strangers that she has changed her name to Wonder Woman. This makes me happy. I never read much Wonder Woman, though. Nothing against her- I always loved her. Loved. You know, I was the exact right age when the Wonder Woman tv show was on. In fact, I think I'll go watch the opening credits on YouTube right now. Excuse me...
Nah, the main reason I didn't read her was she was DC, and I was Marvel. Even more recently I've tried a few WW collections just because the great Gail Simone was getting rave reviews. But there was just too much backstory baggage, even for a guy like me who thrives on backstory. But I picked up the New 52 Wonder Woman hardcover collection at the library and I loved it. Now I wish I had bought it. If only there were some annual day devoted to giving loved ones gifts to brighten our dark Decembers.
Azzarello and Chiang present a Wonder Woman with close ties to both her fellow Amazons, especially her mother Hippolyta, and the various Greek gods that like to muck about in the affairs of women. The art is wonderful, with kind of a Samurai Jack vibe to it, nice and clean but with plenty of moody silhouettes:

There's a part I won't spoil where Queen Hippolyta meets Hera that I love love loved. Good writing.
My only caveat- the gore level, while perfectly acceptable to me, makes it a bit inappropriate for me to read it to Pallas. Which is fine, there are plenty of good Wonder Woman story books targeted to her age level. Those centaurs in the page above? They get created in a fantastically gruesome way. I can't wait until she's 9 or 10, though, I think she'll love it, as I do.
Here is a classic fight scene featuring Wonder Woman.

It's tooken a couple of years, but I've finally caught up on all the comics. Man, you will never believe what happened to Batman. And Captain America? He died. Twice. Or something like that. I'm not actually caught up on every single comic but I have a pretty good foundation of what's going on with most of the major heroes, or at least the ones I'm a fan of.
This is a pretty good time for comics fans, old and new. DC rebooted their entire line last year so new fans could jump on (rebooting is kind of a fact of life for characters whose history goes back 40, 50, even 70 years or so) and though I was never much of a DC kid growing up, I've been glad of the opportunity to get acquainted with a few new characters, sans tons of back issue baggage.
And even better, they didn't reboot Green Lantern. Because Geoff Johns has been writing the definitive GL saga for the last five years or so and it would be a shame to wipe all that away. His run has become one of my all-time favorite comics runs of all time. There's a part in the Sinestro Corps War that I love so much. Sinestro is all like "I'ma make you feel fear Hal Jordan!" And Hal responds by pointing out something kind of profound and even inspiring- Green Lanterns aren't fearless, they just overcome fear. Every. Single. Time. And then he punches Sinestro in the face.
Also there was Rage of the Red Lanterns and Blackest Night and Brightest Day and so on. For the New 52 initiative or whatever you want to call it, Johns did something kind of clever- Green Lantern now features the debut of the brand new Green Lantern of Earth, one Thaal Sinestro. So yeah, Green Lantern kicks ass. I like the Red Lanterns series, too.

I remember this one time the blogger buzz thing you see when you log onto Blogger was going on about how one of the guys who started Blogger or whatever was leaving to start a micro-blogging company called Twitter, and the cool thing about Twitter was that it would limit you to 140 characters and obviously it was gonna be the biggest thing in the world. I was like, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard and there's no way that'll ever catch on. Which is why I was not an early adopter of Twitter. Obviously I'm eating some crow since I pretty much just only hang out on Twitter nowadays, which is why I hardly ever blog here anymore. Oh well. I was an early adopter of Flickr- I signed up for that in beta mode before I even had a digital camera, or even really an idea of what Flickr was, exactly. And it turned out that came in pretty handy when I went to New Zealand lo those many years ago now.
Anyways, that was all a ramble to take advantage of the no-limit characters you can type on old-fashioned blogs. You can just say whatever you want for as long as you want. No going back and getting rd of unecsry lttrs to make a msg fit in 140 chars. You can even type letters that serve no purpose at all! X ^ æ ü and suchlike.
Anyways, this article from the New York Times is making a bit of a splash on Twitter right now, it is also longer than 140 characters so I haven't quite read the whole thing yet but the gist seems to be, there are these jellyfish that can live forever so why haven't we figured out how to do their neat little reverse-aging trick yet?
And everyone was eagerly waiting for Curiosity to announce that she had discovered life, but then she said she didn't after all and everyone was sad. Which was the perfect time for the Mercury spaceship that no one even knew was out there to say, "Wait guys, look what I found- organic matter on Mercury! Suck it, Curiosity!" Turns out that spaceship is named Messenger. Makes sense, since Mercury was the messenger of the gods. Or the god who messaged. Which would make him the patron god of blogging and tweeting, come to think of it.

More Owie Badguy!

One of these days I'll write an Owie Badguy graphic novel. And then it will get made into a movie and I'll win the Original Screenplay Oscar (finally) but I will only accept it on behalf of Pallas, the original creator after all. But until then:


Sketch Request--Owie Badguy by ~em-scribbles on deviantART

If there was a book with this dialogue in it, I would read it:
"Do you notice anything different about me?"
"Uh... new glasses?"
"Nope."
"Haircut?"
"Nope."
"You shaved?"
"No! I learned how to do differential equations!"

I assured Michelle this is a very funny shirt. She was skeptical. But trust me.

Owie Badguy is real.

I came downstairs to go trick or treating with the girls. Pallas' eyes got all wide and she said "Owie Badguy!"
"Hello Spider-White, are you ready to go fight crime?"
"Who's crime?"
"Crime is a badguy."

When you have little ones, you don't get to go out to see many movies. So you gotta be choosy when the opportunities arises. Big movies with lots of explosions and spaceships and hulks and stuff. Even when I had all the time in the world to go see movies, I hardly ever went to see "small" movies- comedies, for example, since what do you lose in the translation to dvd? It's not like you need to see Adam Sandler in full 3D IMAX experience.

Last night we chose to see Argo. Loved it. Kind of a small movie- I have no idea what the budget was but there are hardly any Wookiees or droids in it. Hardly any ;) Just full of tension that keeps building and building. Well, I don't really do reviews, just go see it if you want, or don't. But I recommend it.

It's been ten years of Pooing in the Woods. An insignificant anniversary to all but me, I know, but that's okay. Still not sure what the future has in store for this blog, it's all obsolescent and senescent using ten year old technology. But for now let me have a moment of satisfaction.

Behold, a much better drawing of Owie Badguy. My deviantArt friend MistyTang (who drew the Halloween Bear to your left and a few  others as well )was having a super sale on commissions so i thought I would get her to do up a quick portrait of Owie there. If you're just tuning in, Owie badguy was created by my daughter, who is 3.

On the way to the Mac's today Pallas and I discussed our usual philosophies.
"Dad, can you beat Darth Maul?"
"Uh, well, he's pretty tough. But, it's ok because he's only pretend and even if he wasn't he lived a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Because there's no way I could beat Darth Maul, ever.
"That's right, he lives in Star Wars."
"Yeah."
Little later. "But what if we scare Darth Maul and he comes and captures us or just, just lightsabers us?"
"He won't. And if he was scared wouldn't he run away?"
"Oh yeah."

It goes on like that every day, and I love every minute of it.

Spent the last work week getting trained on drills. When I was an oiler I spent a lot of time on and around drills and they always looked really complicated- all these knobs and buttons and levers and stuff. Turns out, not so much. Pretty simple. To be fair, though, the newish drills we have now are all computerized and GPSatized and pretty much fool-proof.  I will say that it takes a special kind of person to be a good drill operator- a person who is comfortable with doing not very much for prolonged periods of time. A person who prefers quiet contemplation to constant motion and action. A lazy person, in other words. I tell you now, I am that person.

Pallas and I went on a daddy/daughter date to "Trapters". it was so much fun. She's growing up so fast (she recently wrote her name for the first time!) Even going there was fun- stopped at the LRT tracks, we saw two trains go by and an ambulance!  Such lucky ducks we are. Anyways when we were there we spent most of our time in the kids section ,where she was allowed to choose one item to get, but of course we had a tea party and stuff for a while first.
Later we went over to my section, ie the trade paperback comics section which is also handily right by the fantasy/scifi books. "Do you like comics dad?"
"You know I do, Pallas!"
"I was just being silly."
"I know."
Then she saw one of Charlaine Harris' books (the ones True Blood are based on) and she recognized the covers because Michelle has some and gets the others from the library. She got all excited and wanted me to buy it for her.
"But sweetie, this isn't really a book for little girls. See? It's just all words, no pictures or anything." I didn't mention all the vampire werewolf faery human sex.
"Dad! You silly!  I'm a big girl. And I can SO read! I can read I Spy books."
The book I wound up getting was neiter comic nor scifi. It was Jian Ghomeshi's 1982 which I basically read in a day. I enjoyed it- I really only bought it since as a CBC nerd I consider Jian a personal friend (anti-restraining order disclaimer: Jian is not my personal friend). And even then, 1982 and Bowie are not really subjects I had much interest in. I was 8 in 1982, so a little young to have been tuned into the zeitgeist. 1986 and I'm all in. Especially if it's all about Gowan (who Jian mentions in passing, sweet!) Like I said, though, I read it in a day so obviously I enjoyed it a lot. It's very funny and also has that awkwardness that characterized the entire 80s decade, at least for me, so I could identify even though it wasn't quite about my exact generation.
Sidenote- I also just received my copy of Stephen Tobolowsky's The Dangerous Animals Club. I haven't read it yet, but as a huge fan of his podcast, I have a pretty good idea of what's in it. You should get it. Seriously. Jian Ghomeshi should get it too. And have Tobo on Q. I'm really serious. Here's why. The Talking Heads song, Radio Head? You know the one. That the band Radiohead was named after. Yeah. That song is about Stephen Tobolowsky. I am totally not lying. I am sure that story is in the book, but if not, check out episode, uh, well I forget but just listen to them all.
Well, to bring this back to Pallas, I'll also say I introduced her today to one of my favorite movies- The Iron Giant. I got a shirt from Teefury that mashed up Iron Man and Iron Giant so of course hse wanted to know what that was all about. So we watched it together. Damn. That movie gets me every time. Poor little Pallas was just inconsolable. Actually a Dragonette dance party consoled her up pretty good, but she was crying for a long time before we thought of it. Then tonight when I was putting her to bed, she was like, "I don't want Iron Giant to come and get me."
But he won't, he's only imaginary and anyways he's a good guy.
"But but but I don't want him to step on me, I'm just little."
He's very careful not to step on people, sweetie. And anyways, he's imaginary remember?
"I don't want any mosters to come either."
"Monsters know better than to mess with me, sweetie. And imaginary!  Very imaginary."

Every great superhero needs a good Rogue's Gallery of villains and nemeses. So today at work i was brainstorming ideas from Pallas' large little world and I came up with a few. So here are Owie Badguy's bad guys.

1. Stinknut the No. Low level mob thug, probably an enforcer, utterly without mercy. Even when victims plead for their lives, his answer is always no. This is inspired by Naia whose nickname is The Peanut. Sometimes though we call her stinknut. And her favorite word is no. She even says it in varying tones of voice while sleeping. Stinknut the No, yo!

2. Terrible Two. Surely this has been done? I'm writing this out on my iPad in Evernote so I'll google it later. Super powered twins, with some sort of superpowers. You know.

3.Snot Dragon. As parents we learned that children quickly become snot dragons when they're sick. Anyways Snot Dragon would be a mystical martial artist who summons dragons who spew snot rather than fire.

4. Pallmall. Pallas was calling herself that for a while, though it evolved to Powmom or some thing later on. Anyways Pallmall would be your Joker-like psycho who just likes chaos for its own sake.

5. Trum. Your basic rampaging monster with rage issues and utterly without the ability to be reasoned with. Owie Badguy's very own hulkish analogue. Derived from tantrum, of course.

6. Night Knight. His goal in life is for the whole world to say good night. Permanently! And his favorite book is Goodnight Moon. Owie Badguy fights N.K well past the point of exhaustion,
seemingly every. single . night.

7. Gomer Pile O' Bones. We decided our Halloween skeleton hanging outside is named Gomer and my subconscious knew there was a joke in there somewhere. Finally got it to surface. An animate skeleton! Probably kind of clumsy too though I have to admit i really have no idea who Gomer Pyle is.

8. Hohoho. Pallas used to think Santa's name was Hohoho so I thought an evil santaish character with that name would be kind of cool.

9. Bastroyer. Marvel has Galactus. DC has the Anti-Monitor. But even they must bow to . . . Bastroyer! Your basic giant planet-killer. Owie Badguy would still punch him in the face though.

10. Owie Goodguy. Obviously, Owie Badguy's evil clone.

Introducing . . . Owie Badguy! Pallas told me she had a new name for a good guy.
"Yeah? What is it?"
"Owie Badguy."
"Oh, so, he's a bad guy?"
"No, he's a good guy. He makes bad guys say owie."
"Oh, I see. By punching them in the face?"
"Yeah!"
"Well that's the best superhero I ever heard of."

 She tells me his costume is supposed to be blue, with a brown mask, and pink wings. I took some artistic licence and decided to omit the wings. When you're as awesome as Owie Badguy is, being able to fly is just getting greedy.

 First ones on the block! Got some new Halloween deocrations this yeaar so as not to be too repetitive. I love the black pumpkin inflatable thing we have but this year I went with something a little different. And that life-size skeleton was too cool to pass up. Although the first one I bought turned out to be missing a foot and an arm. Luckily I discovered this when I was buckling it into my passenger seat (he has to go somewhere right?) so I took it back into the Walmart and exchanged it for a whole one. Not gonna lie- had I got it all the way home I woulda just accepted that some skeletons are incomplete and obviously this one met a violent end. Carrying it through the walmart I made all the easy jokes to passersby like, "This isn't for halloween this is my wife, thats how long we've been in here" and so forth. I am a laff riot.

Bonus pic of the girls because they're sooooo cute!

 

Yay October! This month marks the tenth anniversary of Pooing in the Woods. Been trying to think of appropriate commemorative things to do to mark the decade but so far drawing a blank. I mean, it would be easy to search the archives for favourite posts and such but that doesn't seem very interesting to me. Also been thinking about completely overhauling the blog, maybe going to Wordpress or something since my comments widget went away forever starting today. And maybe retiring the Homie Bear identity and all that, the internet has kind of outgrown usernames in recent years. Well, the actual anniversary date is the 22nd so I have a few weeks to think about it. I'd invite your comments but not allowed!

I got a phone call from Pallas today. She was excited to tell me about her adventure on the High Level Bridge Streetcar. "That streetcar was pretty brave! He was so high on the bridge. He didn't fall in the river!"

I know you want to borrow my copy of A Feast For Crows by George RR Martin, but you can't. Because it's a signed first edition. Greenwood's Bookstore brought him in waay back in 2006 or so. Michelle and I used to live quite close to Greenwood's so we spent a lot of time there on dates. Yup, for us, going to a bookstore is a great date. And an expensive one . . . though in a good way. Michelle was even known to be a little star-struck when she saw Laurie Greenwood in the store (though she hasn't actually owned it for a few years now). Anyway, it was announced or revealed that it's closing. Yet another independent bookstore casualty. Everyone thought it would be the big box stores that killed them off but I think it was the Kindle and iPad that did it in the end.
And actually, one of the last remaining used bookstores in Edmonton is also closing down, more for not having anywhere to move to in October when their lease expires forever. Belgravia Books and Treasure. This one makes me even more sad, I think. Richard always always always asks about Michelle and Pallas (though Naia, as is her wont, often gets forgotten) by name when I go in there. Not too many places like that anymore. I love used bookstores because you always find the most amazing books that you had no idea even existed.
Well, I'm not exaggerating when I say I've bought, read and loved literally hundreds of books from those two stores, so I will miss them both very much.
Cheers.

There was a local controversy here in Edmonton last spring when a teacher at Ross Shepherd High School, Lynden Dorval, was suspended for going against the Edmonton School Board's No Zero policy. He gave a zero to a student for not handing in assignments. As you can imagine, he garnered near-unanimous support in the community, where everyone was quick to point out that in the real world there isn't a no-zero policy. Last week he was fired. He landed on his feet by getting another job at a private school. But still. Public sentiment squarely in his favor.

My wife is a teacher, so we listened to the news on the radio about his termination with interest.   I made the inevitable easy comments about how silly a no-zero policy is. Her response was a little more nuanced, as someone with university training in pedagogical methods- something of which I know nothing. She said that a zero for incomplete assignments doesn't really address what's been learned or not learned but is rather an inappropriate punishment for a behavioral issue, not an academic one. I know I'm very likely misquoting both her exact words and even her intent, but that's the gist as I understood it. A mark should only be a reflection of learning, and have nothing to do with behavior. So another way to put it might be that marks are meant to measure knowledge but have no usefulness or function for judging behavior.

I didn't really have a good response at the time, though I did feel that there was an argument that could be made there somewhere. And since all I do all day is bomb up and down a haulroad in my Kress truck, I was able to come up with what I think is a reasonable pedagogical model, bearing in mind that as a Kress Truck driver in a coal mine, my expertise in this area is nil.

What if, for any course or class, we set a baseline mark of zero. We come in as fresh faced newbies innocent of any specialized knowledge, and hence we have 0%. Yeah we might know a few facts ahead of time, but let's all start on an even keel.

The teacher's job then is to impart the knowledge of the subject at hand, the curriculum, in order to bring all the students to an end mark of 100%. The ideal goal would be for everyone to learn all the necessary data and knowledge.

Assignments and tests and all that demonstrate how much of the curriculum beyond 0% a student has gained. Hey, if I'm 47% smarter (or rather, more knowledgeable) about calculus at the end of a semester than I was at the beginning, that doesn't sound so bad. If only my RRSPs grew so fast! And if I'm 80%, 90% or 100% more knowledgeable, well that's fantastic.

Not handing in work is simply a waiving of the right to demonstrate a gain of knowledge, and therefore receiving a mark of 0% is simply remaining at the baseline where one started. One could say the teacher didn't even give (or award) a zero, since they already had the zero to begin with.

Hey? Am I right? I never took any courses in logic or rhetoric back in university, so I'm still at the baseline 0% in those disciplines, but sounds alright to this coal miner!

One of these days I'll post something. Or not. I dunno. But in the meantime have a cookie- it's my birthday! (tomorrow)

Finally got some photos of that incident from July. Kind of more of the aftermath after a backhoe pulled the truck out of the sump. Actually, it pulled it out and accidentally tipped it over on its side. Pics aren't the greatest but beggars can't be choosers I guess.

Pallas got a Batman playset today at Costco and came busting through the door so we could play it together. It was pretty fun. Pallas asked if Catwoman is a good guy or a bad guy.
Well, she's sort of morally ambiguous.
I want to call her a good guy.
Well, that's the nice thing about moral ambiguity.
So the bad guys had a bad guy party and the good guys had a good guy party.
Then Joker and Robin and Scarecrow went to the library (You can joke me later, Joker, we have to go to the library now) and Hal Jordan tucked all his kids in safe and sound, even some Strawberry Shortcakes. Oh and the villains broke out of jail but got sent to the naughty mat.

Pallas: Do you know why I sent you to the naughty mat? Because you came out of jail!

Villains: Oh ok, sorry.

Pallas: I forgive you.

Animethon 19 was this weekend. I wish I knew what a great convention this was before now- one year, maybe in 1998 or so I blundered into it and it was tiny. There were maybe a dozen people in a classroom watching an anime movie, my friend and I popped in to watch for a bit and then we left, and that seemed to be the extent of it. Turns out it's grown since then. I think I heard there were something like 7000 people there over the course of the weekend- not bad at all. I went on Friday thinking I would zip into the artist alley since I knew Drake Tsui would be there, and wound up making a weekend of it. Even brought the family out on Sunday.
One of the things that I think is really cool about it is it's been held at Grant Macewan College (University now) which is one of my favorite buildings ever. Crazy towers and spiral staircases and walkways and a big clock and stuff.  Great quad-type greenspace outside which provides great backdrops for cosplay photography.
Downside- they announced at the closing ceremony that there would be no Animethon 20 unless a whole lot of people stepped up to volunteer and share some of the load. More details here.



 

 

 

There's this old railway that runs kind of parallel to sections of our haulroad. It's part of the Coal Branch. It was used mainly in the 1920s to service the coal-mining towns . Lots of interesting history there, but of course the way my brain works I just like looking down at the twisted remnants and pretend I'm in some future Mad Maxy apocalypse where we all pilot giant robots to extract the last dead black guts from the earth. . . and hey look the future is now!  But anyways.
China Miéville's new book is called Railsea and about a whole planet where there aren't oceans but rather one vast sea of railroads. The sealife is giant moles (moldywarpes) and other burrowing creatures monsterized for the purposes of awesomeness. Trains ply the rails trading amongst nations and uncovering salvage of varying vintages. The cover says it's kind of a Miévillian take on Moby Dick (Miéville covers Melville!) but really the only other books it's actually like are other Miévilles. Which is fine by me. 
This is now the second book China has written about trains, so I imagine he's a bit of a trainspotter or train nerd or whatever but it's not like you have to be one too. Trains never really impressed me much growing up but I do love giant monsters and mysterious derelicts from another age. 
Derelicts like these, you might say:

  

The House
 (for Steve)

So you're driving around in rural Alberta and it's not the Alberta you know with mountains and foothills it's just flat prairie far as the eye can see, maybe the odd hoodoo here and there and they definitely are odd. And then there's a town, no leadup, no sign, just town. Not much of a town, for sure, but still a town. The bank is in an atco trailer sharing space with the local realtor. There's a gas station. They have a surprisingly nice playground though, and you're not really sure if that's a nice thing to say about it or kind of mean since it's the only nice thing you can think of to say about it.
But of course you're not just driving around randomly- you have somewhere to be. The house is in a nice enough neighbourhood, big old trees and well-manicured lawns, the picture of smalltown Alberta, could be 1960 for all you know. Hell, there's even some sort of 1960s rocketshiplooking extendovan on the street. Is that a barbecue you can see in its window? There's always some weird thing in the driveway when you come here Steve says.
There's old cars, too, hot rods in various states of repair, and toolboxes and a stack of cartons of protein shakes in the driveway. In fact, the last time you were here a year or so ago, there was a stack of protein shakes, right there . . . that's not the same stack is it? Steve deftly avoids the elderly mother of the owner who is outside gardening but you stop and talk and she tells you the same story she told you last year about how great it is that this house was built using lumber from old government buildings that were demolished to make newer government buildings. From the outside the house is maybe a little more ornate than you would expect in Alberta, a little more fortressy-looking, but otherwise doesn't really seem like it was cobbled together from spare parts. It's only when you go inside that you see it. That you're not really in a normal house.
Your eye isn't really drawn to any particular thing at first, since there's so much to absorb. Over there is a pair of outboard engines, and here's an old red wagon, and some antique bicycles and guitars and a display case with oldtimey telephones and gaslamps and whatnot inside, but then you see to your left that this floor is actually only there to provide a catwalk so that you can look down on the basement where two whole cars are being worked on or built or something in what amounts to a Victorian style library with bookshelves two storeys high, complete with a grizzly skull next to a hippie love sign and some reader's digest books and a knight's helmet and a faux Egyptian bust. Of course, most Victorian libraries didn't have an entire wall devoted to a mural of Camelot or somesuch at sunset, looking out over the ocean. And there's the cars. Two of them.
But whatever, you're not here for that. Instead you climb the spiral staircase which has what one can only hope are structural support beams painted up to look like spruce trees. How do you like my spiral staircase the owner asks you. Yeah, it's . . . fancy you say. Yup, they're way safer than normal staircases he says. Because you know, if you fall, you won't go all the way down. You nod thoughtfully, but refrain from saying what you are thinking, which is that most normal staircases have railings and not just open spaces between the steps. And is that landing for the attic just free-floating plywood? Upstairs is why you're there, and you do what you came to do.
There's dust and there's bugs and there's the debris and detritus that you knew would be there. It doesn't matter. The owner, having displayed a certain tendency towards packratishness, is easily persuaded to keep much of the stuff. Most of the rest goes in the garbage, including piles of old expired medication. I can give you the number of the agency that disposes of expired meds the owner says. Sure you say, and when he turns around you toss it in the garbage. It's going to the dump where it won't be a danger to junkies looking to get high so who cares.
When you're done you try to make a clean getaway but the owner comes and says there's more stuff in the attic, and he leads us further up the spiral staircase. Someone lives up there, you discover. A mouldering mattress with sheets that haven't been changed in way way too long, and a plasma tv and a dr phil book on the nightstand about reclaiming your relationships. It's stifling hot and you instantly want nothing more than to leave. This guy's lived here two years now with no heat, can't talk him into moving downstairs the owner says. And he pushes aside the tarp wall and leads us past piles and piles of lumber under a roof made of that greenhouse stuff they used to use, kind of translucent plastic or whatever. How has this place not burned down you wonder. Anyways there's a bit more to do so you do it and get out of there.
And if you're still with me after all that, you might be wondering what the hell I'm talking about, what is this house. This house. It defies description. All I can say is it's the saddest place in the world.

Michelle's dad passed away on Friday and we were down in Calgary for the funeral. It was a hard time but there were some things I will definitely always remember. Pallas especially was amazing, she and Naia stayed with me in Edmonton the first night while Michelle went down to take care of some details, then we drove down on Sunday.
Naia was sick and mostly just sucked her thumb and stared forlornly. Pallas asked quite a few questions, like "What's a funeral?" "It's where we go to say good-bye to Papa Zunic forever." "But I don't wanna say good-bye forever, I want Papa Zunic to get better." "I'm sorry, sweety, that's not how it works." "But but, who's gonna be Uncle Steve and mommy's daddy now?" "No one, sweetheart."
Later she decided to sing a song, called the Going to Calgary song. It went like this: "Don't be sad, we're going to Calgary tomorrow. Don't be sad, we're going to see mommy." and repeat. I told her it was a great song, the only thing was, we were actually going to Calgary that very day, not tomorrow. "I know Dad, that's just how the song goes."
At the funeral she actually appointed herself an usher, more or less, hadning out one of those memorial cards to all the guests as they came in. She even told me to go back to what I was doing because she was busy working. Anyways, the funeral was good.

There's this brilliant guy named jouste on deviantArt who always draws the most unique and original character designs with these crazily hilarious bios. Finally a game company took notice and hired him to do some work on their new game Shellrazer, which comes out today. Giant turtles vs orcs and stuff!  Very cool.  I bought my copy so now Pallas and I will have something other than zombie-bastruction strategies to discuss at suppertime. Right now I'm working nightshifts so I haven't actually had a chance to try it out.
Here's the link. Only 99 cents!

Michelle saw some Halloween costumes at Costco yesterday and called me to see if she should buy one for Pallas, even though it's not even close to Halloween yet and who knows if she would still care about superheros by then. "Who cares?" I said, "Get her one for today!" Every day is a good day to dress up as Spider-man! Pallas agrees, because she was super excited! "I'll be the best Spider-man ever, I promise!" she told Michelle. So we spent the better part of yesterday fighting bad guys together- I may even have donned my Green Lantern costume from last years's Halloween. Cosplay day at casa homie bear!
Speaking of cosplay and the like, I just watched Comic-con Episode IV- A Fan's Hope. It's a documentary that they filmed in 2010, they year we went. So it was pretty cool, trying to find me or Michelle in the crowd shots (because then we could update our IMDB page) but I didn't see us. I did see lots of the cosplayers I met and photographed though.

So not only did I get piss-tested for that incident with the pickup truck a couple weeks ago (though described just a few posts down) but last night I got written up for it as well. But why? I wish I got to keep a copy of the form they make you read and sign. It said something like this:

On June 26th you had a pickup truck go into reverse and land in a sump, resulting in loss of a light vehicle. Any repeat occurrence will result in discipline.

 Hmm, I wonder how I can remember not to let any more trucks self-slam into reverse and drive into a sump so that I don't get disciplined? Because that seems like something I would forget.... and isn't being written up being disciplined? Anyways, there was a space for me to respond, and I did, thusly:

So, an inanimate object has a mechanical failure and I'm to blame?          That's how you spell                    B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.

Also, no berm- bullshit. And, not even my job. Bullshit!

And in the space where I was supposed to sign, I wrote in "I'm not signing this."

Anyways, later I regretted my choice of words a bit. Technically, the Ford was not inanimate. The very fact of it being far too animate was the cause of the whole problem- it was a failure of inanimation. Well, these guys are hardly literary critics- I think they'll get the message.

I asked my union vice-president about filing a grievance, and he said he would be too happy to do so though by the time it got through, the ninety days of my disciplinary term would be up anyways. And there's really no consequences to being on the disciplinary term, so other than my disgruntled sense of injustice, not to mention my 11-year perfect record prior to this, it doesn't really mean anything. But goddamn it they just pissed me off!  Plus I want a new iPhone!

Pallas went downstairs this morning and informed Michelle, "Mommy, I've been thinking, I think I need to go to the library to buy my own Hulk books."
So of course I took her, thinking we would just grab a few of those learn-to-read books, but they didn't have any. So we grabbed Ultimate Spider-Man Volume 1, a Clone Wars Visual Encyclopedia or something, Winnie the Pooh and an animated movie called Hulk vs Thor. All her picks!
On the way home, she asked me about Hulk.
"Hulk's a good guy?"
"Yup!"
"He's not a bad guy?"
"No."
"But sometimes he gets very very angry?"
"Well, yeah."
"But he's a good guy."
"Exactly."
"He's friendly."
"Yup."
"But only when someone tries to bastroy him he fights them."
"Yeah."
"Green Hulk means go, Red Hulk means stop!"

Naia Peanut is in the 3rd percentile for weight. She is quite wee, it's true. But not unhealthily so. We are just a small people, us Homie Bears. Well, my dad's pretty big but he's the anomaly of our family, I think. A couple of years ago, I was edging up to the 200lb mark, and trying mightily to surpass it. Being 140lbs all through high school and university, hitting 200lbs was a big deal to me. Since I was a casual runner and worked out some, I figured the extra weight was all muscle, baby. Michelle tactfully informed me otherwise. So then I started running a little farther, and hitting the weights a little harder, and pretty much overnight I dropped down to my current weight which is in the 173-178 lb range, which includes, if I may be so immodest, some respectably cut muscles. Not bad for 37 years old.

I think I can mostly thank my genetic legacy and body type more than any iron discipline on my part- you should see what I eat at work. And at home...

Anyways I bring it up because I just  read The Cure for Everything! which was written by a local U of A guy, Timothy Caulfield. Pretty good book, just trying to debunk all the myths and misinformation out there about fitness and healthy living. That, and AJ Jacobs' Drop Dead Healthy have been my literary nutrition of the last few days. The messages are pretty similar and pretty simple- the only truly surefire way to lose weight and live healthily is to eat right and get lots of exercise. Easy, but hard.
I do have one question, though. Here's the thing- a guy like me, probably only supposed to eat around 2200-2400 calories a day, give or take, that may even be a little generous. For a completely sedentary person, less. I don't know if I've ever eaten that little. Doing the math a bit, I wonder how it is that I'm not way fatter? I don't run that much, and indeed, Caulfield asserts that, for all the many many benefits of exercise, weight loss just isn't one of them.
One possible answer, appropriate enough given the title of this blog: poo.
I'm not being funny or trying toilet humour, I'm serious. No one ever talks about the calories lost to poo. I guarantee you our bodies are not 100% efficient at sucking every single calorie out of the food we eat. So how much of the devastatingly bad food choices we make every single day wind up getting flushed out of us unabsorbed? Probably varies, and I'm not trying to provide another excuse for terrible eating, but it's gotta be some right? I know- I'll ask google.
Hmm, Google doesn't really know, or at least, I don't really feel like wading through all the internetz garbage such a search turned up.
Best guess: some.