Here's a children's Hallowe'en story for you, based on a sketch Hermitchild drew me - she called it, "He Made it Himself". Enjoy:

Hallowe'en was approaching and all the cubs of Hudson Elementary School were excited to see the announcement on the school's bulletin board:

Costume contest!
Win a bag of lemon-flavored lemmings
for the most creative costume of the year
Dress up as your favorite monster,
movie character or mythological figure!
Wear your costume to school on Friday
for the lunchtime Hallowe'en party

"Wow!" said Berg. "I'm gonna be a pirate! No, a cowboy! How about you, Cousin H?"
Little Homie Bear replied, "I don't know- how can I choose? I have this cool book at home of all these mythological creatures, I think I will be something from that."
"Like a dragon or something?"
"Yeah, something like that."
"Ooh, ooh, how about a troll or a demon or a zombie? I changed my mind I'm not gonna be a cowboy I'm gonna be a vampire! No, a ghost! I mean, a werewolf. Yeah . . ."
Little Homie Bear left Berg to his quandary and wandered home, deep in thought. He didn't even stop to chase all the little seals who all took a vasive action when they saw the polar bear cub approach. When he arrived home to the ice cave, he asked his mom if they had any sewing stuff. She showed him some old scraps and needles and stuff that was still lying around from the previous occupants of the cave, an Inuit family.
Little H got to work, putting on his red goggles like a welder pulling down his mask. Fabric flew and needles broke as he tried to get his big bear paws to do the delicate motions required, but Little Homie Bear's concentration never wavered, his tongue sticking out thoughtfully. Every day that week he would go straight home from school to work on his costume.
Finally Friday arrived, and Little Homie Bear proudly donned his costume and went to school. Berg and all his friends were there, all dressed up in a dramastick variety of costumes.
"Wow, Berg," said Little Homie Bear, "I thought you were going to be a werewolf."
"Changed my mind," said Berg. "I decided I would be Cruella DeVille."
"Oh. You look great," said Little Homie, as he took in Berg's dyed black fur on half of his head and his feather boa.
"Thanks! But what about you, what are you supposed to be?" But just then the bell rang and everyone rushed to their desks. No one liked to be late for Mr. Baffin's class because he was a mean old bear. But class was a little unruly as everyone was too excited about the Hallowe'en party and contest. At last the lunch bell rang and everyone rushed to the gymnasium.
Hudson School's principal, Mrs. Aurora, went from student to student, praising their costumes and passing out candy. She was the judge of the contest. When she got to Little Homie Bear, she was perplexed.
"And what have we here, dear?" she asked.
"I'm dressed up as my favorite mythological monster," Little Homie Bear proudly said. "Legends say this unfathomable creature lives upside down beneath us on the other side of the world, and it has wings but it can't fly cause it's upside down so it just walks for miles and miles and they make noises like this: SCREECH SQUAWK and they eat, well, I don't really know what they eat. Pixies, maybe. Or lemon-flavoured lemmings, which is my favorite too."
Mrs. Aurora was no match for this verbal onslaught, and she was impressed by the little cub's enthusiasm, if not his sewing skills. "Did your mom help you make this costume?"
"No, I made it myself!"
"Well, very good job. First prize!"
Little Homie Bear, dressed as the mysterious and mythological penguin, shared his lemon-flavoured lemmings with his whole class.

On deviantArt there's a meme going around where artists offer free sketches to anyone who wants one (up to ten, usually) so long as any takers offer the same . So I've taken up a few people on their offers, but rather than sketches I offer poems in return, since my sketches would be a terrible blight on the world. Here is the sketch Travis Hanson did for me, since I was in a mastodony mood last week:



And here is a poem I wrote at the request of Hermitchild, who also drew me a sketch that I will try to write a poem for as well, so I won't show it to you yet:

Little lemming, lemme in, lemme in
Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin
I'm not a big bad wolf and you're not a little pig
So just open up your door, quit being such a prig
No, I'm sorry, but I'm a little indisposed
which is why you can't come in and the door is staying closed
Listen, little lemming, just a second then I'll go
You're probably a salesman so my answer still is no
Little lemming, little lemming, please just let me in
No! Now my patience is starting to wear thin
You keep standing at my door, yammering and talking
I say go away and still you keep on knocking
Sorry little lemming, I know I am a boor
But I won't go away until you open up that door!
I know what you did, how you let those lemmings die
You led them off a cliff by claiming they could fly
Now little lemming, lemme in, lemme in
So I can serve you this subpoena so you can pay for your sin!

The two typefaces are to distinguish voice, which you probably figured out on your own. I wanted to make use of the obvious lemming stereotype while still doing something a little unique.

The Storyteller by Travis Hanson

Okay so, the creative challenge: My Fourth Bloggiversary contest! The assignment I gave the grade 7s was to pretend they were the little boy in Travis Hanson's Storyteller print. What story is he telling that has all the forest creatures so enrapt? So your challenge will be the same, but with some parameters.
Write me a story about anything you want, so long as it has some element of the fantastic, or whimsical, or, well, you know what I like. Courtroom dramas? Not so much. Courtroom dramas where a vampire is suing a zombie and a robot is the judge? Perfect. Take advantage of the fact it's Hallowe'en!
Post the story on your blog or email it to me at nwaddell (at) gmail (dot) com and I will post it here if you don't have a blog. It's open to anyone so even if you are some lurker I have never heard of, or whoever. Tell your friends!
Deadline is flexible but my bloggiversary is the 22nd I think, so around there but definitely before Hallowe'en.
The winner will get to choose between an actual Storyteller print for their wall, or the brand new Seven Devil Fix CD!
Oh yeah, bonus points for using Dramastickly and other examples from the Grade 7 lexicon.

Here's some more examples of creative spelling from the stories I assigned:

sueiside
vilant screeming
enzone (end zone)
bodem (bottom)
hew (who)
ricking havoc
concer (conquer)
metiore
hypers space
19teenth
Take a vasive action!
Neatherlands (a country that is at war with its near neighbour China)
shalk (shock)
quiquly
And my favorite, because it's a whole new word which I challenge all of you to use in a sentence:
Dramastickly

This is way too much fun! About 40 done, 50 to go! Seriously, though- I've been very impressed. The point of this exercise was to get their creative juices flowing and to have fun. Not to circle spelling errors in red ink and stuff like that. I was lucky enough to have teachers who really recognized and nurtured the creative spark in me so the one thing I wanted to accomplish in my brief stint as a teacher was to encourage the students to be creative, and they definitely did that.
How about YOU guys? Are you up for a creative challenge?

Michelle dropped a phonebook-sized stack of papers on the counter- 90 stories for me to mark from my field trip to her Grade 7 classes last week. Wow, how do teachers and professors do it? But at least these are an absolute hoot to read. I marked ten of them tonight, only 80 more to go! Here are some early highlights:

"It was a very bloody war and swords were flying everywhere with hands still attached.// Xerxes wept and sobbed and cursed at the Spartans.// All of the Persians piled upon the rangers killing them all and blood was everywhere but at least only 1 Persian soldier died but they gave him a proper burial." -Connor

"Deranged Snowmen from New Jersey took over the north they hadn't seen us because we camoflaged our igloos." -Ryan (I also liked his spelling- "slottered" makes way more sense than the true spelling!)

"Societies ruined, houses burnt down, blood curdling screams of horror is all that you hear in my town.// We were about to give up when we heard a scream it sounded like 5 year old lil Jimmy." -Haley

"After 5 hours of battle the snowmen came out with some sort of snowball plasma cannon. It was so sophiscated our troops didn't know how to dismantel it." -Zach

Anyways, I was really impressed. The stories had a fair bit of "sophiscation" to them. Quite a few students chose to use this drawing by Travis Hanson as a springboard (hence the deranged Snowmen from New Jersey), while so far only one used this one, which of course, I expecially dig. And sadly, the bear in that story is an antagonist:

"But Fuzz (a coyote) wouldn't come; instead he fought the bear, bitting and scratching, but Fuzz was no match to a bear. The bear hit Fuzz so hard he went flying into a tree with bruises, bumps, lumps, and blood all over him. "Nooo!" screamed Lily and Billy-Willy. The bear walked away with a happy look on his face, like he had accomplished a really hard task." -Carissa

Happy Thanksgiving- I'm Thankful For Elephants!
And for you non-Canucks, Happy Second Monday in October. Michelle and I went down to Calgary for some family, food and fun. It was great. So, know what I think is cool?
Elephants. According to the May 1991 issue of National Geogrpahic that Michelle let me steal from her classroom the other day, there was once a four-tusked species of proto-pachyderm called Primelephas, as well as mammoths and mastodons and other very cool mumakiloids. From that issue:

Of all the truly colossal beasts that once walked the planet, only these two remain [the African and Asian elephants). And they are disappearing even as we are just beginning to learn about their lives.

In the 20th century alone, more than ten million elephants died at the hands of humans. Sad, hey? But so familiar as to be cliche.
Anyways, I bought some cool-looking comics to see if maybe some Elephantmen get a little revenge.

Now I Know What Scares a Bear

I can stand up to and stare down a raving mad coal miner who's got fifty pounds on me. But a room full of gregarious giggling grade 7's, well, that's a little frightening. And then multiply that by three and you're looking at nine years of nightmares for me. Michelle had me in as her special guest speaker for her schoolkids today.
Actually I'm exaggerating- it wasn't scary, it was fun. Though I honestly don't know how my wife can do that every day. Crazy.
I spoke on the art and elements of storytelling, and I read them my Yeti story I blogged about last week. (The mp3 of my reading at the Gathering is online, if you're interested.) I also read this old poem, they liked the line about the poo crapping. I even assigned homework! Michelle said I could, but when I mentioned how we could mark them next week after Thanksgiving she stopped me and said, "No, YOU can mark them next week. All ninety of them. Have fun!" I basically said they could write a story about anything they wanted, so long as they could identify the conflict in it. I showed them some of Travis Hanson's artwork to inspire them a bit, and let them go. I look forward to marking them!
And, uh, if you see my autograph for sale on eBay, well, I tried to explain I wasn't actually a famous writer, but . . .

Homie Bear on Holidays!
Yup, so, I needed a vacation. Because of my four-day shift rotation, taking one set off gives me twelve days of freedom. Pretty good deal. This is already my third day off. Heading to Calgary for Thanksgiving, but until then I'm just hanging out here at home, doing some writing, some reading, some running and some relaxing.
Did I say running? You betcha! Ever since Michelle's half-marathon I have been running pretty steady and I'm loving it. Oh yeah and working out while watching Samurai Jack cartoons on DVD, too.
On the writing front, I'm working on a short story that required me to reread Pierre Berton's Klondike, which was no chore because it is easily one of my favorite books of all time. You should read it- your life will be enriched. Seriously. I finished that up today and now I can go on to something I've been saving for just this occasion- Dan Simmons' Olympos.
Come to think of it, last week at work I read a sci-fi classic that I'd be willing to bet influenced Simmons enormously- Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Well, I have some relaxing to do so I'll leave you with a cool, kinda halloweeny excerpt from another classic sci-fi writer, Fritz Leiber (not Leiberwitz!), from his essay "A Defense of Werewolves".

You think that everything that thrill's (sic) been done, that there's no more true eeriness in life, but just a wearisome atomic round, and that the future . . . belongs to some pragmatic, plodding breed who never heard Pan pipe or feared the darkness that's between the stars? That is to laugh! Pass me the wine-skin. And yet that's just how I feel part of the time.
But how untrue! When each new fact, like an old witch, has as familiar some new mystery, when each conquered realm opens a new wilder, wider frontier, when man's about to leap the planets . . .
Open your eyes . . . and you will see wonders undreamed, innumerable . . . Wonder as great as in archaic times made gleaming eyes by rocks like these at Stonehenge and in the darkling woods where satyrs danced.

Wow, look at the time! It's October! My favorite time of year. In a few weeks, Pooing in the Woods will turn four years old. Soon, I will be able to form whole sentences and even begin to read and comprehend simple stories. Oh, and hockey season starts. Also, the world turns its attention to the underworld, the dark underbelly of the collective unconscious, the horrific and the unwholesome. Monsters! Hallowe'en! Candy!
How's this for monsters in the basement- at the University of Alberta (my Alma Mater) researchers have accidentally discovered a new species of Icthyosaur! National Geographic has the details.

Bill Bryson! At the Royal Alberta Museum on October 31st! Tickets are $5, so if you're not halloweening, or working (like me) you can see one of the finest, funniest authors around. He'll read from The Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid .

An Interview with Phil Carnehl, the Rebel Penguin



Last year I came across a gorgeous illustration of King Kong in a space suit, bashing UFOs rather than biplanes. I loved it, and knew I had found a brilliant artist I would be honored to work with. So I commissioned him to illustrate my poem "Robot's Cove" for when I read it at G-Arts last year. He promptly delivered a beautiful and perfect piece, with exactly the right quality of mystery and wonder I was trying for in the poem.



We collaborated again with the story from last night, about the Yeti and the Yak. I believe this young gentleman has a bright future, and I am pleased to present an interview with the artist.

First of all, who are you? I'm Phil Carnehl, a lifetime resident of California trying my best to make a living off of what i love to do.

Where does your screen name Rebel-Penguin come from? Um i'm sure these questions usually have funny answers but Rebel Penguin came about in my last term of college. Had some extra time left after completing my final animation and wanted to add a cool logo and made up company name to the beginning of it so i designed my current logo and came up with Rebel Penguin Productions. Always liked penguins and i got a lot of good response from the design so it stuck.

When (and how) did you get started in art? I've been drawing literally my whole life but never really pushed myself to go futher with it until after highschool. Found a great art college to go to and the teachers really inspired me to reach for the stars so i've been doing my best to improve ever since.

What tools or media do you use? I start off everything with the basic pencil and paper and from there ink and color it in Illustrator CS2. I've also been breaking into Photoshop and Flash a bit.



What inspires you? Other artists, nature, i like to make people laugh so anything i can make fun of without insulting anyone is always inspiring.

What do you do to get the creative juices flowing? I usually flip through comics, maybe read a few bible passages and of course pray, if asking God to help me in my work doesn't get the art flowing i usually assume that means He's got something else for me to do at the time.

What are some goals or dreams you have? I would love to work with Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack creator) or Butch Hartman (Fairly Odd Parents) or both someday. It would also be awesome to create a cartoon series of my own at some point in my life.

Any advice for other artists? I'm sure you've heard it before but never stop learning, take every opportunity you have to learn from artists around you and even more importantly never stop drawing, don't let a day go by without putting your pencil to paper and creating something, anything, if you love what you do don't let yourself ever run dry.

What artists do you admire and learn from? Again Genndy Tartakovsky and Butch Hartman are both big inspirations, both guys with big ideas who had the heart to press on and make things happen. I also enjoy the work of Ben Caldwell, Craig McCracken and Deviantart's very own Dapper Dan.

Are there any words of wisdom you live by? I'm not in any way perfect but i try to live by knowing putting faith in myself is pointless because alone i will always let myself down, but putting faith and trust in God, the one who made me who i am, is the only way to success and happiness.

Do you think there is such thing as yetis or sasquatches? Definitely, the thought that we've discovered every creature alive on this planet is ridiculous, i'm sure there's more out there just waiting to be found out.

Thanks Phil! By the way, he's open for commissions, so head on over to his deviantArt page for details. I'll leave you with Phil's newest piece, The Least Scary Dragon:

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!
Tomorrow evening at 6PM I will be reading a brand-new children's story (by me) at the Gathering (15620 95 Avenue). It's about a bomible snowman. So if you live in the Edmonton area come on out, it will be a good time- aside from me, the current house band plays some great Irish-style church drinking songs. Here's a little teaser image of the story to hopefully get you curious.

I still have a face! And I feel fine. Hurts to eat, a bit, but otherwise I'm good. (Anyways I didn't even get a chance to eat today until 8 hours into the shift!) Not even a shiner to look scary with. I was lucky and it could have been a lot worse. Thanks for all your well-wishes! Turns out a bulldozer hit a pickup yesterday a few hours after I was hurt so they shut the whole pit down and delivered a stern talking-to about being more safe.
Which is fine but I can honestly say I had no intention of being unsafe yesterday. Things just happen.
Today we were all much safer but it still was not a fun day. I think I'm ready for a holiday, which I get at the start of October so I guess I can hold on a bit longer.
Ironically, there is a big safety slogan contest right now, and I even entered the day before yesterday- wanna hear my suggestion?
Safety: Because it sucks to be dead.

*Sigh* I was hurt at work again today. Nothing too serious, though it feels bad, and it looks, well, actually kinda cool. I was hit in the face by a big metal pothead. A pothead in mining terminology has nothing to do with Cheech-and-Chong-like-shenanigans, it is the metal collar that connects power cables to each other or to equipment. They're big, heavy and hurt like hell when they come flying up out of a pickup truck and smash you in the face.
So, my cheek, temple, nose, jaw and teeth all hurt, and there's a goodly bruise right below my sideburn, as well as other cuts on my nose and temple. It hurts to eat. Doctor said nothing was broke or seriously damaged. On the plus side I got to come home a little early.
I'd take a picture and post it but I don't have my USB cable for my camera here. So instead you can use your imagination and come up with WAAAAAY better visuals than the truth anyways. Imagine I'm a zombie with one eye! And no teeth! Yeah! And green brains oozing out of my temple. You know, because I was smashed in the face with a giant metal Tommy Chong robot.

I have notebook pages full of ideas of things to write- some are completely sketched out in my head, it's just a matter of being disciplined enough to write them down. Others are just vague concepts that need fleshing out before they are ready to see the light of day. Some are mostly ready, but the needs of the story are perhaps a little beyond where I'm at as a writer, and so they stay inside, ripening.

According to Orson Scott Card, "Good stories don't come from trying to write a story the moment I think of a good idea." He goes on to say that it takes years between lightbulb-going-on and finished version. Which is kind of true, in my experience, but not quite the whole story (of course, Card is a successful Hugo-winning writer and I am Homie Bear, so . . . ) I think if you were to take those words too seriously, it might paralyze you, make you think you needn't bother to write anything for the next couple of years.

Writing is not that different from drawing- artists sketch to get the juices flowing, and then ideas come and pretty soon they're ready to do a finished piece. I see it on deviantArt all the time. Blogging is a great way to sketch, for a writer. Which is not to say that you should "scribble" all over your blog and expect readers to stay interested. I like to put polished pieces of writing here, though they are stories about bears fighting zombies which don't have much of a market. But that's okay, for me it's all about the fun.

Now and then an idea or image pops into my brain, and it doesn't take much effort to nurse it into a finished piece. One of my favorite poems that I've written came from an image of brains growing in a field- and then I followed that through to develop a whole twisted ecosystem based on that one image, and not too long after that first inspiration, I had the finished piece. I can say the same thing about short stories I've written.

On the other hand, there have been ideas that have taken years from first glimmer to actual story. The other night at work I got an interesting idea in my head, but I know it will take a lot of thinking and research to make something workable out of it. And last year I was finally able to write a children's story after the initial idea had been floating around in my head for years. I had a character name, but nothing for him to do. Then a second idea came to me and within a week the thing was finished. I'll be reading it next week at the Gathering if you want to hear it- it's about an abominable snowman. I don't want to say too much about it, but I promise it will be a good time- I've collaborated with a couple of other artists to make something pretty cool.

I wish I could snap my fingers and conjure a great idea out of nothing. But if it were that easy, it wouldn't be worth doing, would it?

The best birthday present this year was a bag of springrolls. It was from a coworker I'll call Mario Andretti, not because he's Italian- he's Philipino- but because he drives his rock truck really really fast all the time. Even in total whiteout conditions like last night. But back to the springrolls.
On Monday, Mario asked me how I was. I said I's okay, considering it was only the first shift, it was my birthday, and I would rather be home with my wife.
The next night, on the bus, Mario patted his seat, inviting me to sit with him. Then he surreptitously handed me a plastic bag with a brown bag inside it- and inside the brown bag were warm springrolls. Nice! He didn't want me to have to share them, hence the sneakiness. But I shared some anyways- have to spread the good vibes around, right?
A little character sketch is in order here. Mario is around 55, and though he has been here for 25 years, he still has a nearly-impenetrable accent. And I'm not convinced he finds our accents totally comprehensable, either. I remember my first shift back after my honeymoon last year, when Mario was still a fairly new driver. I had just settled into the operator's chair on shovel 8, getting into a groove. I heard a loud thump, which I didn't really pay much attention to. But in my peripheral vision I saw the big orange box of a rock truck much closer than you ever want to see one.
"I think he hit me!" I said to Vic, the operator. So I honked him out and got up to investigate. But Mario just pulled ahead and started reversing for a second try- right back where he was. I lay on the horn again, and call him on the radio to hold it there. He pulls up, and again the backup lights come on as he backs up again. Honnnnnkkkkk! Thinking he finally got the message, Vic and I get up and were just exiting the cab to check the damage, when here he comes one more time! I had to literally dive over the seat, grab my radio mic, where I yell into it, loud as I can "STOP! JUST STOP!" The entire minesite came to a dead stop. Turns out the damage was fairly minor, so no big deal other than a couple of tense moments.
Fast forward to six months later, and he hit me again! This time I was in shovel 10, the new one, and again, I didn't really notice (which gives you an idea of how big these machines are), I just heard a thud. Later on my subconscious kind of nudged me, and I started thinking to myself, "What was that thud, exactly?" So on the bus going home that night, I asked him, "Mario, did you run into me again today?"
Looking like a kid caught in the cookie jar, he sort of jumps, and says, "Just a little bit."
Despite his repeated attempts at crushing me beneath his 12-foot tires, Mario and I are good friends. Who couldn't love a sweet, kindly old fellow who crashes his motorcycle, comes to work wearing a red bandana beneath a skewed baseball cap, gangbanger-style, and gives me springrolls for my birthday?

What a great weekend- my friend Travis, who I've known for at least 29 years, got all married up! I was honored to be a groomsman, returning the favour he did me last year when it was my turn. He married the lovely Leila, who, among other things, is my chiropractor.
As if that wasn't excitement enough, I am holding in my hands the brand new, minted-ten-minutes-ago Seven Devil Fix CD. Michelle is sleeping, which is the only thing preventing me from playing it seven times louder than I am now. Some of you know that 7DF is Blu's and Gotthammer Mike's (who officiated at my wedding, speaking of) kickass band. You can listen to some of the tracks on their Myspace page.
Well, I'm off to the coalmine for some nightshifts. Happy birthday to me. Last year I was working nights on this day too, and actually I didn't even remember it was my birthday until like 3:30 in the morning, but it was cool because there were some pretty great Northern Lights.

Last night on Sonic, Adam Thompson mentioned that the Royal Canadian Mint is having a contest to name the polar bear on the toonie! Except, it turns out that they already have a bunch of names and all you get to do is vote. So "Son of Homie Bear", "UR-515", and "Agent H, Ultra-Top Secret Bear of Kungfu Death and Kicking Ass" are not options. Instead you have to choose between "Wilbert", "Plouf" and "Sacha", among others. On the plus side, you can enter a contest to go to Churchill, Manitoba to see polar bears.
Did you know that octopi are amazingly smart? It's true- they've been known to walk across the seafloor holding a shell over their heads for camouflage, and they are notorious for busting out of aquariums (only to drown, so . . . yeah. Smrt! ). The other thing they can do is kill sharks! I think they should have a contest to name the octopus in this video- I vote for "Agent O, Ultra-Top Secret Octopus of Kungfu Death and Kicking Ass." (For best results don't listen to the audio, it's annoying.)
Sadly, there was no such octopus watching out for the Crocodile Hunter. Here is a DeviantArt tribute to Steve Irwin:


Steve by =snapesnogger on deviantART

From A History of Robotics, Third Edition by Wei MeiDe, © 2074, 2081 Puffin Books, New York:

As we saw in the previous chapters, the Americans pioneered many of the foundational technologies that led to the rise of modern robotics. The Japanese refined and expanded on those technologies, so much so that by the early 21st century they were the world leaders in the field by a wide and inarguable margin. Thus it shocked the entire world when the first truly autonomous and sentient robot was built, not by the Japanese, the Americans or even the emerging Chinese powerhouse, but by bears.
The story is familiar to schoolchildren everywhere, so that we forget how truly singular and amazing it was when the first robot bear materialized out of the woods of the Canadian Rockies. In retrospect it is easy to villify the authorities who panicked and overreacted- the implications of which are perhaps better suited for a political science textbook than this humble history. Regardless, we now know that the UR-515 unit was initially built for a variety of purposes. It was given the capability, which long eluded its builders, of opening bear-proof garbage containers, and of using the garbage obtained therein for power. Having no need to hibernate, they were able to give bears year-round security.
Of course, its primary programming concerned scientific exploration and surveillance, as the grizzlys then were very concerned with their diminishing habitat. But as time wore on, we learned that it also possessed the more ominous ability of dealing with problem humans. Whenever such a person encroached on grizzly territory, they were targeted by a UR-515 sonic stunner, rendered unconscious, tagged with a satellite tracker (the PAN-da 2 SpySat launched from China the previous year was thought to have been created by the Chinese government but we now suspect it was built by the Wolong Sanctuary pandas. Of course their current crisis makes verification impossible) and released into the wild- usually a city hundreds of kilometers from the human's home.
It remains the holy grail of robot researchers to obtain an UR-515 for study, but we have never been able to, though there have been several ill-fated attempts to capture one. Human technology has never been able to attain the prowess of the robot bears, and perhaps never will.
It is small consolation that the bears' technological supremacy was only finally surpassed when British Colombian beavers engineered a rigorous nanotech industry.
__________________________________________

Special thanks to Shane Cheffins, the R3dEyeJedi, for doing such a great job with the robot bear you see to your right. Check out his Kraftworld site for more ninja/robot/alien goodness!

I wonder what kind of robot you could build out of a cellphone battery, an old non-wireless laptop network card, a mechanical pencil, two flashlights and a 6-volt drill without any drill bits? I bet it would be pretty cool if you could get it to work.
I could probably get some scrap metal from the mine, if you have any ideas. Not to mention all the coal you could ever need, should it be powered by coal rather that cellphone battery. Can you imagine the robot you could make out of this kind of stuff:

Nothing went right last night. And it started off so great- it was Friday, after all! All us coal miners on the bus were laughing and joking as we headed off to work for the last of our four nightshifts. Just twelve more hours and we could all go home for five days! What could ruin such a great feeling?
Let me tell you.
First, I was assigned Shovel 5, the oldest, smallest and digger in the pit. Which wasn't so bad- I figured I could set up my XM radio and be able to listen to something other than country for a change, since I would be operating rather than oiling for someone else. So the first thing I did was string up the antenna on the roof of the cab, running it through an open window, and taping it to the ceiling to prevent it from getting severed during the night. When I went to turn on the inhouse AM/FM radio (without which the satellite receiver is just a very expensvie clock)I discovered that the radio was fried. So I sighed, but said to myself, "It's Friday! Life is good!"
Life wasn't so good for long. My bucket door wouldn't stay closed. Imagine you're at a beach, trying to fill your wagon with sand using a pail with no bottom. That's kind of what I was doing last night, only instead of being at a beach, I was in a big black pit, and rather than a lil' red wagon, I was loading 260-ton dumptrucks. I was trying not to get frustrated, but I have to admit I was cursing vehemently. I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn't worth getting mad about, since it was Friday, and look! My XM radio is playing a kickass song! Too bad I can't hear it, but at least I can sing it in my head. "Dum de doo de f*&K g-d--n piece of s^!t!"
I decided it was time to be proactive. I swung the bucket around,set my brakes, grabbed a catbar, and went down to clear out all the gunk that was clogging up the dutchman. Suddenly it was pouring hail, and I was soaked in seconds. But that's okay, I was being proactive. Poking the five-foot metal bar into the ten-ton metal bucket, I was alarmed when lightning started thundering all around. I decided I would rather deal with faulty buckets than fried brains, so I went back inside.
Anyways, more trials with the bucket, including when the trip cable got stuck behind the latchbar, but you get the picture. Around midnight I decided it was time to reward myself with my carefully hoarded energy drink, since the caffeine would keep me going well into today. I took a glorious sip, set it down, and cursed (again) as I let the gravity-controlled bucket fall a little too hard, causing it to slam against the boom, pummeling poor old shovel 5. "Oops," I thought, "Better be more alert. Can't be having these little moments of inattention. I know- I'll drink some more of that sweet sweet Guarana-laced nectar." Only the bucketbomb had sent the undersized can flying out of its holder, spilling its life-giving elixir onto the greasy, coal-besooted floor.
Then I really started swearing.
Anyways, at just after the halfway point of the shift, the shovel's ability to propel inexplicably vanished, and it took the electrician the rest of the shift to fix it. Which left me with not much to do but lament my spilt caffeine. I guess it wasn't so bad after all. Hey- it's Friday and I have five days off! Isn't it Wednesday for the rest of the world? Have fun at work!

Wanderers

Max is off to his next destination. I envy him- he's just starting out, still a little innocent, but on his way to becoming a worldly and wise wanderer. Today was the first time he ever flew on an airplane! My wandering days are pretty much behind me, now that I'm a married homeowner. Sure, we'll still travel, but never again the pure "Wherever I May Roam" of thumb and backpack beneath the stars and planets, themselves celestial vagabonds whose very name is derived from the Greek word for "wanderer".
Nine years ago, when I set off on my cross-Canada hitch-hiking adventure, I was a touch naive myself. Luckily, people often went out of their way to help me out. One time I was in Ontario, the middle of nowhere, and it was getting too dark to hitch-hike. Nothing but farmers' fields all around. I thought my best bet would be to knock on a random door to ask permission to camp somewhere, rather than just be an uninvited squatter. So I knocked, and 39 dogs started yipping and barking. A man in his housecoat answered the door, and I blurted out as fast as I could, "Hi I'm hitch-hiking across Canada I'm not a psycho or an ex-con or a criminal I just need a place to set up my tent can I use your yard please????" The gentleman looked me over and decided I looked harmless enough, so he said "Why don't you use the guest house I just built? It's not quite done but there's a fireplace and room for your sleeping bag, and I can bring you out a tray of food."
It was paradise, a haven for a hungry and lonely wanderer. It was experiences like that that motivate me to take in people like Max, help them out, provide a safe place for a little while before they go back out there. Maybe I'm not a wanderer anymore, but I can look out for those who are.
So I feel for Pluto today, stripped of its "wanderer" status. But it's still up there, indifferent to our nomenclature, indifferent to all the roamers and homebodies, making its way slowly around the sun.
Anyways, here's to Max, and Pluto, and all wanderers past, present and future! May your orbits always be clear of debris! And watch out for Neptune.

Returning home from a tryst with the most beautiful woman in the world (Michelle is in Three Hills for the week for a teacher's conference), I picked up a hitch-hiker. Many of you who only know me through the blog may not realize, but back in the day I hitch-hiked clear across Canada and back. Many, many total strangers helped me out in a huge way so I make sure to repay the debt when I can to this day. So this particular hitch-hiker is a Quebecois named Max, and tomorrow he's flying up to Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. Tonight he's staying at my house, where we're watching anime, eating salmon, drinking organic wine, listening to some kickass tunes, and learning how to blog. Say hi to Max the Quebecois hitch-hiker!
In fact, he's an animator too, so check out this fantastic movie he made about a faery.
I wish they had blogging back when I was hitch-hiking across Canada. Back in those days, web-based email was a novelty, and beyond my expertise.

Rockstar: SuperFarmer

Michelle kept telling me about a reality show she thought I'd like- it had Tommy Lee and "James" Newsted and someone named Gill Gilby. Gil Gooby? Gooby Goo? Something like that- she couldn't remember his name and I couldn't think who she might be talking about from her gilbydegook (it's ex-GnR guitarist Gilby Clarke). But even though it had Jason Newsted, one of my musical gods, I didn't really pay too much attention.
Finally I let her show me some of the performances on the net, and I was impressed, and hooked. There are some pretty amazing singers on that show. My favorite is Dilana who has already become one of my musical goddesses.
Every week someone gets voted off, of course. But the bottom three get a chance to redeem themselves by singing a song of their choice.
If I was on the show, I would be the first to get the boot, since bears are not renowned for their singing voices. But I would choose "Poets" by The Tragically Hip to go out on, because it's by the best Canadian band ever, it's an instantly catchy tune that everyone loves on first listen, and it's about poets. Or so the title would lead me to believe- the brilliant lyrics aren't as clear, in typical Downian fashion:

Lava flowin' in SuperFarmer's direction
He's been gettin' reprieve from the heat in the frozen-food section, yeah

So, what song would you sing, and why?

X3 and Pirates were my only "must sees" for this year. Everything else of interest I can wait for DVD (V For Vendetta kicked much ass). Except maybe for Snakes on a Plane! I see many Oscars in its future. I believe this will open up a whole new genre so let me present to you a plot synopsis for

Bears on a Bus

A kindly old lady named Ethel (played by Trent Reznor, perhaps, or Viggo Mortenson) is on bus #9 returning to her nursing home from her grocery shopping trip. She is suffering a slow but steady descent into senility, as will be revealed in a series of heart-wrenching flashbacks throughout the movie. She tries to engage the driver in conversation, as she is very lonely, but he is gruff and eventually she gives up and just stares sadly out the window. She feels useless and forgotten.
The bus stops and three thuggish lads wearing bright neon-colored swastikas and carrying huge lumpy sacks board the bus. Ethel looks them over and doesn't like what she sees- she recognizes them as Neon-Nazis, a pernicious group of white supremacists. When they force her to move out of the seat reserved for the elderly she is disgusted, and calls them "Fascist shitheads".
Suddenly, the neon-nazis release the bears that were expertly hidden in their canvas sacks- a black bear, a grizzly and a polar bear. Chaos! The bus driver is the first to be eaten, and one of the neon-nazis takes the wheel. They deliver a sternly teutonic lecture on the supremacies of both Aryans and fascists, and most of the passengers are terrified. The bears are still causing havoc.
But Ethel stays calm. She uses some of her groceries (which will have great potential for product placement)to subdue the bears, and in the climax, smears the leader of the nazis with oatmeal and leberwurst, providing an ironic and hilarious death when the snow white polar bear devours him. Ethel says the German equivalent of "hasta la vista baby" or maybe "Is that oatmeal just right, sucka?" or possibly "Snap, you SS-wannabe shithead!" This can be rewritten to reflect the latest catchphrase- whatever a focus groups respond best to.
Ethel has a new lease on life as she starts a bear sanctuary and begins the process of rehabilitating the bears, who of course are not racist but merely victims of the Neon Reich.

Reznor, eh?

I actually thought Marilyn Manson would come up- I've always thought we had similar noses. Well, Marilyn's mentor will do.



I can't tell you how many times I've been stopped in the street and told I look exactly like Gnassinbe Eyadema. Or Posh Spice (who shows up as 53%).
Speaking of Marilyn Manson, at his concert in Vancouver a few years ago (gabrielle and I went to it) some little kid asked me if I was Dee Snider!


Anyways, you guys should give it a try and tell me who looks like you!

The response to my last entry inspired me to create a virtual anthology of whimsical sci-fi short stories for you to track down in libraries and (used) bookstores, if you so desire (most have been published many times so look in the table of contents of books called "Year's Best Sci-fi" or "Sci-Fi Hall of Fame" &c). I even came up with a soundtrack for each story! Yay!

A Martian Odyssey, Stanley G. Weinbaum. This is widely considered to be the finest sci-fi short ever written. Even after 72 years it still has the ability to astonish and delight, with characters such as Tweel, a beak-diving avian, the brick layer, and the industrious barrel people. "We are vriends!" Soundtrack- "Woodpeckers From Mars" by Faith No More.

Mimsy Were the Borogroves, Henry Kuttner and Catherine L Moore. You might recognize the title, borrowed from Jabberwocky. What happens when the blank slate of a child's developing brain is introduced to the educational toys of a far-future four dimensional geometry? Soundtrack- Anything from "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Thomas Newman.

The Nine Billion Names of God, Arthur C Clarke. Those crazy eastern monks! Always engaged in some inscrutable project or other. Here they are cataloguing all the known names of god. When they're finished, we are treated to the best last line of a short story ever. But don't peek! Soundtrack- this seems appropriate! Just click on the "listen" button.

Homefaring, Robert Silverberg. Don't let the generic title fool you- it's all about the crustacean wisdom of lobsters. One of my favorites. Soundtrack- Rock Lobster by the B-52's.

Elephants on Neptune, Mike Resnick. This is the newest story on the list, a Nebula winner from 2003. It's a sort of lament for the way humans have treated elephants over the years, but it's set on Neptune so it still counts as sci-fi. Soundtrack- White Elephant by the White Stripes. The whole album.

The Liberation of Earth, William Tenn. A hilarious commentary on the rhetoric of conquering nations (China still insists it did Tibet a favour by "liberating" her 47 years ago). Soundtrack- Bulls on Parade, Rage Against the Machine.

Blood Brother, Charles Beaumont. A newly undead vampire goes to see a shrink. "'As I understand it, you think you are a vampire.' 'No, I think I'm a human being, but I am a vampire. That's the hell of it. I can't seem to adjust.'" Dedicated to the vampirenomad. Soundtrack- Surprise! You're Dead, Faith No More.

Founding Father, J.F. Bure. If I tell you this one is about two little alien lizard guys that ride around on the backs of humans, telling them what to do, you might think I'm weird and not want to read the story. You'd be right, but you'd be missing out! Read the story! Soundtrack- Lizard King, The Doors.

Puppet Show, Fredric Brown. A common sci-fi theme is aliens come to invite us to join a galactic society. But what if the aliens are a little nervous about the reception they'll get? I love the twist ending. Soundtrack- Master of Puppets, Metallica.

Turnover, Geoffrey A. Landis. Another relatively new one (1997), I like it mainly for its comic tone. It's about a scientist and her beautiful assistant who go to Venus. Soundtrack- The Beautiful People, Marilyn Manson.

I was excited to read Endymion Spring, since the author, Matthew Skelton, grew up in Edmonton and is a fellow U of A alum. As much as I'd love to tell you that I've finally found a great YA novel that everyone can enjoy, this one didn't quite get there for me. But at least the writing wasn't too bad- not nearly as bad as some I've encountered lately. The story was just a little too . . . unexciting. Not boring exactly. Just average, I guess. My bet is that Skelton has some great books in store, so he'll be worth keeping an eye on.

I know lots of you read Young Adult fiction (which actually means children's literature). Where are the good titles? Harvey, I know you have the goods on what's going on in New Zealand and Australia, I definitely want to look into some of your recommendations. I liked Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, His Dark Materials, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and of course the classics which stand on their own (Tolkien, Lewis, even Beverly Cleary). But I didn't care for Artemis Fowl, Septimus Heap or the Edgewood Chronicles (though the beautiful art almost made up for the writing). What are you guys reading that you recommend? My criteria are first and foremost a good story, but I am also fairly discerning regarding the writing as well.

I realize a 10 or 13-year-old won't necessarily have the same standards as I regarding what makes good writing, but at the same time I think it is very unfair to give these young readers subpar writing with the attitude that it's okay because they won't know the difference. I believe it does matter- because an excellently written story will be a pleasure to read, and young readers will be motivated to seek out more great stories. Whereas a clumsily written story will be hard to read and will therefore have the opposite effect- some readers in that age group will encounter bad writing and think the difficulties they are having are their own, and hence they will be less inclined to read more. Haley-o, do you have some inside insight?

I read The Sword of Shannara in grade 4. My teacher saw me reading LOTR, and thought I would enjoy Shannara. And I did, but only because I was pretty motivated to get through it, and I was already reading at pretty close to an adult level at that point. I still remember how painful the first twenty-some pages were when the main character is just walking through the forest- a less skilled reader likely would have given up on it. By the way, I went back to that book last year to see if I could recapture the magic of youth and was appalled at how terribly written it was. No offense to Terry Brooks, I'm sure he has improved a lot in the last 25+ years since Sword was written.

Back when I worked at the SCup, I loved inventing new drinks in the blender with all the ingredients at hand. And then naming them was just as fun- the Suicide Girl was one, and gabrielle named another something like Vampirebloodjuice. Yum. Now Michelle has bought us a blender so the fun continues at home. Today I unveil my newest creation:

1 cup ice
1/2 cup cold coffee that you forgot to drink in the morning, 6 hours ago
the rest of the Smarties left over from last night
a smidge of french vanilla coffee creamer
Blend

I call it a Grossie. It tastes no good at all.

Bears Always Win?

The big gross spider was an easy victory as far as battles go. And Homie Bear has fought his share of epic battles. Or rather, his share of rhyming couplet battles. Mostly he does pretty well, vanquishing his foes, like the Witch, or Chogtwer. But as we see here, he doesn't always fare so well. This is from the archives, reprinted in full since it's been two years and many many of you are new.


Homie Bear was hunting and he caught a big fat seal
But a killer whale saw him and said that he did steal
His supper out from under him and that just wouldn't do
Homie said to the whale why don't you eat some poo
So the offended orca turned and hit him with his tail
He had never been blindsided by such a craven whale
Homie bounced off an iceberg but got back on his paws
He charged the whale full speed ahead to cut him with his claws
But the whale dodged and dove down deep into the sea
Where he soon discovered that even there he wasn't free
From a bear's vengeful wrath since Homie jumped right in
And grabbed the astonished dolphin by his dorsal fin
The ocean thrashed and bubbled from the epic battle
All the way in South America they felt a little rattle
The water churned and ice exploded as the titans clashed
They bit each other hit each other and they slashed and bashed
With a mighty heave Homie threw the whale back onto the land
Where the raging frenzied beasts prepared their final stand
Ursis maritimus and Orcinus orca, fighting to the death
The whole world seemed to pause as if holding in its breath
Then a timely interruption burst the tension like a bubble
The seal broke in and said, "You should have saved yourselves the trouble
"Fighting over me just isn't worth the pain
"Since I'll be leaving now and you will have no gain"
And then the seal swam away and left the hunters there
Neither now had a meal and they couldn't even share
The only thing that they had proved with their big ordeal
Is that in a fight between whale and bear, the winner is a seal!

Yeah, so, some pretty big words there made the rhythm suffer, but still good fun. I remember writing it in about half an hour before work one day so, you know. The only time I can recall where Homie Bear out and out loses wasn't really a fair fight.
So, who or what should Homie fight next? If there are some good suggestions I might go forth into battle once more.

* Michelle interrupts your regularly scheduled poo . . .*

EEW! EEW! EEK! EEW!



This spider was perched rather precariously above our veranda, here in suburbia. Does this look like a suburbanite to you??

What the f#@% is something like that doing here?? This is the kind of spider that created Spiderman - not the kind that a handful of Kleenex and a sturdy shoe could take care of . . .

Vampirenomad?? Rubber ducky?? Cass?? Selkie?? Ladybug & Nomi?? Digger?? Lydia?? Susa?? haley-o?? I know you have my back on this one!
EEW!! EEW!! EEW!!

But alas, my burly bear was able to quickly dispose of it before it procreated and attempted a hostage takeover of The Woods.

I just know I'm going to have creep-crawly nightmares tonight . . .

*Homie Bear here again*

Yeah so, it was Ursis Subursis versus Shelob's great-great-granddaughter. And the bear won. Bears ALWAYS win. We now leave you with this passage from Professor Tolkien:

Great horns she had, and behind her short stalklike neck was her huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between her legs; its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench. Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg's end there was a claw.
-The Two Towers

Ursis Subursis
After six months, I think I've adjusted rather well to the suburbanite life. And perhaps more importantly, the neighbours haven't yet complained about having a bear for a neighbour. Although Michelle and I spend a lot of time talking with friends about such things as the real estate market and planned home improvement projects, we still have our heads firmly floating in the clouds. We are often found reading children's books to each other, busting silly moves in the kitchen to our diverse music library, and even performing Crimestoppers Reenactments (when I was Falsely Accused of Using Her Toothbrush).
This morning Michelle asked me if I wanted anything from the mall. "Like what?" I asked, and she replied, "Something that starts with a 'B'."
"And ends with illy Talent? Yes please!" So I am happy to report to you that Billy Talent II is chock full of kickass. They're Canadian, so I don't know if you non-Canucks know of them, but they really are amazing. Kinda punky buzzsaw rock, hooks aplenty, with vocals reminiscent of Jello Biafra stripped of sarcastic whininess. (Sorry, I know he's a legend and I respect that but I have never really been a fan of Biafra.) Plus they get bonus points for taking their name from Hard Core Logo, a legendary Canadian road film about a fictional punk band, starring the Headstones' Hugh Dillon.
And I am also very happy to hear that right here in Southwest Edmonton there is a fossil bed full of Edmontosauruses and possibly their predators, Albertasaurus. How many suburbanite bears have dinosaurs for neighbours?

Does anyone remember Mighty Man and Monster Maker? I had it when I was a kid, but I forgot all about it until I read Andrew's blog. How could someone forget something as cool as that? Must be all the other great things crammed into my memory. Like, I knew someone who had this toy sand quarry. It was just a piece of cardboard covered with bubble plastic, and inside was a bunch of sand and some dumptrucks. Then you used a magnet to drive the dumptrucks around. Something like that, anyways. That's a little foggy too, partly because I would never want to forget the Master Blaster. It was an electronic game where you shot missiles at little UFO blips that shimmied their way down to earth. PSPs? PShaw!
I also really liked my little Battlestar Galactica ships that had little red plastic bits that would pop out when you shot them. Mostly, of course, I played with all my Star Wars figures. Still do!

Lakes on Titan
Interesting news coming out of the Cassini-Huygens mission- it seems the space probe is finding evidence of rivers and lakes on the Saturnine moon's surface. Obviously not bodies of water, the liquids inhabiting the basins and channels would almost certainly be methane or ethane. Scientists and sci-fi writers have speculated for years that the surface of Titan might have liquid methane present.
And from there, the obvious leap to make is to question whether life could arise in such an environment. There are copious amounts of organic chemicals on Titan, but no water or gaseous oxygen. And it's colder than death there. But as we see here on Earth, life has evolved pretty much everywhere, sometimes in places we thought anathema to life, such as oceanic vents that spew H2S. Any life on Titan would be both very simple, and very bizarre, requiring the ability to metabolize hydrocarbons.
Although, looking at the Cassini pictures, I think I see evidence of great hordes of Titan Bears fishing the methane rivers for Saturn Salmon.

My wife ran her first half-marathon today! Yay for Michelle! In the midst of the craziest hot spell ever, and on a wounded knee, she finished the race in 2 hours and 31 minutes. That's really amazing. During that same 2 hours and 31 minutes I waited in Hawrelak Park and acquainted myself with the Tim Horton's Community Van lady who was giving away Timbits and coffee for free. Yum!
Update: I went for my first run in many years tonight (Monday). I ran for seven minutes, which is 2 hours and 24 minutes short of a half marathon. But it's a start!

Looks like that silliness at work pretty much blew over. It helped that yesterday a loader caught on fire so they have something new to investigate.
Never a dull moment at a coal mine, I'll tell ya. Seriously. If it's not things blowing up or flipping over, it's the escapades of the colorful characters I work with. The stories I could tell you . . . too bad they're not really very wholesome, for the most part.
Though I did find out that one of my coworkers once raised three orphan black bear cubs, back when he was a kid in Manitoba. I asked him about them, and he told me, in a wistfully nostalgic tone of voice, "dey're just like 'umans, dem fuckin' t'ings."

Yesterday, this topheavy, poorly designed service truck

wound up upside down. Luckily, the untrained guy who was driving it was unhurt.
Today, they came and tried to blame me for the incident, since I was driving this water truck:

This unit exists for dust control- it lays down water on our 23 km haul road to keep the dust at bay. It's a laughably impossible job on a hot summer day, but we at least make the attempt. Anyways, their thought process went something like this:
"Service truck upside down! Must be slippery! Must be Homie Bear's fault!"
They asked me to fill out a statement, and although I used all the details and technical jargon that won't mean anything to you, my statement basically said "I was doing my job, I was 15 kms away at the time of the incident, therefore it wasn't my fault you dumbasses." We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Pirate Month: The Kraken Strikes Back!

Dead Man's Chest was good fun, a great middle chapter of a trilogy. So long as Pirates 3 doesn't have ewoks, we should be okay! But to tell the truth, ole Homie Bear likes ewoks. Little forest cousins, I call them. Did you know that Lucas was once sued by someone who claimed he stole the Ewok idea? If I recall correctly, that guy was from Calgary but I could be wrong. The internet is strangely silent on the subject. Lucas' defense was that ewoks were simply half-wookies, and he even took the name by rearranging the word wookie. More cynical observers may have remarked that he should have pled guilty just so he could saddle the blame on someone else! Sadly, no one has yet claimed that Lucas stole JarJar Binks.
You may think I am indulging in some weird, non-piratical digression here but actually it segues into this item about how the producers of POTC are being sued for allegedly stealing the idea for everything from supernatural pirates to the name "Black Pearl". I have no idea how much merit there is to this suit, but I think it would be so sweet if Bruckheimer et al's defense consisted of just one word:
Pirate!

At work, I have the option of listening to:

a) Classic rock from Edmonton
b) Classic rock from Vancouver
c) Hot country from Edmonton
d) Classic country from Calgary

I have lobbied repeatedly to get one of the stations changed to Sonic (since we pipe them in via satellite to our remote wilderness location), but I have been told this is "impossible". No one has been able to clarify whether this means:

a) It is physically impossible, due to obscure technical reasons pertaining to kilohertzes and megawatts.
b) It is legally impossible, due to the CRTC's draconian rules
c) It is simply impossible, where "impossible" is defined as "I don't really feel like changing it."

Last night I had occasion to make the following observations about country music:

a) Surely there are more than four classic country songs????
b) Convoy may be the strangest song ever written
c) Country covers of rock songs are, excepting Johnny Cash, generally very terrible. The slogan of the Discount Country Cover Warehouse is "We take tired old classic rock songs and render them even more limpid through the application of liberal amounts of twang, autoharp and group harmonies, and then removing the melody!"
d) Country music is still better than Howard Stern

The solution to this woeful musical situation is to come home to your wife and find that she has loaded the CD player with:

a) Bif Naked
b) Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Soundtrack (lovely jazz from the gabrielle collection!)
c) Selkie's Non-Country Cover Mix
d) KoRn

Anyways, here is a fun, musical meme started by Rolling Stone- Terrible Songs on Great Albums. Mine are:

a) The Tragically Hip's Day For Night actually has three terrible songs (IMO), that ruin the beautiful diad of "Scared" and "Titanic Terrarium". Those songs are, um, tracks 11,12 and 14. But the rest of the CD is beyond exceptional.
b) Metallica, Reload- "Attitude". Ruining the amazingly atmospheric diad of "Low Man's Lyric" and "Fixxxer" by sticking a generic rocker in between.
c) KoRn, Follow the Leader, "All in the Family". It's a sorta funny battle song, but it gets a little too over the top for me, and again, disrupts the mood of the disc. And it has Fred Durst, so . . .
d) Beck, from Guero- "Missing". Not really terrible, but I tend to skip it to get to all the other fantastic tracks. It lacks the genius of the other tracks.

We're back from our First Year Anniversary Moon! We went on a road trip, driving down the Rockies to Southern Alberta. We camped in Jasper where we stoically endured a crazy booming thunderstorm all night. Michelle was a little worried, but I kept thinking about how Karen Ellis would render such an adventure. Here is my attempt at a Planet Karen homage- which taxed my drawing skills pretty much to their limit. Plus I took some artistic licence, which probably means my licence should be revoked:




You see why I leave cartooning to people like Karen.
Anyway, we had a pretty nice time, we survived the deluge. And we saw a black bear with two cubs! So cute. But dangerous, always remember that, kids. Some more pics here if you're interested.
Now I have to go work nightshift. Pirates will have to wait till next week.

Celebrating One Year!



And looking forward to many many more.

Pirate Month: Blackbeard, Buccaneers and Bristol!

This month's National Geographic is, as always, a treasure trove- not only does it have panda bears, it also has an article on Blackbeard's sunken ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. You can explore the wreck and history online.
Although little is known about Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, it is thought he was originally from Bristol. Since I just read Treasure Island, I know Long John Silver and the crew of the Hispaniola hailed from Bristol also. According to my dA friend Andy Council, a modern day Bristolian buccaneer, the "arrr yarr" pirate lingo is probably derived from the Bristol accent. That may be the case. All I knew about Bristol prior to Pirate Month was that Andy rendered it as a giant animated dinosaur! And also a wee baby one (non-animated)! Arrr rarr!
And it turns out the artist behind the pirate bear you see to your right, Karen Ellis, is from Bristol, too, which makes at least two artistic geniuses and two pirates from one city. Wow. Oh yeah and Bristol also has a giant robot sculpture named WEEE!
Makes me want to move to such a piratical paradise.

One of the best things about our house is the veranda. I've been getting a lot of mileage out of it, or actually non-mileage since I just sit there, immobile. The sun doesn't set till almost 11PM in Edmonton in June, so it's nice to sit outside and read and watch the world go by. That Boilerplate Rhino book is so good at stimulating my thinking that I keep a notebook handy while reading. Which allowed me to take a poetic snapshot of an actual event that happened earlier this evening:

Reading on my veranda
a small girl walks by
pulling her wagon
in which sits a Care Bear
Cute, I think, and also:
They still make Care Bears?
She stops
walks back to the Care Bear
and lays it down snug
Then she walks back
to the front
of the wagon
picks up the handle
and runs like hell
Moments later her dad
zooms past
running even faster
and though he is only concerned
for her safety
I find myself cheering
for the girl
I hope she
and her wagon
and her Care Bear
make their getaway

I hope you enjoyed that- it was very funny to watch. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get back to pirates. For some reason the pirate bear has been intermittently appearing and disappearing today, hopefully that gets resolved soon- the place looks bare without him. I prefer it when it looks bear.

Snails n' Spiders n' Stuff
I'm reading The Boilerplate Rhino, by David Quammen, which is a collection of columns he did for Outside Magazine over the years. It's full of fascinating facts about the natural world. I never knew that a male snail's reproductive organ is a long, flexible tube extending from its head! Try not to think about that as you watch this almost criminally cute and hilarious Flash cartoon called David's New Snail.
Spiders also have strange reproductive organs, but spiders are just too gross to talk about. Spider-Man is not gross, though, and the trailer for Spidey 3 is out! Venomlicious!
If you happened to pick up the National Post today, you will have seen the article that pits Superman against Spider-man and Batman and Wonder Woman. It was illustrated by Andrew Barr, who was kind enough to post the illos on his blog. You'll be happy to know, Selkie, that Wonder Woman comes out ahead in the aricle, though it seems to be by virtue of her sex appeal. Which is admittedly much higher than a snail's.

Being a heavy equipment operator, I occasionally wrestle with the temptation to operate the machines in ways they were never designed to be operated. Whether or not I succumb, and in what ways, I will leave to your imagination, more for my own protection than yours.
It seems the engineers at JCB have had similar thoughts, and so they built the world's only drag-racing, wheel-standing backhoe! We saw it at the IHRA races on Friday. Pretty cool. It was my first time ever to the drag races- Michelle goes every year with her Dad, so I joined them this year. Crazy. And really, really, really loud. Very loud.
This was the weekend for Loud, since Michelle joined me for her first-ever arena rock concert- System of a Down. Kickass! Disorder! Sugar! Aerials! But sadly, no banana banana banana banana banana banana banana banana terracotta pie.
(Speaking of kickass, the greatest metal album of all time, Master Of Puppets, is 20 years old this year! Wow. To celebrate, Metallica recently performed the entire album on a tour in Europe!)

Pirate Month: Rhyming and Stealing
A poem about pirates! The seeds for this poem were originally planted three years ago when PotC first came out, and I just never got around to writing it till yesterday- it was surprisingly hard to figure out the best way to write it. Not sure if I hit the nail on the head but I'm happy with it.

The Pyrite Pirates
Arrr! Cap’n o’ the Midas’ Revenge be I
Doomed to sail the seven seas till I die
Which might be this day if I don’t get my say
N’ if my bilge-sucking mates instead get their way
Aye, bucko, ‘tis true, that I, Fearsome Stu
Must now contend with a mutinous crew
“By thunder!” they cry, “We can’t help but wonder
“If not for your blunder would we still have some plunder?
“ ‘Twas you that pilfered that mermaid’s purse
“Bringing upon us the mermaid’s curse!
“So now walk the plank, n’ join Davey Jones
“Where the fishes n’ squids can chew on your bones!”
“Me hearties!” say I, “Pray let me reply
“Before you condemn your poor Captain to die
“Aye I admit, that down in our hold
“All of our booty has been turned to Fool’s Gold
“But my dear pigeon Pauly don’t care about carats
“He only wants to be changed back to a parrot
“That mermaid’s magic turned everything fake
“But we’re men n’ we’re pirates! We steal n’ we take!
“I mean, shiver me timbers! It could ha’ been worse
“We could ha’ been hexed with a Dead Man’s Curse
“So come, buccaneers, let’s put bygones aside
“Weigh anchor n’ hoist Jolly Rodney with pride!”
I could see that me words had stirred their black hearts
I would escape with me life and all o’ me parts
“Arrr!” roared me mates, “You’re still Fearsome Stu
“N’ we be your crew n’ we’ll always stay true!”
I stepped off o' the plank on to the poop deck
I thanked me smooth tongue for saving me neck
“Now scurvy dogs, ahoy and avast
“Sing me our shanty while we sail real fast-
“Yo ho ho and a bottle of juice
“The Pyrite Pirates are on the loose!”


Bonus booty to anyone who gets the joke embedded in the Captain's name. And mermaid's purses really exist!

Blog Tips #3: Favicons
I've dried my tears, shaved my playoff beard, and I'm ready to move on, after just one more thing:

Thank You Oilers! You kick ass!

Alright. I have another easy tip for sprucing up your template today (June 12 for previous tips). See how Homie Bear's head shows up in your address bar? And if you were so kind as to bookmark Pooing in the Woods, you would get the same icon in your bookmark menu (they're called "favicons", which is a dumb word, but Decepticon was already taken). All you need to achieve this effect is one line of code, as well as an appropriately sized icon which you can make pretty easily- make sure it's 16X16 pixels. Upload the icon to your image host, and then insert this line into your template after the title tag:
{link rel="shortcut icon" href="URL of your icon here" }
where the squiggly brackets are replaced with < >'s.
Easy, eh? It's actually a little more complicated, since IE wants an .ico file rather than a .jpg or .gif, but as long as you're using Firefox or anything other than Explorer (and you really should be!) you'll be alright.
Give it a try and let me know if it worked or if you need help.

Third Period- Last Game of the Playoffs, Too
I hereby appoint Stompin' Tom Connors an honorary pirate! What a great day- I have the next 13 days off. The only downside is that my first day back to work is also my and Michelle's first anniversary. D'oh! So the timing is a little wonky, but at least I have today off for the ultimate in hockey. Game 6 was beyond beautiful- it was perfection. Tonight will be more of the same and Oil will once more fill the Stanley Cup.
I always feel a little wonky myself after a stint at the ol' coal mine, so today is all about relaxing, listening to my new CDs* and reading Treasure Island out on the veranda. Oh yeah and hockey!
Anyway, here's a funny bear story Michelle sent me.
*Have you gotten the Angels and Airwaves CD yet? Do yourself a favour, seriously. When I heard blink-182 was on indefinite hiatus (ie breaking up), I was really sad because their last album was amazing, showing a lot of growth and evolution as artists (their self-titled disc, not the greatest hits). But now I suspect it was Tom DeLonge doing the growing since We Don't Need To Whisper is another step in the direction of the last blink disc.
And the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs is great. Karen O kicks yo' ass! They get honorary pirate status too for writing a song called Honeybear.

Here are some pirate games, like this one- Puzzle Pirates. Or Dogs of the Sea. I think you need an account to play them.
Did you know there isn't a pirate-themed Munchkin? That seems like an oversight. Rectify it, Munchy makers! Or walk the plank!
My favorite pirate game is where I pretend I'm a pirate all day at work. My foreman loves it when I load some coal on a truck and get on the radio and say, "Arr matey, the treasure map was true! Black gold by the ton! Quickly now, take yer booty and flee to the high seas- we shall slit these scurvy soundrels' throats and keep all the coal for ourselves!! Avast!"
What does avast mean?
Oh yeah and check out Planet Karen's June 6 entry, where she chronicles the creation of the mighty pirate bear.
Game 6 tomorrow! Go Oilers Go!

Pirate Month: Pirate Hall of Fame
So who be your favorite pirate, matey? Captain Jack Sparrow gets my vote, no surprise there. But there are some other greats out there in pirate lore. How about Captain Hook? I finally saw the movie Hook last night, my interest in all things Peter Pan piqued by the great play Michelle and I went to last week. (Interesting Hook trivia: Band of Brothers' James Madio plays the Lost Boy known as Too Small. He's just wee!) Captain Hook is suitably vile and despicable, worthy of the name pirate.
Then there's the real-life buccaneer, Blackbeard. Arrrr!
Roberto Clemente was truly a great Pirate and humanitarian who died too young.
Oh yeah and then there were the X-Men's space pirate buddies, the Starjammers!
Cap'n Crunch is a pirate too, isn't he?
Did I miss anyone?

Pirate Month!
Arrrr! It be Pirate Month here at Pooing in the Woods! But I promise not to talk like a pirate for the whole month. Maybe just part of it, matey! Of all the movies coming out this year the one I'm most excited about is The Lake House Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. So for the next month there will be a decidedly piratey feel here, starting with the excellent pirate bear you see to your right. It was drawn for me by Karen Ellis of Planet Karen. Now, it just so happens that she is available for commissions, so if you read my tutorial yesterday and were looking for an artist to make you some great art, Karen can definitely hook you up like Captain Hook. You can contact her via her blog, which is a superb diary in comic form. Even if you don't want to commission her, you should go to her blog, bookmark it, and vote for her. Seriously. May 20th's entry finds her on a pirate ship. Arrrr!
Come back often for whole treasure chests full of piratey goodness- lotsa lootin' and plunderin' and rhymin' and stealin'!

Since my Do's and Do Not Do's of Blogging were so popular, I'll continue the series, and share more bloggy wisdom. Remember, these aren't laws, just advice.

Today let's focus on your template. There are millions of blogs, but only about six templates. And four of them are ugly. Personalize yours! While a fancy template won't make your content any better, it will help set you apart from other bloggers. There are easy ways to tweak it that don't require much html or CSS skills.
The first is color. Go into your template, and you will find a bunch of instructions for the colors of your text and background like this: color: #xxxxxx. The six digit code is called the hexadecimal value, and can be changed to anything you like. Here is a hex chart. Experiment, but try not to damage your eyes! Dark text on a light background is best. Make it easy on your readers- if it hurts, we won't read it.
You can also add a banner like Gotthammer's, or a picture, like my bears (made for me by Sarah How). So make something, or commission if you lack artistic talent. Don't steal. That's rude and illegal, even if no one will throw you in jail. Next, upload to an image hosting site. Although I like Flickr, their terms of use don't allow their bandwidth used for webpage elements. But Photobucket allows it.
Alright, now grab its URL (right click and choose "Copy image location") and insert it into this html tag: (img src="URL of image here") where the "( )" are replaced with "< >". Usually. In CSS you use round brackets . . . and getting it to appear where you want is tricky, too. Uh, rather than try to explain it, since every case is different, I recommend this CSS tutorial, or this one. Troubles? If you're nice I'll help you.
Or you can browse the free templates offered at BlogSkins, but this doesn't really personalize your template, just makes it slightly less common than the blogger stock.
Alright, that's all for today! Have fun!

Last week I saw my first bear of the season coming home from work- a black bear, I'd say three years old. And this morning driving home to Edmonton Dad and I saw a younger black bear hanging around the Yellowhead (east of Hinton- a first in my experience) with a little more curiosity than was healthy, so I pulled up to her and then honked my horn, sending her scurrying into the bushes. Not because I am mean, you guys know me better than that. Rather I was hoping to encourage a negative association with highways, cars and people. Better to frighten her a bit than have her end up run over or shot.
Anyways, it's been a good weekend for bears in the news. First we have the bear who was scared into a tree by a kitty cat. *What?* Cats can be scary. Sort of. Watch this video of housecats on the prowl and you'll see.
Then we have this photo of an orphaned polar bear cub in Siberia.
And, uh, somewhere out there in that world wide web, there's a new webcam for Pandas in Wolong sanctuary. But I can't find it just now.

6/6/6
With Roli the Goalie out for the series, it certainly feels like the end of the world. But the Oilers will still win the Cup- in 6 or 7 rather than 4. Thus saith the Messianic Cult Leader Who Promotes Violence, who has survived one Apoocalypse already.
If for some reason you can't bear to watch Game 2 tomorrow night, and if you're not working nightshift like I will be, you can go the new incarnation of the Sidetrack and watch the suitably apoocalyptic Seven Devil Fix open up for Jets To Theory. Did you know 7DF just recorded their second CD? Should be out by fall.
And if today really was the Apoocalypse, I would expect to see a lot more 5-foot long scorpions walking around, like they had back in the Carboniferous Period.
June 6, of course, has a more serious significance, being the anniversary of D-Day.

I'm not sure that I've ever seen Disney's Peter Pan. Maybe once, when I was little. And I never saw Finding Neverland, or Hook. Just a weird little oversight more than an intentional boycott. So when the Citadel's production of Peter Pan got rave reviews, and a casual mention by Michelle, it didn't really register. At first, anyways. Luckily my subconscious brain is a little quicker on the uptake and it sent me the message that casual mentions by Michelle=good advice. So we went to Peter Pan last night and it was astonishing. All of you who live here in Edmonton, you have until June 11th to go see it, so waste no time! Make haste! Arduously strive to secure tickets to this play! You won't regret it, even though it's expensive. This play has everything- amazing sets, special effects, good acting, pirates, a crocodile, a fairy, and little children who fly. Yeah, and pirates! Captain Hook was killer.
For those of you not in Edmonton, well, you can watch the Pirates of the Caribbean trailer. Pirates are good! Arrrr!

Do you remember when kd lang threatened to sue the Rolling Stones for having a song that sounded too much like Constant Craving? The Stones gave her a songwriting credit on Anybody Seen By Baby to avoid the hassles and embarrassment. Anybody Heard That Song?
Now it is Tom Petty who is (supposedly) threatening to sue the Chilli Peppers for Dani California. Apparently it is too similar to Mary Jane's Last Dance. Which I don't really hear at all, musically. If anything, the Chillis are ripping off themselves, since the lyrics are sorta similar to Around The World. And whatever- their new double album Stadium Arcadium is my favorite disc of the year so far- two CDs of kickassage.
Hasn't Petty been on the other side of this coin before? I like his music, or lots of it anyways, but . . . maybe he should just leave this one alone.

From Mary Jane's Last Dance:

She grew up in an Indiana town,
Had a good-lookin' mama who never was around.
But she grew up tall and she grew up right
With them Indiana boys on them Indiana nights

From Dani California:

Black bandana, sweet Louisiana
Robbin'a bank in the state of Indiana
She's a runner, rebel and a stunner
On her merry way saying baby what you gonna

See, Mary Jane grew up right. Dani, on the other hand, was a bank robber.