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



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

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



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

.Cuttlefish. by *Andoledius on deviantART

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

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

More Mandalore:


Clone Wars by ~panoramacon on deviantART

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

Happy Life Day!






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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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



PS- Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!

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



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

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



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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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


You can make one too- here's how.

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most . . . Illogical



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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Canada Day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Longest Day of the Year
The sun was already up when my alarm rang at 4:58 AM. I finally arrived home in Edmonton a few minutes before 11PM, just as the last few milliphotons of nonlasering sunlight dipped below the horizon. I love the solstice.
And at least it wasn't the longest day of the year in the other sense of the word. Just another dayshift. Oh yeah and I got to help put out another fire at work today. A backhoe this time and really there wasn't much in the way of flames by the time I got there.

Did you know that Mars has a naturally occurring laser? Yeah, it's kind of crazy, but true. The details are pretty technical, which is another way of saying I don't understand it myself. It has to do with photons and protons. Next time someone is boring you to death with personal details about their financial debt load, just say, "Yeah, but on Mars there's a natural laser. I'm working on developing one for myself."
And if you want to experience Mars-like conditions for the next year and a half, just volunteer with the European Space Agency and they can hook you up.
Personally, I am more interested in experiencing QueenCharlotteIslands-like conditions later this summer when Michelle and I go on holidays.

Some of the things that are exciting to me this week:
-new White Stripes! Too bad I couldn't get tickets to the show, but if you have some you don't want just let me know. I'm even willing to go to the Whitehorse, Yellowknife or Iqaluit shows.
-new purple froggy! Well, they call it a toad but it looks like a species of poison dart frog to me. Too bad Michelle won't let me get one, but if you have one you need to get rid of, just let me know.
-new black running hat. So I don't overheat while running. My wife didn't just let me get it, she bought it for me! yay! On Canada Day I will be running my first race, just a little 5 k one. But I'm excited.
How about you- what are you excited about these days?
PS- turns out Ashley MacIsaac and Jack White are distantly related so Ashley will open for the White Stripes for at least the Eastern leg of their Canadian tour (Which I will also accept tickets for).

This is why I need a digital SLR:

My trusty little Fujifilm 3 megapixel just isn't the best camera to have when you come across a wolf chowing down on a deer. Or a grizz. Though to be fair I doubt I would bring a $1200 camera to the coal mine with me. Here's some video of haul trucks I took last night with same. Note the snow. In June.

Last month Lloyd Alexander passed away at the age of 83. So I went back and read The Prydain Chronicles for the first time in over twenty years. My Grandma, an elementary school librarian, was always giving me these fantastic books to read, starting with The Hobbit when I was ten. But I think her favorites were Alexander's tales of Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper. Rereading them as an adult I'm pleased to say they retain their magic, unlike some of the books I read back then (excuse me I have to sneeze, ah-ah-shannara!) They have a real sense of humour to go with the typical heroic quest themes of this type of fantasy.
Some of the unforgettable characters you'll meet are Fflewddur Fflam, the wannabe bard with the lie-detecting harp. The photo of Alexander above is pretty much how I imagine Fflewddur.
Gurgi, a vaguely-described creature of epic loyalty and appetite, if not brains. I think he is a sort of hominid, maybe an unknown variant of australopithecine.
Then there's Doli, the grumpy old dwarf who discovers that turning invisible is not all it's cracked up to be.
And of course, Taran and Eilonwy, the assistant pig-keeper and the girl he loves.
Disney made an animated movie of The Black Cauldron but I've never seen it. I don't think it's available on DVD, actually- it didn't do too well, possibly because it was rated PG rather than G. Funny how that makes a difference.

What could be better than Johnny Cash performing with Emmylou Harris? The answer is nothing in the entire universe. (Though the second song is perhaps best left in the 70s with such things as the original Battlestar Galactica and disco.)

And for more Emmylou edification, try Prayer In Open D, from her tour with Spyboy which I was lucky enough to attend, way back in I think 1995. I went alone since no one I knew had heard of her. I also love her cover of Leonard Cohen's Prayer For A Cowgirl. The "video" is kinda cheesy so just listen. And this live double shot features her own songs "The Pearl" and "Red Dirt Girl".

Part of the genius of Star Wars was how much was going on in the background, not part of the story but contributing to it nonetheless. Like the huge skeleton in Tatooine's desert. Threepio and Artoo walk right by, not even noticing, yet it made you feel that this was an alien world with its own history and biology. That's why I love the mystery of this photo out of Newfoundland:

What is it? How old is it? Maybe it was a walrus, eaten by a polar bear. Or a narwhal trapped in the ice. It might even be some prehistoric creature preserved for millenia. Who knows? And we'll likely never know, as the iceberg is floating and melting away, indifferent to our curiosity. Which is kind of how I prefer it, actually.
(Full story here.)

I dreamt that I was back at university doing a research paper on architecture and Faith No More. Even in the dream I had trouble finding any kind of useful citations.
Anyways, I got to thinking (yeah I was bored at work today) about some of the architecture I've seen in my travels, and how it relates to Faith No More. For no extra credit, here are my findings:


Potala Palace- Edge of the World


(Not my photo) Guggenheim Museum- As The Worm Turns


Christchurch Cathedral- Epic


The Petronas Towers- Woodpeckers From Mars

In Colby Cosh's newly comment-enabled blog I tried to start a small discussion about cultural differences between Americans and us Canucks. It seems an American thought the new Shreddies marketing campaign was only funny if you're Canadian. (And another Yank thought it was nice of us to have Spanish on our cereal boxes, having never, apparently, been exposed to French before.) Anyway, not much got going there but it reminded me of a conversation I had at work the other night with a buddy who has been buying some real estate south of the border. Make sure you imagine his portion of the dialogue with his Jamaican accent.
Me: Arizona, eh? It's pretty nice down there.
B: You shoulda seen the guy I saw on his Harley. Driving down the highway with two guns strapped to his waist.
Me: Whoa. Crazy.
B: And NO HELMET!


Anyways, the Pirate Bear Karen Ellis drew for me is back because Michelle and I are off to see PotC3 after she gets home from work.

Last night was a gong show. Seriously. I kept checking the moon to see if it was full but it wasn't. How else to explain the three drunken/crazy/suicidal teenagers who jumped in front of my moving haul truck in the middle of the night when I'm least expecting it? They were dancing or cavorting like the beasts in Where the Wild Things Are. Weird, but at least I didn't turn them into pancakes. Later I myself was nearly turned into a pancake when one of these:

tried passing me and had to swerve out of the way of another one of those so he cut me right off in the little cable reeler I was running. If I hadn'ta veered . . . Later he pulled over to offer what I thought would be a heartfelt apology but it turned out he really just wanted to explain why the whole situation was my fault. Me: No, I'm sticking to my guns on this one. You shouldn't have passed me. Him: Yeah but I'm much more important than you so you should have got out of the way. Me: So, I'm guessing you're not going to apologize.
And the reason I was in the cable reeler in the first place was because another coworker, who I will affectionately refer to as Ten Tons of Moron, hit a shovel cable with his backhoe bucket and shorted out the entire pit, meaning me and my buddy Robin had to fix everything up for him. And that's a whole process and comedy of errors which would take ten paragaphs to properly explain.
The frustrating thing was, if it wasn't for Ten Tons of Moron's screw-up (#36 of an ongoing series, btw) it would have been a pretty good shift. My Dad, who has worked out there at that mine since I was ten months old- 32 years- finally tendered his resignation so I wanted to go and visit him for a while on his last shift, but I never got a chance. But I know he understands- over the last couple of decades he's had to fix more than a few of TToM's mistakes himself.

Star Wars is 30 years old this week. They're having a big party/convention in LA to honor the venerable old movie- Celebration IV it's called. Lots of great artists will be there exhibiting SW-based prints, like this one from Grant Gould:

Star Wars Celebration IV Print by *grantgoboom on deviantART

And plus there will be all sorts of original sketch cards available, wish I could get some of these, like the ones by Otis Frampton, whose work I love:


Star Wars 30th 2 by *OtisFrampton on deviantART

So if you happen to be going this week, say hi to Chewie and pick me up some of those cards! The rest of us can read Bear Wars, the epic tale of how Homie Bear got caught up in the SW universe once.

My third musical recommendation this week comes courtesy of some of my work buddies. If you like didgeridoos and singing voices reminiscent of Paul Simon, than Aussie Xavier Rudd is for you! Not only does he play the didge, he also plays harmonica and kick drum and guitar and probably other instruments as well, usually several at once.
You can listen to one of his best-known tunes, Let Me Be.
Looks like he's got a new CD coming out soon, I looked into ordering it but the international shipping costs, and then having to pay duty on top of that made me think I'll just buy it at HMV.

Another recent musical discovery I made (thanks to late night CKUA at work) is Ridley Bent, a Canadian singer/songwriter/guitar player who blends acoustic country with hip hop beats and rhymes. He calls it hick hop. From Suisidewinder, which you can hear on his site:

I'm Johnny Cash when I'm drinkin', I'm the Clash when I'm thinkin' I'm Mad Max when I'm drivin', I'm Mike Diamond when I'm rhymin' I'm Humphrey Bogart when I'm smokin', I'm Bob Marley when I'm tokin And in bed when I'm dreamin' I'm a guitar slingin' demon

It was last week or maybe two weeks ago, I was reading an article about cover songs when I first heard of Amy Winehouse. The article (written by Sandra Sperounes in the Edmonton Journal if I recall) asked some musicians not who they would cover, but who they would want to cover them. Good question! Anyways, a couple of them mentioned Amy Winehouse. And after that her name just kept popping up all over the place so I headed over to YouTube to see what she was like. Whoa! I think you should do the same, or go to her website.
If I ever wrote a song, though, I would want Emmylou Harris to cover it. Or maybe Cookie Monster, since I regularly cover his signature tune, "C is for Cookie".

Michelle's school is putting on a production of Les Mis this week, we caught the matinee (how can I make a french e with an accent?) and I was really impressed. That's an ambitious musical to perform for a professional troupe, let alone some high school students. And I have to say it was nice to walk in on Michelle's grade 7 class and have them remember me and start shouting out the details of my story that I read to them, waaay back in September. They wanted me to make up another story for them on the spot but I was literally saved by the bell.
And now, in true Victor Hugo fashion, I will completely change the subject and ramble on about something altogether unrelated for a while.
NASA put on a Regolith Excavation Challenge, in which the object was to design a machine for digging Lunar regolith. The rules were fairly straightforward- it had to be less than 40 kilos, totally autonomous and had to dig 150 kilos (330 lbs) of regolith in a half hour. No one won. At first I was a little surprised by that- I mean I can dig over 80 tons- 160,000 lbs- in one scoop, not even a minute. How hard would it be to design a little miniature shovel or loader that could do the scale equivalent? But I guess the point is to develop something lightweight enough to be economically feasible to send to the moon, that can work in a vacuum, under radiation and micrometeorite bombardment. And it has to be a robot.
But still. Next year they're offering $750,000. How much you figure it would cost to build something?

(Flickr)
Due to the Labour Shortage (that's right- capitalized like a force of nature- Labour Shortage Larry!) I often find myself doing several jobs at once. It can be a pain in the butt sometimes. I remember one night I drove the pit bus, went back and got the pump truck to do some pump stuff, moved the cable stands, then had to go on the water truck, then relieved the shovel operator while he had to go down and write an incident report, then back on pumps, then I did some loader training, then . . . But over the course of a 12 hour shift there's lots of times to do stuff and being busy helps it go by faster. Last night was a new one though- I was written in on the lineup sheet twice, in two different jobs (neither one my own). "Do I get paid twice?" I asked.
"No."
"Oh. Well, I can do two jobs half-assed or I can do one job with my whole ass, which would you prefer?"
So I wound up doing three jobs with, I suppose, one third of an ass each.

Some Random Roman Stuff
I finished watching Season 1 of HBO's Rome tonight(hey gabrielle, what does HBO stand for?)- and though I kind of knew how it would end, historically anyways, it was still a helluva ride. I feel like Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo are old friends, and I loved watching their Forrest Gump-like journey through the rise and fall of Gaius Julius Caesar. Especially the second-last episode, if you've seen it you know what I mean. Ooh- and their encounter with Cleopatra! Classic, if not exactly true to the classics.
And I have to send another shout out to Avatar the Last Airbender. For a kids' show it's surprisingly well written and engaging. I just watched the episode with the hippie nomads. Hilarious.
Check out my new desktop background. Kind of Avatary in a way, crossed with Crouching Tiger. But not Forrest Gump.
That's all for me, I'm heading to work tomorrow. Did you know I put more videos on my YouTube from work? It's true. Like this one:


One more thing- the new Marilyn Manson video can be found here- but it's not safe for work.

Okay, so Spidey 3, though it had its moments, wasn't amazing. But that's alright. For the truly amazing all you have to do is turn to real life, which never runs out of innovative ways to surprise and astonish. Have you ever heard of Attila Ambrus? I hadn't, and I even spent a few days in Budapest in his heyday. Luckily for us, author Julian Rubinstein was paying attention and wrote a book about his exploits. It's called Ballad of the Whiskey Robber, and it's about a Transylvanian who defected to Hungary, became the unpaid backup goalie of a professional hockey team in Budapest, and made his money by robbing banks and post offices. He was very good at it, and was known for his thoroughness, his politeness (even once giving a cashier flowers), and his penchant for whiskey. When he was finally caught he confessed to everything, but then decided it would be best if he broke out of jail, so he did.
That's just the broad strokes. You should read the book to truly appreciate the story of Attila Ambrus and the cast of colorful characters that lived in the outlaw days of post-communist Hungary.
Attila never killed anyone's uncle or turned into living sand, but his story is far more amazing than any onscreen burglar, I'll tell you that much.

Taking a break from Venom week to bring you some important Panserbjorn news:



That is all.
Oh yeah and May the Fourth be with you. (Thanks Kimdianna, ever since I heard you say that it's my new favorite day!)

I found another Venom for you, which I think is one of my favorites so far- it catches a certain insane, coming-undone quality which suits the character.

It's by a Deviant known as EuphoriouSin so go take a look at his gallery, he's got some pretty interesting pieces.
I also found a cool pop culture blog that's having a Spider-Man week, check it out: Blogzarro.

Happy Miner's Day! Instead of being a miner and going to work like I was supposed to today, I get to celebrate by staying home and NOT mining! I like how that works.
Here's what you can get me for Miner's Day this year- a Venom Vinyl teddy bear! Actually, I don't want one, I just thought it was funny.
And in continuing with the tradition I started last year, here are some examples of Miner's Day cards you can send to the miners in your life:
"You're Such a Blast!"
"You may be a miner but to me you're major."
"Roses are red and coal is black
as coal miners go you're ahead of the pack!"