Have you ever heard of High Dynamic Range photography? The first couple of times I saw an HDR photo I was kind of blown away without really knowing why. Then they got to be kind of all the same, a bit. Maybe a little fake. Plus I am not really a big believer in heavily editing photos with software, I like to see what I can achieve in-camera. Although I am marginally open to the idea in the future, for now it is a photography blindspot for me. Here's a Flickr group devoted to HDR to give you an idea of what it is. Gizmodo posted a pretty cool HDR motion capture video, though. I used to have a little 3 megapixel FujiFilm camera, a Finepix, and that camera took some amazing shots for whatever reason. None of these photos were altered in any way by me- they came out of the camera like that:



I suppose the foregrounds would be a little better exposed if I edited them for HDR, but I like them fine. Spooky, Halloweenish. I took them at work one day many years ago now.

Then there's what I am going to call the Unapologetic Pop Culture Hellyeahs for those things that all the hipsters and everyone else but you turn their noses up at but you love. I got tons of those. Tons! Exhibit A: Load and ReLoad by Metallica. In fact, Metallica in general. No longer the cutting edge of cool that they were a mere 20 years ago, but I will never give up on Jaymz and the boys. Hellyeah! In fact I still listen to all those 90s thrash and death metal bands almost every day...
Exhibit B: Star Wars. Even the prequels, mostly. Childhood nostalgia goes a long way.
ElfQuest, and other 80s comics. Again, nostalgia trumps goodness! I'd mention modern comics too but no one really turns their noses up at them anymore. Not like in the good old days...
So You Think You Can Dance- most reality or competition shows fly under my radar but Michelle got me into the SYTYCD- some years I watch, some I don't, but there's some amazing dancing going on. The Canadian version was recently cancelled and all I can say about that is I hope Tre Armstrong lands on her feet.

Plus: Avengers Trailer!

James Bond came up at dinner last night and once again I was forced to admit that I have never been much for James Bond. It's what the Pop Culture Happy Hour folks would call a pop culture blind spot, except when they discuss blind spots, they mean they're open to them, just that they've never really gotten around to them before. Me, no real desire to get into Bond, James Bond. Shaken, not stirred and all that. Maybe the Daniel Craig ones but they're hardly new so if it was important to me I would have done it before now. In high school I had many a geeky argument over why I just wasn't into Bond, preferring guys like Indiana Jones. Bond was sophisticated, rich and cultured- probably the type to use an Oxford comma like I just didn't. Indy wasn't any of those things and I sure as hell wasn't either! If not shaving's good enough for Indy it's good enough for me goddammit. And so forth.
Other Pop Culture Blind Spots- Twilight. No surprise there, and I'm not the target demographic so no one gets hurt over that one.
Arcade Fire- Michelle and I both are marginally open to them, supporting Canadian (mostly) music and all, but so far we don't really get it.
Dexter was one but we just started watching the first season and are suitably hooked so cross that one off the list.
If I had a reliable commenting system I would invite you to share yours but for some reason comments only show up in Safari. Or Firefox? Oh yeah Safari.

Happy Thanksgiving!  Right now I'm feeling thankful that the Oilers have a perfect record, and hopeful that we'll still be able to say that for a week or so.
This morning we ran a 5 km Turkey Trot down the road by the rec center. Pretty good run, one killer hill at the end but we did alright. I think my time was in the 28:30 range, not bad for pushing a stroller with both girls. I know I was the first stroller roller to cross the line, anyways, for which I won a DQ gift card. Truthfully the gift card was a random draw I think but I choose to see it as the First Prize for my category of Old Guys Pushing Young Kids. Me and Pallas even had a cheer we made up for us:
Run so fast!
Kick some ass!
Come in last!

We went for a walk in the river valley today, and I didn't bring my camera which is a shame since it was a beautiful day. Pallas loves the forest, she is forever saying she's going to the forest to find her father, which apparently she learned from Beauty and the Beast. But here's a good photo of Naia:

There was an article in a Sports Illustrated, circa 1994, in which the writer related an anecdote about a guy named Joe Schitz. Seems Mr. Schitz got so tired of his name that he legally changed it. To Frank. Now no one would ask him "Whaddyaknow Joe?"
Last night at supper with some friends we were reading an article about Steve Jobs, seven things you never knew about him or something, and I impressed them by knowing stuff like his Syrian dad and who Joan Baez was and how to say Wozniak. It's not like I explained how transistors and resistors circuitly electrify with ohms to make an iPad work or anything like that, since obviously I can't. Anyways this got me thinking. What do I know?

Here's what I know about what I know.

Some of what I know is wrong. Too bad I don't know what. My wrong knowledge can come to me from an erroneous source- ie what I was taught was wrong to begin with. Or the knowledge changes over time- we were taught Pluto was a planet but now they teach us it is a dwarf planet (though we know better don't we precious?) Or our brain can fail us and "save" the info incorrectly. I was so sure Crockett's car in Miami Vice was a Testarossa- I could even recall the cheese grating in the opening credits, but my Dad, who knows cars but his pop culture fu is spotty at best, told me it was a Ferrari Daytona 365. No way!  Way! We argued and bet and then I owed him money. Though just now as a I googled it I see he DID drive a Testarossa after the Spyder was blown up in Season 3. I want my money back!

Much of what I know I've forgotten. At one time I used to know calculus and crystallography and what all the guts of a shark were, among other things, but now I don't.

None of what I know is not already known by google. Unless it's personal experiences and stuff like that I suppose. And the internet has been known to be wrong on occasion... So what's the point in acquiring knowledge when all the known knowledge of the entire world is at our fingertips (or Siri query)? I don't know!  Google it. Nah. I just like being smrt, even if all my knowledge is thoroughly useless. Like the fact that there was a joke in a magazine 17 years ago that would make an excellent intro to this little minimeditation. That's something google can't do for you- associate and correlate and bring it on home, from the top!

Sometimes you just need to go to Cracked.com and read some of their lists- like this one- 5 Absurd Ways Comic Books Have Resurrected Dead Superheroes.

Here's a video from the cab of my loader I took at work today, I just taped the camera to the dash while I loaded. So not all that riveting, but you get an idea what my day is like. Except it's more so. Oh yreah, nothing much happens for the first 1:30, and then nothing too much happens after that but at least it's different nothing than the first minute of nothing.

New Feist today! Sweet. Does anyone buy physical CDs anymore? Do you? Why or why not? I pretty much go with iTunes now, phased out on the discs without even really noticing I was doing it. It's the convenience mostly, and the price. If the disc was 9.99 I'd get it, then you'd have a copy for the car or if your computer and Airport Extreme get stolen/melted in a fire or whatever. I still buy books even though I intend to go with iPad versions one of these days. Once I clear my pile. That I keep adding to.

That's more like it- back on my truck today with my regular crew. Easy day, had some minor issues with my truck so I helped the mechanic out a bit and took some pictures from inside the box, somewhere I'd never been. Trippy, see?



Also here is what you see when I pass you.

Oh right I hate pumps! But I like getting paid double, so I went to work today on overtime as a pumpman. I figured it wouldn't be too bad, but it was rianing/snowing all day and there was mud and flooding and all that stuff I hate. One road was so flooded the water was up over the exhaust pipe and the truck made a funny gurgling sound and then died shortly after. Then a backhoe dropped a Godwin pump three times. But it still ran. They're tough, what the hell.  Nice thing? I was the third banana on the pump crew today, plus there's a contractor outfit taking care of one pit, so it wasn't all on me like in the old days. And now that it's over, it wasn't so bad. The paycheck will take away the sting anyways.

October already? Sweet! Too bad there's a pumpkin shortage in Alberta this year, I have some pretty good ideas for jack o' lanterns this time around.

It was an astronomical week at work this time around. Not because of anything work-related, though. Just lots of Northern Lights. Little spears of green light thrown by Pallas Athena from her perch up on Olympus. And one night there was the craziest meteor, a lot of us thought it was leftover debris from that satellite that fell to Earth- it was super-bright and gave off sparks, and about halfway through its arc, it turned green. I know Alberta doesn't have much credibility after that Okotoks Twitter Hoax but that's what I saw.
Otherwise work was nice and quiet, I just drove my truck and listened to many podcasts. If you have time, definitely check out this episode of DNTO, at least for the stories told by Jack Tueller, a WWII pilot and trumpet player. They also post to a YouTubeo of him, very very cool.
Thanks to my new friends at NPR's Monkeysee (and the related podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour), I checked out The Tobolowsky Files. Everyone knows Stephen Tobolowsky but you just didn't know his name. He's that guy from that show you like. Seriously. Turns out he's also a fantastic story-teller. Sorry about the obnoxious ads on that website, I just get all my podcasts from iTunes but I dunno how to hyperlink there. One last amazing podcast- the most recent episode of This American Life. If you get them the week they're posted they're free (and you can listen online for free too) so just go listen right now- it's this crazy (true) story about a P.I. agency staffed by soccer moms headed by a guy who starts to dabble in some extracurricular activities...
My drive home from Hinton this morning featured not strange astronomical phenomenon, but strange roadkill- a fox and a cougar, though not together. I've only ever seen one live cougar in the wild and it's sad that now I've seen an equal amount of dead ones.

My friend JimSmash sent me some Hulk comics! Sweet! Me like Hulk. One of them was this classic from 1977. Spoiler alert- the unexpected super-villain is none other than Bi-Beast! Yup, the clone robot thing with the dual nature (plus he has two faces on his head) that was made by some bird-people on a floating island somewhere. I was a little hesitant to google him but it turns out he isn't as obscure as I might have thought, and even cameoed on a relatively recent episode of Avengers:Earth's Mightiest Heroes. It says so  on his Wikipedia page.

My dad and I went for another ride yesterday, possibly the last of the season but hopefully not. We decided to go to the Brazeau Dam, just to see. Why not? When I was a kid we went to see the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington. That one was a little more impressive.

It's the late Jim Henson's 75th birthday! Lots of love for him all over the net, from the Googlelogo to announcemnts of Henson-related graphic novels (Dark Crystal!  Yeah!) and this video of the Muppet song by OK Go (to be fair it wasn't strictly for his 75th but whatever). Pallas liked it as much as I did.

 Happy Hobbit Day! Hobbit Day, of course, being the birthdays of both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, who were born on September 22, 2890 and 2968 (Third Age) respectively.
Did you know Alberta's own Evangeline Lilly is appearing in The Hobbit as the Elf Tauriel, a role created for the film. She was my favorite thing about Lost, well her, and that hobbit.

I owe Pallas five bucks. We were upstairs playing while Michelle was making supper. Then there was a vacuum sound and Pallas asked what it was. "Mommy's vacuuming." "No. That's not!" "Yes, sweety, that's the vacuum cleaner." "Mommy's not vacuuming! She's not!" And we then had a protracted argument, which I thought I would end by saying, "Yes it is, I'll bet you five bucks." She answered by saying something about 6:35 which is her favourite number for some reason and then we went downstairs for supper. And Michelle was not vacuuming anything, it was our neighbour doing something outside. So I guess I owe her $6.35.

Anyways. Always with the tinkering. Facebook. George Lucas. Even Blogger. Why? To make something better? Not if you ask all 8 billion Facebook users, or the remaining 8 Star Wars fans. George Lucas has never held the Star Wars universe in the same esteem as his fans- for him it's always been about developing new technology to do cool things and making money while doing it. That's not even a cynical criticism by me- I love Star Wars and always will because he can't go back and tinker with my childhood- it's just a widely-accepted reading of the ample history available on how Star Wars came to be. It's also pretty commonly held that Lucas's strengths aren't in the "people skills" category. He makes neat stuff but doesn't always understand or seem to care why others like it or dislike it.
Mark Zuckerberg has never held Facebook in the same esteem as its users- for him it's always been about developing new technology to do cool things and making money while doing it. A common reaction to the howls of rage that accompanied the new(est) Facebook was along the lines of "no one's forcing you to use this free service that you enjoy". True enough, though I would argue that Facebook isn't free- just the costs are hidden and indirect. It's a $50 billion company for a reason, and that reason is not to give you more enjoyment. Does Zuckerberg and co care that you dislike the new Facebook? I doubt it, they never cared before all the times they changed it. Zuckerberg's strengths aren't in the "people skills" category. He makes neat stuff but doesn't always understand or seem to care why others like it or dislike it- and there still isn't a "dislike" button on Facebook.
Though you can always, like Vader, scream "Nooooooooo!"

Vacation over. My only regret is that I didn't take more. And that I didn't discover any perfectly preserved dinosaur feathers like these guys did. I hardly ever discover any dinosaur bones of any kind, and I live in a province chock full of dino bones. Every now and then we find some clam-type fossils at work, not even brachiopods which are supercool, just normal old clams. Is it too much to ask for a trilobite every now and then? Yes I understand the basics of biostratigraphy and all that. Still. Look at this crazy guy. It's like a long wormy trilobite.

There's so many calories in that cake that it may spontaneously explode. Your computer. But it's so yummy! So yeah, I had a pretty good birthday. Actually it was pretty quiet, all rainy outside so we stayed in and watched movies and read. X-Men First Class was fantastic.
The girls picked me out some gifts, and then Pallas told me, "Thanks for the birthday presents daddy!"

Here you go.

So I'm an uncle now! I have a niece. Yay!
Other than that, still on holidays. Weather's great. Alberta Beach isn't. Reading lots. Watching some shows. True Blood is goofy as ever but still a lot of fun. Rewtching BSG a bit, that first miniseries is good but the acting and filming aren't as great yet as they will be. Started watching LOTR during my workouts- the first time since I got back from New Zealand almost 7 years ago. Crazy. It's cool to recognize some of the scenery from having been there, and also I have a guidebook with coordinates so I can look up other places on Google Earth if I want to. First I would have to download Google Earth I suppose. Remember this place?


Pretty sure they reused it for The Hobbit.
Also, I have a niece!

Finally went to see the chiropractor today. He expressed a fair bit of dismay over the state of my back and neck, which I thought was pretty much all healed up. He could tell it wasn't, and then did unkind things to them, hopefully not as punishment. Now I kind of feel worser than before. But I still ran my 10 km, goldurnit.

Finished reading Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream by Jason Fagone. It was recommended by Christopher McDougall in that book I read last week. Pretty much the opposite of that book, in a way, but just as interesting. Funny, crazy, kind of alarming. It's all about the competitive eaters, whose major league webpage can be found here. I considered looking up some YouTubeos of eating contests but then I thought better of it. Besides my YouTube is about to burn out from all the Elmo videos we've been watching. At least Pallas can identify Feist by sight now, and thinks Katy Perry is a princess.

Somehow I was able to snag a vacation here in the most coveted bloc of the year. Actually, even though I have somehow accrued enough seniority to be one of the seniorer guys on my crew, I forgot to put in my requisition slips in time and was left with the dregs. But who's laughing now? The best week of the summer is upon us, and everyone else is going back to school leaving us free to wreak havoc at our leisure. And little secret- it's my birthday soonly. Haha! Evil plan complete. But thus far no actual havoc wreaked. However I was able to do a full workout today, almost completely healed up after my moto-mishap of not even two weeks ago. Even Wolverine wants to know my secret. And the secret is cale. Or possibly chia seeds. Maybe whey protein or even just the blueberries. Smoothies, anyways. Liquid healing factor. Enjoy a Game of Thrones funny sent to me by my friend Sarah. You know what's weird? New and improved Blogger somehow doesn't have the ability to make separate paragraphs. Seems like a step backwards to me.

Went for a short ride today, it was so much fun. I was a little nervous about spontaneously falling off again, like maybe I caught Wipeoutitis and was doomed to forever suck at motorcycling. So that's good. That I didn't.
Now for the home stretch of A Dance With Dragons. Spoiler alert- George RR Martin really really dug Avengers #9.
One time I was reading an old issue of ROM Spaceknight (I think) and there was a fan letter from Kurt Busiek (I think). Here's a good mission for you- see if you can dig up the old comic that has a letter from me in its letters page. Give up? I was only fooling!

NIghtshift sometimes is pretty cool. (Other times, not so much.)

I'm still working on A Dance With Dragons. After four or five weeks I am only about 750 pages in or so. It's not that I don't like it, it's that I like to savor things and also we keep getting all these great books from the library that have to be read within a certain amount of time. Such as:

Manhood For Amateurs, Michael Chabon: pretty much brilliant, just a bunch of loosely connected essays about his life, and being a dad, and being a man, and being a geek. I wonder why I related so much. There was even one essay that opened with his great love for Big Barda, a superheroine I had never heard of till I met her at the Calgary Con and then saw her all over the place.

Then I read two books by Sesame Street Muppeteers- Carrol Spinney who plays Big Bird and Kevin Clash who performs Elmo. I learned about them from two different podcasts, so that was weird, sorta like running into Big Barda everywhere 35 years after her brief moment in the sun. Great books, especially the Elmo one, actually. Kind of autobiographical but also made me realize how important Sesame Street is and so I have Pallas watching much more Youtubeos of Elmo. Him and India Arie doing the ABCs is pretty good. Me: India is pretty, eh?

Pallas: Yeah! Mommy, India is pretty!

Michelle: Who else is pretty?

Pallas: Me!

Silver Surfer: Requiem is one of the best comics stuffs I've read lately. Especially since I had no idea it was about what it was about. I really like J. Michael Straczynski's stuff.

The best book I've read lately is Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall. Michelle found it in a bookstore one time and showed it to me, but even though I'm a runner I kind of put it back on the shelf, thinking that reading about running sounds like even less fun than actually running. Luckily she read it and kept reading me all these astonishing highlights that I had to give it a try. It's awesome the way books like Into Thin Air and Klondike are awesome, full of amazing feats and real-life characters that would seem too over the top if you put them in a novel. I'm not quite done it, so every few minutes I turn to Michelle and say I'm gonna throw away my shoes and go barefoot, and she keeps telling me to finish the book before I go entering any ultramarathons. Today was actually a run day for me but due to inexplicable soreness on the side of my body I fell on when I crashed my bike, I decided not to.

Did you ever see that movie One Week? Most likely not as it was a Canadian Indie about motorcycles and cancer. Anyways, the guy has cancer so he buys a bike and rides across Canada to sort things out in his head. There's one scene where he's driving along and alla sudden he's in the ditch. Or maybe there was a very good reason he crashed, I don't recall exactly. Well, a similar thing happened to me today. Except it was a corner I came on a little too fast and didn't really handle it too well. I'm okay, mostly, and so is the bike, mostly. It's even uglier now but at least the scars on it are my own and not the previous owners' doing. If only that one burger joint had been open in that one town we were in, it wouldn't have happened. Well, nothing you can do now, at least in the sense of changing what happened. What you can do is control how you go forward, right? I've given it some thought though I might need some more time to process it, it's kind of surprising how many different and weird emotions and reactions I'm having.
The first thing you can do, obviously, is get up. For some reason it was really important that I jump up immediately, as if in doing so I would guarantee that I hadn't been hurt. My Dad didn't see it happen so I had a few minutes to pick the bike up and try to get it back on the road, though I wound up needing his help to do so.
Then you have to get back on the bike, assuming it will still run. Mine did. Did I take corners a little more slowly on the way home? Yeah, but nothing wrong with that.
The rest is mental, as so much of life is, and here's some thoughts I tried, and mostly succeeded, to believe:
-yeah I crashed but I'm so badass I got right back on it and kept riding.
-it coulda been a lot worse and it wasn't so chalk one up to luck (both good and bad I guess) and be better next time

If it had been my bobber I think I would have cried. And threw up. Poor little EX 500!

So I did a kind of cosplay yesterday, we went to a supernaturally themed costume party. We been catching up on True Blood Season 3 (we just finished it tonight in fact) so what better than dressing up as Sookie and Lafayette? Especially since, with two weeks notice, going as Daenerys and Khal Drogo wasn't really all that feasible . . .although that would have been pretty kickass. Michelle would have to really amp up her weight training though if she wanted to pass as the Dothraki horselord. And of course I don't have long silvery gold hair. Hmm.
Anyways. Sookie was easy enough, though a little expensive as we had to order the t-shirt and apron with the official Merlotte's logo from the States, and pay extra to have it expedited here in time.For Lafayette you have a little more leeway, just have to wear something suitably loud, a necklace and jangly ear-ring and a do-rag. And eyeshadow and nail polish, of course. Nothing a quick trip to wal-mart can't provide. I had to get a kindly old lady to help me with the eye shadow- I pointed at a picture of a model wearing some and said, "What's that stuff around her eyes? I need some of that!"

So the race we ran this morning was called Iron Mama, and it was pretty cool since it was a lot of Moms and their kids. And four dads! I was one of them. Also Batman was there, encouraging you to enter to win. It was fun, and in support of a good cause, famine relief for Africa. We ran it pretty fast, too, so we wondered if it was really a full 5km- but no one was complaining too much. Last night when Michelle told Pallas we were running this race, and that she and her sister would ride in the stroller while Daddy pushed them, she said "Maybe Pallas race too!" How can you say no to that? There actually was a kids' race, though we were under the impression it was a 1km run, so we didn't go in it. BUt it was just a fun there and back again sorta thing and Pallas totally coulda run it. Anyways after the race Pallas said it was her turn so we let her out and I ran with her for a bit, she was pretty happy with that.



After that I went for another motorcycle ride with my Dad, so pretty much a perfect day!

Good news! I figured out Bluetooth, so I can finally get all the pictures off my little cellphone. But the even more better news is I went out for a ride with my motorcycle gang today, which consists of myself the Homie Bear, Uncle B (the B stands for Badass) and uh, Big Papa. We showed how many rat's asses we just don't give by staying a shade under the speed limit the whole time! Another reason for doing so is technically I still don't have a motorcycle licence. Rat's asses I just don't give, I'm telling you! It's still legal for me to ride since my class 5 counts as a learner's so long as I'm in the protective care of my posse. And leave all my guns at home.
Anyways, all joking aside I just have to say how so so so fun it was. So fun. We rode about 200 kms, just going around some of the backroads a bit and then home on the highway. Big Papa found a killer deal on a Kawasaki EX 500 that was a little banged up from being dropped once or twice- it used to be a motorcycle school bike, but it runs great. Perfect for me to get some experience on.
My friend Robin, who also got the motorcycle bug from Big Papa, now has three bikes- a bobber like the one I'm building only his is done and runs, a small Honda for his wife and a new Triumph. HIs wife is totally into it,and we were discussing the possibility that Michelle might someday want to ride. I said it wasn't going to happen, srsly. Robin said, "She probably doesn't want a bike because she loves life."
"Yeah, that's basically why, in a nutshell. Living is nice."
"But I would argue that is the very reason she should get a bike."

You know what's fun? Running. Except that it's really actually not, no matter how much I try to tell myself it is. What's fun is being in shape and the knowledge that yes, I can run 10 kms without trying too terribly hard. There's also, I admit, a small degree of satisfaction in knowing that in all likelihood, you can not. Not to get too cocky though, there are tons and tons of people from children to senior citizens who run marathons and would use my laughably elephantine gait as a lesson in how not to do it.
Perhaps in an attempt to make running even more fun, I've noticed a proliferation of themed runs. A few years ago, Michelle and I ran a 5k race whose theme was, uh, cops and robbers or something. We were the only ones who dressed up! This year there's a run in support of mountain gorillas and other great apes where everyone is supposed to run in a gorilla suit! Remind me to register for that one. But the best one I've seen so far is this one in Baltimore (roughly a million miles from here) called Run For Your Lives, where you have to evade zombies while you run. Ooh! More locations coming soon. What better than one in Deadmonton?
(via Bonniegrrl)

Back to work today, but it was a really good day (for being at work) since I listened to a whole ton of podcasts and before I knew it the day was all done! Probably the most interesting one was an episode of NPR's This American Life about a bunch of prison inmates who put on a production of Hamlet. Mostly I'm a CBC podcasty kind of guy, but lately I been branching out to NPR for a little variety- I also really like Pop Culture Happy Hour, which is all about nerding out.
And I couldn't wait to get home to check out Wookiee the Chew, especially fitting because of our Winnie the Pooh outing earlier this week. That from another geeky podcast, the name of which I forget. I'll have to show this one to Pallas when I get home, since she loves Pooh Bear and she loves animated Star Wars stuff, Star Wars Gangsta Rap being her current favorite cartoon. I kind of wonder what sort of twisted version of Star Wars she's building in her head, since I haven't shown her the actual movies yet. She just really really loves Boba Fett (she always makes me Boba Fett tea, it's bountylicious!) and I think she will be devastated to learn that not only is he not the main character, when he does finally show up about an hour into the second movie, he's a bad guy. Who meets a stupidly silly end in the first hour of the third movie. She'll have to learn the truth some day. As Hamlet might say,

I must be cruel, only to be kind:
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind

This might not be totally appropriate but since it's entirely innocent, I'm gonna blog it anyways. Where else can I preserve these memories?
So I'm on the potty today, and Pallas opens the door and announces, " daddy has a penis!" and then in a sweet little voice asks, " May I come in?" That's how Michelle has been teaching her to ask, and she is so good at copying inflections and tones that she sounded so grownup it was hilarious.
This is better than what she used to do, barge in and say, "Dat's Daddy's vagina!"
It's not a vagina I would kind of gruffly say. Than I would hear from the kitchen, "Tell her what it's really called!"
I suppose I could just learn to lock the door when I'm doing my business.

We were finally able to take Pallas to her very first movie today, Winnie the Pooh. She loved it, and cried at the end. Not because it has a sad ending, but because she wanted "more dat movie" and we had to tell her you only get to watch it once. We also brought Naia, for reasons of logistics. Logistics, obviously, being very important when you have two little ones. Originally we were gonna drop Naia off at a friend's and take Pallas by herself. Our friend's schedule dictated that we would have had to go to a 1:00 or 2:00 show, which, logistically, was less than ideal because Pallas would miss her nap and who wants to have a grumpy child at a movie theater? Then again, with two children, the chances of having an unsatisfied theatre-goer more than doubles, it like, hundredifies. So we chose a 5 PM showing, figuring the theatre would be mostly empty and we were right, there was another couple of kids and we all agreed to just not sweat it if anyone cried. So success! For the most part.
The movie itself was alright. Now, I understand that I am not the target audience of such a film- my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter is. BUt even so I had pretty high expectations- only because I really enjoyed The Tigger Movie, which I thought was clever and had a good story with good action and even some rich emotional content. Srsly! I'm being serious. So I assumed this movie would be on the same level, and though it was totally fine and Pallas liked it, I was surprised there wasn't more to it- the Quest for the Tail and the introduction of a perfectly acceptable, if imaginary, antagonist made me think there would be. More to it, I mean. Oh well. You don't really wanna go the whole Spike Jonze route either, though imagine if the Backson had been the manifestation of a debilitating illness afflicting Christopher Robin in the real word, just like all the Pooh Bears and Tiggers are stuffed animals in his real life . . . anyways. Pallas liked it!

So. Wicked. MIchelle loved it and that was the main thing. And I didn't mind it- some funny parts. The sets were pretty good, the singing was . . . Broadwayey, but impressive in its way. Yeah. I loved Elphaba. The flying monkeys were a bit of a letdown, as I suppose all non-actual monkeys have to be. You know who did a really wonderful Wizard of Oz adaptation? Marvel Comics! Eric Shanower did the writing chores and the great Skottie Young arted it. Here are some of the covers he did for it. It won some Eisner Awards, which are handed out every year at SDCC. Hey, isn't SDCC going on right this minute?? Why yes! In fact you could go see Skottie Young at table 4601.
I actually finally gave in and joined Twitter today, just so I could follow pretty much anyone who's at SDCC. The second hand highlights of Day 1- Dave Filoni promised ScubaTroopers in Season 4 of Clone Wars! There's a Game of Thrones pedicab with the Iron Throne for the seat! Someone said 7000 people were unable to get seats for the Game of Thrones panel??

We're going to Wicked tonight. I'm half excited and half not excited, which I guess should cancel each other out to make me completely neutral on the subject. Here's the thing- I really liked Gregory maguire's book, the language was rich and it was a cool idea, the Wicked Witch of the West's life story. But the direction he went in was perhaps a little bit- okay a lottle bit- not where I would have taken it. And then the two sequels were not my cup of tea at all.
On top of that, I'm not sure if I've ever really mentioned it, but Broadway music is at the top of my list, the very very top, of types of music I cannot handle. However Michelle came with me to Slipknot and System of a Down (twice!) so I definitely owe her that one, and without a single complaint either.
On the plus side, though, who doesn't love a beautiful green-skinned woman? Plus there's flying monkeys! Flying monkeys!
In other news, San Diego Comic Con starts tonight, Preview Night. Can't believe it's been a year since we went already. Well, this year I can't go, but in a vicarious sense, I'm already there. I'll be checking blogs and Flickr photostreams and maybe even Twitter feeds all weekend. Here's one to start with, and please let me know if you have any.

Back from yet another week of work. As always, there were many ninja attacks, zombie apocalypses and alien invasions, but we dealt with them all. Plus I saw a squirrel.
Anyways. Remember how Jon Favreau was going to direct the Princess of Mars movie but decided to do Iron Man instead? That worked out pretty good, especially since they went ahead and made John Carter of Mars without him.
Remember how Peter Jackson was going to direct The Hobbit but then Guillermo del Toro was going to but then Peter Jackson did anyways? This past week has seen a bunch of official photos of the Dwarves! Pallas's favorite is Sneezy.

So we went to the Chapters Harry Potter party tonight it was really fun. Pallas enjoyed it, though she really didn't know what was going on. She got some candy and was sorted into Slytherin House, and waited for the Hogwarts Express and was even thrown into Azkaban! Stupefying. Also she sat in the Teacup of . . . uh, Horcruxes? Oh yeah and I got A Dance of Dragons. Sweet! Michelle got a cookbook, which doesn't sound that exciting but they are like comic books to her. If there was a San Diego Cooking Con she would want to go!

I had every intention of rereading all seven Harry Potter books before the movie came out, but plainly that's not gonna happen. Although I guess we can wait a year or two before we see it right Michelle? Tomorrow night at all the Chapters stores they're having a sort of release party or whatnot, I think we will bring Pallas, she doesn't know who Harry Potter is but I'm sure there will be people dressed up and that's always fun. Plus A Dance With Dragons is finally finally out today, so we'll have to pick it up right?
THis weekend another movie opens, and actually I am far more excited for it- Winnie the Pooh. We decided this would be Pallas' first movie we would take her to see at the theater. She just loves Pooh Bear. I let her watch the trailer, and she's started imitating Tigger when he comes on and does his Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo! She does it pretty good. And she says "Oh bother" when Pooh says it. My own first movie ever was Star Wars, of course, and life has never quite been the same for me.

I haven't posted about work much lately, mostly because work is the last thing I really want to think about. Here's some photos though:





Lately I've been spending most of my time actually doing my own job, driving Kress truck. So not too much exciting stories, just listening to a lot of music and podcasts. Which suits me fine. I had one night on pumps a couple of weeks ago which was a good reminder (not that I need one) that I made the right move to bid off of that job.

Been catching up on some reading.
John Scalzi recently released a reboot of the H Beam Piper classic, Little Fuzzy. I love that old book, must have read it three or four times. So when Scalzi, whose other books I love, got the nod to tackle the reboot, well that'd be like if JJ Abrams or someone got to reboot Star Trek. His version is called Fuzzy Nation. My girls got me the book for Father's Day (along with China Mieville's newest, Embassytown) and I read it in two days. You should read it- but first you should read Little Fuzzy. It's charming and fun but also has a great twist at the end, which Scalzi wisely incorporates but doesn't use as a twist.
I tried and tried to figure out the identity of the Red Hulk, and fastidiously avoided spoilers on the net, but in the end I was defeated by trickery. Well, if they hadn't employed a bit of the tricksy stuff it would've been too easy, and the tricks were perfectly legit tricks within the Marvel Universe, so I guess. But I wonder how many 8 year-olds got it.
Full disclosure: I've never smoked crack or even been idly tempted to try it. But I heard Christopher Shulgan on a DNTO podcast talk about his misadventures with crack while his newborn son was ... new. So I had to read his book, Superdad. Wow. Crazy. Here's a guy who's a year older than me, grew up in a small Canadian town then moved to a city. New dad. Pretty much exactly the same demographic. It would be easy to say the only difference between us is he has a problem with drugs and I don't. But what I found so interesting about the book is it's also a fairly deep examination of his concepts of manhood and fatherhood- ie, in his eyes, the two are mutually exclusive. While I was reading I thought "well his dad must have been a nightmare and that's how we have such different ideas here" and then it turns out he named his son after his dad since his dad is the greatest man he knows. Okay so,we also have that in common- my dad also is the greatest man I know. Well, I thought, obviously he didn't read nearly enough superhero comics or watch enough Star Wars when he was a kid, because if he did, then he would have had good role models to teach him how a man should be. Turns out he blames Harrison Ford for all his problems! Wow, did I see Han Solo and Indy differently than he did. Well, he worked it out and wrote the book, but I won't spoil it for you- this whole post has been spoiler free! Because real men don't ruin things for others.

Here's the artworks I commissioned at the Calgary Expo:

A couple of years ago, Fiona Staples drew me this Star Wars sketch at Free Comic Book Day, so I thought I would get a companion piece, and she chose Aurra Sing:



And remember when the Hulk went to Sakaar and got married? HIs wife's name was Caiera. David Joyce drew her for me:



And Drake Tsui did this Harley Quinn for me, all Arkham Asylumed up:

Uploading the photos now... might be a while. It was a good weekend. I'm glad I went all three days- Friday was great because it wasn't busy at all, so you could go and actually talk to artists and merchants at their tables. Saturday was way busier, but still not San Diego crazy, so that's not so bad. Michelle enjoyed the panels but walking the floor really isn't her thing, so we didn't stay too long. Especailly since the Alberta Browncoats were all out of Jayne toques- they were knitting more on the fly! I got her one the next day- in fact, the very last one, she tweeted so as she sold it to me. Sunday there was a roller derby game put on by the Calgary Roller Derby Association, super heroes vs zombies. Everyone won! Sunday, of course, is the day all the dealers try to get rid of their inventory so they don't have to carry it back with them, so I got some good deals on comics and graphic novels. A Longshot hardcover! And many others. Had to make a couple of trips to my car, as I was having trouble managing everything and taking photos too. Here's some:

I'm in Calgary for the Comic Expo, it's been good so far. Last night was nice to wander and talk to artists without such a big crowd. Today was our traditional Battlestar Galactica panel, this time Michael Hogan and Kate Vernon were the guests, and it was great. We did a rousing bunch of " So say we alls" to end. And Summer Glau had a panel after, she was really sweet.
I have lots of great photots of cosplayers of course, but those will have to wait till ibget back to my computer to upload them, I'm on my iPad right now. Hence all the typos.

I took a basic motorcycle rider training course this weekend, it was pretty fun even though it was just riding around on 125 cc bikes, mostly very slowly round and round! I got to take a CBR 125 out on the street, that was surprisingly zippy. I'd spent most of the weekend on a Marauder, which is a cruiser with forward controls, my bike has forward controls so I wanted to get used to it. Then it was time for the road ride and I hopped on the CBR, so it was a little different but all good. I'm a little nervous about taking my test for my licence!

Art day! Fanart Friday you could say. I drew "Bobbo bott"at Pallas's request. Drawing has never been my strong suit that's for sure!

This morning as were waiting for some friends to come over for a visit, I asked Michelle what time it was. Pallas piped up out of nowhere and said "It's 6:35!" It was quarter to eleven but still I was blown away. Where did she come up with that?
Anyways now seems like a perfect opportunity to share wth you one of my all-time favorite songs ever, Got The Time by Anthrax. It's a Joe Jackson cover, and even though it's 20 years old now (wow when did that happen?) it still stands up. Even if the mullets don't. Check out the bass solo at about 1:45. Sweet. Or, as we said back then, umm, what did we say back then? Gnarly. Radical. Bitchin'. Tubular. And so forth. Oh yeah- Wicked! Speaking of which, our Wicked tickets came in the mail today. Turns out the strike starts tonight rather than last night. Tubular!

It looks like Canada Post is set to strike in a few minutes. I was a little worried that my Calgary Comics Expo passes might get lost in the shuffle, but they arrived today. Yay! We also have tickets for Wicked in July but hopefully everything will be worked out before then. And anyways it's not like we don't have alternatives to getting tickets in the mail.
I just finished reading Joss Whedon's entire run of Astonishing X-Men. It was good. Pure Whedon so lots of brilliance sprinkled throughout. I've also read a whole mess of Avengers comics, kind of whatever the library has for me. Mighty Avengers of course, but also Avengers Initiative (training camp for Avengers), Secret Avengers (no one knows about them cause they're secret), Dark Avengers (run by Norman Osborn, they're secretly all psychos and criminals), New Avengers (a slightly better name than Shiny Avengers, but they were opposing the Dark Avengers) and of course, Ultimate Avengers, which are the Avengers in the Ultimate Universe, though keep in mind that the classic Avengers in the Ultimate Universe are called the Ultimates. So the Avengers are some other guys.
I tease, but really I enjoy them all. But reading them whenever I get them from the library means I read them all out of order and stuff so it can be a little confusing at times. But the gist is easy enough, whenever bad guys try to take over the world, the Avengers Assemble! I wonder how Whedon's Avengers movie is going to be. He said it was gonna be good at Comic Con.

I have the best daughters ever!

Pallas informed she wanted to watch the "bobbow bott" movie this morning. My Boba Fett bobble head has been a favorite toy of hers since she was just wee. See? But as much as I can't wait to share Star Wars with her, I didn't want to disappoint her, she has a hard time watching movies when her favorite character is not onscreen. Sleeping Beuaty takes forever before "Pincess Aueya" shows up, and then she (Aurora, not Pallas) falls asleep for the rest of the movie. Boba Fett is only in Empire Strikes Back for what, three minutes total screen time? Patience, young Padawan. You will see the greatest movie of all time, many times. Just not yet.
What else. I shaved my head last week, figured there was no sense in pretending I still had a full head of hair any more. I know big changes like that can be hard for a two-yo to absorb, so I told her before hand that I was gonna cut my hair just like Uncle Bee. (My brother-in-law has a shaved head and all the bald men we see are Uncle Bee to her.) "Is that a good idea?" "Yeah!" But even so when I got home I made sure to wear my hat and remind her that all my hair was gone. When she was ready, I took my hat off. "Hat on, Daddy!" She was a little upset. BUt I explained her again,and she was better. "Daddy's hair fall off."
Yup.
"Pallas hair not fall off?"
No sweety, your hair isn't going to fall off. And then she was happy.

I got my slab of Walking Dead in the mail the other day. Seriously, it's heavier than a bible- it has 48 issues worth of lumbering zombie goodness. Which made me think, what would be the Ten Commandments of the Zombible? The first is obvious:
1. Thou shalt eat brains
but after that, there's not too much else zombies need to worry about. Learn to dance, that's about it.

Kapow! Getting close now. I htink the forward controls will have arrived by now. We gotta do those and then wire it when the battery gets here (the Japanese tsunami may have made those hard to come by and that's understandable) and paint it up and little odds and ends like that. THen i gotta get my licence!
System of a Down was good. A little rusty at first. Maybe not mind-blowing but still fun. And did I mention the tickets were free?

Going to see System of a Down! Tonight is their first concert since their hiatus in 2006. If I'm not wrong, here in Edmonton was also their final show before the hiatus (which Michelle and I went to as well). But I can't recall for sure. So don't quote me in the New York Times like you always do. Enough already!

Happy Free Comic Book Day! For me it is not so happy since I am stuck in a town w here there are no comic shops and I'm working nightshift. So if you want to help me out hy picking me up some free comics, I would really appreciate it.I am particularly interested in these ones :
Green Lantern. Avatar/Star Wars. Mouse Guard. Super Dinosaur. Atomic Robo

I had an even epiccer run today. I was still in a Hulky mood so I was wonfdering what to watch, decided to rent from the iTunes store, other than a freebie once I never tried that before. Some weird mental block about paying 99 cents for a file that disappears in 48 hours. Not 99 cents! Who can afford that? But it's easier and cheaper than driving to Blockbuster (and driving there again to return it) so yeah. Anyways, I rented the Ultimate Avengers movie, a cartoon based on the Ultimates. It was alright, the best part eas that although the Avengers assembled to deal with an alien menace, it was really about Hulk fighting Thor and Captain America et al. Yup I just said et al. So I got my Hulk fix.
We also were able to watch the first two episodes of Game of Thrones. Pretty cool, eh? Of course no one looks how I imagined them but that's always the case. Pretty faithful adaptation for the most part. And the opening titles are great. Hopefully the series lasts long enough to get to the part where the giants ride the mammoths. I'd like to see that. I'd like to see Hulk fight giants riding mammoths.

Pallas informed us at supper tonight- "Don't eat ants. Don't eat bugs. Don't eat puppies."
That's right sweetheart.
"Don't eat poo!"

Anyways, PIxies were amazing. What a show. Started with the B Sides, then played all of Doolittle, then played some encores to hit all the classics, Where Is My Mind of course, Gigantic, etc. Nothing from Bossanova though. Sokay. I think some other stuff happened last night too.
Other stuff that happened today was I went and worked on my bike with my dad. We been banging away at it, still not quite ready. Today we got the mounts for the gastank in place and nailed down with nails. Welds I should say. See?

So the Pixies are back in town tomorrow, and I'm going to see them. They're playing Doolittle in its entirety. I know I'm pretty much the only Pixies fan in the world to say this, but Bossanova was the first album of theirs I got and it remains my favourite. Are you looking for the mother lode? No! No my child, this is not my desire. So I hope they play more than just Doolittle. Pretty short set if not. Oh well. System of a Down is coming nextweek, and I didn't get tickets to that, though I did try to win tix form the Journal. And then Sepultura, minus Max, is playing the Starlite and that's sort of tempting, though not quite the same as if it was the actual real classic lineup.
Read some Ultimate Fantastic Four at work this week, I really liked it. Jonny once sent me Ultimates Volume 1 and it was also good, though I had no idea their was a whole line of Ultimate comics. Basically the Ultimate Universe is, um, the classic marvel characters all retold for a modern day? Not made more real, and not intended to be a relaunch or a replacement, but just an alternate version . . . obviously I don't really understand it very well. Regardless, I like it!
Watched the Ed Norton Hulk movie today while I kicked ass on my treadmill (yeah I ran 10 kms in 51:08, including ten minutes at 8 mph and a minute at 10- when Hulk was kicking it up a notch to catch Emil Blonsky I was like, I can do that too) and it's better than I remembered. Too bad Ed got mad at everyone involved and pulled out of any sequels or the Avengers movie. Or has that changed? Maybe he was still in character when all that happened. Well, I'm available. Just paint me green and I'm good to go, not sure who you'll get to play Puny Banner though.

There's finally not as much snow as in that picture! Happy easter. We spent the day over at my folks' house, I worked on my bike a bit with my Dad. It's coming along, but it's surprising how many hours simple little things can eat up. Oh well it will be worth it. Pallas got lots of treats from the Easter Bunny. The easter egg hunt was fun. Yeahp.

MIchelle got me this best shirt ever! We actually bought an Indigo Tribe shirt at Comic Con without really knowing what it is.But I do now! Nek lok! And a Green Lantern onesy for Naia which we totally have to put on her. Too bad Pallas doesn't have one, she definitely has the no fear thing down.

Check out this great photo of some Corpse Bride cosplayers, three altogether.
And these pictures were on a friend's iPhone and I meant to get him to forward them to me but they were easy enough to find. Seriously amazing bodypaint hand art. Just go see them they're hard to describe.

Bad movies with great soundtracks:
Queen of the Damned
A Series of Unfortunate Events (books good movie bad)
Underworld
Last Action Hero

others?

Yup the new iMac is pretty sweet.
Here is a poem based on some of the words from our Scrabble game Michelle and I played earlier this evening. It was the first time I ever got a . . . I forget what Michelle called it. Scrabblocity? I used all my tiles and got a thousand bonus points. Anyways.

He avoided clay his whole life
with urgent thrift
stuck in a blue cage
hiding from the Roman raptor
he said, no more!
and became the golem

Only the first four lines were from the Scrabble game, but I had to end it with some semblance of sense.
There's gotta be an easier way to erase songs from an iPod, no? I don't want every song I own on the computer going over there, but I don't want to go through 2200 songs individually deciding which one makes the cut either. I figured out that other issue easily enough, just change the permissions on the folder in the info window.
Hey I finished Blackest Night! Sweet! The Green Lantern parts were sweet, anyways. Some of the more peripheral DC comics were not so much up my alley. I can happily go without reading another Superboy comic for my whole life I think. Did you see the extendo Green Lantern footage from Wondercon? I liked it. We are the Corps!

First a moment of silence for a dear old friend:



It didn't die, I just hired a replacement. Yup, I went and bought a brand new iMac today. It's so big I can't even look at the whole screen at once! At least not this close. It's so big it doesn't really fit on the computer deskvery well. I used the Migration Assistant uitilty to move the contents of my old hard drive to this one, it worked great for my iTunes library (goddamn but I love Rihanna's version of Love the Way You Lie right now. And Buck 65 of course!) but every other folder won't allow me in, saying Not Allowed! It's an easy enough fix with a memory card I suppose but there's gotta be an easier way. i'm open to suggestions.
I swear I bought a Magic Trackpad with it but it's not here, and it's not in my receipt either so I guess for now the Magic Mouse with no buttons will have to do. I think I prefer the old keyboard, too. I liked how it had a pair of USB ports on it. I might go back to it, we'll see.
Anyways. You shoulda seen Pallas tonight- we taught her how to play hide and seek. First I just took a blanket and hid under it, and she would find me and I would tickle her and she would say "more iding daddy" and then we moved to the actual rules of the game. It was hilarious, she fell for all my decoys and traps. And Mommy was the best hider of all. Pallas' hiding skills still need improvement, when it was her turn she laid down on the carpet in front of us and covered her eyes. Seriously, it was so much fun you can't even imagine.

If you like love you'll love this most likely:

Buck 65 | Part 1 (Gee Whiz) | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

And part 2! Jenn Grant and Buck 65 in Paris.

A weird thing about my RSS reader that's built into my Blogger log-in page is it shows posts that are either queued or just drafts or whatever. So I a mstealing this, I won't name the source in case the reason it was deleted is he felt kind of embarrassed. But I'm not- ElfQuest kicks ass! Here is a fan-made teaser trailer of what a live-action ElfQuest movie could look like. Though I wish Leetah was in it. And Picknose!

Check out this Calvin and Hobbes animation- well, more of a type art font work? I dunno what you would call it but it's cool.

I usually run10 kms twice a week, and today woulda been the day to do it but my feet been really hurting lately (ever since my chiropractor decided they should be adjusted they haven't been doing too good). I even bought new running shoes since you need to do that way more often than you like to do that. Didn't really help. So today I went to the rec center and rode 10 kms on an exercise bike. Took half the time, used a quarter of the calories, and now, well, I can't sit down. I had a point beyond just whining for telling you that. Hmm. It does make you wonder though, I love being in shape and kicking ass but you're always sore or hurt from doing it. Still worth it.
Inheard about this book called BattlenHymn of the zither Mother. Aka Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. (ipad helping me out on my spelling there.) Caused an uproar in the Op-Ed pages and probably the Internet too, though not really the parts I hang out in. Pretty fascinating, I read it in just over a day, going so far as tot ake a break from my comic books. Well, I had all sorts of stuff to say, but my iPad is making it nearly impossible totypw a sentence coherently and, well, I canlt sit at my computer desk today. Exercise bike. But I hope to return to the topic soon! After night shift.

A few years ago I walked into a comic shop and asked what was good. The guy handed me the first TPB of Invincible, saying it was easily the best superhero comic being made at the moment. So I bought it, read it, and though it was good I wasn't blown away by it. I decided to give it another chance since my library has 3 huge Ultimate Collections of it. Now I see what the guy was talking about. Turns out I just need to hold out one or two more issues for things to really pick up.
What else. I also read a collection of Alan Moore's DC stories, pretty cool, especially for mid-80s. What was really cool was this one story about Abin Sur, Hal Jordan's predecessor as Green Lantern of Space Sector 2814. In it, Abin goes to the planet Ysmault where the Empire of Tears is banished. He meets Qull of the Five Inversions, crucified with a Green Lantern pin. Qull tells him a prophecy in which "the weaponers of Qward, Ranx the Sentient City, and the unspeakable Children of the White Lobe" rise up against the Green Lantern Corps. Sodam Yat will perish and the planet-form Green Lantern Mogo will be the last to fall when Ranx explodes a blink bomb within his core. Pretty much the outline of the Sinestro Corps War arc that Geoff Johns wrote more than 20 years later. I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaking of which, I'm trying to read the Blackest Night arc but getting it all in order from the library is tricky, though I do own the Green Lantern Blackest Night hardcover. I'm not even sure what order they all go in. On the plus side, that's the worst of my troubles.
Also I read Aliens Omnibus Volume 1. It was kind of . . . hit and miss. Oh well. I put in my Aliens DVD to watch while I run on my treadmill but my iMac's DVD player has been quitting for no reason lately. Plus I need a new mouse. Plus my iTunes is in need of an upgrade so I can upgrade my iPod touch and run my iPad off it. BUt in order to do that I have to upgrade my OS X which costs $130. PLus I need more RAM. And an external hard drive would be nice. So really, rather than spend $100 here and $200 there, might as well just wait a bit and buy a new iMac. Right? Right! If only all my troubles were so easily solved. Like, which friggin Blackest Night edition needs to be read first? It doesn't say! So stressful.

I know it's early in the year but I think Buck 65's new album, 20 Odd Years is the year's best. Zombie Delight (the video for which may or may not appear up above- update, nah it doesn't work so instead here is Paper Airplane) is a fun song but actually the rest of the album is more serious. Well mostly. A Leonard Cohen cover with Jenn Grant kind of vibe.
Also I really like Mother Mother's new one. Kind of a terrible name to have in the Age of Google since their homepage only shows up on page 200,000 or so. Oh here it is.

By sticking to the basics I was actually able to make a decent supper for my family for once in my life. Bacon and egg sandwiches on fresh buns from Cobbs bakery. Pretty good. Only one fire alarm but it wasn't even really my fault, the buns were too thick for the toaster and they were burning on the heating elements. This is the fourth week of a brave new era where I make supper once during a set of days off.
The first time I looked in a recipe book and found one that sounded good, some sort of shrimps-on-a-bun with a sauce and everything. So I made it just like the recipe said, but the shrimps were all cold and clammy and nobody liked it very much at all.
The second week I started flipping through recipe book at 4:30 that afternoon, only to discover that all of the good ones required prep work the night before! Who knew? So Michelle gave me a free pass to go get something from Dairy Queen. Pallas somehow knew what I was going to do because she ran and got her shoes and said "Daddy, Pallas go McDonnos!"
Last week was also quite delicious. It was a sort of ginger beef stirfry. So yummy! It also required some thawing and prep work the night before. I was in Hinton working overtime so I asked Michelle to do that part. You know, get the meat out of the freezer for me please honey. Yeah but you also have to make the marinade sauce the night before. Oh . . . would you mind doing that too? So all I really had to do was boil some rice and dump all the stuff in a frying pan.
That gives me a great idea for a recipe book, all the recipes would go something like this:
Step 1- get your partner to do all the work the night before.
Step 2- take all the credit!

My buddy Jon sent me a link for a fanfilm of Batman vs all the usual suspects, pretty fun.
Which reminded me of this fan-made Superman cartoon:



And then I recently watched the Planet Hulk animated movie on DVD. Did I ever tell you how much I truly loved the Planet Hulk saga in comic book form? The movie necessarily simplifies it a lot, but is still faithful and as a bonus, ends on a happy note so if you like you can just leave it at that or read the comic that continues on to the inevitable tragic ending.

So I been working a bit of overtime lately. Sundays are doubley good because you get doubley pay. Your always a little apprehensive about going for OT. For one thing you'd way rather have the day off. Especially when it's Spring Forward night and you have to get up at what feels like 4AM. Then there's a whole nother crew that you don't really know, that's kind of weird. I just pretend it's a based-on-real-life movie where none of the actors quite look like the people they're playing. And you generally get put on the oldest, decrepitest piece of equipment out there.
But yesterday was pretty much the best shift ever. Yeah, I was on 17 truck, which isn't quite as old as me but it's older by a few years than, hmmm, the fall of the Soviet Union. But I didn't haul a single load before first coffee, through no fault of my own. Shovel 8 was down. Actu8ally I did haul 1 load off of shovel 9 but I got stuck and had to dump it right there and was sent out of that pit. Goal disallowed! After coffee 8 came back up but 10 went down so all the trucks were diverted to 8. I got 4 loads from then until second coffee. Four goals in the second period of a hockey game is not so bad but in mining, not so good. After coffee I got stuck again and so I hauled only two more loads, off of 22 loader which was also having issues. And that was my day thanks for the big bag o' cash!
I got to read quite a few comic books this week, not only yesterday but also when i was on 22 loader on my own crew. You just load three trucks and send them on their way and then sit there for an hour and a half. Got caught up on some old Walter Simonson Thor, that was good stuff. Essex County was really cool, you might remember Sara Quin championed it for Canada Reads. What else. Some Hulk. I love Hulk so much. Usagi Yojimbo.

A new set of Star Wars steampunk mashups is making the rounds. Cool, eh? The artist is Bjorn Hurri. I think he owes a bit to Sillof, though, don't you?


Steam Wars Boba Fett by ~sillof on deviantART

I know this cosplayer as definitely influenced by his designs:

Alla time putting out fires. This one was just a little one, but it was definitely on fire. My friend Tim was taking an ancient 100-ton watertruck down to the shop to get it fitted with a Wenco GPS tattletale system. Why an old sumpsucker like that needs a GPS system is beyond any logic mortal man can fathom but whatever. I was in my Kress zooming down a hill towards him and I saw sparks. So I called him on the radio to say there's sparks, there might be fire but it might be just his gridbox or something(yeah Tim you got sparks, not sure if you're on fire, no, doesn't look like it), as I got closer I saw there was definitely flames coming out of his wheel motor (You have to stop Tim. You're on fire), so I skidded to a stop and then I put the fire out. One and a half extinguishers, pretty piddly really. All in a night's work. On the incident report, on the part where they ask what actions can be taken to prevent this from happening again, I wrote, "Oh I dunno. To be honest it's a lot of fun putting out fires so let's not change anything." My foreman made me cross that part out.
A guy on my crew, buddy of mine, his house burned down earlier this week. No one in his family was hurt but they lost everything. Crazy. Definitely not fun and games anymore. I can't even imagine and don't want to imagine it happening to my family.

When I'm on nightshift I'm always a step behind, so those of you who care probably are already all over this, but yesterday was a big day for George RR Martin fans. A full official trailer for the HBO series was released, starts airing next month already!



And then on top of that a release date was finally set for A Dance of Dragons. July 12th. Not that it's actually finished or anything.

Neil Gaiman's so good, hey? Seems I'm always finding books of his I didn't even know he wrote in used bookstores. Last week I picked up a short story collection, possibly his first. Uh, what's it called? Don't recall off the top of my head and it's alla way upstairs . . . I got Michelle reading Fragile Things which is a more recent anthology, and we're both loving it. Not too long ago I bought a Batman comic he wrote, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? I find Batman comics kind of hard to read, because unlike the movies, in the comics there's like 70 years of history and continuity that you need to know (Robin is dead but Robin 2 is Nightwing and Robin 3 is in the future and she's a girl . . . )but this one was brilliant and accomplishes its purpose- which is to bring to an end both iconic Batman series- Detective Comics and Batman- with a story that would be 'true' now and in twenty years, or seventy. I didn't even know they canceled those titles (naturally they relaunched them with new numbering and all but still). Yeah. Check it out.
In other news, Pallas and I have been busy kicking ass all week. Well, we went on the big water slide a billion times at the rec center and found all our shopping list on our own and made supper all by ourselves (even if it sucked). I taught her to say "kick ass" so when we got home from kicking ass I told her to go tell mom. "Mommy, kickass! Kickass! Daddy Pallas kickass!" but Michelle thought she was saying Princess. Well, in Pallas' case, same thing.

This week started off so good. The first day was an overtime for double pay and it was easy money. The next day was a stat so even though it was my regular shift, it was double time and a half pay. And even easier money. Then the bubble burst yesterday when, rather than be on my truck, I was assigned to pumps. Which was my nightmare job that I hated and was the worst experience of my life. But whatever. We had to put a pump in. Which took all day and it was cold and wet and I even singed half my beard off by poking my face into a fireball. Why was there a fireball and what was I doing poking my face into it? When it's -30 pumps get all frozen for some reason, so we have to use a propane torch, basically a flamethrower, to thaw them out. I guess flames build up into fireballs in enclosed spaces.
Anyways. Today I'm even colder because I had to shave my beard off. And guess what? We have to pull that very pump since they're blasting. Nightshift never did get it working so we didn't pump so much as one gallon out of the pit. Tearing shit down is always easier than setting it up, so at least there was that. But after the blast, guess what? Back goes the pump! They asked me to stay late to get it running and I very flatly refused. Fuck em. That's why they have nightshift guys. And it'll be there tomorrow, just waiting for me to tear it apart I'm sure.

It's coming along. Now that a lot of the custom pieces and parts are arriving from all over the place. You should see the springs we got, not shown here. Thanks to my dad who did a whole mess of work in the last few days. I did a wee bit of chopping. Turned some wrenches. Nodded sagely here and there. You know. Remember what it looked like when we started?

Last week on our drive to Calgary we were listening to the Glee soundtrack, Michelle's favorite music. She asked me who wrote one song, and I said, "I have no idea, I've never heard this song in my life."
"Your musical knowledge has a serious gap in it."
"Yeah, I don't know any of the cheesy songs."
To be fair, I gave Glee a chance at her insistence and I really like it. Not the music as much, but Sue Sylvester kills me. Like, makes me laugh so hard I cry and Michelle has to pause the dvd while I recover. Jane Lynch is gonna be on Q one of these days, actually.
What else. The music I'm really digging on right now is Buck 65's new one, 20 Odd Years. I can't get enough, seriously.
What else. Been working a bit of overtime lately so I have even less time at home than usual. Pallas told me on the phone the other day, "Daddy, come home!" Heartbreaking. At last work is waaaaay better ever since I bid off of pumps. Just drive my truck and read my comics. Marvels was very good. I've also been reading the Star Wars Omnibus series that reprints the old Marvel Star Wars series we all grew up on. Classic. I only had maybe not quite half of them so it's fun to go back and read what all I missed. The original 6 issues were an adaptation of the movie, but it came out before Star Wars was released, and the artist hadn't seen it. I don't know if he went off storyboards or production photos or what, but R2-D2 is drawn as if he walks on his legs rather than rolls. Kind of funny.

The following is an extremely true account of what happened at work the other day. A Wenco is a computerized GPS dispatching thing that knows your every move every minute.

I was hauling off of shovel 9
It's Friday and I was feeling fine
Until my Wenco started going crazy
Telling me "start hauling loads, stop being lazy"
Well, we all know, the Wenco, it's gotta go
I'll be the first to say I told you so
But how to get rid of Big Brother GPS?
I knew I'd have to scheme and be devious
Just then the radio played some Miley Ray Cyrus
And it hit me! I know, I'll make a virus!
So I mashed all the buttons on that little unit
For good measure I thought I'd pull my pants down and moon it
But then something happened that was kinda weird
There on the screen a robot appeared
It laughed and said "Now you've gone and done it
"I've taken over your truck and now I'm gonna run it"
My seat belt, it wrapped around me I'm trapped
and my truck took off like a bat that'd been zapped
Went straight for the dump, passing 145
and if you know Myriame, you know that girl can drive
we came to a stop in front of Craig's dozer
and dumped it right there, not one rock went over
He was so mad he called me snot sausage
But it's not my fault! I'm being held hostage
What the Wenco did next I should have expected
It went on the network, and so it infected
all of the trucks and shovels in PC3 pit
that's when I thought I might be in deep shit
so I used ninja tricks to jump outta my truck
just my luck I landed knee deep in the muck
I pulled myself free and looked up to see
Shovel 9 with its bucket was coming at me
It tried to eat me! I swear it's the truth
Lucky for me it was missing a tooth
I jumped through the clamshell but no time to relax
I still had to dodge shovel 9's tracks
Swinging around it came in for the kill
Time to bust out all my GI Joe skill
I adopted my patented Miyagi stance
Part kungfu with voodoo and hiphop dance
With a jab and a feint and a flying round kick
I separated shovel 9's boom from its stick
My triumph short-lived as the rest of the fleet
was headed my way and I knew I was beat
I was just about to give up in defeat
When I heard on the radio Cito say "Sweeeeet!"
So I dodged and I kicked and I punched until three
That's when I stopped for coffee lunch and a pee
At 3:30 I said "Alright" and "You betcha!
"You're coming for me but I'm gonna getcha!"
I wrecked every last truck, including the Kresses
You shoulda seen Jimmy, you know how he stresses
But anyways, to make a long story short
This is the end of my Incident Report!

You should see me. I pretty much kick ten tons of ass. I'm not just saying that because this is the internet and you can say anything. It's true. And now I will only get even more awesome because our new rec center opened with its swimming pools and weight rooms and skating rinks and Dairy Queens. God I love Dairy Queen. Not sure about the wisdom of putting one inside a facility dedicated to physical fitness though. Oh well. Maybe I'll only kick nine tons of ass and have one ton of blizzard on my fat ass.
Also, me and my dad kicked some ass on my motorbike today. Well you should see how much work he did in his garage to set up a shop. We even built a bike stand in about ten seconds today. Then we chopped my frame up a bit. Wrecking shit is so easy! Putting it back together . . .
Know who else kicks ass? The vampirenomad. She doesn't really kick ass at blogging lately. But in the category of moving back to Canada after six years in New Zealand, she wins. Sweet!
Also my eldest daughter kicks ass so much. Srsly. She's awesome. Didja see this picture? Awesome.

The most exciting thing that happened at work last week was I got to read a bunch of comics. I wisht every week could be like that!
I'd heard that Age of Apocalypse was one of the all-time classic X-Men storylines so I got the Complete Epic (four volumes) from the library. Maybe my expectations were too high but I thought it was kind of terrible. Never mind that the way you could tell that the X-Men were all alternate-reality versions of themselves is because they had mullets. I dunno. The basic idea was sound, what if Charles Xavier had died before forming the X-Men? Obviously Magneto would lead the X-Men and Apocalypse would take over the world. But where it went wrong for me is all the focus on space aliens and Blastaar and the Negative Zone. What does that even have to do with Apocalypse? I dunno.
Luckily World War Hulk was better. Not as good as Planet Hulk which I loved. WWH is all about how he comes back to Earth with his Warbound buddies to get revenge for all the bad stuff that happened at the end of Planet Hulk. It had some great moments, though lots of the big things happened off-screen, ie in the tie-in comics that weren't in the WWH collection. Oh well. Hulk still smashed plenty of shit.
Batman R.I.P. was kind of confusing. Didn't really know anyone other than Batman. Even Robin was someone else.
What else. Spider-man and Red Sonja. Got that one for a laugh and it was definitely funny.
I also finished reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I liked it. Makes me want to make a pinhole camera detector. Among other things. Not that I'm worried someone snuck into my house to install a pinhole camera to spy on me. Does make me wonder about the classrooms where Michelle teaches, though. And the washrooms. Eew.