Happy Halloween!
I was really looking forward to carving pumpkins with Pallas, I even got her her own little set of carving knives, but Michelle convinced me it might be better if she just painted her pumpkin. I made her a Tinkerbell pumpkin, and a Green Lantern one too, which on the back I drew a Red Lantern symbol but never got around to carving it. Too much tricking and treating to do!

  

I think one of life's greatest pleasures is trick or treating with a toddler. Trick or treat! She said it so clear at every house, and thanked everyone, even wishing one lady "Happy Halloween, okay!" Maleficent answered the door at one house and was shocked that I knew her name. But Pallas really impressed her by telling her she was the bad guy from Sleeping Beauty. Her middle name IS Aurora, dont'cha know. Naia didn't come out with us this year. But she was a pretty cute Elmo, even if the costume was several sizes too large.

 

 

I'm supposed to be at work right now but I took an extra day off for Halloween. But Homie Bear, it's not Halloween yet. I know, but right now I've been awake for 28 hours or so, which I didn't want to be the case tomorrow for trick or treating with the girls. How do you do that tense, anyways? The future implausible? I didn't want to have been yet that froop. Yeah that's another thing, the day after nightshift makes you a little loopy. Like, I went to buy Naia a Halloween costume today and for some reason it seemed eminently logical that she should have a Toddler 2T size despite the fact she's only ten months old and in the 25th percentile for size.
We got three pumpkins to carve tomorrow!  Hopefully they will be as awesome as last year's:

Hey look I accidentally started a meme. After years of trying to get the "Everyone give Homie Bear ten dollars" campaign to go viral, what finally sticks is the "What 5 action figfures would  you keep if the devil threatened to destroy the world unless you threw all your toys away but he still let you keep five because he's really a nice guy." And I have to credit my Flickr friend 8, who really got the ball rolling.
It started here, and continues here and then here and here, here, here, here , here, here, . . .

The Edmonton Examiner is one of those small, free community newspapers that mainly focus on neighbourhood feelgood stories. My buddy emailed me and said Pallas was on the cover of the newest one, undoubtedly that same photo from the Sun, unless she did a photoshoot she didn't tell us about, but ours didn't have it. It boggles the mind but apparently there are completely different versions printed up for different regions of the city. Anyways, if yours has my daughter on the cover could you save it for us? Cheers.
In other news, Glen Weldon asks Who's the Spookiest Super Villain? He makes a good point about lab coats.
I'll say this about my little qwerty Samsung phone- you can drop it down a flight of stairs, watch it bounce, hit the floor, skid several feet and it will still work. Pretty sure my wife's new iPhone 4S that I got her for early Christmas wouldn't survive the experience. Though to be sure, Pallas once dunked my Mom's iPhone in coffee and it was able to be saved with some professional CPU CPR. My reason for brining this up, though, other than to brag about the fact I got my wife a 4S for Christmas, is to express surprise that Samsung is currently outselling Apple in the Smartphone war.

Ironically, for a guy who calls himself Homie Bear, given that bears have the best sense of smell in the animal kingdom, I am anosmic. Doesn't bother me too much. I don't play it up but I don't hide it either (which is why, after 9 years, this is the first I mentioned it). What happens is, at work, after I mention to the guys that I don't have a sense of smell, I'll find myself in a truck and there will alla sudden be all this snickering, and I'll ask what? and they'll be like, we was just testing you man, we been letting 'er rip all day and you ain't said nothing, I guess you really can't smell! Just the other day my good buddy Jay was fueling me up and he mentioned how gross it was, every now and then he caught a whiff of the shitter. Hmm, I said. Oh sorry, he says, I keep forgetting you can't smell. That's okay, it's not like I was just thinking I wish I could smell that shitter.
Really, it's kind of a super power, especially when it comes to changing diapers. But it means food has always been kind of utilitarian to me, a bit. Our latest book club book was Ruth Reichl's Garlic And Sapphires all about when she was the food critic for the New York Times. On the one hand, it was fascinating that she could write about food in such a rich way- the fricassaise has an oceanic flavor but the sensual succulence of the truffles held a note of a hidden brook etc etc. For me it's kinda "It was yummy" or "It was yucky." On the other hand, there's only so much food writing I can take before I need to go read some comics. Snobbery doesn't sit well with me. Recihl is not the snob, though she falls into the trap of it a bit as she dresses up in disguise to avoid being recognized as the pre-eminent food critic in the world. I liked the book- I just didn't like the world it described. Sommeliers? Not part of my world. And Maitre d's that have no time for you? Come to my world for five minutes we'll see how you make out in a coal mine buddy. Yeah. I visited New York about nine years ago, my buddy Jon who grew up in the same small town as me moved there. So there we were in the East Village just outside a liquor store or something, we had just bought a bottle of wine (undoubtedly something cheap) and were just hanging out on the sidewalk when a rich new York lady all into fashion with her little pocket dog walks by, and she did the classic snobby thing where she sniffed and said "Excuse me" in those icy tones reserved for the editors of fashion magazines and the like and I just couldn't resist- I said, "Why, did you fart?" You can't take us provincial small town Albertans anywhere.

Apparently I had stashed a box of Groo comics at my sister's house lo these past ten years or so. Do you remember Groo?

Sergio Aragones, Mark Evanier and Stan Sakai are to blame. Just teasing. I love Groo. Did, anyways. He still has a place in the nostalgic rooms of my geeky heart. Most issues were kind of the same, with a lot of running jokes, like someone says to Groo, "I know you are slow of mind" and he eventually, with a longer gap every time, says "Hey what did he mean I was slow of mind?" And there was a hidden message in each issue ("This is the hidden message" it always said if you were clever enough to find it). I pulled a couple out today to read- issue 11 of the Marvel series, in which a handsome Adonis named Arcadio takes the credit for all of Groo's accomplishments, managing to fool everyone, even Groo. And also #2 of the original Pacific Comics series, something I didn't even know I had. The price tag on the sleeve said $4 but that was crossed out and in its place it said $200. Which would make it the most expensive comic I own! I certainly don't remember paying $200 for it but you know, you can have it for a mere hundred if you want. That is a great deal, as any fool can plainly see.

She was in the paper!  Of course this really didn't impress her much as she's on the internet every day. She has no time for old media.

Tried to work overtime today but was stymied so instead we took the girls to West Edmonton Mall for a Halloween thing at Galaxyland. It was fun. Usually we avoid WEM but it wasn't so bad. There's a small possibility Pallas will be in the Sun tomorrow as a photographer took some photos of her since she was one of the only ones dressed up.

 

 

Pooing in the Woods is 9 years old today!  Which in blog years is pretty much a century. One more year for an even ten, then it might be time to shut er down. Or not, I don't know.
Here's nine random highlights culled from the previous nine years of archives:
The Case of the Missing Purple Gasoline
Terminus
Me vs all the haul trucks
Again, the abomination
I just love warehouses
Black heart scarring darker still
E=mc2
The Frog Store
Ode to Nemicolopterus crypticus

Although I didn't attend Comic-Con this year, I feel like I almost got more out of it in some ways by following the Twitter feeds of those who did, panelists and artists and such. Last year when we went, I hadn't yet fully resubmerged into the comics world, going mainly because of my long association with deviantArtists and the Star Wars community. And after all, it was Michelle's idea to go, for which I can thank Edward James Olmos since he gave her chills at a Calgary convention by saying "So say we all!" That was pretty great. Anyways, going in 2010 was the catalyst for me to jump back into comic fandom.
Thanks to the aforementioned Twitter feeds, I heard about yesterday's rather unexpected layoff of 15 Marvel employees. You certainly didn't hear about from Marvel's Facebook feed. The newspapers wouldn't really pick up on it, except for maybe a side paragraph in the business section where it would probably just speculate on how the move would impact Disney's share value or something. Here's a fairly informative article, maybe a little speculative as well but certainly more savvy than what I know. I'm just a guy who's loved the Hulk and Spider-man et al for over 30 years now. It's be nice if the custodians of these characters, the keepers of the legacy so to speak, were treated with a little more respect.

After being so wordy yesterday, today I just have some photos. Here we have 35 truck, looking like it is auditioning for a part in a children's show about mining:



And just a quick shot out my window as the small snow storm we had today started to clear up and melt away.

I'm glad I decided to give Malcolm Gladwell another chance. I read Blink a few years ago and though it was a fun read I was left a little unsatisfied- the thesis was (I may be a little off now a few years on) essentially that you can really trust your snap judgments except for when you can't. But this past week or so I've been reading What the Dog Saw and loving it. I keep turning to Michelle and saying "Even if you don't read this book you should just read this one essay," but I say it about all the essays so really she should just read the whole thing. The essays vary widely by topic but they definitely have some commonality- they tend to point out a new way of thinking about something familiar, giving you new insight on a wider world. Gladwell is really really good at pointing out things you might never have noticed but once you're shown, they almost seem obvious. Once I figured out that that was what he did, I learned to adjust my expectations accordingly. So with Blink, I kept waiting to be given some tools to figure out when my first impressions are trustworthy and when not. BUt he never promised to do that, I just assumed he would. Same with many of these essays, and here's an example I spent some time pondering today at work: In the essay The Art of Failure he discussed the subtle but fundamental differences between choking and panicking. I don't want to just repeat what he said but I was completely engaged because it seems to me that having understanding of what's going on in your head when you either choke or panic can be useful for the next time it happens. Again, Gladwell is content to point out that this is what happens without really going into how to prevent it from happening to you. Which is fine because I have 12 hours at work to mull things over. It kind of has a personal stake for me because of my recent motorcycle crash- by Gladwell's definitions I panicked rather than choked in that situation.



Now- I have always prided myself on my coolness under pressure and I honestly can say I don't panic, at least in the sense of getting all excited and doing the chicken-just-met-an-axe thing. But when I realized, going into that corner on my bike, that I was going too fast, I grabbed my brake, and that was my undoing. As my dad pointed out, braking while cornering causes a bike to stand up which is the opposite of what you want. With more experience, that situation woulda been took in stride. But as a newbie, in that moment without tons of experience to draw on, I just did the only thing I could think of- grab the brake. textbook panic, according to Gladwell, because in the stress of panic you lose short term memory. So even though I was totally calm as I flew through the air, I have to say I panicked. At least I didn't choke! But choking is reserved for those who really know what they are doing. So some day I hope to be good enough to choke.

Edward James Olmos follows me on Twitter. He's not hanging on my every word though - he follows pretty much everyone who follows him.  Not that I tweet much anyways, I have a hard enough time blogging every day which so far in October I have been able to do. But in honour of Eddie Adama, we watched one of his classic movies last night- Stand and Deliver. It was kind of fascinating from an anthropological/historical point of view- set in the mid 80s much like part of my own life was. So thinking about this gentleman who was hired to teach computers at a school that had no computers (so he teaches them calculus instead) who in real life goes on to be active on Twitter . . . the world has changed a lot in the past 25 or so years, which is not a brilliant thing to say but it's an easy thing to forget. Of course, you could reach the same conclusion by watching original Battlestar and then the new one.

Spoiler alert! If you still want to see Green Lantern, don't read this.
Even after I downgraded my expectations for the Green Lantern movie (based on all the negative reviews, though I still held out some hope as a comic book geek that maybe it was too comic booky for everyone else) I still found myself disappointed. Often when a comic book movie disappoints, it's because the director seems to be completely ignorant of its source material. Elektra, for example. But that's not the problem here- save some minor tweaks for streamlining and simplicity's sake, the comic books, and specifically Geoff Johns' excellent version, are more or less faithfully transferred to the big screen. Maybe that's the problem- Hector Hammond with his oversized brain looks silly in "real life" and as a villain he fails because the poor guy was an innocent victim of circumstances he never asked to be involved in. He's quite a sympathetic character, actually (in the comics he has no redeeming features). Hal Jordan isn't even as sympathetic as poor old Hector. Hal's kind of an ass, actually. Not a charming ass like Tony Stark, just a kid who never grew up and doesn't know how to clean up the messes he makes. Maybe ass is too harsh, since I did like him, and I liked Ryan Reynolds fine.
 Parallax? Well, kind of lame. Better than Fantastic Four 2's Galactus in that he was more than a giant cloud- but not much more. And of course it stretches credulity that the entire Green Lantern Corps would be "He's too tough let's let him win" and then when Hal is like, "I'll fight him all by myself even though I am the greenest of Green Lanterns. Everything will be okay, you guys just chill on Oa!" I did like that he basically punched Parallax in the face, though. Nice.
Sinestro was the best part of the movie, I thought. The actor classed up the joint with his performance. Unfortunately, the final scene where he puts on the yellow ring doesn't really work because there is absolutely no reason for him to do so. In the comics he has a very complicated and nuanced reason for creating the Sinestro Corps and going to war with the Green Lanterns. Here it looks like he did it for the hell of it. I stilll hope they make a sequel, though. A war between the Corps would be pretty cool on the big screen. Maybe.

Last week I put up the Halloween decorations, and realized they were kind of sad. Styrofoam chunks missing, ancient curses nullified, that kind of thing. So I went and got some more. It looked like a billion things in the shopping cart but then when set up, less so. Oh well. I can always get more.

 

 

Back from another round of night shifts. Not much to say about that week- just a nice easy week, three parts Kress truck one part loader. Podcasts!
What's that band that has some American expats in it that are based out of Montreal and they're really good? Ar something? No, not Ar. . . hmmm . . . Barr. .  yeah-  Barr Brothers! They were on Q and played a couple of live songs. Wow. I was using the finger-swipey scrub motion to find the spots in the podcast to replay those songs. I can't find a link to it but all these are from iTunes anyways. CBC Q.
Speaking of music via podcast, Tegan and Sara have an entire folk festival concert available from NPR music which was nice and Tegan and Sara-y.
As It Happens had a pair of interviews with a Welsh gentleman whose giant vegetables caught the attention of Snoop Dogg who then posted a video to YouTube inviting him to a concert and backstage to discuss horticultural techniques.
Stephen Tobolowsky entertained, as always. And Freakonomics had an episode on hitch-hiking which I found interesting because of all my hitch-hiking adventures.

This pretty much says it all.

UPDATE: Pallas announced to us out of the blue that Cinderella was on her Facebook. Neither of us remembers ever mentioning Facebook in conversation but who knows, she had to have picked it up from somewhere!

I'm sure I've mentioned this sometime in the past 9 years, but Halloween is my favourite time of year. But horror movies and books are probably my least favorite of the genres of movies and books that I like- which is to say, horror is on the list of stuff I like, but it's at the bottom. Below sci-fi, fantasy, superherody, drama, comedy  and western. Science fiction and fantasy head the list because the emotions those evince, at least when done well, is a sense of wonder. Like, you want to go there and do that. Middle-Earth, an asteroid field, Hogwart's. Being a superhero would be pretty great, right?
Horror just tries to scare you. It's right there in the name. Some people really enjoy that feeling, but for me, not as much. And most movies don't really achieve that goal anyways. Then there's the sub-genres like slasher and all that stuff which I've never been into.
Nightmare Befote Christmas and Corpse Bride? Yes please.Sweeney Todd? No thank you. Well, that was alright but the Saw movies and me need never intersect ever again.
But after saying all that, I still love Halloween because the horror trappings, the ghosts and goblins and pumpkins and everything, is fun in a way that horror movies are not.

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.