My plan, when I was laid off, was to write more, and submit more. I've had some success getting published, so I thought I would try to build up a solid writerly resume that way, piece by piece. And indeed I do still submit stuff, but back in September I learned about chapbooks and realized they were kind of the perfect medium for what I do. I'm not a novelist, after all. Maybe one day but not now. But I have a nice big catalogue of work that stretches back the entire life of this blog, 18 years, and then some. Which is a long-winded way of introducing my first chapbook, available right now on Amazon!  With plans to diversify into the other ebook markets and also do a print run. And I know I can do at least three more of these just with material that already exists, and hopefully even six volumes eventually. The writerly resume I want! Much of the writing was first published here, though not all of it. Anyways check it out!

This Halloween

I love my local library, Edmonton Public. Since the pandemic started I haven't been to a branch in person but thanks to Twitter and their email newsletter I've been able to keep up a little with what they're doing. Can't wait to visit the newly reopened and renovated Stanley A. Milner main branch when I get a chance. I signed up for this Zoom meeting that was all about Twine, which I didn't know anything about but I've found signing up for these sorts of things is almost always valuable. Twine is pretty cool, at its simplest it is a way to make choose your own adventure stories fairly easily. Not understanding this, I got to work making a branching poem on multiple sheets of paper before I even investigated how to use Twine. Turns out if I had just gone to Twinery in the first place I could have saved a few trees. Now my next trick is to figure out how to embed it here, and maybe I figured it out. Hopefully. Well, you won't see this if I manage it, but as I type this I am on my third attempt! I'm sure it will work this time: 

 Did it work?

 NO! *%$*&#@$^&(*&**%##^^&*&*(^$; (cartoon swearing because I never swear in real life) 

Ok fine, here is a link to the google page I made but I wanted to embed it right here in this post.

 The poem itself is not a masterpiece at all- it's terrible and I don't mind admitting it. I just wanted to have something to bring to the workshop, and to gain hands-on experience. But it will work as my Halloween story for this year!

I tried embedding it using the html iframe function. If you know how to do this please let me know. It seemed simple enough but yet. 

 Another significant milestone for me- and I almost didn't notice. I was telling a story to my family about staying in a men's shelter back on  my cross-Canada hitch-hiking trip, and Pallas asked me how old I was when I did it. 

"I was 23," I said. "And that was 23 years ago."

Kind of blew my mind. I realize it's not anything most people would care about but on this one little tiny corner of the internet I get to decide what gets talked about! Definitely one of the adventures in my life that has shaped who I am.

The story I told the kids was about staying in a men's shelter in I think Ajax, Ontario. Somewhere close to Toronto anyway. I was just there one night after a day of thumbing so I needed to find a place to stay and someone mentioned a "men's hostel" nearby. Sounded good to me so off I went. Turns out yeah it was a homeless shelter. They had room though so I registered to stay there for the night. I was fully prepared to pay for my berth but in fact I was informed otherwise.

"In the morning come here and we will give you your three dollars for staying here."

"Um, no, I don't need three dollars."

"We have to give it to you."

"No thanks, I don't need it. But that's very nice of you."

"Sir, it's the law. You have to take it."

That  made the girls laugh, and when I was a kid of 23 I thought it was pretty hilarious myself. With an additional 23 years of experience and wisdom I see now how this funny law of requiring each guest at a homeless shelter to receive $3 from the government would need to have a system of checks and balances and budgetary whathaveyou to protect unscrupulous people from taking advantage of it. And I'm not talking about the guests. 

Anyways I just gave my toonie and a loonie to one of the guys there that I met and befriended. I think he was able to use it along with his own allowance to buy a pack of smokes. Once it was mine I was free to do with it what I wanted, and once it was his, ditto!

 Happy bloggiversary to me! Hard to believe this little blog is now old enough to drink, at least here in Alberta. I haven't been advertising the fact that I'm more or less active again, because the world has changed a lot in the past 18 years. There's not really a blogosphere anymore. Not in the same way. Social media kind of killed that off. The several year gap in this very blog is a symptom of that for sure.

Regardless, 18 years is pretty impressive. Makes you miss 2002, especially in this cursed year of 2020. This is a good time to announce, to not really anyone in particular, that I've been working on a series of chapbooks which encompass a lot of the creative writing I used to do as well some of the stuff I've since done elsewhere. First volume is coming along nicely. I'll just publish them myself and get them out there. Be a good writing resume and something I can point to and say, I made that. Took 18 years goddammit but I did it.

Cheers!

 I discovered that helicarriers were real! More or less. First a quick history in pictures as to what a helicarrier really looks like- the MCU version was super cool but the comic version was more heli less carrier. Here it is in its first appearance as depicted by the King, Jack Kirby:

And how it looked when I was more familiar with it in the late 70s/early 80s:

Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were both WWII vets and would have been familiar with the pre-war rigid airships. I was reading a National Geographic today that had an article about the USS Macon, an American Navy airship. A lead zeppelin, sort of. The damnedest thing was, it carried a complement of five biplanes, little Spitfighters that were stored inside but were deployed by a hook. They had to latch onto the hook to "land" as well! Somehow I was unaware of this fact my whole life. Pretty neat. It only lasted two years and then it crashed into the ocean where it lays still. They've located the remains as well as a few of the Spitfires. Too deep and damaged to salvage, as far as I know. The article was from 1992 so maybe since then they've brought it up but I really doubt it. Click here to go to the wikipedia article, it's pretty cool. I always thought the helicarrier was one of the more outlandish flights of fancy Stan Lee and Jack Kirby took but maybe they really took a flight on an airship, or saw one.

Pilars of the Earth

A friend of mine lent me the game Pillars of the Earth. I've never read the book, but Michelle has, and I was always interested in the board game based on it. Even the fact that they made a game based on this thick tome of historical fiction about (presumably) building a cathedral is pretty fascinating don't you think?

I played it once solo to learn the rules, then played it once with Pallas and once today with Michelle. Both of them liked it, and I really like it too. It's got a beautiful board with some beautiful components, and it's a worker placement game with some different takes on the whole worker mechanic, so it's pretty much exactly what I look for in a game.

It's pretty simple really. Six rounds, broken into two main phases. First phase you draft some cards- either you send a certain number of workers (you have a bunch) to one of three resource areas in exchange for a certain number of resource cubes, or you pay some gold to buy another craftsperson which you take into your hand. Maximum hand number of these crafters is five. They are what convert your resources into victory points later on.

The second phase is where it gets interesting- each player has a number of master workers in a bag, and each worker is drawn blind from the bag one by one. The first worker drawn has the option to either pay 7 gold (a lot) to place their worker on the board, or pass. Either way the next worker drawn from the bag, even if it's the same colour as the previously drawn one, has the same opportunity, only this time it only costs 6 gold. This goes all the way down and if everyone passes, then all workers still left can be placed for free in the order they were first drawn. This is quite unique to my experience and a lot of fun as it makes for some hard and interesting decisions.

The board has a bunch of places that offer differing benefits, as in all worker placements. The trick is to pick the one that gets you the most points, and of course your opponents are blocking you and forcing you to think fast to change tactics. After each round another piece of the cathedral is placed, and at the end of the game you have a cool little wooden cathedral in the middle of the board.

This game isn't super new, and I described it to Pallas as "it's like they heard about worker placement games and only had a vague idea of what those are and designed a cool game based on their conceptions." Which I totally dig. It does stuff I haven't seen in other wp games. It's fun! But if I'm honest I was a little disappointed that the big wooden cathedral, the biggest hook in the game, is really just a glorified round tracker. After each round you add a piece. That's it. And the thing is, there are three other round trackers built into the game already- the craftsperson cards, the favour cards and the event cards all double as ways to keep track of the rounds.

This has the unfortunate effect of turning the big wooden pieces into a gimmick. I really hate to say that, because this is a really fun game! I thought players would maybe work together to gather the necessary resources to build each piece, with maybe points for the player who contributes the most or penalties to those who don't, as in the constructed markets in Euphoria (the game I discussed in the previous post). I almost thought about designing my own variant where this is what you do, but that is a little ambitious and beyond my skills, so I didn't. I wonder if anyone has?

The other day on Twitter someone started a good discussion by calling out some prominent board game YouTubers who had taken it upon themselves to "fix" Elizabeth Hargrave's new game Mariposas. Which I have and have played twice now. I really like it. You play a bunch of Monarch butterflies who have to migrate from Michoacan up to Canada and back, picking up resources and card sets along the way. It's really hard- collecting sets to get points is not always possible while also meeting the other goals and requirements of the game. So RandomDude decided to make a rule where something something something. I dunno. He made it easier anyways.

So, on the one hand, if you buy a game, you have every right to house rule and do whatever you want with it. You bought it. Bonk each other on the head with the board and smash each other in the face with the box for all I care. 

On the other hand, doing this with your platform of thousands and implying you know better than the designer is a little ... I can see where this raises eyebrows. Especially when Elizabeth Hargrave, award-winning designer of the massively huge game Wingspan, has had to face all kinds of misogynistic passive aggressiveness and aggressive aggressiveness just for being a woman in the board game design world. 

And again, if RandomDude was just saying "this is too hard so I made it easier for me lol lol I'm terrible at games" I would be the first one to give a thumbsup emoji. You do you! Have fun! But this RandomDude (who is not just some random dude at all but one of the biggest BG personalities) has a history of blundering into these sorts of gendered "controversies" (for want of a better term, these are hardly scandals on the scale of separating children from their parents in ICE concentration camps) and claiming innocent ignorance.  "Oh I didn't realize I was being a dick! Teach me better I want to learn!!" I'm less inclined lately to pardon ignorance when your google bar is just right over there. 

But I do wish we were actively building the cathedral in Pillars of the Earth.

Euphoria is one of my favourite games, and certainly one of my most photogenic. It's a bit of a tough one to teach, though. I kind of had a good spiel (this is a funny pun for boardgamers) down for it but I also haven't had much opportunity to practice it on anyone since this whole rigamarole so. Pallas and Michelle both enjoy it though. Last night I played it solo which is something I don't mind doing occasionally.  

Stonemaier games almost always come with a solo variant using something they call Automatically Factory, which I have tried for Euphoria but honestly, with worker placement games I am almost always just as happy to just play two different colours and see what happens. I guess that takes away from the competitiveness of it, which is kind of the point of playing games, but I honestly just like the feeling of helping to build up this utopia.

Euphoria's tagline is "Build a Better Utopia" but one of the things I love about the game is that's sort of disingenuous, as you come to realize when you look at all the fluff text that really you're kind of a force for not good in this world. It's a dystopia and you are trying to be in charge of it, sort of. It's subtle and perhaps a touch unclear which is partly why it is difficult to teach. Ultimately you're just trying to be the first to place your ten stars, which is just game speak for accomplish any ten things that score. 

Broadly speaking there's four different factions on the board, three ground based and one up in the clouds. Each offers certain resources and commodities which you collect and trade in whatever ways you see fit to help you get closer to victory. Maybe you want to collect some gold bars (the gold bar resources you get are beautiful heavy bricks) to help build a market. That gets you a star, and if someone else didn't help, they don't get a star, and also they have now a penalty that applies to them until they can find a way to place a star.

And you do all this not with worker meeples as in many other games (that happy fellow above is a miner meeple not controlled by any single player) but with dice. Dice are your workers, and their different values determine what they can do for you. And if the total value of your dice is too high, that means your workers are too smart and one of them runs away. Lol. I'm not trying to teach you the game, just give you some flavour for it. Anyways it's all interconnected and strategic. And so fun! Michelle beats me every time. One reason why I like playing against myself, but even there last night I lost against myself. But I also won I guess.

 It's Read In Week which in normal years means people from the community come to schools and read to the kids. This being 2020 we do it all by google meets and such. But I did get to zoom into Naia's grade 4 class today. Same thing, in normal years usually we'd've already gnet to Meet The Teachers night and the girls would have excitedly shown us their classrooms and all the projects they're working on. So yeah, even by zoom (google meet sorry) it was cool to see her class and even her teacher. Everyone wearing masks. I read the story from a couple weeks ago, Curse of the Dad Joke, at Naia's request, as well as a poem originally posted here back in .... 2003? Long time ago. The F.A.F.A.F. (I was going to try to link to it but apparently the permalink are not really working anymore. It's ok, I'm working on something more better.)

Tomorrow I'm zooming into Pallas' class and I will read my short story Dams which was printed in a local anthology but has never been online. I originally wrote that quite some time ago, too. Been going over a lot of my old writing, seeing which of it holds up. Salvaging some of it, anyway.

Ever heard of Twine? It sounds vaguely familiar from listening to CBC's Spark. Got my EPL newsletter today and they have some sort of zoom thing involving writing something on Twine, so I signed up. Might as well, right? I have the time. I think it's just writing stories with hypertext. A few years ago for Mother's Day I wrote Michelle a whole Choose Your Own Adventure story - I even downloaded a template with the red border and got the girls to draw the cover. It was fun- aliens come and kidnap Pallas and Naia and Michelle has to use her ingenuity and kickassness to get them back. That was just a one-off but it was fun to write the various pathways.

 I've really hit a good stride this week, I think, with my "work" days. I hit on a project idea for myself- maybe last Friday? which has really energized me. I won't say anything about it for now. It's fun for me though. I've tried different things with a workspace and coffee and all that to hit just the right paramters. If you know you know and you probably do. Today I even tried standing up to do some typing, and that was good though when Michelle's laptop (that I've been using, all my other tech is dead or close to it) battery ran down I sat back down. 

I didn't go for a run, which has also been huge for creativity, but I did go for a lunchtime walk over to the pond not far from my house. It's been a lovely September so being outside has been amazing. I watched the Canada geese and some loonish looking things which I don't think are loons. Hey why don't I post some pics since this has apparently been a bird blog lately lol. Actually Naia and I also went to the same park to throw a football around today after supper and we saw three bluejays too, which I tried to photograph but didn't really get any good shots. 

My point though, beyond the birds, is this has been a really good time for me, now two months into my layoff. I don't believe in fate or destiny at all but I am where I am "meant" to be. I don't like that word since it implies we have purpose and all that. Let me say, I'm where I'm optimized to be. Perfectly adapted for this situation we find ourselves in. Not to tempt fate (which lucky for me doesn't exist!) with the virus still out there but yeah. I am happy. How are you?

 I was walking Pallas over to  a nearby park and we saw that same bird I mentioned last week, got a slightly better picture of it but the crucial identifying feature isn't shown, though we clearly saw it. A red patch on her head! Easy enough to google that and the result was Hairy Woodpecker.  I know these are hardly exotic birds but they're a big deal for me in my nondescript Edmonton backyard!

Stonemaier Games announced the second Wingspan expansion today! Quite a striking box art, as with all the Wingspan art. I'm excited for this since it was my trip to New Zealand that really opened my eyes to how cool birds are. I'll never forget Been looking out the window of Wedge and saying, "There's a parrot out there."

I had no idea there were parrots in New Zealand. Where are parrots from? I'm not super sure. What even are parrots? Anyways the kea is the world's only alpine parrot and I can't wait to see its card in Wingspan. Hopefully it's special power is to open your backpack and steal all your food! Here's my photo of that kea from sixteen years ago (!):

Hmm. Well since the last time I was super active on this blog my Flickr account was essentially taken hostage- they wanted fifty bucks or all my photos but a thousand would be deleted forever. So I just deleted them myself- I save them to various places but I can't find my Kea anywhere. Oh well it wasn't a great photo or anything. But it was mine.

Curse of the Dad Joke

Naia was throwing bullets. And Pallas was catching kicks like a pro. It was a perfect October afternoon of football in the park. Dad called them in for a huddle and a high five.

 "Great job, girls," he said. "Hi5s all around! I think I need to go home and help Mom with supper though. Before I go, here's a joke for you."

 "No!" Pallas said. "No jokes!" 

"Why did Cinderella get kicked off the football team?"

 Pallas rolled her eyes, but Naia said, "Why?" 

"Because she kept running away from the ball!" 

 The girls groaned and Dad ran home.

 "Let's practice our spirals!" 

Naia headed downfield and Pallas wound up to throw a perfect pass, the ball zipping through the air as if shot from a cannon. But it didn't reach its target!

 Instead it collided midair with some strange flying thing, knocking the strange flying thing out of the air with a ferkluffenish thud. Pallas and Naia ran to the crash site from opposite ends of the field. It was a beautiful woman wearing orange robes and a hat. Pallas extended her hand to help her up. The woman dusted herself off, using the sweepy end of a broom to wipe her feet. 

 "Two things," Naia said. "First, sorry for knocking you out of the sky. And second, are you a witch? Or a fairy???" 

"Yes, I am a witch." The witch looked at the two sisters, seeming to notice them for the first time. 

"I thought witches were green," said Pallas. 

"Witches are whatever colour they want to be," said the witch. Who was green now.

 "Wow!!" 

"Most witches would put a devilish hex on you for knocking them down like that," said the witch. 

“We're very sorry! We were practicing football. You can play with us if you want," Pallas said. 

The witch was climbing onto her broom, with every intention of flying away, but she looked into the eyes of these two small, wicked children, and said, "Football is not really my jam, but you two remind me so much of myself when I was young, so, why not? I will play."

 Football with a witch turned out to be the funnest thing ever, if not really in keeping with any of the rules. Magic spells and flying brooms and perfect spirals opening wormholes in reality. Pallas and Naia were laughing so hard they collapsed in heaps on the ground. The witch had never had so much fun in all her centuries. 

"Thank you, little witchlings. That was amazing. But I need to go. And you know, I still owe you a hex." 

"You're still going to hex us?" Naia asked. 

The witch smiled. "No. Not ever. But I will still cast a hex for you, anything you want. As long as it's wicked and witchy."

 Pallas said, "Ok, we just need to huddle for a minute." She took Naia a short distance and they whispered and conferred as if planning the final play of the Grey Cup.

 "OK," said Pallas, after they returned. "Can you hex our Dad so he doesn't tell Dad jokes anymore?" 

The witch thought about this. "I won't compel your dad to do anything against his will. I am a force for chaos and mischief but I still strongly believe in consent. But I think I know just the thing." She held her hands just so, fingers making claws, and spoke an ancient and forgotten tongue. Witchish, probably. Then she blew both sisters a kiss and climbed on her broom and flew away. 

The girls looked at each other, shrugged, and went home for supper.

 "That was fun!" said Naia.

 The family gathered around the table, eating and talking about their days. Pallas kept sniffing, the crisp October air giving her a runny nose.

 "Hey Pallas," Dad said, "What do you do with a runny nose?" 

Pallas side-eyed Dad. "What?" 

"Catch it before it gets away!" Dad's laugh was abruptly cut off, however, when his nose jumped off his face and started running like a bat out of hell. He shrieked and fell out of his chair. His nose was running all over the board game shelf, knocking over Lego and dice and making a terrible mess. 

Dad slipped and tripped and stepped on Legos and D20s. His nose blew boogers at him! His own nose!

“I can't believe this is happening! I swear I will never tell another Dad joke as long as I live!" 

With that his nose calmly walked back and reattached itself to his face. Dad fainted. 

Naia said, "Enzgurgh smuild!" 

Pallas said, "What does that mean?" 

"It means 'hooray' in Witchish!”

 What's your favourite bird? When I was a kid it was the bald eagle, I liked it so much I even learned its latin name which I still remember, almost forty years later. Haliaeetus leucocephalus. And eagles are still pretty damn cool, but through no fault of their own they also reek of American symbolism. Hmm. I kind of like hummingbirds. I installed a hummingbird feeder earlier this year but I didn't see any- maybe I was too late in the season to attract them, maybe they don't really frequent the area. How does one market to hummingbirds anyway? Mostly I have sparrows. They didn't care for the sunflower seed-heavy feed I put out this year. Usually they gobble the birdseed I put out in less than 24 hours but there's still some of that stuff left. 

Gotten a few different species this year too, which I haven't seen before. Hopefully it's a sign that bird populations in general are more healthy than they've been. Don't be fooled, though. Shifting baseline syndrome is definitely a thing. We tend to think the conditions (ecological conditions like faunal populations) we grew up with are normal, but really they were already in really bad shape, so when we perceive an improvement we are more impressed than we should be, since the actual baseline from whenever you want to measure it, say a hundred years ago or a thousand, was way way higher. There used to be ten billion passenger pigeons a hundred years ago, but now there are zero. Or when I was a kid, bald eagles were relatively rare, having been hurt by DDT and other things, but now they are much more common than in the 80s. But still not at their optimum population.

Anyway, my point was to post some of the pictures of cool birds I've taken this year. I no longer have a DLSR and I usually have to take pics quick before they fly away so I'm not saying these are amazing photos. But it is kind of amazing to me the variety of birds we can get in my neck of the Woods since when I was kid the baseline was basically sparrow and ravens. 

Western Tanager:

House Thrush:

This one just showed up the other day and I don't know what it is. 

And then at work- where I used to work I mean which is still weird to say- we always had a bunch of these flying around. They rarely sat still long enough to get a good look at them but they definitely had a red colouring, but I'm pretty sure they are different than a house thrush:

So yeah. I like birds. Also at work I got to watch a juvenile bald eagle practice flying, with I assume one of its parents supervising. I took some video but the eagle is hard to see, I think I mainly just got the adult. Well, maybe I'll upload it somewhere one of these days. It's a bit of a rigmarole not having my own computer though so not right now. I was going to talk about Wingspan and Mariposas tonight too, but those could really go in their own posts.

Gotten quite a few rejections for short stories lately and that's fine and normal. Earlier today on Twitter I posted how even though I've tried so many things to get the writing juices flowing nothing seemed to work. I set up a nice writing table and I have my still-too-small collection of notebooks that I use instead of a computer:

There's a method but also I don't really have a computer so.

I've been trying to write a little every day but it's not really been too successful. I try to just warm up by journalling but not life journalling just literally like warming up writing muscles talking about the process and stuff. 

I listen to boardgame design podcasts and one doctrine that's really essential in that field is to iterate quickly instead of overthinking stuff alla time so I tried that. Definitely helpful but you have to be comfortable with suckiness. Hell, I even watched some YouTube videos on writing just to see if I could jumpstart creativity. Other things I try- reading my own writing to sort of remember what my style is. That's helpful too, actually.

Then I took a break and did some household maintenance type things. Still just urg! Finally I decided to go for a run sans AirPods so no music or podcasts. Just me and my thoughts and I ran a good 10 kms and also it totally worked so yay! Once winter comes I don't know how happy I will be to get out there in -30 but I will cross that bridge when it comes. 

 I didn't see that coming! I'm sure you've heard by now the news about the phosphine gas discovered in the clouds of Venus. I think most people, especially the scientists who published the findings, are pretty quick to point out all the reasons to be appropriately skeptical. Scientific progress is built on healthy skepticism but as a layperson I can definitely embrace some cautious optimism. Cynical pessimism I can do without. Anyways my money was always on Europa so Venusian cloud bugs is a huge bonus even if it turns out phosphine can be produced by some process we just haven't seen before, without any life-form being involved. From what I understand we don't even really understand how micro-organisms produce phosphine here, just that we know they do.

I was reading a book on Overdrive and you know how when it expires it just says "too bad for you asshole stop reading!" and it goes away? And then you have to put it on hold again and wait until some random day when all 12 of your holds are available somehow on the same day. Well the Venus news reminded me to check and yay the book was available for download again! I only had two more days to claim it so lucky for me the cloud dwellers of Venus saved the day. The book is called Alien Oceans by Kevin Hand. He doesn't seem to have a personal website or blog but if you google him all sorts of stuff comes up. The book is mostly about the search for and probability of life on the myriad of ocean worlds just in our own solar system- Europa, Enceladus, even Ceres has just recently been discovered to have an ocean! Still very intriguing stuff, even if Venus is about as far from an ocean world (now) as you can get. Anyways I bring it up because I liked a point he makes in it and it is relevant today: in our history we have discovered geology works beyond Earth; chemistry works beyond Earth. So like, does biology work beyond Earth?

THE GIANT FLOATING INTELLIGENT FLYING WHALES FARTING OUT PHOSPHINE GAS ON VENUS SAY YES!!!!!

 I've read more than 70 complete issues of National Geographic this year, mostly since the pandemic hit. A long time ago I realized that if you read an issue cover to cover, you would pick up the most amazing and useful info you otherwise never would have known that you would want to know. This is just a trick I do, not something I recommend to anyone else. You do you. But for me it's been invaluable. It would be faster and more efficient to just read the articles that sound interesting but then you miss out on all these interesting tidbits about potatoes, for example. Because if I didn't have that rule there's no way I'm reading 2000 words about potatoes. But they're really fascinating. Who knew!

Since 2004 or so- in fact when I went to New Zealand as chronicled in the early years of this blog- this has been my practice. Most years I was lucky to even read 12 issues this way, and thus it was a losing battle. And hey, I'm not saying my goal or desire is to read every issue of NatGeo ever. No. But maybe since I was born? September 1974 issue? But completing this task is beside the point. The point is only and always to learn all the things. I've also read a shit ton of comics on Marvel Unlimited this year but that's for whole other reasons. Really, though, all reading just makes me, and you if you care to, a better writer.

As if I already wasn't Nerd to the power of a hundred, here is a chart I made tracking the issues I have read cover to cover:

And here are a couple of cool links to some of the things I've discovered, which I had no idea existed beforehand:

A stone mosaic map of the Middle-East in Jordan.

The largest known geode, known as the Pulpi Geode, is big enough to stand in!

The kodkod, or guigna, is the smallest cat in the Americas, and are about half the size of a house cat. Leopordus guigna guigna is its latin designation but looks like maybe güiña is the more correct way to write it.

If you find the common link you will win a prize! Just kidding, the common link is I read about them in National Geographic. There will be no prizes ;)

 

It's my birthday! A lovely day. Thought I'd dust off this blog, which isn't quite as old as I am, but as blogs go, it's pretty ancient. Like a million in blog years. I think I would like to make better use of it from now on, since I have plenty of time to do so. Back in July my long career at the ole coal mine came to an end. The photos above show my firstish day- maybe it was taken my first day, maybe a few weeks in, I honestly don't recall- and my last day, standing next to the exact same truck! Camera technology changed a little bit in the intervening 27 years so I guess my iPhone has a .... slightly more fisheye effect? Or wider angle? I'm not too sure about the specifics. But I tried to capture the same angle, just didn't quite nail it.

So much has changed, even since I wrote the essay in the previous post- indeed it did come to pass, going into decline and all that. But the virus changed everything. It didn't really affect the mine closure much- that was going to happen regardless. But it sure made the "well, now what?" phase much scarier for a lot of my colleagues. Some of them got jobs, and some haven't yet. As for me, I am able to stay at home- for the first time in my married life I won't be gone from home half the time! Which is huge for us. The girls are in school, Michelle is working, and we have the flexibility to deal with any changes in that situation. Well, short of getting the virus at the same time. I have no idea what will happen then and I don't mind admitting that thought scares me. Anything else I think we can handle. 

So yeah, I have more time to pursue writing, so I will write here from time to time, though my focus now will be on getting published in other venues. I've had some small success with that over the years, even when constrained by the Harrison Bergeron effect of shift work. 

And I get to work out more- also something that I did fairly well while living with the constant near-jetlag effect of shift work. No more night shifts! That's so huge for me. I can string together a much more impressive run of workouts now. My Apple Watch is much happier with me, lol. I'll sign off with a selfie even! 

Into Decline

Here come the Berserk Dwarves! Like bowling balls with beards, this ale-swilling, axe-swinging band of marauders are no match for the resident Diplomat Elves who hitherto lived peacefully in a perfectly charming mountain realm. It’s a small world, after all, and there’s no room for dwarves and elves to live together in harmony. Before long the Berserk Dwarves had established themselves as the undisputed and rightful occupants of their new kingdom, and nobody better try to kick them out of it. Because they’re berserk! And Berserk Dwarves don’t stand aside for nothing.
Unlike regular Dwarves, Berserk Dwarves are . . . well, one might argue the difference between Berserk and Regular Dwarves is subtle, a redundancy even, a matter of blood alcohol content rather than any taxonomic differences. Be that as it may, Non-Berserk Dwarves can at least be negotiated with, lived alongside, perhaps even, in all humility, befriended. Berserk Dwarves, not so much. Once they’ve ensconced themselves in a region, well, there goes the neighbourhood.
Unless and until they go into decline…
Years ago when I first played the Days of Wonder board game Small World I was taken by the beautiful artwork and the way you could combine races and factions to get a unique combination of traits and special powers every time. Berserk Dwarves, Diplomat Elves. Bivouacking Amazons and so forth. I might have glommed onto my BersDwars a little too fondly, though, since I really didn't like the rule that said you should let your race go into decline and choose a new one once they’ve overextended themselves. Why would I want to do that? What’s better than Berserk Dwarves? Spoiler alert, pretty much anything is better than Berserk Dwarves, even Wealthy Halflings, if everyone else at the table is playing a strategic rather than a nostalgic game.
Ten years later I am a lot more savvy when it comes to board games and design decisions and the going into decline mechanism makes way more sense. It’s called Small World for a reason- there is limited space and limited tokens. If you want to win you’re going to have to manage your races and choose the right time to cut your losses and try a new strategy. Fair enough. But I still kind of wish they had just included way more Dwarf tokens.
I bring this up now not because I think Small World is the best board game ever- it shows its age for sure though it still has some fun aspects- but because I suddenly find myself in the uncomfortable position of being a real life Berserk Dwarf whose real life job unexpectedly switched from full steam ahead to Mines of Moria-style decline.
I’m a coal miner. Not the dwarvish delving-too-deep-into-the-bowels-of-the-earth-waking-up-ancient-horrors kind, nor indeed even the underground guy-with-a-canary kind, but rather I operate heavy equipment in an open pit mine in Alberta, Canada. Started as a summer student back in the 90s, then hired on permanently in 2001, though I endured a layoff for a couple of years, but now continuously since 2004. My whole adult life. I’m a miner! I’m a Berserk Dwarf!
Soon I will be a very different sort of beast, one I didn’t plan to be and have no desire to be. This sort of beast is called the Laid-off Miner. Their special power is they no longer get bonus coins or coins of any kind but at least they no longer smudge everything with coal dust. Yay!
The berserk thing about this whole situation is none of us saw it coming, really. Sure, coal mining is cyclical in nature and there are always ups and downs and good times and lean. But we were ramping up to our next phase, we were hiring anyone with a pulse seemingly, we had a plan and a future. Until we didn’t. A decision came from the big big bosses, Wealthy Humans known as the Board of Directors of the corporation I work for, that we would no longer be pursuing the next phase of mining, and that, once the current phase is mined out, say another year or so, the site would be shut down. After fifty years, our mine is going into decline.
A slow motion decline that will play out over the next year. Weird, right? It’ll take place in phases. Around Xmas time our biggest shovel, a huge electric excavator that moves massive amounts of rock, will be torn down to components and mailed to another mine owned by our parent corp. When that goes, the first major round of lay-offs occurs. Merry Xmas. I have enough seniority that I will be around to the bitter end but that is cold consolation as I wave goodbye to many of my union brothers and sisters.
In the meantime we still have to do our jobs. But, if we do our jobs too well won’t we be out of work that much sooner?  This realization does strange things to our morale and our work ethic. Going into decline has unforeseen side effects which will only be more pronounced as time marches on.
Because time will march on, like it or not, and operations will just keep downsizing and declining. Eventually, and by eventually I mean inevitably and much sooner than I’d like, the doors will be shut, and any of us still employed will be like the last of the dinosaurs, looking around after the asteroid and wondering where all the T-Rexes went. Or, perhaps more fittingly, like some kind of deep-digging gimling who didn’t notice the demon of the underworld that ate all of her kin.
What does a Berserk Dwarf do for a second career, anyway?


Note- Small World is readily available anyplace you would expect to find games, whether online or at your friendly local game store or even some big box stores. Other more modern games with similar feels but perhaps being just a little bit more fun include Ethnos and, if you really want to go all in, Heroes of Land, Air and Sea. I’ve never played Heroes of Land, Air and Sea so if you do I will be jealous but will want to hear all about it. Find me on Twitter @NathanWaddell1 and on Instagram @nwaddell1974

Pumpkin Splice

It's probably impossible to quantify the havoc wreaked upon history by the high fantasy art murals airbrushed on a certain type of van native to the 1970s. But surely the impetus for this little gothic can be traced to one such vehicle so adorned. It lived next door to our protagonist. Protagonist? A strong word. Perhaps main character is more apt. HIs name is Trip. He's not the nicest person. When we meet him here, long in his past, he was just a sweet kid. Innocent and curious and a little bit nervous. But you would be nervous too, if, when you were 8 years old, the aforementioned painted van moved in next door.
It arrived by mysterious means, for subsequent investigations revealed it to be engineless. Probably brakeless, too, though Trip lacked the mechanical wherewithal to check. Even he could tell it didn't have an engine, though, since the truncated hood was permanently open, revealing its gaping maw. It was parked directly across from Trip's bedroom window, and it never moved. Because, engineless.
It was a Halloween scene, full of all the usual motifs and cliches. Bats. Full moon. Lots of orange. And so many pumpkins, the most prominent of which served as the head of a scarecrow-like figure, but instead of the usual triangle slices for eyes, it instead had these angry, intense blue eyes that seemed to stare directly into Trip's heart. Evil eyes. They looked wrong on that pumpkin head, and something about them disturbed Trip deeply.
At night those eyes would stare into his room, and into his soul. If he buried his head underneath the covers he was safe, but if he had to go to the bathroom, he was doomed.  Doomed. When his full bladder convinced him that maybe he wasn't 100% doomed, that perhaps his doom percentile was more like 36% whereas his bladder capacity was at 126%, then he would race to do his business and then sneak, ninja-style, back into his own bed and under the covers once more.
In the daytime, the spell was broken, somewhat. It still held an almost magnetic fascination, but it wasn't irresistible. There were other things to see in the daytime. Like the girl who lived across the street from Trip. Her name was Sadie. Sadie wasn't interested in evil eye Sinatra pumpkins. She was interested in kissing. And running. Kissing and running. She would sneak up on Trip, give him a smooch on the cheek, and take off running. Trip would howl and run after her, and even though Sadie was at least twice as fast as Trip and would win any head-to-head race any day, he always caught her.  And then Sadie would kiss him again. Trip would get so mad that one could only assume his higher brain functions were impaired, because he never seemed to recognize the pattern. Until he did, and by then he was clever enough to pretend that he didn't.
Innocent enough, right? Fast forward a few years and maybe not so much. Sadie having a sleepover with her best friend in her yard, camping out in a tent. Trip sneaking over to see what he can see. All in good fun, you say? As the omniscient narrator I can tell you with confidence that Trip wasn't exactly pure of heart. Did he deserve what happened next? Yes. He did.
Sadie's friend had a dog. And this dog, like all of her kind, was pure of heart. Stout of nose. So when she smelled ole Trip slinking about she raised the alarm. And then answered the call herself! Trip had to put all his years of practice chasing Sadie to avoid getting a big chomp mark on his butt.
The dog chased him straight to the van, where she had him cornered. Trip cowered underneath those evil blue eyes, while the yellow dog eyes glowed at him in the dark. HIs personal Scylla and Charybdis.
Sadie's' friend called off her dog, and Sadie punched Trip in the gut for his crime, leaving him winded and crying, not to mention grounded because his parents heard the commotion and were not impressed.
Doomed. Trip was right all along.
<-->

So it turns out growing pumpkins is easy. Trip discovered this sometime between grades 11 and 12. He started his horticultural career in junior high with tabletop gardens, with the LEDs and the water pumps. Easy enough. And then he convinced his parents to obtain a double plot in their local community garden, which he turned into a small pumpkin patch.
And since all that was so easy it wasn't much harder to learn about GM. Through the wonders of Kickstarter and CRISPR technology, Trip was able to set up a small and surprisingly powerful gene editing lab in his bedroom.
What was hard was convincing an organism that lacked a nervous system to grow eyes.

<-->

Nothing. Just a plain old orange pumpkin like all the rest. Trip was disappointed but already had an idea for version 6.0. On Halloween he did what he always did. Cut the top off to scoop out its guts. So gross. So fun. When he saw the little eyes dangling down from the lid, though, he dropped his knife and jumped. I'm pretty sure he swore loudly. Once his heart started beating at a normal pace, he examined what, after all, he should have been expecting.
Rhopalia. Heard of them? Box jellyfish have them, little clusters of six eyes looking every which way. These box jellyfish have four rhopalia, for a total of 24 eyes! What does a jellyfish need with 24 holysmokin eyes? I dunno either, but they've been around for half a billion years so they must be doing something right. One thing is for sure, though, a pumpkin definitely does not need 24 eyes inside its gourdular cavity. Gourdular is not a real word, but rhopalia is. Seriously. Look it up if you don't believe me.
Anyway. Trip was ecstatic. A huge success! Once his elation died down a little bit he realized success was maybe a bit premature. A huge step in the right direction. Now that he had proof of concept he could work on getting the eyes to migrate to the outside of the pumpkin, where they might do some good. Or rather, evil.
For this next phase, Trip turned to the humble Pectinidae. Aka the scallop.
Let us consider the scallop. I consider them to be quite tasty, but if perhaps they are not to your taste or if you don't eat meat it is entirely possible you have never given them much thought at all. I know I certainly didn't know the following fact, which you may want to sit down for:
Scallops have a whole pile of eyes.
So many eyes. Itty bitty bright blue super intense Frank Sinatra eyes.
You scoff. You sputter. Nonsense, you may be shouting, even now when I can not hear you. It's provable. It's googlable. Or you could even go to the seafood tank in your supermarket and see for yourself. See the seafood and you will see.
Trip saw. He had been seen, seen and haunted by eyes just like these. And now he saw. But even so, having seen, having been seen, the way eluded him.
Now, I can't really explain the technicalities of his problem. Plural, actually. A plethora of problems, probably. But their nature are beyond my powers of description. I know what CRISPR means, or at least what it stands for. Let’s see, the C, that stands for… hmm. Well, the R (one of the Rs, don't recall which at the moment) stands for repeating, and the P for palindromic. I may not be a geneticist or molecular biologist but I am a writer and I know all about palindromes. Racecar. Spell it backwards? Racecar. Repeating palindromes: racecar racecar. See? Easy.
So imagine there was a bacteria out there with this odd little phrase in its DNA:

Racecar holysmokin killervirus racecaR

At first the scientists couldn't figure out what these odd phrases of DNA were for. Because it didn't say “holysmokin killervirus” it more likely said something like ATGCCCATTAGTA etc etc and it took them a while to see that what that meant was basically holysmokin killervirus. And then it clicked. The palindromes were simply bookends, or you could even consider them like a picture frame. And the picture inside, essentially those are “Wanted Dead or Alive” posters. The bacteria use these phrases as an immune system of sorts. Some DNA invades their premises that matches that poster, gone! Not allowed!
Okay, so, yay for bacteria. But what does that have to do with pumpkins and franksinatra eyes? Using this principle, scientists were able to appropriate their little defense system and repurpose it as the world’s most effective gene editing tool.
Along with a protein called CAS9 scientists (and heck, unexceptional 15 year old boys and anyone who wants to, really) can now insert whatever Wanted Poster they want, and CRISPR will find that string of DNA, cut it out, and replace it with whatever they want. Magic. Actually, better than magic. Science. So long as no one abuses it. Luckily no one would ever want to do that.
Trip renewed his efforts, spurred on by the pursuing Furies with pumpkin heads.You know what’s great about Halloween? I mean, besides everything? Halloween doesn't have any important life lessons to offer. It’s just about awesome, scary stuff. And candy. It leaves this narrator somewhat at a loss for just the right simile to describe Trip’s determination, however. I guess it was like a zombie hunting for brains. Or a kid in a Halloween costume seeking out treats. He really wanted to get it done, in other words.
Even so, it took years. His enthusiasm percentile, well, even if it never dipped below 92%, his procrastination quotient often shot up well past the redline to 126% or so. Thus in his twenties he could often be found passing evenings at his local licensed pizzeria, playing vintage arcade games and drinking beer. His favourite game was a pinball machine called Haunted House which had plenty of creepy ghosts and assorted demony creatures. He got especially good at hitting a certain set of mushroom bumpers which reminded him a little too much of rhopalia.
“Trip, is that you?” a vaguely familiar voice from behind him said.
He turned, and the ball dropped, unnoticed, past his inert flippers and down the drain. It was Sadie.
“Cindy, hi!”
She grimaced. “You haven’t changed, Trip. Good to see you. How have you been?”
Trip talked at length about himself, even though there was little to say. Sadie listened politely but even Trip could tell she wasn’t 100% present. Finally, having exhausted the subject of his own accomplishments (and without really going into his CRISPR adventures) he asked, “How about you? What’s new in your life?”
“Oh, well, I’m in med school actually. I …”
“Med school? You? I always thought you were going to be, like, you know, a soccer mom who runs marathons on weekends.”
“Uh, you know, I am on the varsity basketball team, so that’s cool.”
“Basketball? Interesting. I kind of hate basketball, but I can see how you’d be good at it. Do you remember when we were kids and you used to beat me at 21 all the time?”
Sadie held up her phone. “You know what, Trip? I have to take this call. But it was nice running into you.” And with that she was gone, phone to her ear.
Trip turned back to his game. Her phone must have been on silent, he thought, since it hadn’t rung.
Walking home that night, slightly tipsy, Trip encountered an apparition. If you had been walking next to him, you might not have described it with precisely that term. Probably you would’ve called it a tree, recently denuded of leaves by the autumn winds, that bore a vague resemblance to a pumpkin-headed skeleton creature. And vague is being generous. It’s just a tree!
But Trip’s mind was conditioned to see apparitions. Apparitions with pumpkin heads and bright blue eyes.  He jumped. He swore. He decided it was a good night to get into jogging, and he ran home.
Once safely ensconced in the comfort  of his house, he abandoned his newfound fitness regimen and instead sat down at his CRISPR lab and got to work. What better way to purge your nightmares than to make them reality? Wait, what? Many people are scared of spiders but that doesn’t mean they embark on a lifelong quest to genetically engineer an even more frightening and deadly arachnid.
Good point. But Trip’s psychological paradigm, his mental operating system if you will, was one of those weird ones no one else ever heard of. Like KolibriOS but more prone to viruses. To stretch the metaphor. In Trip’s mind, outsourcing his fear was one way to lessen it. If he could terrorize his friends and neighbours, maybe his own terror would die down a little. Then, too, there was the know thine enemy aspect- Trip had an intimate understanding of the genetics of his creation, which should have helped his brain process the fact that there really was nothing to fear, but honestly? Obsession and phobia are not rational. Fear had ruled his life, and instead of seeking help he sought to make others feel the same way. Misery loves company, right? More like Misery loves farting in public so that everyone can enjoy the smell.
But while we were busy trying to decipher Trip’s aberrant psychology, he was busy gettin er done. Success! At long last. Well, it’s not quite like baking where the timer dings and you pull a perfect pumpkin concoction out of the oven. These things take time to grow and such. But in a literary (but not literal) and metaphorical sense, he had done it! The end!
Of course it’s not the end. Not yet.
Trip had long ago converted his back yard in to a pumpkin patch. It was quite photogenic, really, at least in the fall when the pumpkins matured. And if you went in the daylight. At night, well, Trip didn’t like going out there at night so much. But during the day he felt a special sort of thrill each time he approached his little pumpkin babies. Imagine the thrill he felt the first time he saw his little blue-eyed pumpkins, the literal fruit of his labour.
It was a huge thrill. It was also hugely terrifying. If only those emotions cancelled each other out, Trip would have been perfectly calm. But emotions are not equations, and Trip was not perfectly calm at all. But let us suppose for just one minute that emotions can be expressed as equations. His thrill factor was at 87%, while his initial terror percentile was easily 128%, though his resting terror index, once the standing startle went away, was a more manageable 66%. Added together you get at least 200% worth of jittery excitement which is why he jumped and hollered and hyperventilated. The little pumpkins watched him impassively.
The first Halloween he started slow. He placed one of his modified (he thought of them as “modifeyed” but I mean, come on) pumpkins on his porch steps alongside a regular jack o’ lantern. Hardly anyone noticed. That’s a gross overestimation, actually. No one noticed. Not one person. Would you? We all love a good jack o’ lantern and are quick to point out particularly clever or skilfully carved pumpkins, but there’s just too much to see on Halloween, isn’t there? The costumes and the decorations and the candies. Everyone’s busy seeing and being seen. A few extra eyes are bound to go unseen.
The next year he went a little bigger, basically transplanting his pumpkin patch from his backyard to his front. And though he got a lot of appreciative murmurs- not exactly gushing praise, but not nothing- once again no one really noticed. Maybe some dogs acted a little strange around the pumpkins but on Halloween everyone is a little strange, or should be. It was enough for Trip to know that his pumpkins were there, watching.
Almost enough, I suppose I should say. He also decided to sell them.
The following year he obtained a stall at his local farmer’s market. He even painted up a sign that read “Pimped Out Pumpkins” and somewhat unwisely hung it up for everyone to see. What he really wanted to do was recreate the scene from the mural that had haunted his dreams since childhood, but he lacked the artistic skill so he settled for his alliterative, if distasteful, company name.
Soon enough he attracted curious onlookers, which attracted more curious onlookers, which attracted, eventually, a local news station.
Trip was excited. Finally the world would see him! And his pumpkins. Not being an accomplished public speaker, or someone used to being in the limelight in any way, his interview was rather awkward. The station did their best to edit it into something coherent and delightful, local colour after the weather, but the reporter couldn’t quite hide her squeamishness as Trip held up the little blue-eyed gourds for the camera, and the piece had more of a creepy tone than is usual for a kicker.
Local media exposure in turn led to an even more awkward interview with the RCMP. Trip squirmed uncomfortably as the constables inspected his pumpkins and asked questions. Trip tried to trip them up by being as technical as possible but was surprised to discover that at least one of the cops- she identified herself as Constable Baxter- seemed able to follow along.
Eventually, though, they determined that no actual laws had been broken so they thanked him for his time and left.
There was a third significant visitor to Pimped Out Pumpkins, and by this time Trip was weary of the awkwardness. But it was Sadie, and her conversation was not awkward at all. She had only one thing to say: “Do you want a job?”


<-->

After graduating from med school, Sadie went to work for the University Hospital, splitting her time between the maternity ward and doing research in the fertility lab. She was doing a clinical study on the efficacy of converting skin cells into pluripotent stem cells. It seemed the best way to do this was with CRISPR. All labs need lab techs, so Sadie lobbied her supervisor, the principal investigator of the lab, to hire Trip despite his lack of academic training. Dr. Isabel Calvano was happy to let Sadie handle that aspect of her clinical study, what with all the budget cuts her lab had been subject to in the recent past. Her own work was concerned mostly with in vitro fertilization and had little to do with Sadie’s research.
Trip was a lab tech now!
Technically, to be a lab technician, Trip had to promise to enroll in a two year degree program, which he promptly did- he found an online course that seemed easy enough. But for the most part he let that slide. Much easier that way.
On his first day, Sadie showed him the ropes. He was like a kid on Halloween running from one house to the next to get treats. Such shiny equipment! Way better than the stuff he had at home.
“For the most part, your job will be using polymerase chain reaction, you know, pretty easy stuff. Preparing samples, looking at slides. Your job is to help me, Trip. Most of my day is in the clinic, helping patients. You get to do the mundane thankless stuff I don’t have time to. Yeah?”
“Yeah. Sounds good. I got this. Whoa is that a GeneRead QIAcube? Nice!”
He got to set his own hours. At first he tried to come in on a regular business hours schedule, but he wasn’t really a morning person. He wanted his evenings free for his own work, and for pizza and pinball. But entropy set in and he started arriving later and later, and stayed long past when everyone else went home.
The lab equipment and the unused computer monitors glowed blue in the dark.
Trip did his best to ignore them, and over time he noticed them less and less. It helped that Sadie often worked nights and would drop in often to work and to chat. Trip would try to position himself so that she was blocking some of the blue glow.
Sadie thought his behaviour was a little furtive, and privately called him Trippin, but overall she was pleased with his work.
Halloween came around again, at its appointed time, nearly a year after Trip started at the lab. Trip attended a Halloween party as Sadie’s plus one, and they dressed up as Frank and Nancy Sinatra, and drunkenly sang Something Stupid, and it wasn’t even awkward. It was chaste, though, and Trip was home in time to hand out treats to some straggling trick or treaters. It was a very normal Halloween, the best Trip could remember, and he hadn’t even bothered to set out any pumpkins. In fact, he hadn’t even planted any this year. He was past all that. He went to bed, and slept soundly, unplagued by nightmares.
The next day when he arrived at work, Sadie was there, and Dr. Calvano, and even that RCMP officer, what was her name? Constable Backgammon or something.
“Hi,” he said.
No one said hi back.
“What. Did you do.” Dr. Calvano had rarely addressed Trip before. Sadie and the constable stared at him with matching expressions of stern but contained fury.
Dr. Calvano grabbed him by the collar. “How many? You bastard. How many?”
Constable Baxter gently touched Dr. Calvano on the shoulder, and much more forcefully took Trip’s arm and yanked it around his back, handcuffing him while saying “I wish to give you the following warning: You are being placed under arrest, you need not say anything as you have the right to remain silent, but if you do say anything it may be used as evidence against you. Do you understand?”
“No, I don’t understand. What’s the problem here?”
Dr. Calvano practically screamed at him. “You know what you did. You sick… you … you…”
Trip looked over at Sadie. She hadn’t moved, and she had tears in her eyes, though they hadn’t yet fallen.
“Sadie, he’s perfect. Go see. They’ll all be perfect, I made sure. Ten fingers, ten toes and ten beautiful blue eyes.”

40 Below Volume 2 is out! You can buy it in brick and mortar bookstores like Chapters and Audrey's, or you can buy it online here. Or at the 40 Below Project website, where there are also short audio interviews with some of the writers.

A story I wrote is in a book! That you can buy! Digitally and printally!

If that leaves you wanting more you can always read this story I wrote about humans:  Ghost Lights

(In fact every Thursday I still have my Laserium over at Vampirenomad.com )

It's true, I do kick ass. I have a brand new two-part story on the Laserium called The Summoned:

Part 1

Part 2

Happy New Year!
I wrote a story about New Years, called Resolutions. Not to give it away, but it's actually about the end of the world.

The other day, while leaving the rec center to drive home.
Pallas: There's your car daddy!
Me: Good eyes Pallas!
Pallas: Yours is the dirtiest one.

Just now, while watching Clone Wars on Netflix (woohoo!)
Pallas: Daddy, does General Grievous have a secret identity or is he made of robot?

Though this blog is in hibernation a bit, I've actually been writing a fair amount lately. My old friend the Vampire Nomad has sort of gathered a collective of writers for her own website which has a better reach than this. I wrote something I'm quite happy with, so check it out here if you like!

11 years. Figure I should post something. Here's a photo:

Next week I get to go to Volbeat! Woohoo!  I only just discovered these guys about a month ago but have become completely addicted to their Metallica/Slayer/Ramones/Johnny Cash/Elvis/rockabilly Danish sound. Here:






Pallas has also recently taken up writing songs about devils:

Two blog posts in an hour! New world record. This one was kind of a case of spontaneous poetry since a twitter friend (@Rudy_Trev) was raging against the dying of the light and his homework, or so I assume. He has to write a villanelle. "I'm good at poems!" says I. But then I started thinking. I wonder what it is a villanelle.  Turns out it is a ridiculously complicated poem of 19 lines and this line has to be that line and that line repeats over here and suchlike.
Well, this might not be technically correct but I wrote it in eight minutes so:

O Wolverine
why did you forget
your shirt?
I always liked your
yellow blue costume
O Wolverine
Is it because you can't be hurt
that you don't sweat about
your shirt?
You are pretty mean
and definitely kind of lean
O Wolverine
Was it Sabertooth
who ripped
your shirt?
So good night and carpe diem
Wolvie Logan-san son
Adamantium 'em all
and let god sort 'em out

I wasn't the best father ever yesterday. Just kind of lost it on Naia. Sure, she was being completely stubborn and unreasonable, but I'm the adult and I sometimes need to remind myself to act like one. The situation was really no different than a hundred before it. In the parking lot, where there is tons of construction. Sidewalks all closed so we are on the car surface. The rule in this instance is all little girls hold Daddy's hand. But since i only had one hand free (the other had groceries) I told Naia to hold Pallas's hand. She did not comply. Even when I switched it up so Naia was in the middle, she still wasn't gonna cooperate. Screaming and crying. And you should have heard Naia. Anyways I yelled at her in the car. Like, really yelled. She stopped crying but then sort of did this traumatized whimpering the whole way home. And did I mention that I went into Booster Juice and got myself a shake but didn't get one for Pallas, who was the one who asked that we go there? Oops. Pallas was very sad and her feelings were hurt too. Anyways, cuddles and Avatar Aang made things all better.

I just bring that up because today was much better, on everyone's behalf. They were very "hāve" (I tell them to behave when we go somewhere and Pallas says "were we being have?") even though we had to spend two hours at a clinic. Some of the highlights from today:
Pallas: Naia, you're funny!
Naia: NO I'm not funny.
Pallas: What are you then?
Naia: I'm . . . . . . . BIG funny!

And then later I was tucking Pallas in and she said "my room is the safest place in the whole world because you and mom won't let any bad guys or monsters in."
"That's right, sweetheart."
"You're my favourite BoogerButtBrain."
"Oh. Well you're MY favourite BoogerButtBrain! Goodnight princess!"

 Pallas also went and got all her dance class stuff today. I teared up a bit but she made me so proud:

 

I don't think Wolverine and the Hulk have had a good scrap in a while. I was the perfect age for the classic issue written by Peter David and pencilled by Todd McFarlane where Wolvie and Hulk (in his grey smart incarnation) fightfightfight. Pretty much a perfect comic book fight. Anyways.

Pallas got her ears pierced yesterday. When she was born my mom wanted to take her out of her little NICU incubator to pierce her ears but I thought it would be better if we waited until she was old enough to ask for it. Just kidding about the incubator. Sort of.
She's definitely expressed an interest before, she loves jewellery and fancy stuff. So I told her when she first asked that she definitely could if she wanted, just that she needed to be aware it hurt a little bit for a little while. Not that much and not for very long, but I wanted to be honest. So upon further reflection, she decided to wait. NOw that she's 4 1/2, and a big girl, she decided that short term pain was worth the long term gain.
So we gathered up her PoohBear blankie and her Pink Guy and went to Atomic Zombie downtown since they were recommended to us as a place where they take care of children, since not very many places do (outside of Mexico, where my Mom is from). They were great. I went in with Pallas and held her hand, and she was amazing. She kicked ass. She did the gasp of pain, and I could tell the tears were coming but she was determined to not let them win. It was so cute and so awesome to watch. We were half-convinced that she would bail after one, but she soldiered on and did the second right away. Same thing, initial gasp of pain, some half-sobs and then.... SHE DID IT! The pride on her face and the "ascitement" of finally having real ear-rings, well, these are the memories a dad treasures for all time. Afterwards she kind of did a dance with Michelle and announced to the heavens and anyone else in earshot "I got my ears pierced!!! I'm a big girl!!!"
Poor little Naia said, "My turn!" only it was not her turn.  Soon enough, Peanut! Don't grow up too soon.

Remember the halcyon days of the Woodsy Crypt? It was a simpler era of mostly we just watched movies and tv shows chosen by the VampireNomad. There were a few simple criteria for these programs. They needed to star either Gina Gershon, Craig Parker or Tom Hardy. Back in those days Tom Hardy was mostly known for playing the Romulan clone of Jean-Luc Picard or something, Shinzon, in Star Trek Nemesis. I'm hazy on the details and my PS2 from those days had a lot of trouble playing Nemesis, no matter how many copies I brought home from the video store where I worked. (Which is now a dollar store in the shopping centre closest to my house, weird.)
I'm losing my point in the nostalgic musings. My point is simple: back then I didn't really get why Tom Hardy should be singled out for such adulation. I gamely went along with her, but I didn't see it myself. HIs other claim to fame back then was he briefly appeared, naked and scrambling for his clothes, in a late episode of Band of Brothers. Like, episode 9 of 10. Again, didn't really see the appeal.
When the first pictures of Bane showed up I was like, "Hey that huge-ass dude has the same name as the guy my old room-mate was into way back when. That skinny naked guy from Band of Brothers. Whatever happened to that guy anyways?"
The answer is he got awesome. He got so awesome that he defined new realms of awesome such that the word awesome itself is obsolete.
Michelle and I watched Warrior last week. What a great movie. You should watch it. Oh you've seen it already? Watch it again! After it was over I told Michelle that I had a lot of work to do the next day. She was like, why, it's Canada Day it's a holiday. And I was like, the tomhardification of Nathan must begin anew!
You know, because I work out. Inspirational and all that.
Tweeted that and the VampireNomad was like, squeeee! A new term was coined. She even came up with units with which to measure tomhardification. Banes! And since I am but a wee mere mortal, I quickly realized that I could only measure myself in milliBanes.
We can only strive to reach one Bane.

Two and a half months, my longest hiatus from this blog in the nearly 11 years of its existence. This is merely a post to explain that I haven't died, just gone into hibernation. Heh. Little bear joke like in the good old days.
Mostly doing Twitter.