Did you know that Philip Pullman has a very . . . unique signature? I discovered this today when I found a signed copy of The Amber Spyglass in Strathcona Books. I was curious if it was a first edition and found that it was in fact a signed first (American) edition. Whoa, I thought, and flipped to the signature. I was a bit suspicious because it almost looked as if somebody just scribbled "Philip Pullman" to pass it off as his autograph. I asked the lady if it was genuine, and she didn't know. I bought it with the understanding that if it turned out to be fake I could take it back. I checked the internet, and it's real! Nice!
Michelle and I are starting to build a decent collection of signed books- last month I got A Feast For Crows signed by George RR Martin. Michelle has some Nick Bantock (from the reading we went to, remember gabrielle? Someone pawned their copies and I found them!) and Diana Gabaldon books. Oh yeah and gabrielle found a signed copy of House of Leaves when we were in Wellington and she talked me into buying it.
Do you guys have any?

Like a lumbering alkaloid dinosaur from Titan, Shovel 10 slowly walks its way up the mountain, maw open and ready to devour everything in its path with its blunt metal teeth.



Work really kicked my ass this week. We moved a shovel every day, and two yesterday- from the bottom of the pit to the top of the mountain, or off to the healing grounds to get fixed. A shovel, for those of you unfamiliar with the alien world that is an open pit coal mine, is the primary means of moving rock to get at coal. They're gargantuan electric digging machines, not the small handheld tools you find in your garage. They're also unwieldy. It's not like you can just drive them anywhere you want, you have to manhandle their power cables, move things around, make sure nothing catches on fire, or touches a powerline. Basically you stand outside in the cold ensuring that nothing goes wrong. When there's a ramp involved, and ice, then you want to have a bulldozer (another species of metal monster- a brutish and stubborn chilopod from Neptune) acting as a brake in case, as almost happened with 10 here, it starts sliding out of control. Moving one is a lot of work, and takes a long time. Still, it's not a bad job, especially with the scenery. I certainly don't mind working. And who else gets to play with giant metal alien dinosaur robots that eat rocks?
Anyways, work's done, time to enjoy some days off. Four of them. On the agenda for today: absolutely nothing! Lots and lots of nothing.

I was going to be all mopey about Team Canada's 2-0 loss to the Russians, but then I remembered that today was a great day for Canada at the Olympics. We're now in 4th place in the medal standings! Can't complain about that. Canmore's Chandra Crawford won a cross-country gold and radiated her 10,000 watt excitement all the way home. There was a short track relay silver, and Cindy Klassen won her fourth medal of the games, a gold in the 1500 m speed skating race. Her teammate Kristina Groves won silver! So really, we kicked ass today. I hope tomorrow's papers remember that and don't have a ten page insert on "What Went Wrong", and "How It Is All Gretzky's Fault". It wasn't a bad hockey game, for that matter. We just lost. And the women's team won gold the other day. So it's all good. The millionaires can come home to their NHL teams and try for Mr. Stanley.

If I have one vice (pooing in the woods is not a vice!), then it would have to be books. I sure spend a lot of money on books. Now that we live quite a ways away from the six excellent used stores and the best new bookstore of our old neighbourhood, I thought I might get a chance to get caught up on my bookshelf backlog. But then Michelle told me she would like to have a copy of Pride and Prejudice. So, we made an excursion to the old country to find one. Which we did, and then we spent quite a bit of money on stuff we weren't looking for. But how can you not buy the complete works of Lewis Carroll in one volume for ten bucks? Or Sopranos Season 3 for less than half price of what it would be new? And to finally get our own copy of Oh, the Places You'll Go, well, it's money well spent.
Right now, I'm reading a very cool little book called Darwinia, by Robert Charles Wilson. I bought it last year, and it has sat on the shelf because I read another book of his, called The Chronoliths, which had a very cool concept, but then I felt it sort of failed to capitalize on it. Still a good read, but if you have a story about a conqueror who hurls huge monuments of his victories back in time, well, I wanna read about that guy. But we don't get to. Oh well. Darwinia is a lost world type of story, but completely unique in execution and concept. As a nice touch, it has a few nods to Edgar Rice Burroughs. Oh yeah, he's Canadian! Nice!
Oh yeah, speaking of Canadian authors, I also bought a book by Charles de Lint on Gotthammer's recommendation.

Are you guys going to enter the Bulwer-Lytton Contest this year? I am busy paring my hopefully-horrific sentence down to around 60 words, but it's hard. It would be better if we were allowed an entire painful paragraph. Well, I have it down to 61 so that should be bad enough. (No wiseguy remarks about how I should be a shoo-in!)

Make it stop! Please! I'll give you a lucky loonie!
Anyways, back from nightshift today. Tired. I'll be back tomorrow with my usual Substantial and Brilliant Utterances Upon Varied and Sundry Topics Sprinkled With References to Ursines of All Species And Their Tendency to Poo in the Woods. Which, some minor trivia for you, was originally going to be the title of this blog, until brevity prevailed.

Happy Valentine's Day! May you not be embittered by this oft-heartless day. Here is a V-Day poem dedicated to my amazing wife- not one of those mushy and cliched poems, with lots of references to eyes being like oceans,though, or climbing really high mountains. It's just a love poem, with robots. In fact, that's what it's called:

Love Poem, with Robots


A fleet of technospaceships
full of robots
from the planet Technotopia X
arrived at Earth the other day
looking for the meaning of life
and love
all the questions of the human condition
that have plagued robotkind since
at least the golden age of pulp fiction
they sent a robot researcher
down to study you and I
and make a report to the mothership
he followed us around
mostly unobtrusive
but occasionally pestering us with
tiresome requests to clarify some
figure of speech
that he took literally
anyways
he kept a careful tally
medians modes and means
of every time we
hugged
touched
said I love you
he returned to his
mothership
to report on his findings
love is
he said in his robot voice
love is . . .
love . . .
love . . . does not . . .
compute
love . . .
and then
his technoneural processors
fried
and he died
so the fleet of technospaceships
fled
back to Technotopia X
we felt sad
I said
I loved that little guy
and you said
I love you!
I laughed
and said
I love you too!

Marilyn Manson has been fairly quiet lately, causing gabrielle and I to send urgent emails across the equator wondering what's up with that. Turns out he's been working on a film about Lewis Carroll, author of such classics as Alice in Wonderland and Jabberwocky. Which, when you think about it, is a perfect fit.

Yay for Olympics!
Eighteen years ago, when I was 13, I fell in love with the Olympic Winter Games. They were in Calgary that year, and our province embraced the Games with a zeal I had never seen before, or even since, really. It was cool. There were larger than life athletes, people like Alberto Tomba, Katerina Witt, Eddie the Eagle (a hapless ski jumper from Great Britain who qualified by virtue of being the only Brit ski jumper, the Jamaican bobsleddders, and our own Canadian heroes like Elizabeth Manley and Karen Percy (now married to Oilers GM Kevin Lowe) who won us two of our five medals that year.
Yay for Olympics! Michelle and I watched and cheered (Michelle cheered especially loud) as Spruce Grove native Jennifer Heil won Canada's first medal, gold in Women's moguls. We watched Cindy Klassen get a bronze in speed skating. Today I watched some figure skating- did you see that Chinese pair, Zhang and Zhang? She fell hard 38 seconds into the program attempting a quad throw, skated hurt off the ice, and then they came back and won the silver. That's what the Olympics are all about- inspiring stories of human accomplishment. Every four years it's good to get caught up in that again and cheer on the athletes, regardless of their national affiliation.
As an aside, I'm not really sure what the legal betting habits of Janet Gretzky, a non-athlete, has to do with anything. Hopefully the focus will shift off of that and on to what matters, the athletes.
Turin 2006
CBC's Olympic Coverage website
Canada's Olympic Team
New Zealand's Olympic Team (for no particular reason, other than I was wondering if my kiwi friends had much of a presence in the Winter Games)
Yay for Olympics!

Isn't there a football game on today? It's been a while since I payed much attention to American football. And in fact, I know absolutely nothing about the present incarnation of either team. But that won't stop me from handicapping the game for you, using my Ingenious and Infallible method of adding "poo" to the two teams involved. So it's the Pittsburgh PooSteelers vs the Seattle Poohawks, eh? Well, obviously, stealing poo is immoral and really gross, but when has that ever stopped Pittsburgh? In fact, the only way I can see the Poohawks winning this one is if they litter the field with so much birdturd that the Pittsburgh defence is overwhelmed. Not gonna happen. PooSteelers 31, Poohawks 13.

Sherri Ryan of Sonic 102.9 does a countdown show every Tuesday night where she picks a random thing and plays the top ten songs in that category. Sadly, I am either busy coalmining or, uh, watching House at that time so I have yet to actually hear her show. Luckily she posts her list every week on her blog. Remember my top seven six songs about vampires? Compiled when I was trapped in the Crypt.
The reason I bring it up is I have been trying to come up with a top ten list about coal mines, or heavy equipment, but pretty much stalled out at "Coal Mine" by Armchair Cynics. And that song isn't even about coal mining! But just tonight someone told me about this really cool song and video out there that fits the bill as far as being about machinery, and has the added bonus of having that wistful/reminiscent/childhood whimsy vibe I dig so much. Check it out: JCB Song, by Nizlobi.
Also, you should really check out House. He makes me laugh, with all his childlike whimsy!

Wow, here's something I started back in July of 2004 and completley forgot all about. I don't really know where I was going with it, though it likely was anticipating gabrielle's and my trip. Anyways, I found it in my drafts archive and I just finished it off in a few minutes for something to do, taking it in a completely different direction, I guess. No real clever wordplay that I like to think is my forte. Just a quick bit of silliness. 

Homie and the Sea Turtle

 Homie Bear in polar mode 

 Decided to see the antipode 

 He went to where the icebergs flowed 

 Caught a current and off he goed 

 He promised a postcard to the coastguard 

 Waved byebye to his whale friend Blubbalard

And settled back to enjoy the trip 

 But he was intercepted by a pirate ship 

 They wanted swag and booty and gold 

 But all Homie had was ice and cold 

 So they went away but first they say 

"Watch out for sharks when you get to the bay" 

Homie said, "Sharks! That sounds pretty cool!" 

He decided to see them, like a big fool 

He went to Shark Island and clambered ashore 

He didn't see sharks, they don't live there no more 

But he saw a green turtle, laying eggs in the sand 

And got her some water, to help lend a hand 

The turtle said "Thanks, my name is Ferg 

"And I can't help but notice that your little iceberg 

"Is melting too fast in the tropical heat 

"You're sweating so much you smell like old sheet 

"So hop on my shell and I'll take you home 

"I've always wanted to see where polar bears roam" 

So Homie said sure and he went back to the Arctic 

Leaving his iceberg right there where he parked it 

And Ferg liked it so much in the great white old north 

That she became a polar turtle from that time henceforth 

Which is why when you time travel a million years from last week 

You see white sea turtles with white shells and white beaks! 

 There. Hope you like it. I better go make supper for Michelle. Speaking of my beautiful wife, tomorrow is her birthday, so please all send her some love! And maybe for a gift you can suggest a nice romantic song (but not dumb, okay?) and I can make the compilation!

6:56 AM
It's early, it's dark, I'm still bleary, and I know I have a very long day ahead of me. I do my start-of-shift checks on the shovel, and all the oil and grease levels are good. I go up to the cab for a few minutes before my day begins in earnest. The shovel operator is in his chair, contemplating his own day. He's a nice old fellow named Vic, about 57 or so.
"They told me this is really called a gooey," he says.
"What's gooey?"
"This. The computer. It's really called a gooey."
"Oh, yeah, I know what you mean- a graphical user interface." (GUI)
"Sounds like your dad will be in the pit hauling some coal."
"Yeah I heard that." The sudden change in topic change doesn't faze me.
"Oh so it's a computer term, eh?"
"Yep."
"Gooey."
"Gooey," I agree.
"Well, I think I'll turn to my right here, where the bucket is pointing, and widen out. They'll likely tell me to keep going right to expose more coal, but I have to widen out."
"Yeah, guaranteed they'll be hollering at ya."
"Yep. Gooey!" And with that he plunged the bucket into the face, hoisting more than 80 tons of rock to begin his day.
7:02 AM
My foreman is here to pick me up. The rest of the day is spent by myself outside in the wind, lifting and pulling and wishing the day was over.
But every time I think of gooey, I smile.

Everyone say congratulations to my wife who started her new job today! Congratulations wife! Now I can quit my job!

Today was one of those "you really feel like a coal miner" days. Being open pit miners, we are far removed from the black faces and canaries of undergrounders (and thankfully far removed from their dangers as well) so though we get dirty every day, it is not usually too bad. Today the wind was howling off the mountains something fierce, gusting upwards of 60 km/hr, blowing coal dust in my eyes and face all day as I was down on the ground doing various things, not least of which was help one of these get unstuck. Even through my goggles and other protective gear I was completely black. I had Trent Reznor eyeliner, and cried tears of coal. In fact, I sneezed snot of coal, too! And I pooed . . . well, it doesn't quite get THAT deep. Though I can't really explain how my kneecaps and feet even get coaly.

Dinosaurs make me happy. I was spending a lazy Saturday afternoon down by the fireplace reading a National Geographic article on the mighty saurians. Here in Alberta we have one of the finest dinosaur fossil beds in the world, and an excellent museum to go with it, the Royal Tyrrell. If you are an Albertan student, you can enter their poster contest, though you will have some stiff competition from Weremagnus, who is her own worst enemy it seems, as she was disqualified from a previous year's contest because the judges didn't believe she had actually drawn her entry herself.
Lucky for everybody else, I am not eligible to enter.

Behold my terrifying Triceratops of triumph!

After almost a week of living in our new house, we are settling in quite nicely. Maybe even too nicely, since I accidentally chased off the guy who was shovelling my sidewalk for free. Well, I didn't chase him off so much as tell him that he didn't need to do it anymore, since the house had occupants now. And then a few seconds later I realized how utterly foolish that was. D'oh! Come back, free snowshoveller guy! Come baaaaack!
Oh well. I bought a fancy ergonomically sensitive snowshovel at the hardware store the other day so I might as well make use of it. Before it gets stolen. And speaking of hardware stores, I have been to the Home Depot more times this week than ever before in the rest of my life put together. Weird.
Anyways, the picture you see at the top is my new work area, replete with many bears and General Grievouses to make me happy and unproductive. What do I need to be productive for anyways? I'm on holidays. Heck, I'm still in my Pyjama Power™!

The Last Batgirl
(starring Tom Cruise as Batgirl and Ken Watanabe as Ra's al Ghul?)
Okay, after this I will move on, but how could I not link to Sarah How's fantastic rendition? She of course is the kickass artist who drew my two blogbears for me.

Just for Selkie
I scoured DeviantArt for some Wonder Woman pictures, since Batgirl is getting all the attention these days. So here are:
A vectorized version. A colored comic illo. A digitally painted piece. A B&W WW. Same spiffed up with colors. An Amazon avatar. And an updated Underwoman. I mean, Wonderwoman.

Batgirl!!

Wanna see more? Most of them are much better than mine, I promise.
Here are some of my fav orite ites ites ites . Yay for Batgirl ! ! ! !