I was excited to read Endymion Spring, since the author, Matthew Skelton, grew up in Edmonton and is a fellow U of A alum. As much as I'd love to tell you that I've finally found a great YA novel that everyone can enjoy, this one didn't quite get there for me. But at least the writing wasn't too bad- not nearly as bad as some I've encountered lately. The story was just a little too . . . unexciting. Not boring exactly. Just average, I guess. My bet is that Skelton has some great books in store, so he'll be worth keeping an eye on.

I know lots of you read Young Adult fiction (which actually means children's literature). Where are the good titles? Harvey, I know you have the goods on what's going on in New Zealand and Australia, I definitely want to look into some of your recommendations. I liked Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, His Dark Materials, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and of course the classics which stand on their own (Tolkien, Lewis, even Beverly Cleary). But I didn't care for Artemis Fowl, Septimus Heap or the Edgewood Chronicles (though the beautiful art almost made up for the writing). What are you guys reading that you recommend? My criteria are first and foremost a good story, but I am also fairly discerning regarding the writing as well.

I realize a 10 or 13-year-old won't necessarily have the same standards as I regarding what makes good writing, but at the same time I think it is very unfair to give these young readers subpar writing with the attitude that it's okay because they won't know the difference. I believe it does matter- because an excellently written story will be a pleasure to read, and young readers will be motivated to seek out more great stories. Whereas a clumsily written story will be hard to read and will therefore have the opposite effect- some readers in that age group will encounter bad writing and think the difficulties they are having are their own, and hence they will be less inclined to read more. Haley-o, do you have some inside insight?

I read The Sword of Shannara in grade 4. My teacher saw me reading LOTR, and thought I would enjoy Shannara. And I did, but only because I was pretty motivated to get through it, and I was already reading at pretty close to an adult level at that point. I still remember how painful the first twenty-some pages were when the main character is just walking through the forest- a less skilled reader likely would have given up on it. By the way, I went back to that book last year to see if I could recapture the magic of youth and was appalled at how terribly written it was. No offense to Terry Brooks, I'm sure he has improved a lot in the last 25+ years since Sword was written.

Back when I worked at the SCup, I loved inventing new drinks in the blender with all the ingredients at hand. And then naming them was just as fun- the Suicide Girl was one, and gabrielle named another something like Vampirebloodjuice. Yum. Now Michelle has bought us a blender so the fun continues at home. Today I unveil my newest creation:

1 cup ice
1/2 cup cold coffee that you forgot to drink in the morning, 6 hours ago
the rest of the Smarties left over from last night
a smidge of french vanilla coffee creamer
Blend

I call it a Grossie. It tastes no good at all.

Bears Always Win?

The big gross spider was an easy victory as far as battles go. And Homie Bear has fought his share of epic battles. Or rather, his share of rhyming couplet battles. Mostly he does pretty well, vanquishing his foes, like the Witch, or Chogtwer. But as we see here, he doesn't always fare so well. This is from the archives, reprinted in full since it's been two years and many many of you are new.


Homie Bear was hunting and he caught a big fat seal
But a killer whale saw him and said that he did steal
His supper out from under him and that just wouldn't do
Homie said to the whale why don't you eat some poo
So the offended orca turned and hit him with his tail
He had never been blindsided by such a craven whale
Homie bounced off an iceberg but got back on his paws
He charged the whale full speed ahead to cut him with his claws
But the whale dodged and dove down deep into the sea
Where he soon discovered that even there he wasn't free
From a bear's vengeful wrath since Homie jumped right in
And grabbed the astonished dolphin by his dorsal fin
The ocean thrashed and bubbled from the epic battle
All the way in South America they felt a little rattle
The water churned and ice exploded as the titans clashed
They bit each other hit each other and they slashed and bashed
With a mighty heave Homie threw the whale back onto the land
Where the raging frenzied beasts prepared their final stand
Ursis maritimus and Orcinus orca, fighting to the death
The whole world seemed to pause as if holding in its breath
Then a timely interruption burst the tension like a bubble
The seal broke in and said, "You should have saved yourselves the trouble
"Fighting over me just isn't worth the pain
"Since I'll be leaving now and you will have no gain"
And then the seal swam away and left the hunters there
Neither now had a meal and they couldn't even share
The only thing that they had proved with their big ordeal
Is that in a fight between whale and bear, the winner is a seal!

Yeah, so, some pretty big words there made the rhythm suffer, but still good fun. I remember writing it in about half an hour before work one day so, you know. The only time I can recall where Homie Bear out and out loses wasn't really a fair fight.
So, who or what should Homie fight next? If there are some good suggestions I might go forth into battle once more.

* Michelle interrupts your regularly scheduled poo . . .*

EEW! EEW! EEK! EEW!



This spider was perched rather precariously above our veranda, here in suburbia. Does this look like a suburbanite to you??

What the f#@% is something like that doing here?? This is the kind of spider that created Spiderman - not the kind that a handful of Kleenex and a sturdy shoe could take care of . . .

Vampirenomad?? Rubber ducky?? Cass?? Selkie?? Ladybug & Nomi?? Digger?? Lydia?? Susa?? haley-o?? I know you have my back on this one!
EEW!! EEW!! EEW!!

But alas, my burly bear was able to quickly dispose of it before it procreated and attempted a hostage takeover of The Woods.

I just know I'm going to have creep-crawly nightmares tonight . . .

*Homie Bear here again*

Yeah so, it was Ursis Subursis versus Shelob's great-great-granddaughter. And the bear won. Bears ALWAYS win. We now leave you with this passage from Professor Tolkien:

Great horns she had, and behind her short stalklike neck was her huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between her legs; its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench. Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg's end there was a claw.
-The Two Towers

Ursis Subursis
After six months, I think I've adjusted rather well to the suburbanite life. And perhaps more importantly, the neighbours haven't yet complained about having a bear for a neighbour. Although Michelle and I spend a lot of time talking with friends about such things as the real estate market and planned home improvement projects, we still have our heads firmly floating in the clouds. We are often found reading children's books to each other, busting silly moves in the kitchen to our diverse music library, and even performing Crimestoppers Reenactments (when I was Falsely Accused of Using Her Toothbrush).
This morning Michelle asked me if I wanted anything from the mall. "Like what?" I asked, and she replied, "Something that starts with a 'B'."
"And ends with illy Talent? Yes please!" So I am happy to report to you that Billy Talent II is chock full of kickass. They're Canadian, so I don't know if you non-Canucks know of them, but they really are amazing. Kinda punky buzzsaw rock, hooks aplenty, with vocals reminiscent of Jello Biafra stripped of sarcastic whininess. (Sorry, I know he's a legend and I respect that but I have never really been a fan of Biafra.) Plus they get bonus points for taking their name from Hard Core Logo, a legendary Canadian road film about a fictional punk band, starring the Headstones' Hugh Dillon.
And I am also very happy to hear that right here in Southwest Edmonton there is a fossil bed full of Edmontosauruses and possibly their predators, Albertasaurus. How many suburbanite bears have dinosaurs for neighbours?

Does anyone remember Mighty Man and Monster Maker? I had it when I was a kid, but I forgot all about it until I read Andrew's blog. How could someone forget something as cool as that? Must be all the other great things crammed into my memory. Like, I knew someone who had this toy sand quarry. It was just a piece of cardboard covered with bubble plastic, and inside was a bunch of sand and some dumptrucks. Then you used a magnet to drive the dumptrucks around. Something like that, anyways. That's a little foggy too, partly because I would never want to forget the Master Blaster. It was an electronic game where you shot missiles at little UFO blips that shimmied their way down to earth. PSPs? PShaw!
I also really liked my little Battlestar Galactica ships that had little red plastic bits that would pop out when you shot them. Mostly, of course, I played with all my Star Wars figures. Still do!

Lakes on Titan
Interesting news coming out of the Cassini-Huygens mission- it seems the space probe is finding evidence of rivers and lakes on the Saturnine moon's surface. Obviously not bodies of water, the liquids inhabiting the basins and channels would almost certainly be methane or ethane. Scientists and sci-fi writers have speculated for years that the surface of Titan might have liquid methane present.
And from there, the obvious leap to make is to question whether life could arise in such an environment. There are copious amounts of organic chemicals on Titan, but no water or gaseous oxygen. And it's colder than death there. But as we see here on Earth, life has evolved pretty much everywhere, sometimes in places we thought anathema to life, such as oceanic vents that spew H2S. Any life on Titan would be both very simple, and very bizarre, requiring the ability to metabolize hydrocarbons.
Although, looking at the Cassini pictures, I think I see evidence of great hordes of Titan Bears fishing the methane rivers for Saturn Salmon.

My wife ran her first half-marathon today! Yay for Michelle! In the midst of the craziest hot spell ever, and on a wounded knee, she finished the race in 2 hours and 31 minutes. That's really amazing. During that same 2 hours and 31 minutes I waited in Hawrelak Park and acquainted myself with the Tim Horton's Community Van lady who was giving away Timbits and coffee for free. Yum!
Update: I went for my first run in many years tonight (Monday). I ran for seven minutes, which is 2 hours and 24 minutes short of a half marathon. But it's a start!

Looks like that silliness at work pretty much blew over. It helped that yesterday a loader caught on fire so they have something new to investigate.
Never a dull moment at a coal mine, I'll tell ya. Seriously. If it's not things blowing up or flipping over, it's the escapades of the colorful characters I work with. The stories I could tell you . . . too bad they're not really very wholesome, for the most part.
Though I did find out that one of my coworkers once raised three orphan black bear cubs, back when he was a kid in Manitoba. I asked him about them, and he told me, in a wistfully nostalgic tone of voice, "dey're just like 'umans, dem fuckin' t'ings."

Yesterday, this topheavy, poorly designed service truck

wound up upside down. Luckily, the untrained guy who was driving it was unhurt.
Today, they came and tried to blame me for the incident, since I was driving this water truck:

This unit exists for dust control- it lays down water on our 23 km haul road to keep the dust at bay. It's a laughably impossible job on a hot summer day, but we at least make the attempt. Anyways, their thought process went something like this:
"Service truck upside down! Must be slippery! Must be Homie Bear's fault!"
They asked me to fill out a statement, and although I used all the details and technical jargon that won't mean anything to you, my statement basically said "I was doing my job, I was 15 kms away at the time of the incident, therefore it wasn't my fault you dumbasses." We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Pirate Month: The Kraken Strikes Back!

Dead Man's Chest was good fun, a great middle chapter of a trilogy. So long as Pirates 3 doesn't have ewoks, we should be okay! But to tell the truth, ole Homie Bear likes ewoks. Little forest cousins, I call them. Did you know that Lucas was once sued by someone who claimed he stole the Ewok idea? If I recall correctly, that guy was from Calgary but I could be wrong. The internet is strangely silent on the subject. Lucas' defense was that ewoks were simply half-wookies, and he even took the name by rearranging the word wookie. More cynical observers may have remarked that he should have pled guilty just so he could saddle the blame on someone else! Sadly, no one has yet claimed that Lucas stole JarJar Binks.
You may think I am indulging in some weird, non-piratical digression here but actually it segues into this item about how the producers of POTC are being sued for allegedly stealing the idea for everything from supernatural pirates to the name "Black Pearl". I have no idea how much merit there is to this suit, but I think it would be so sweet if Bruckheimer et al's defense consisted of just one word:
Pirate!

At work, I have the option of listening to:

a) Classic rock from Edmonton
b) Classic rock from Vancouver
c) Hot country from Edmonton
d) Classic country from Calgary

I have lobbied repeatedly to get one of the stations changed to Sonic (since we pipe them in via satellite to our remote wilderness location), but I have been told this is "impossible". No one has been able to clarify whether this means:

a) It is physically impossible, due to obscure technical reasons pertaining to kilohertzes and megawatts.
b) It is legally impossible, due to the CRTC's draconian rules
c) It is simply impossible, where "impossible" is defined as "I don't really feel like changing it."

Last night I had occasion to make the following observations about country music:

a) Surely there are more than four classic country songs????
b) Convoy may be the strangest song ever written
c) Country covers of rock songs are, excepting Johnny Cash, generally very terrible. The slogan of the Discount Country Cover Warehouse is "We take tired old classic rock songs and render them even more limpid through the application of liberal amounts of twang, autoharp and group harmonies, and then removing the melody!"
d) Country music is still better than Howard Stern

The solution to this woeful musical situation is to come home to your wife and find that she has loaded the CD player with:

a) Bif Naked
b) Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Soundtrack (lovely jazz from the gabrielle collection!)
c) Selkie's Non-Country Cover Mix
d) KoRn

Anyways, here is a fun, musical meme started by Rolling Stone- Terrible Songs on Great Albums. Mine are:

a) The Tragically Hip's Day For Night actually has three terrible songs (IMO), that ruin the beautiful diad of "Scared" and "Titanic Terrarium". Those songs are, um, tracks 11,12 and 14. But the rest of the CD is beyond exceptional.
b) Metallica, Reload- "Attitude". Ruining the amazingly atmospheric diad of "Low Man's Lyric" and "Fixxxer" by sticking a generic rocker in between.
c) KoRn, Follow the Leader, "All in the Family". It's a sorta funny battle song, but it gets a little too over the top for me, and again, disrupts the mood of the disc. And it has Fred Durst, so . . .
d) Beck, from Guero- "Missing". Not really terrible, but I tend to skip it to get to all the other fantastic tracks. It lacks the genius of the other tracks.

We're back from our First Year Anniversary Moon! We went on a road trip, driving down the Rockies to Southern Alberta. We camped in Jasper where we stoically endured a crazy booming thunderstorm all night. Michelle was a little worried, but I kept thinking about how Karen Ellis would render such an adventure. Here is my attempt at a Planet Karen homage- which taxed my drawing skills pretty much to their limit. Plus I took some artistic licence, which probably means my licence should be revoked:




You see why I leave cartooning to people like Karen.
Anyway, we had a pretty nice time, we survived the deluge. And we saw a black bear with two cubs! So cute. But dangerous, always remember that, kids. Some more pics here if you're interested.
Now I have to go work nightshift. Pirates will have to wait till next week.

Celebrating One Year!



And looking forward to many many more.

Pirate Month: Blackbeard, Buccaneers and Bristol!

This month's National Geographic is, as always, a treasure trove- not only does it have panda bears, it also has an article on Blackbeard's sunken ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. You can explore the wreck and history online.
Although little is known about Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, it is thought he was originally from Bristol. Since I just read Treasure Island, I know Long John Silver and the crew of the Hispaniola hailed from Bristol also. According to my dA friend Andy Council, a modern day Bristolian buccaneer, the "arrr yarr" pirate lingo is probably derived from the Bristol accent. That may be the case. All I knew about Bristol prior to Pirate Month was that Andy rendered it as a giant animated dinosaur! And also a wee baby one (non-animated)! Arrr rarr!
And it turns out the artist behind the pirate bear you see to your right, Karen Ellis, is from Bristol, too, which makes at least two artistic geniuses and two pirates from one city. Wow. Oh yeah and Bristol also has a giant robot sculpture named WEEE!
Makes me want to move to such a piratical paradise.

One of the best things about our house is the veranda. I've been getting a lot of mileage out of it, or actually non-mileage since I just sit there, immobile. The sun doesn't set till almost 11PM in Edmonton in June, so it's nice to sit outside and read and watch the world go by. That Boilerplate Rhino book is so good at stimulating my thinking that I keep a notebook handy while reading. Which allowed me to take a poetic snapshot of an actual event that happened earlier this evening:

Reading on my veranda
a small girl walks by
pulling her wagon
in which sits a Care Bear
Cute, I think, and also:
They still make Care Bears?
She stops
walks back to the Care Bear
and lays it down snug
Then she walks back
to the front
of the wagon
picks up the handle
and runs like hell
Moments later her dad
zooms past
running even faster
and though he is only concerned
for her safety
I find myself cheering
for the girl
I hope she
and her wagon
and her Care Bear
make their getaway

I hope you enjoyed that- it was very funny to watch. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get back to pirates. For some reason the pirate bear has been intermittently appearing and disappearing today, hopefully that gets resolved soon- the place looks bare without him. I prefer it when it looks bear.

Snails n' Spiders n' Stuff
I'm reading The Boilerplate Rhino, by David Quammen, which is a collection of columns he did for Outside Magazine over the years. It's full of fascinating facts about the natural world. I never knew that a male snail's reproductive organ is a long, flexible tube extending from its head! Try not to think about that as you watch this almost criminally cute and hilarious Flash cartoon called David's New Snail.
Spiders also have strange reproductive organs, but spiders are just too gross to talk about. Spider-Man is not gross, though, and the trailer for Spidey 3 is out! Venomlicious!
If you happened to pick up the National Post today, you will have seen the article that pits Superman against Spider-man and Batman and Wonder Woman. It was illustrated by Andrew Barr, who was kind enough to post the illos on his blog. You'll be happy to know, Selkie, that Wonder Woman comes out ahead in the aricle, though it seems to be by virtue of her sex appeal. Which is admittedly much higher than a snail's.

Being a heavy equipment operator, I occasionally wrestle with the temptation to operate the machines in ways they were never designed to be operated. Whether or not I succumb, and in what ways, I will leave to your imagination, more for my own protection than yours.
It seems the engineers at JCB have had similar thoughts, and so they built the world's only drag-racing, wheel-standing backhoe! We saw it at the IHRA races on Friday. Pretty cool. It was my first time ever to the drag races- Michelle goes every year with her Dad, so I joined them this year. Crazy. And really, really, really loud. Very loud.
This was the weekend for Loud, since Michelle joined me for her first-ever arena rock concert- System of a Down. Kickass! Disorder! Sugar! Aerials! But sadly, no banana banana banana banana banana banana banana banana terracotta pie.
(Speaking of kickass, the greatest metal album of all time, Master Of Puppets, is 20 years old this year! Wow. To celebrate, Metallica recently performed the entire album on a tour in Europe!)

Pirate Month: Rhyming and Stealing
A poem about pirates! The seeds for this poem were originally planted three years ago when PotC first came out, and I just never got around to writing it till yesterday- it was surprisingly hard to figure out the best way to write it. Not sure if I hit the nail on the head but I'm happy with it.

The Pyrite Pirates
Arrr! Cap’n o’ the Midas’ Revenge be I
Doomed to sail the seven seas till I die
Which might be this day if I don’t get my say
N’ if my bilge-sucking mates instead get their way
Aye, bucko, ‘tis true, that I, Fearsome Stu
Must now contend with a mutinous crew
“By thunder!” they cry, “We can’t help but wonder
“If not for your blunder would we still have some plunder?
“ ‘Twas you that pilfered that mermaid’s purse
“Bringing upon us the mermaid’s curse!
“So now walk the plank, n’ join Davey Jones
“Where the fishes n’ squids can chew on your bones!”
“Me hearties!” say I, “Pray let me reply
“Before you condemn your poor Captain to die
“Aye I admit, that down in our hold
“All of our booty has been turned to Fool’s Gold
“But my dear pigeon Pauly don’t care about carats
“He only wants to be changed back to a parrot
“That mermaid’s magic turned everything fake
“But we’re men n’ we’re pirates! We steal n’ we take!
“I mean, shiver me timbers! It could ha’ been worse
“We could ha’ been hexed with a Dead Man’s Curse
“So come, buccaneers, let’s put bygones aside
“Weigh anchor n’ hoist Jolly Rodney with pride!”
I could see that me words had stirred their black hearts
I would escape with me life and all o’ me parts
“Arrr!” roared me mates, “You’re still Fearsome Stu
“N’ we be your crew n’ we’ll always stay true!”
I stepped off o' the plank on to the poop deck
I thanked me smooth tongue for saving me neck
“Now scurvy dogs, ahoy and avast
“Sing me our shanty while we sail real fast-
“Yo ho ho and a bottle of juice
“The Pyrite Pirates are on the loose!”


Bonus booty to anyone who gets the joke embedded in the Captain's name. And mermaid's purses really exist!

Blog Tips #3: Favicons
I've dried my tears, shaved my playoff beard, and I'm ready to move on, after just one more thing:

Thank You Oilers! You kick ass!

Alright. I have another easy tip for sprucing up your template today (June 12 for previous tips). See how Homie Bear's head shows up in your address bar? And if you were so kind as to bookmark Pooing in the Woods, you would get the same icon in your bookmark menu (they're called "favicons", which is a dumb word, but Decepticon was already taken). All you need to achieve this effect is one line of code, as well as an appropriately sized icon which you can make pretty easily- make sure it's 16X16 pixels. Upload the icon to your image host, and then insert this line into your template after the title tag:
{link rel="shortcut icon" href="URL of your icon here" }
where the squiggly brackets are replaced with < >'s.
Easy, eh? It's actually a little more complicated, since IE wants an .ico file rather than a .jpg or .gif, but as long as you're using Firefox or anything other than Explorer (and you really should be!) you'll be alright.
Give it a try and let me know if it worked or if you need help.