Extravenomza
How do you like my Venom Bear? It's a far cry from the usual quality of my poo bears, but that's because I drew this one myself. I'm pretty exited about Spider-Man 3, I hope Venom is suitably venomous. He's one of the most visually arresting characters in comics. So here's a Virtual Venom Gallery for you to stick your tongue out and slobber over (please take a moment to click on the links to visit the artists' gallery and see the images in their full-sized glory):
We'll start with a pic of Venom triumphing over Spidey, just so he don't get mad at me:

Enrico Galli

Next we'll show you some more stylized versions, which I always like:

Lineart by Todd Demong colors by Jeremy Treece


BlueBerserker


Mihajlo Dimitrovski

And finally, take a look at these two images- one is a tribute to the other.

Driving out to Hinton for another round of nightshifts this afternoon, I heard Yann Martel on the CBC talking about how he is sending Stephen Harper a book every two weeks, and I thought that was a great idea. There's a website the Life of Pi author set up to show the books he's sent (just one so far) and the PM's response, if any, and so far there's been none. Makes me want t read along.
What would you send the PM to read? I'll need to think on that one before I answer.
Right now I'm reading David Brin's Heaven's Reach, with the new "JRR Tolkien" on deck. I put that in quotes since really it is Christopher messing around with his dad's notes again but I've heard good stuff about it. Oh yeah and after that I have Friedman's The World is Flat. Only cost me five bucks at Greenwoods' with the little stamp card deal they have.

So Michelle has introduced me to Killer Bunnies. We've been amusing ourselves this week killing each others' bunnies, as well as the bunnies belonging to Tom and Mindy and Mr and Mrs. blu, too. It's a great combination of skill and luck. Unlike the Nightmare Before Christmas game the blu's have which is just a combination of luck and suck. Did I ever mention that when we build a garage (hopefully this summer but maybe next summer) we'd like to build a second floor on it to have a dedicated games room? Mostly for poker but also for big Killer Bunnies and Munchkin tourneys too.
Anyways tonight Michelle and I are watching AVP to complete the Predator/Alien binge we've been on this week. It would be cool to have a Killer Bunnies/Munchkin-type AVP game- something with the same silliness and fun-factor but also those actual mythologies.
Failing that, though, just drool over this CG speed-painting of a predator by Swedish artist Peterffy Levente:



Finally, in a seamless meld between killing bunnies and CG art, go check out this painting by Bobby Chiu.

We were giving some of the guys a hard time about the way they use their mics at work- some yell into it, some hold it down by their bellies so you can't hear them, and a couple of guys, for some reason, squeeze the hell out of their mics so they make these godawful sounds. Leon is the worst offender by far- he has these huge bulldog hands which are not made for delicacy. So it was ironic that he was the one razzing John about his mic etiquette.
"You sound like that space alien in that movie, what's it called there, you know . . . " and he put his fingers up to his mouth and wiggled them in the universal sign language for Predator.
"Yeah, Predator." Then he clucks his tongue in a fair approximation of the predator's vocalizations. We all laugh.
"I love that movie," I say.
"Yeah it's wild. He could imitate whoever he heard. Perfectly! And he could make himself invisible!"
"No shit!" said John, clearly impressed.
"But he was a trophy hunter that sunuvabitch. Took their heads. The first time I seen him there he was hunting Arnold Schwarzenegger."
"If it bleeds, we can kill it," I say in my best Arnie voice.
"Yeah! And then the next time I seen him there, he was hunting drug dealers. But the last time I seen him, he was hunting that alien from that other movie, what the hell was it called there . . . "
"Alien!" I say.
"Yeah, Alien!"

Michelle decided that she would like to see Predator. Even though it's one of my favorite movies ever, I told her I didn't think she would like it very much- it's just a bunch of guys running through a jungle shooting at an ugly alien. And getting shot by it. But it also had two guys who would go on to become governors of American states, so I guess there is some historical value. Anyways, we watched it last night and I loved it as much as ever, and Michelle, well, she had some good laughs at some of the cheesy lines and was also heard to remark, "Men are strange."
Well. The image you see above is an early concept for the predator, and here he is again sans helmet:

This was a design by Alan Munro, who said, "The original maquette for the creature was extraordinary. It was a frog-like body with intertwined sinews everywhere. There were large air-cavities up the arms and in the chest. Aesthetically, it was gorgeous." Well, having seen the suit in the Special Features of the DVD, I'm not sure I agree. Nor did anyone else, luckily. Director John McTiernan decided on a different direction. Something more like "a Masai warrior. Rather than squat, bulky and tough, he wanted it tall, with very upright posture . . . statuesque. Conceptually he turned it into a mystic warrior going through a rite of passage." So Stan Winston was brought in and he came up with the classic design we know and love.
(Images and quotes above are taken from Paul Chadwick's article Alan Munro: Midwifing a Predator which appeared in Dark Horse Comics' Predator #1, June 1989)
And just because it's so beautiful, here is the back cover from the very first Alien Versus Predator story ever printed, from Dark Horse Presents #36, February, 1990. Painting by Dave Dorman. All images copryright of Dark Horse or Fox or someone other than me.)

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is in town to perform Dracula. I bought tickets for Michelle for Christmas. Yup, me good husband.
MIchelle fell prey to the Tire Vampire this morning whilst on the Whitemud. In rush hour traffic. So I came to the rescue with my trusty stake. I mean, lug wrench. It would've been cool if I had a Helsing Van. Get it? Me funny bear.
Anyways, if the ballet isn't your thing, you might still be able to get in to see Dog the Bounty Hunter at NAIT. I kinda wish I could go see him, too, but I don't think Michelle would be so into that. I could've joined forces with him to become Bear the Tire Vampire/Bounty Hunter.

Since YouTube is owned by Google, I'm not really sure why Google has their own video service. But anyways, in honor of tomorrow's start to the playoffs (yeah I know, Oiler-less) here is a hilarious clip of a fight- more like a scuffle- at a Mighty Mite or Midget or whatever level hockey game.
And continuing in the series of videos I took at work, here is a nightshift shot.

Have you ever seen Avatar: The Last Airbender? It's an American-made anime that airbends on Nickelodeon (and is out on DVD which is how I watch it). So yeah, it's for kids but I've been really getting into it. It's about this little kid, Aang, who is the Avatar. Sort of like a Dalai Lama in a world where martial artists can control the elements. Plus it's got flying bison and shape-changing panda bears. The episode I watched tonight had pirates. "I used to kind of look up to pirates but those guys were terrible," Aang says after they beat them down.
Mako, the great voice actor who sadly passed away recently, who also voiced Aku from Samurai Jack* plays the Fire Lord's brother.
Anyways, I couldn't help but notice certain amount of resemblance to another great American cartoon, so I drew a fanart:
(if you can't see it you're probably using Internet Explorer for some reason)


Avatarlie Brown by ~HomieBear on deviantART

*Speaking of Samurai Jack, I'd just like to point out that the Scotsman had a prosthetic machine gun leg first! Though that in no way is meant to detract from the oure kickassness that is sure to be Grindhouse.

More Digging



I took some more grainy video at work yesterday- I need to point out that there's no zooming whatsoever- Michelle thought I was zooming in on the bucket when it comes so close but that is just how it works- it has to come in real close to the house so it can dig from the bottom. The other one shows what it's like from inside the cab.
Some other stuff I'm digging today: this cool Flash animation of the Hogwarts campus. No one is playing frisbee but it knows what time of day it is and changes accordingly!
And some emoticon movie trailers:
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Fifth Element
Alien VS Predator
And I'll tell you what I'm not digging: winter. Enough already! There's been snow on the ground since September and it's still snowing! Argghhhh!
I just had to get that out of my system.

The new Harry Potter book won't have any quidditch in it, as apparently Harry and Voldemort have taken up frisbee.
And the Battlestar Galactica guys are having a fan-film contest! They're providing music, sounds and even some visual effects for you to do up your own episode. I should talk my friend Crogdor the Baltar-lookalike to learn a London accent so we can enter. Who do I know that looks like Tricia Helfer?

We pretty much had the fire under control, though it kept flaring up again so Robin and I kept spraying our fire extinguishers on it. That gunk doesn't taste any good at all. We'd been driving by the ready rail, where all the spare equipment is parked, when I noticed flames coming out of the wheel motors of 32 truck. "Whoa! Truck on fire!" So we sprang into action, like the highly trained fire-fighting coal miners we are.
I thought we were the only ones there but after a while I noticed the truck's operator on the other side of the truck. "Tim! Your truck's on fire! Your truck- it's on fire!" Tim was looking at me funny- like I was being dumb or something. But he wasn't hurrying over to help. He just stood there, so I kept telling him the obvious. I could tell he wasn't scared- people who get freaked out by these kinds of fires are easily recognized by the fact that they are running away. Tim was just giving me that weird look like he was embarrassed for me. Finally he pointed at the other wheel motor, the one he was standing by, and said, "Yeah- the fire's over here!"
It turned out both motors were on fire. So we put the other one out too. We hadn't seen the fire over there and Tim hadn't seen our side, so it created that bizarre discontinuity between us. Tim was wondering why were shouting about the fire but weren't doing anything about it and we were kind of wondering the same about him. Ah well. No harm done. Except for the wheel motors, I guess, which were steaming piles of molten goo. At first we thought it was the brakes that had caught fire- a relatively common occurance, but they both kept flaring up time after time so it was likely an electrical fire.
Anyways, if you look at this picture I added a little note to show where the wheel motors are.
Later on, I was on the water truck and it was all frozen up so we had to thaw it out with a tiger torch- basically a big flame thrower attached to a propane bottle. Which, if you think about it, is kind of ironic.

I only have a few seconds before heading off to my last nightshift of the week, so just go look at this: Steampunk Star Wars. Wow.

Yar! I think I'll go drink rum now.

You know the Oilers have fallen on hard times when you go to a game and the highlight is the national anthem. Actually, it was a pretty good game, but they still lost (or rather, failed to win) their 11th in a row. It was the first NHL game Michelle's ever been to. She grew up in Calgary so you can understand why she never cared much for hockey. We had a pretty great time, though. Good seats. Michelle was really looking forward to seeing Paul Lorieau sing, but instead a young girl came out dressed in the robes of a First Nations princess and sang the anthem in Cree. So that was cool.
Raffi Torres got the Edmonton goal.
Final score: Vanpoover 2, Edmonton 1

Digging Some Rocks
I took some video with my digital camera yesterday at work- I never tried that before so you'll forgive my amateurity. Anyways, here's a minute in my life at the mine. Multiply that by 760 and you have a whole shift!



So that big blue thing is my shovel, and the trucks it's loading are 260-ton trucks. For some non-pixellated still images of my job, go here.

My sister had her neurosurgery and is recovering well. She was sent home today, actually. We visited her yesterday and she looked great. The incision in her skull was pretty cool looking, with all the staples and stuff, and surprisingly long. I thought she kind of looked like one of Saruman's orcs but I decided to keep that observation to myself- I would take it as an immense compliment but she doesn't always see things the same way I do. She told some funny stories about being high on codeine, asking her nurse to hand her the Wiimote so she could turn off her drooling.
Anyways, I thought I would write her a little story to cheer her up:

Zach woke up feeling confused and disoriented. There was a septic smell, and he realized he was in a hospital. He sat up in alarm. Nightmarish, incoherent images flitted through his mind- but the only thing he clearly remembered was the ambulance. Pushing these thoughts aside, he took stock of his body. Three fingers on his right hand were missing, and he was pretty sure they had been there before. His head was wrapped in a big bandage, like a mummy. Perhaps most alarming of all, there was a very large discolored patch on his left leg.
A nurse came into the room. "You're awake!" she said. "How are you feeling?"
"What happened to me?" Zach asked.
"You had a very close call but you're going to be alright."
"Okay, but, what happened?"
The nurse stopped fiddling with his EKG and IV drip, and looked at Zach. "It's best if your doctor tells you directly. He's on the floor right now doing rounds so he should be here soon." She smiled at him. She had a nice smile, gentle and pleasingly assymetrical. Zach found her attractive and decided to trust her.
A distinguished looking gentleman entered the room. The nurse introduced him. "Zach, this is your physician, Dr. Moon."
"Hello Zach," Dr. Moon said.
"Doctor. Can you please just say what happened to me?" Zach didn't fail to notice the quick glance Dr. Moon exchanged with the nurse, whose name Zach realized he didn't know. She coughed and excused herself, and Zach wanted to call out and ask her her name. Anything to get her to stay. But he said nothing.
"Zach, you had a very close call, but you were lucky. I believe you will make a full recovery. Undoubtedly you've noticed your missing fingers- I had to cut them off. It seemed the best option. With your leg, we felt we could save it with some aggressive treatment, and it seems to be responding well. The vitasticizing regions are shrinking, and the Streptococcus pyogenes we applied are stabilizing the affected area nicely."
"Vitastisizing . . . I don't even . . . why won't anyone just tell me what happened?"
Dr. Moon sighed. Finally he said, "Alright. This will be hard for you to believe. Zach, you were exposed to a consecrated substance. Holy water. You were attacked by nuns."
"Nuns? That's ridiculous! There's no such thing as nuns. You're just messing with me, right?"
"I'm afraid not. A whole convent of nuns attacked Deadmonton yesterday in full daylight. They managed to resurrect and convert several zombies and vampires before they were contained. Your grave was one of the ones exhumed, but we were able to save you."
Zach tried to absorb this crazy news. His defingered hand went up to his brow, and touched the bandage there. "What about this, then? Why did you operate on my brain?"
"A CAT scan showed some activity in your cerebral cortex. We think you were exposed to a crucifix. We decided to lobotomize it to be safe. We saved some grey matter for you if you like, sometimes our patients like to celebrate their recovery by snacking on their brains."
Zach nodded, the enormity of the news still not totally sinking in. Brain snacks seemed like a minor matter compared to everything else he had learned. He looked down at the skin-colored portion of his leg, in such stark contrast with the greenish hue of the rest of his body. It was probably just his imagination, but it seemed like he could almost see the flesh-eating bacteria munching away. A beep sounded from across the room, and Dr. Moon excused himself to check on the other patient in the room. For the first time, Zach realized he wasn't alone. The zombie in the other bed looked to be in even better shape than he was, the poor bastard. His EKG beeped again. A third time.
Dr. Moon erupted into action, pressing the alarm button to call for help. "Code Blue! We have a heartbeat in 313."
In the flurry of activity, Zach took comfort in his own heart-rate monitor, which showed a nice, comforting flat line. In a world with nuns running around bringing zombies back to life, Zach was just happy to be undead.
THE END

Anyways, in keeping with the zombie theme, here is a zombear I asked a Deviant named FunkYeti to make for me. You might remember my Homie Bear poem, Lair of the Zombear. So there you see the Zombear in all his horror.

The Edmonton Art Gallery (or Art Gallery of Alberta as it's now called) is doing a cool thing- before they close down for major renovations they opened their exhibit halls up to the general public. By that I mean they let anyone who wanted drop off some artwork for display. Michelle and I went and browsed the art yesterday- there were some pretty impressive pieces on display. Actually overall the quality level was very high, which isn't really surprising given the high-level of arts participation in this city. I was expecting a bunch of stick figure drawings (like what Michelle wanted us to bring) but it was real art. You should check it out if you have a chance, it's free to enter until March 24th when they shut down.
I have no art of my own to display so instead I'll show you what my current desktop wallpaper is:
Lil-Red vs Wolf-Dog by Enrique O. Rivera

It's still a few months till POTC3 (and shouldn't there be trailers for it by now?) but I decided to go back to the Pirate Bear to celebrate Planet Karen's one year anniversary! It's quite an accomplishment, so congrats to Karen and here's to many more years of four-panel brilliance!
And I just want to see if it's possible to scoop the vampirenomad on anything Gina-related- Gina Gershon wrote a children's book called Camp Creepy Time. Did you know that, gabby?
And here's something that almost escaped my radar- KoRn has an unplugged album coming out on Tuesday! With Amy Lee singing backup! Last week on Sonic I heard this weird, something-about-it-was-totally-familiar-but-I-couldn't-place-it vibe. It was Freak On A Leash. Waaay different, yet still faithful to the original. You can hear it on their site.

I know most of you aren't really Oilers fans so I will spare you my grief and angst. And since you're not Oilers fans I find you all, as a form of life, to be at least as strange and fascinating as squids.
Did you hear about the Colossal Squid they caught in New Zealand?
Kind of looks like something from Hellboy. Have you seen the new animated movie? I haven't, yet, though it looks kickass.
Well, I have one more day of work this week before I can go home so I should obtain some rest.

Crash Course In Brain Surgery
So yeah, along with Battlestar Galactica I've been getting into Grey's Anatomy lately. It's pretty good- I still haven't figured out for sure which character is the Cylon agent. My money's on Sandra Oh but it could just as easily be that McDreamy guy- he's just a little too perfect if you ask me.
I know it's a TV show, but one thing I appreciate about it is how it makes brain surgery look so routine. They're like, "We need to cut out half of your daughter's brain and we need to do it in the next five minutes or the Cylons will destroy the Earth she'll die!" And then they go and do it. Easy! There's no sense that operating on someone's brain is this crazy hard thing to do, it's just a normal part of their day. Which makes sense- they're brain surgeons! They say to each other, "This isn't exactly brain surgery you know. Or actually, that's exactly what this is but no problem- that's what I do."
Which sets my mind at ease as my sister goes in for a little brain surgery on Tuesday.