Happy new year! It was a great year but I am pretty sure 09 will be the best yet.
Also, I dreamed that Yoda was training on grader at work. He kept using the ripper instead of the blade. And he did wheelies into a cardboard box.

The Best of Pooing in the Woods 2008

If I can be a little self-indulgent (and what else is a blog for?) I would like to present some of the best posts from the past year.

In which I enter a safety Slogan Contest. Who knew the best safety slogan might be to stay away from crazy bus drivers?
Some fine examples of paleoetry.
My favorite installment of Fanart Friday. And some of my Flickr Favorites that I took myself.
But of course the big news was the coming little cub! And all that that implies. PLus the first photo of the protobear!

Homie Bear's Top 10 Books of 2008

I always cheat a little here because I include books from whatever year that I happened to read in the past year. Most of them aren't from 2008. But this time I could almost fill the list with books published this year. Just not quite. In no particular order:

1. The Book of Stanley, Todd Babiak (2007)- gotta start the list off with a local writer. Funny, takes place in Banff, has sasquatches.

2. Schuyler's Monster, Robert Rummel-Hudson (2008)- really just follow the link to meet Schuyler and her monster, and her dad.

3. The As It Happens Files- Radio That May Contain Nuts, Mary Lou Finlay (2008)-perfect for the CBC freaks like me!

4. An Imperfect Offering, Dr. James Orbinski (2008)- this is one of Michelle's books that she bought after hearing Stephen Lewis speak at teacher's conference. Orbinski was the president of Medecins Sans Frontiers when they won the Nobel Peace Prize. Before that he was in Rwanda and pretty much everywhere else in the world where people were suffering. Made me cry.

5. Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2007)- do you remember when Theo Van Gogh was murdered for a film he made? Ayaan was the subject of that film. This is her life story and it is amazing.

6. Wicked, Gregory Maguire (1996). Okay back to fiction. I can;t remember the last time I liked a book and its writing as much as the story of Elphaba.

7. Nurk, Ursula Vernon (2008)- Ursula is one of my favorite artists, and her first book is a fun little adventure for kids.

8. The Scar, China Mieville (2002)- by a slight margin this is my favorite of Mieville's books, though they are all great. 

9. The Baroque Cycle, Neal Stephenson (2002-04)- cheating a bit here, since this is three books and I have only started the third today. But the first two came to 1600 pages so I get some slack! PLus I could have cheated even more by putting his brand new book Anathem (which I got for Christmas) but it will be a while before I get to it.

10. Evolution- the Triumph of an Idea, Carl Zimmer (2001)- I knew of Carl though his blog where he often featured science tattoos. I didn't know he was such a clear, lucid and interesting writer too. Who knew a book about evolution would be hard to put down?

Homie Bear's Top 8 Musics of 2008

Since I did listen to more than 8 albums this year I have an easier time filling up this list- but not putting it in order. And really who cares if such and such is #5 or #3? What matters is here is 8 great records that I dug from this year:

1. Sheryl Crow- Detours. You might think from reading the track listing (Love is Free, Peace Be Upon Us, God Bless This Mess) that this is a happy hippie album. Part of it is, though it is just as much protest album as  anything else. And actually some of it's darker than Slipknot's- Make It Go Away( Radiation Song) reminds you what she's been through.

2. Metallica- Death Magnetic. Apparently it's a concept album about aging superstars but all I hear is kickass.

3. Slipknot- All Hope Is Gone. Really all three of these CDs could be tied for number 1. Make sure you get the Bonus tracks edition of this one though.

4. Wendy McNeill- A Dreamer's Guide to Hardcore Living. Earlier I compared her to a villainous Red Riding Hood, and Michelle recently remarked she is sort of like Tom Waits. As if that doesn't send you scurrying to your iTunes.

5. Alanis Morissette- Flavors of Entanglement. There are songs on this CD that are as strong as anything she's ever written. Not As We, Incomplete and Citizen of the Planet especially.

6. Raconteurs- Consolers of the Lonely- Anything Jack White puts out is gold. If only he and Jack Black would collaborate!  

7. Cadence Weapon- Afterparty Babies. I don't really follow the hiphop world but Rollie Pemberton is easily Edmonton's best rapper ever, I think.

8. Foxboro Hottubs- Stop Drop and Roll. It will do until Green Day puts out something uncer their own name.

Cheers!

Homie Bear's Top 8 Movies of 2008

Umm, I'm not even sure if I saw eight movies this year, let alone eight good ones. The top two are no-brainers. Even the top 3. After that it is pretty much just the ones I saw this year. I really want to see The Wrestler and if I already had I'm sure it would be on the list.

1. The Dark Knight

2. Wall-E

3. Iron Man

4. Clone Wars

5. Son of Rambow- these are actually the kinds of movies I really like- quirky and full of heart

6. Into the Wild

7. Be Kind Rewind

8.Incredible Hulk

Hmmm. Pretty bad, but a least I finally came up with 8. But lots of movies weren't worthy of the list- Indy 4 and Wanted to say the least.

Being the big CBC junkie that I am, Michelle got me Mary Lou Finlay's new book The As It Happens Files- Radio That May Contain Nuts. As It Happens just happens to be celebrating its 40th anniversary. I remember last year listening to it, and they mentioned it was the 30th anniversary of Stephen Biko's murder in a South African jail cell. I listened in fascination as I finally learned the story behind Peter Gabriel's beautiful song Biko (they made a movie too which you should watch- Cry Freedom with Denzel as Biko). Then I was kind of amazed when they dug into their own archives and played an interview that (I believe it was) Barbara Budd did with the apartheidist minister who uttered the famous words, "The death of Stephen Biko leaves me cold." She was scathing. It was awesome. Anyways, go dig around in their archives and read the book- the book is more hilarious than anything, since they don't just interview apartheidists but also have a knack for finding the eccentric element out there in radioland.

I hope your Christmas was as good as ours. We had lots of fun and lots of food. And I have lots of gigabytes on my new iPod Touch that Michelle got me. Sweet!

It's Merry Christmas to me from the internets! Well, sort of. My Wellington friend the great poet Harvey Molloy's book Moonshot arrived today (thanks Harvey!) as well as a CD with some good tunes, including some Maori stuff which I love.
And also a deviantArtist named Dantooine did some sketch cards that I dug so I took them off his hands and he even sent me a bonus one. Sweet! So merry Christmas everyone!

Me and Michelle have been spending our time wisely, trying to unlock as many courses in Mariokart Wii as possible while we still have free time. This is good fun but now I find that when I close my eyes I find myself zooming along a mushroom-or-carnivorous sunflower infested racetrack, throwing bananas behind me. Several cures exist for this condition, including but not limited to Star Wars marathons.
Anyways, here is a guy who takes his Mariokart a little too seriously, with hilarious results.

Babies don't seem very cryey these days. In the last few weeks I have held and otherwise interacted with a number of very young babies and none of them have been cryers. This gives me great hope for the very near future when just such an individual will take up permanent residence at my house. Since the last time I really paid much attention to the world of babies it seems that great technological strides have been made towards minimizing the tears and the tantrums. Oprah discovered this lady who can see sounds, and she in turn discovered that all babies make the same 5 shapes when they cry- in other words, they can communicate their needs and if you just buy her DVD you can figure out what they are saying. And if you know someone who already bought the DVD than you can just borrow it!
Then there's things called swaddlers. Babies apparently really like to be smooshed and trapped inside pieces of cloth that render them immobile. To me it seems like this would only increase the howls but apparently it reminds them of the womb or something so they just magically fall asleep. If, for some reason, imprisoning them in this papoose doesn't work, you can give them a teddy bear that has a device inside it that mimics the sound of a mother's heartbeat, as heard from inside the womb. Works wonders, they say.
And if all that fails, holding them, rocking them and making faces at them also seems to work.

Our friend Erika came over today and took some pregnancy photos of Michelle, a few with me too. They are on Michelle's Facebook so make sure you check them out if you are friends with her. If you are friends with me I tagged the ones with me so then you should be able to find them, if interested. For the rest of you, here is a photo of Mt Doom that I took four years ago now and sorta forgot about. But it's nice, eh? Mt Doom was played by Mt Ngaurahoe in Tongariro National Park. New Zealand, yo! Didn't it erupt recently? One of them did I think. Maybe Ruapehu?

Sometimes you just need to see baby pandas.

 I'm not saying Wanted was terrible because it had some good entertainment value, but I sometimes wonder what goes on in those meetings where they greenlight films.
"So there's this magic loom, okay? It tells these weavers who to kill."
"What, like guys who make cloth?"
"Yeah, they started out a thousand years ago and they figured out their loom was speaking to them in binary code so they taught themselves how to control bullets."
"The weavers did. A thousand years ago."
"Yeah! So then Angelina Jolie is there and she's driving this car from outside of it on the hood."
"Angelina? Greenlight!"

Anyways today is Friday so I guess that means it's time for some fanart. My favorite Christmas character is the Grinch so check out TraditionalDanimatio's tributes to the green grouch, of which I will only provide one thumbnail, so you can check out the other two yourself:

And there are even more at SketchTavern.

My wife is a great teacher and tomorrow is her last day until next September. Maternity leave. Most people would be jumping up and down cheering and celebrating and possibly rioting and looting to get nine months off. But she will genuinely miss it. She pretty much has it down to a science- or an art, more like. I love when she tells me stories, like how she deals with all the hyper kids who line up at her desk just as class is starting with the urgent need to tell her sob stories:

Student: Mrs. Bear I was doing some of this and some of that and etc etc etc

Mrs Bear: Skip to the moral of the story please.

Student: Wut?

Mrs Bear: Is the moral of the story that you didn't do your homework?

Student: Well, yes.

Mrs Bear: Go sit down. Next!

But I know she really admires the ones that show some spunk, like the kid who, for a fundraiser, purchased the right to teach a Language Arts class. He brought in a bunch of cans of whipped cream and was going to have an eating contest.

Mrs Bear: Hold it, Mr. X- you need to relate this to Language Arts.

Mr. X: Oh- uh, who can give me an adjective for whipped cream?

Anyways they had their eating contest and even got to smoosh some pies into my wife's face as part of the same fundraiser. Good for them!

Anyways, here's to the great teacher Mrs Bear!

As far as I can remember I think this is the first time since the summer of 2004 that I will spend three straight weeks in the city where I live. Crazy. This is what is on the agenda:
1. relax
2. many movie marathons with michelle
3. christmas
4. babyproof the house

Of course item #1 can be expanded to include such diverse activities as Mariokart (thanks Steve&Megan!) and parties and trying to finish Neal Stephenson's excellent and hilarious Baroque Cycle. Who woulda thought a historical novel about calculus and finances could be so funny. That's why he's such a genius.

Done for the year! So that's good. Now I have nearly three weeks off. And then the baby should come sometime soon after* and I will take more time off! And then the market for coal will tank even farther and I should have the rest of my life off! So all good news, basically.
*Because today is 35 weeks. You might think holy smokes- one more week and it will be nine months! The baby will come any day! Any second even! But it turns out that a pregnancy takes 40 weeks. Which if you do the math works out to ten months. So that whole nine month thing is just a fallacy and a lie and a falsehood. Also it just isn't true. I dunno why this misconception is allowed to permeate our entire society but it's possible it has to do with alien overlords. So again, all good news, basically.

Speaking of unpleasantness on the radio, we are not allowed to swear on ours at work. This is not just company policy but a requirement of the CRTC who lease us the airwaves. But of course people forget and slips are common. For the most part I am pretty good, but I let an F bomb go the other day. I think it was justified:
After delivering a space heater to a shovel operator I notice that a haultruck has come in to the stands and made its turn. Worse, it is now backing up towards the pickup I am in. I get on the radio and say, "40 truck are you there?"
No answer. The driver is a rookie, but also very near retirement age and there are concerns about how well he can actually see and hear. And he's driving a 260 ton rock truck! So much fun. Though he doesn't answer my hail he at least stops backing up and takes his truck out of reverse. I wait a few more seconds to be sure and then decide it is safe to get the hell out of there. Just as I am making a turn he starts backing up again, and I am in his path. So I get on the radio with my assertive, I could even go so far as to say scary voice. "40 truck!! DO NOT BACK UP! STOP RIGHT THERE! Oh F#@*!" That last part was no longer Scary Voice, but Scared Voice.
Obviously since I am still here I didn't get squished into a pancake but it is only because I took evasive maneuvers. And I don't think ole 40 truck even knew I was there.
My foreman thought it was justified too.

Then days like today I get the CBC crystal clear all day but nary a Wendy McNeill song to be had. Just Rex Murphy and his best theme music ever.

The thing that bothers me most about my job is not the long hours, the cold, the grease, the pulled muscles, the night shifts- what bothers me most about work is the radio. Being way out in the boonies we have to pipe in music from elsewhere so we get two classic rock stations and one country. So three flavors of suck. I know I've whined about this before so I won't belabor the point. But every now and then I can sort of get a staticy CBC which is almost worse than nothing since it just tantalizes but doesn't satisfy. Like today, on the Key of A, a show that plays live concerts from Alberta artists, they had Wendy McNeill and I couldn't really make it out that well, and anyways I was in and out of the truck doing work so I was aware of it but didn't get to hear much of it. But what I did hear just strengthened my resolve that she would be fantastic as the female singer in an Alberta Ballet production of Nightmare Before Christmas. Can we make this happen yet? Wendy is kind of like Red Riding Hood if RRH was the villain in the story and the wolf the victim. And didn't wear red. Need proof? Watch this video, which is kinda balletic itself in that it is all one shot:

Ask Me No Questions

Fanart Friday: Random Fandom

A mishmash of cool stuff I've seen in the world of fan art lately:


Grumpygoat draws a great Wonder Woman for charity. And TimKelly reminds us that Skeletor is way cool. Cowkitty accidentally re-envisions Maleficent. And joewight sketches a sweet walker.