Neil Gaiman's so good, hey? Seems I'm always finding books of his I didn't even know he wrote in used bookstores. Last week I picked up a short story collection, possibly his first. Uh, what's it called? Don't recall off the top of my head and it's alla way upstairs . . . I got Michelle reading Fragile Things which is a more recent anthology, and we're both loving it. Not too long ago I bought a Batman comic he wrote, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? I find Batman comics kind of hard to read, because unlike the movies, in the comics there's like 70 years of history and continuity that you need to know (Robin is dead but Robin 2 is Nightwing and Robin 3 is in the future and she's a girl . . . )but this one was brilliant and accomplishes its purpose- which is to bring to an end both iconic Batman series- Detective Comics and Batman- with a story that would be 'true' now and in twenty years, or seventy. I didn't even know they canceled those titles (naturally they relaunched them with new numbering and all but still). Yeah. Check it out.
In other news, Pallas and I have been busy kicking ass all week. Well, we went on the big water slide a billion times at the rec center and found all our shopping list on our own and made supper all by ourselves (even if it sucked). I taught her to say "kick ass" so when we got home from kicking ass I told her to go tell mom. "Mommy, kickass! Kickass! Daddy Pallas kickass!" but Michelle thought she was saying Princess. Well, in Pallas' case, same thing.

This week started off so good. The first day was an overtime for double pay and it was easy money. The next day was a stat so even though it was my regular shift, it was double time and a half pay. And even easier money. Then the bubble burst yesterday when, rather than be on my truck, I was assigned to pumps. Which was my nightmare job that I hated and was the worst experience of my life. But whatever. We had to put a pump in. Which took all day and it was cold and wet and I even singed half my beard off by poking my face into a fireball. Why was there a fireball and what was I doing poking my face into it? When it's -30 pumps get all frozen for some reason, so we have to use a propane torch, basically a flamethrower, to thaw them out. I guess flames build up into fireballs in enclosed spaces.
Anyways. Today I'm even colder because I had to shave my beard off. And guess what? We have to pull that very pump since they're blasting. Nightshift never did get it working so we didn't pump so much as one gallon out of the pit. Tearing shit down is always easier than setting it up, so at least there was that. But after the blast, guess what? Back goes the pump! They asked me to stay late to get it running and I very flatly refused. Fuck em. That's why they have nightshift guys. And it'll be there tomorrow, just waiting for me to tear it apart I'm sure.

It's coming along. Now that a lot of the custom pieces and parts are arriving from all over the place. You should see the springs we got, not shown here. Thanks to my dad who did a whole mess of work in the last few days. I did a wee bit of chopping. Turned some wrenches. Nodded sagely here and there. You know. Remember what it looked like when we started?

Last week on our drive to Calgary we were listening to the Glee soundtrack, Michelle's favorite music. She asked me who wrote one song, and I said, "I have no idea, I've never heard this song in my life."
"Your musical knowledge has a serious gap in it."
"Yeah, I don't know any of the cheesy songs."
To be fair, I gave Glee a chance at her insistence and I really like it. Not the music as much, but Sue Sylvester kills me. Like, makes me laugh so hard I cry and Michelle has to pause the dvd while I recover. Jane Lynch is gonna be on Q one of these days, actually.
What else. The music I'm really digging on right now is Buck 65's new one, 20 Odd Years. I can't get enough, seriously.
What else. Been working a bit of overtime lately so I have even less time at home than usual. Pallas told me on the phone the other day, "Daddy, come home!" Heartbreaking. At last work is waaaaay better ever since I bid off of pumps. Just drive my truck and read my comics. Marvels was very good. I've also been reading the Star Wars Omnibus series that reprints the old Marvel Star Wars series we all grew up on. Classic. I only had maybe not quite half of them so it's fun to go back and read what all I missed. The original 6 issues were an adaptation of the movie, but it came out before Star Wars was released, and the artist hadn't seen it. I don't know if he went off storyboards or production photos or what, but R2-D2 is drawn as if he walks on his legs rather than rolls. Kind of funny.

The following is an extremely true account of what happened at work the other day. A Wenco is a computerized GPS dispatching thing that knows your every move every minute.

I was hauling off of shovel 9
It's Friday and I was feeling fine
Until my Wenco started going crazy
Telling me "start hauling loads, stop being lazy"
Well, we all know, the Wenco, it's gotta go
I'll be the first to say I told you so
But how to get rid of Big Brother GPS?
I knew I'd have to scheme and be devious
Just then the radio played some Miley Ray Cyrus
And it hit me! I know, I'll make a virus!
So I mashed all the buttons on that little unit
For good measure I thought I'd pull my pants down and moon it
But then something happened that was kinda weird
There on the screen a robot appeared
It laughed and said "Now you've gone and done it
"I've taken over your truck and now I'm gonna run it"
My seat belt, it wrapped around me I'm trapped
and my truck took off like a bat that'd been zapped
Went straight for the dump, passing 145
and if you know Myriame, you know that girl can drive
we came to a stop in front of Craig's dozer
and dumped it right there, not one rock went over
He was so mad he called me snot sausage
But it's not my fault! I'm being held hostage
What the Wenco did next I should have expected
It went on the network, and so it infected
all of the trucks and shovels in PC3 pit
that's when I thought I might be in deep shit
so I used ninja tricks to jump outta my truck
just my luck I landed knee deep in the muck
I pulled myself free and looked up to see
Shovel 9 with its bucket was coming at me
It tried to eat me! I swear it's the truth
Lucky for me it was missing a tooth
I jumped through the clamshell but no time to relax
I still had to dodge shovel 9's tracks
Swinging around it came in for the kill
Time to bust out all my GI Joe skill
I adopted my patented Miyagi stance
Part kungfu with voodoo and hiphop dance
With a jab and a feint and a flying round kick
I separated shovel 9's boom from its stick
My triumph short-lived as the rest of the fleet
was headed my way and I knew I was beat
I was just about to give up in defeat
When I heard on the radio Cito say "Sweeeeet!"
So I dodged and I kicked and I punched until three
That's when I stopped for coffee lunch and a pee
At 3:30 I said "Alright" and "You betcha!
"You're coming for me but I'm gonna getcha!"
I wrecked every last truck, including the Kresses
You shoulda seen Jimmy, you know how he stresses
But anyways, to make a long story short
This is the end of my Incident Report!

You should see me. I pretty much kick ten tons of ass. I'm not just saying that because this is the internet and you can say anything. It's true. And now I will only get even more awesome because our new rec center opened with its swimming pools and weight rooms and skating rinks and Dairy Queens. God I love Dairy Queen. Not sure about the wisdom of putting one inside a facility dedicated to physical fitness though. Oh well. Maybe I'll only kick nine tons of ass and have one ton of blizzard on my fat ass.
Also, me and my dad kicked some ass on my motorbike today. Well you should see how much work he did in his garage to set up a shop. We even built a bike stand in about ten seconds today. Then we chopped my frame up a bit. Wrecking shit is so easy! Putting it back together . . .
Know who else kicks ass? The vampirenomad. She doesn't really kick ass at blogging lately. But in the category of moving back to Canada after six years in New Zealand, she wins. Sweet!
Also my eldest daughter kicks ass so much. Srsly. She's awesome. Didja see this picture? Awesome.

The most exciting thing that happened at work last week was I got to read a bunch of comics. I wisht every week could be like that!
I'd heard that Age of Apocalypse was one of the all-time classic X-Men storylines so I got the Complete Epic (four volumes) from the library. Maybe my expectations were too high but I thought it was kind of terrible. Never mind that the way you could tell that the X-Men were all alternate-reality versions of themselves is because they had mullets. I dunno. The basic idea was sound, what if Charles Xavier had died before forming the X-Men? Obviously Magneto would lead the X-Men and Apocalypse would take over the world. But where it went wrong for me is all the focus on space aliens and Blastaar and the Negative Zone. What does that even have to do with Apocalypse? I dunno.
Luckily World War Hulk was better. Not as good as Planet Hulk which I loved. WWH is all about how he comes back to Earth with his Warbound buddies to get revenge for all the bad stuff that happened at the end of Planet Hulk. It had some great moments, though lots of the big things happened off-screen, ie in the tie-in comics that weren't in the WWH collection. Oh well. Hulk still smashed plenty of shit.
Batman R.I.P. was kind of confusing. Didn't really know anyone other than Batman. Even Robin was someone else.
What else. Spider-man and Red Sonja. Got that one for a laugh and it was definitely funny.
I also finished reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I liked it. Makes me want to make a pinhole camera detector. Among other things. Not that I'm worried someone snuck into my house to install a pinhole camera to spy on me. Does make me wonder about the classrooms where Michelle teaches, though. And the washrooms. Eew.

Seems like Naia will be fine. So that's good. Yesterday was kind of a crazy day. On the way to the hospital we were involved in a weird quasi-collision because of lane confusion and whatnot, the lanes aren't as wide as they normally are Nd on top of that they're all fooked from the LRT and stuff. Anyways traded some paint with a lady, I kind of had to chase her down to get her to stop, and the initial confrontation was, well, confrontational but I'm pretty good at remaining calm and defusing situations. She had a baby in her car sp of cousre I'm not going to go off on her, and once I explained that we also had a baby in the car, and were actually on the way to the Stollery, she calmed right down. It wasn't too clear who was at fault since neither of us owned the lane we met in. Whatever, after llooking at the very minor damage we agreed to just go on with our days. But I'm pretty sure she hit me! An62-6/
Apparently ipads think anyways should be spelled with way more 6s than normal.
At the University, we parked at the lot we often go to when we are at the hospital. One of those pay with your credit card dealies. At first it didn't really work so i tried again. When it charged me $120 I tried desperately and in vain to cancel the transaction. Geeze. Later I went to Parking Services to clear that up, shouldn't be a problem but it will be a week while they review my case.
Anyways the doctors were great. The Stollery has a really good reputation, we've never had to test it before but we were very impressed.

Pallas is turning two on Saturday. I won't even be here, I have to work. For that matter I'm missing Michelle's birthday which is the day before as well. Worst dad in the world.
Tomorrow we actually have to take Naia to the Stollery because of some concerns with jaundice or whatever. If that sounds like I'm fuzzy on the details, it's because I'm the world's worst dad. But also because the doctors haven't been exactly clear on what they're concerned about. How worried should we be? I dunno. I'm sure she's fine. Right? Please be fine.

World's Worst Dad

You're the world's worst dad she said
not with her words but with her eyes
and I must be because the accusation
doesn't even bother me I just laugh
and say despite what you may think
you are not actually the boss of me
but let me let you in on a secret
when I piss you off and tell you no
it's not to make you mad
but because I love you so much
I'd rather absorb your wrath
then fail you as a father

I'm pretty much the world's best writer over there in my haultruck. Nothing to do all day but read comics and listen to CBC podcasts and think about life. Then I come home and the genius evaporates like so much . . . stuff that evaporates.
Anyways. Can always talk more about comics. read two the last couple of days- Wolverine Origin, which I had really really low expectations for, but since it was library I thought I'd see how bad it was. Considering they (as the movie also showed) made him a little sickly child named James. But you know it wasn't that bad. At least he's still from Alberta! And the way he got the name Logan actually makes sense. So yeah.
And even more better? Planet Hulk. Some of my favorite comics are those ones where the heroes somehow get transported to another planet or dimension and there's always an evil emperor and gladiatorial games and slaves to be freed. Like when Hulk and the Defenders went to Tunnel World and had to overthrow the Unnameable. Still one of my favorite comics ever. And Planet Hulk is just like that but with less Namor. Too bad the ending is so sad. But Hulk can't have happy endings any more than um, like . . . well he just can't have a happy ending. Not allowed!

The library was kind enough to lend me the Marvel Civil War collected edition. Pretty cool. I liked how there was no major villain, but rather an ideological divide between allies, friends and even in some cases, lovers. I bought the first issue back in 2006 I think it was, and remember it as the one where Tony Stark reveals he's Iron Man. I thought that was their inspiration for the end of the movie. Memory's a funny thing since it was actually Spidey who unmasked. Weird.
Also what happened to Thor? In this series he was a clone or a robot or something. And Hercules snmashed his face in good using robot Mjolnir. That was cool.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite comics of all time- an old Thor (I would dig it out of my collection but that would require a lot of digging) where Hercules is out for a stroll in Central Park with the Avengers' butler and they come across a group of youngsters playing frisbee. Unbeknownst to Herc, one of the kids was being bullied by the others for always drawing pictures of his hero Thor. So the kids ask Hercules who would win in a fight, him or Thor. Herc, of course, starts spinning a tall tale about how he totally kicked Thor's ass after Thor bonked him on the head with Mjolnir. At one point he even picked up the entire island of Manhattan to throw at Thor ("I don't remember that," say the kids). Jarvis, the butler, notices what's actually going on and asks for a word with Herc, who then quickly edits his story to show that Thor was faking weakness the whole time and totally beat him up so bad. That was a good one. Oh yeah here it is:

In Brightest Day, in Blackackest Night . . .
wait, how's that go? Blackackest Night. Blackackest? Yeah. Blackackest Night. So cool!
This is how slightly drunk Homie Bear recites the oath of the Green Lantern Corps.
My friend Jasmine drew the totally sweet Green Lantern Bear you see to your right. I tried scanning and photographing him to get him in his best light but I might need to try again, and get the background set to transparent. Which I dunno how.
Ooh ooh do you remember that part in Green Lantern where Green Lantern beat up Sinestro? That was cool.

Flickr friend 8 Skeins of Danger tagged me, and showed me how to do it too thanks to bighugelabs. Gotta show the:
1. Most Viewed- seriously an out of focus pic of aayla secura is the most viewed? Sigh.
2. Most favorited- and soon to pass most viewed too, Adrianne is still getting 10 or 20 views a day.
3. Most commented- I drive those for a living you know. Mine is #43.
4. Personal Favorite- I've always been partial to this one from a Wellington tattoo and body art festival.
1. Poor Aayla, 2. Adrianne Curry- Officer of the Empire!, 3. the badger, 4. ethereal

A minor Facebook skirmish broke out over who came up with the exceedingly clever joke of comparing the current winter conditions to living on Hoth. Umm, all us school kids 30 years ago? It's not Hoth if there aren't any wampas. Anyways. I would like to know who first came up with that whole "Did you know the Chinese character for crisis is made up of the words danger and opportunity" thing. And punch him in the face.
Seriously. I first heard it in 1992, which I remember because it was a pastor speaking in a church in the Ukraine which I've only ever visited in 92. Even wide-eyed naive ole me wasn't impressed- it seemed that, even if that were true, it was more likely because crisis could be translated as an "opportunity FOR danger". And then hearing it umpteen billion times since, well, it doesn't speak highly of your originality if you pull that one outta your ass. David Suzuki I'm looking at you. Even Robert McKee sullies his otherwise excellent Story by trotting it out.
Well a quick googleglot reveals that my suspicions are correct- it's bullshit. With just enough truth to persist in the minds of politicians and preachers everywhere.
In other news, I briefly reached the 2000 song plateau on my iTunes today before trimming some fat. Any suggestions for what should be my real 2000th song?

Back from another round of work. Good week- first day was a little lame since I was on shovel 9 and it was on another makework project- skim a meter off a ramp to even out a hump in the road. Which we don't use. Course the ramp wasn't drilled and it's all frost lumps anyways. Beat up the shovel and beat up the operator with that kind of nonsense. Day 2 I was back on shovel9 but it was in a better spot (somewhat anyways) for digging and plus I got to retrain a good guy who's been off for four months with cancer. Fuckin cancer.
Day 3, my truck was still down and with all the new hires and overtimers they had nowhere to put me. So they gave me a choice of hanging out with either the pump crew (my old job) or the utility crew (my old old job). I gave them option 3 and bumped a green guy off a redbox and spent the day hauling coal. Much better. Yesterday was more of the same.
but really the worst part of the whole week was driving home in the crazy blizzard. I waited till today to drive though rather than risk it last night. I've driven that highway in whiteout conditions enough to know it's doable but not very fun and to give it all due respect. The worst part, of course, was trying to get into my garage, I got stuck and had to dig myself out.
Well with all the snow there's just no choice but to hunker down and watch DVDs. You know what kicks ass? Clone Wars Season 2. Season 1 was great but season 2 is pretty much eclipsing the movies. I think Dave Filoni is borrowing a few pages from the BSG playbook, which is fine since all those shows owe a lot to Star Wars and thus the circle is complete.

Before Christmas a friend lent me this cool coffee table sorta book about the history of Marvel Comics. It had a page or four for each year from 1939 or something right up to when it was published, maybe 2009? I read every page though apparently my non-detail oriented mind didn't pick up too much dates-wise. Doesn't matter because it was so cool! Filled me in on a lot of stuff I sorta knew about, and all the stuff in the 90s and oeys that I missed out on. Also she lent me a Wizard magazine which filled in some of the stuff the official versions left out- like did you know Steve Ditko pretty much fell off the face of the planet? And Bill Mantlo, who wrote ROM Spaceknight which I loved back in the 80s, he was hit-and-runned quite a while ago now and suffered permanent brain damage of the worst sort. Sad.
Anyways, I bring this up because the last few days at work I been reading Batman- The Dark Knight Returns (which of course is DC but it all relates). That and Watchmen are pretty much the most famous (superhero oriented anyways) graphic novels ever. With good reason. Frank Miller of course started out at Marvel with his brilliant Daredevil run and then revitalized Batman with DKR, published in the mid-80s sometime (details, man, I no good at them) and now he's most famous for Sin City and 300. Um, I was going somewhere with all this. I really was. And now not only the details escape me but the whole general idea. Well, the general idea is that comics are awesome.

I'm a downloading fool, though I do it all legally. Robin got me an iTunes gift card for Christmas which I have put to good use by procuring some Avenged Sevenfold, Asphyx (yeah old skool metal! I put a Pestilence song on a mix CD for my cousin last week so I remembered how much more crushing Asphyx was) and finishing off the Mumford and Sons album.
Then my brother-in-law Steve told me about FreeAppReport which compiles a daily list of free apps on the AppStore. Most of which are whatever and mostly for iPhone rather than iPad but still. Got a simple and fun racing game and stuff. I also got a Chuggington app for Pallas, it's designed for 4yos but she caught on pretty quick. And thus ends the era of it being my iPad. And through the Journal (and probably your hometown paper as well) I got a free download of the movie One Week, a Canadian road movie about cancer and motorbikes which I wanted to see back when Jian Ghomeshi had the director on Q. Cool!
Oh yeah and the App of the Year, also free, is something called Flipboard which is kind of cool, it makes your Facebook, Flickr and such feeds into a magazine style design. you have to see it, I like it. Maybe not enough to replace my browser but I don't think that's the point.
Green Lantern says download responsibly kids! Or face the rage of Atrocitus.

I'm such a party animal you can't even believe it. I was in bed last night by 9:00. Nightshift did me in once again. Make any resolutions? I find I don't really ever need to. I'm pretty much perfect already. Don't smoke. In good shape. Super brilliant. An obscure cult of neo-pagan Trappists in San Juan de Fuca Town wants to canonize me but I turned them down, as I do all such requests. Maybe I'll work on my harmonica skills this year.

I'm on nightshift right now so I doubt I'll get around to my annual best of the year lists. Not that it matters since who cares anyways right? I don't think I even bought a physical CD all year. Rob Zombie and Johnny Cash, if those were this year. And I saw two movies. 2010 was all about the younglings. And Comic-con. Green Lantern! And work. Ha work. What a year for that. Can I retire yet? It's much better now anyways.

Good Christmas? Me too. Back to work tomorrow night but what can you do about that? We converted Pallas's crib to a toddler bed so she can get in and out by herself which will be a huge help to Michelle who Is still severely limited in her movements due to her surgery. Anyways. Did you see Scott Pilgrim? He was a big deal at Comic-con so I was glad to get the DVD for Xmas. Loved it right up there with Big Lebowski and Royal Tenenbaums which is high praise for me. What else? Got more Green Lanterns for Comicmas yay! Rage of the Red Lanterns yo! Of course I got this iPad which I opened early, courtesy of Michelle and her side of the family. She got a pretty sweet gift from me I gotta say. A dust buster. Nothings too good for my sweety!
Update: yup, that thump I heard upstairs was Pallas falling out of bed. She's okay though, I went in and handed her Pink Guy and she didn't even stir.