Happy Halloween!

 

Alright I’m at work right now typing on my phone but I wanted to get a post out before it’s too late! Here’s me as Cobb Vanth. That’s it. That’s the tweet! Have fun!

Ps the first guy is not me the first guy is Timothy Olyphant. The second guy is me. 

 

"Hey Marshal, this town ain't big enough for the both of us!"

"You're absolutely right Gar Saxon. Mandalopolis is waaaay too crowded. Let's build another level!"

"Good idea! You're the best! I heart you!!"

Filoni and Favreau, I am absolutely available to join your writers room, I can make up dialogue like that all day long!

So, I got the Mandalorian Starfighter (set 75316, not to be confused with The Mandalorian's N1 Starfighter, totally different things) primarily for the sweet minifigs. Got it sealed in box but secondhand for half price so I couldn't pass up that deal. Built the ship and it's fine, has cool moving wings and all that, but it doesn't sit in the depths of my heart they way TIE fighters and X-Wings and Imperial Shuttles do. 

So I thought I would dismantle it and use all the plates to build a second level, a boring square one since that's all I know how to do, but when I took the wings off and put them side by side I noticed how they look a lot like a Mandalorian helmet. I mean, obviously, right? So then I thought I would just tie them together (with bricks, not string), do a quick technic stand and voila. The overcrowding problem in Mandalopolis is solved! 

I also was able to put the various pieces of the Armorer's Mandalorian Forge (75319) just underneath for a sort of cave effect. Sweet! Put a micro fighter and some Minifigs on top and Boba's your uncle!

"Good job, Marshal! But where are we going to put the N1 now?"

"Oh sh..."

 Happy 10/22/2022. It also happens to be the 20th anniversary of Pooing in the Woods! I changed the header name a while back just so it looks a bit more professional as more and more of my writing gets out there in the world. But we know the truth right.

Yesterday the girls and I were out in the garage, I wanted Naia to help me with a part of my Halloween costume, so I asked her to spray paint a thing. I was pretty sure I had some spray paint somewhere, some red stuff I "accidentally" took home from the mine a while back. I found it, and it still worked! This was amazing since it's been in my garage over ...many winters now.

"How many winters, Dad?"

"Well, let's see. I remember using it for some reason I don't recall out in the yard before we had grass, so I dunno. 14 years?" (Editor- more like 16!)

This blew their mind, but for me it's just, yeah I had this in my garage for a while.

That's a little how having this blog turn 20 feels. It's just sort of been there, I don't use it much. 

But it's nice to know it's there when I need it!

Happy 20th Homie Bear!

 

Two things turn twenty in this year of 2022- Attack of the Clones, and this blog. Neither has aged very well, it can be admitted, but both are still around, so. Though this blog very nearly died in the Attack of the Social Media. There's a years-long gap in posts a while back. But I'm striking back! Revenge of the ... you get the point.

Most Star Wars fans will agree that the best thing to come from Attack of the Clones is the meme of Anakin and Padme where she's like, "You did the <insert whatever> in the <normal> way, right?", but the second best thing is the Republic Gunship which I have just learned is actually called the LAAT- low altitude assault transport. But no one ever calls it that, same as the AT-AT.

Lego just released the Ultimate Collector's Edition of the Gunship, and it is gorgeous. Stunning. You can imagine the price- heck you don't have to imagine, I will tell you- it costs $400 US, and even more in Canadian dollars. Even the less ultimate editions, retired now, are expensive and hard to find. But of course, Rebrickable has your back. 

There are tons of designs on there, but I found this one on Instagram and loved the size- midi-scale which is a touch smaller than mini figure scale, but the designer, Ron McPhatty, made it just big enough to accommodate some Clones. A fantastic build, full of little details and great work-arounds. Those doors slide open! There's a hidden little speeder incorporated into the hold! 

This was the second big build we did- Pallas was involved in this one right from the start. It took us a while, a lot of the dark red parts are hard to find even on BrickLink stores, so we also made use of the newly opened Edmonton Brickyard bulk bins, but we eventually found the pieces we needed and the time to build it. Of course we used some alternate bricks here and there but overall it looks great.

 Can you stand all these Lego posts? Can't help it, it's what I'm really into these days. Really pleased with this stand I built for my Imperial Shuttle (75094) which I have had for years now but has had to sit, somewhat uninspiringly, in park mode. With the wings up. It looks so much cooler wings-down! 

The stand is a pretty accurate build of barneius' stand on Rebrickable, I just recoloured it to match the Tydirium colours. And also since all of our black pieces have been scooped up for a build Pallas is doing this weekend! So it's a bit patchworky here and there but overall it works fine. Who knew white SNOT pieces were so hard to find!

Michelle has occasionally made comments about how our home decor is a little more Lego-y than she strictly remembers agreeing to . . . so the shuttle might fly back down to its hangar but for now, it enjoys pride of place on our mantle!

 

Microcosms have always fascinated me. Little worlds. I think our own universe, the cosmos, is probably just a microcosm of some other more bigger universe, as in the first Men In Black movie, that little necklace that the dog had. Was it a dog? That movie came out 25 years ago so I don't remember it very well. I know it was 25 years ago though because that is also when I was hitch-hiking across Canada having the time of my life, exploring the microcosm of Canada. Which isn't very micro.

What is micro are Microfighters! Love these little guys, I think they fit the Lego esthetic so well with the design of the minifigures which, after all, were always meant to be cute. The little Y-Wing shown above, the yellow one, came in a book about Lego Star Wars, and I always loved the design. So I built another one out of spare parts. I was going to make it red to be like the Resistance Y-Wing micro fighter (75263) but turns out I don't have that much red parts. I have a ton of grey though! So I built a Mandalorian version. Even stole the nacelles off of the Razor Crest microfighter (75321) which, honestly, kind of missed the mark of that cuteness that I like so much. They plugged right in! Since Din Djarin already has a bunch of ships, and fragments of ships (lol) I thought would give this one to a random Mandalorian mini figure. Pretty cool.

In other news, The Librarian Kickstarter was wildly successful and is going to come to an end next week. Thanks for your support! Completely by coincidence, another anthology featuring one of my stories will launch on Kickstarter next week. One of these days I should do my own Kickstarter since I already am getting kicked so much! Seriously, I would like to Kickstart The Ursus Verses Volume 2. One day. This upcoming anthology is from The Dragon's Roost Press and is called LOLcraft. An anthology of humorous  Cthulhuesque stories. Mine is really fun, I can't lie. It's about the cosmos. Well, cosmic horror! There's kind of a microcosm in it! Several, really. Sort of. Honestly, you just have to read it. Microcosmic horror? Hmmm....

 

I sometimes think space and time are unified in the same way matter and energy are, and that there is a finite supply of both. So as the universe expands- space gets bigger- time gets smaller. Or less of it. There's probably a formula for that but in a less cosmic sense, all I know is I have very finite space to display my Lego collection, and not nearly enough time to build more Lego.

Thus I have developed a somewhat unexpected passion for stands. The Convor is a bit of a space hog for the size of the model. Lots of surface area. It was made to soar, dammit! So I went back to Rebrickable and found this stand, by Fantasts. I was able to build a decently similar thing with parts I had on hand. The nice thing is you don't need to be exact, just need some good greebling. A combination stand and little minifigure diorama! Love it!

 

Years ago I read a book called Accelerando, by Charles Stross. Mind still reeling from it lol. There was a lot in there, but one of the things I often think about was how, in that universe, any raw material like asteroids or, say, the Moon, was a terrible waste until it was converted into processing power. I'm ok with the Moon just being the Moon but my gigantic horde of loose Lego bricks definitely seems like unrealized potential.

Luckily I have discovered Rebrickable! The best way to convert loose Lego into Awesome.

Spoiler- I also discovered BrickLink stores, the best way to acquire even more Lego so that my pile doesn't really actually seem to shrink at all...

So there's this guy that I follow on InstaGram, ScruffyBrickHerder, who is an accomplished Lego builder, and he makes what he calls 'Uglies'- mashups of Star Wars ships. They're pretty cool, the design language of Star Wars being very amenable to this sort of thing. When he posted this TIE ugly, I fell in love. So pretty! He calls it the TIE Convor, after a bird creature seen in Clone Wars, Rebels and so forth. Simultaneously cute and cool. Right up my alley- I had to build one for myself! And he was thoughtful and kind enough to post free instructions on Rebrickable. In my innocence I just started building, from step 1. Oh sweet summer child. I know better now. But this was as far as I got with the parts I had on hand before getting stuck:

Which, not a bad start, but I didn't want to just discard it as I had so often in the past doing similar things. That's where BrickLink came in. Turns out there's a guy just across the freeway from me, so I bought the parts I needed and was back in action. The best part, though, was that my daughter Pallas asked me what I was up to, and I showed her and pretty soon she was right in there, digging for parts and just being a great Lego building partner. In fact, it's become a thing for us now. More on that later! Here's another view of the finished model for now. I stole the cockpit window from Yoda's Starfighter (75168) and I feel bad but he wasn't using it so. Cheers!

This Kickstarter launched today! Variant covers! A story by me! Even more better stories by other authors! Even a story told with sequential art (comic!)! Exclamation points! 

Best time of the year, right? Busiest too. Next month marks the 20th anniversary of this little blog! Trying to remember to celebrate the milestone in some small way, even if no one else in the world cares lol. The world has definitely moved on. That's ok. And anyways that's next month. I was talking about how busy this month has been!

Yeah, September is my birthday month and I turned 48 this year. Urg. But we had a nice day, went to Board N Brew for some games. Pretty sure I won all of them.

 Later that week I headed back downtown to visit my good friend Christopher at Tattoo Apothecary, got a tattoo:

That day actually happened to be the 25th anniversary of the day I set off on my Cross-Canada hatch-hiking journey. Another little anniversary that is significant to me. Always thought it would be fun to mark the occasion by hitching a ride to somewhere, even if not quite all the way to Newfoundland. But I think that isn't in the cards in today's world. Oh well. 

Last week I got summoned to jury duty! Or rather, summoned to be in a room with a hundred other people to see if we will get picked to serve on a jury. I was not one of the chosen few! Phew!

 

It's the last day of summer vacation (well I was never on vacation lol but Michelle and the girls were) and it's been a whirlwind but also kind of an "every day is exactly the same" sort of summer. One thing I forgot to mention here but I put all over my socials to the point of annoyance, maybe, was that I will have a story featured in this absolute gorgeous dream of a book! The Librarian from Air and Nothingness Press. A dream publication for the best press out there. I'll let you know when the Kickstarter for it kickstarts. I'm in some very good company, and I am so proud to this story and excited for this project. 

I've got a couple things dropping now or very soon, so I thought I would aggregate everything together in one handy post. Here is where you can buy my currently-available writings (some things are out of print or were one-offs you know- collector's items!)

Dropped today:

Lost Boys Press publishes an ezine called Straight On Till Morning with different themes for every issue- issue #4's theme is Moot. It features my story "The Spidermancer" and works by other great writers!

Dropping soon! July 1:

Wyrms is an anthology from Shacklebound Books of very short- exactly 100 words each- stories about dragons and wyverns and wyrms and whathaveyous. Can preorder on Amazon! This one is also electronic-only, it looks like. 

That's the new stuff. Don't forget you can go to Air and Nothingness Press' site to order a physical (no electronic versions of this one sorry!) edition of Upon A Twice Time. It features my story Megaflora which is a mashup of Jack and the Beanstalk and Victorian travelogue and other really cool things. Seriously. It's really cool. Everything AaN does is super cool.

And of course you can get The Ursus Verses Volumes 1 and 3 in the next post. I would love it if you did! And please consider leaving a review on Goodreads or Amazon or tell all your friends. Thanks!

 So I was reading the December 1981 issue of National Geographic and there was a Wildlife as Canon Sees It ad in it! So the whole last post is just incorrect sorry! Not sure where I got my facts from. The internet, probably. Can't always believe the internet. The featured animal, btw, was the orangutan. Since that issue was published scientists have discovered that there are actually three species of orangutan. Pongo abelii, Pongo pygmaeus and Pongo tapanuliensis. With the latter being critically endangered at about 800 remaining individuals.

 Wildlife as Canon sees it debuted in the January 1982 issue of National Geographic. 40 years ago! I think I saw that Canon discontinued the series just recently- like maybe in December? A pretty good run. I haven't gotten this month's issue but it will be weird to read a NG without those iconic ads. 

Maybe I mentioned it but I have been engaged in a decades-long project to read every word of every NatGeo- maybe as far back as the month I was born, September 1974. It's coming along.  Got a ways to go though. This month in fact I read the January 1982 issue, which is maybe why these ads are at the top of my mind:

What I often do, especially when the featured species is unfamiliar to me, is google to see how they are doing now. Giant Pandas are hardly an obscure species, of course, and they have come a long way since 1982. I was surprised that they are still actually not in great shape, at least in the wild. We've all seen the photos and videos from the Wolong National Nature Reserve, and they seem to be doing good work (I think?) but in the wild Giant Pandas are still listed as vulnerable by the WWF. Exact numbers are hard to come by and fluctuate in any case, but somewhat less than 2000 seems to be a realistic count.

 It came! A beautifully wrapped little care package. With some tea, some chocolate and some poetry. By me!

Did you know I'm an award-winning poet? It's true- I entered a poetry contest in Grade 11 and won a pen. It wasn't a very good pen, but that's ok, it wasn't a very good poem.

Anyways, I bring this up because, in all seriousness, I am no one's idea of an award-winning poet, but I have sold my first poem and it feels pretty good. I've sold stories, and a modest amount of my own chapbooks that have my poetry in them, but never before has anyone published a poem of mine. It'll be on a postcard! Packaged in a subscription service with some tea and chocolate. When my copy arrives I will post some pics but for now if you want to order your own head over to Off Topic Publishing! 

The anticipation! I can't wait. Speaking of, the poem that won me a pen was called

Anticipation

Anticipation is the expectation of things which might occur

Waiting for annihilation

Death of the world on a moment's spur

It went on like that for a while but I will spare you the rest. The poem on this postcard is much better, I promise! If I still had that pen I would use it to write you a postcard...

 Here is a story I wrote for my Off Topic Literary Festival talk. It's untitled at the moment but I wanted to use the principles I developed to write something to show that they work. I kind of want to call it Forgotten Past after a deep track on Death's classic 1988 album Leprosy, but maybe a better title would be  Paradise City. Hmmm. Ok stay tuned at the end because that's a better spot to show the skeletal structure:

No one was looking so I ran out and kicked the tire of our U-Haul. I knew it was a futile gesture but it was the only outlet for my fury. Besides, this rental van was trying too hard to win me over- it was one of those new ones they’d rolled out recently with the fancy graphics on the side- ours had a dinosaur on it. Albertosaurus, a locally grown T-Rex lite. I wasn’t falling for it, and anyways I was damn near fifteen, way too old to care about dinosaurs anymore. I kicked the tire again. 

The dinosaur just stared at me, frozen in a roar as ineffectual as, well, as a kid who didn’t want to move away from his hometown.

The window for sabotage closed, as my dad and mom emerged from the house with another load of boxes. The moving van was pretty much full. 

It was time. 

Dad jumped in the van with me getting in the passenger side. He smiled and turned the key. It … definitely tried to roar to life like an Albertosaurus on the hunt, but only if said dino was gaseous and unwell. It belched and blew black and blue smoke. Not inspiring. There was a knock to the engine too, perfectly acceptable for a diesel, only the rental wasn’t a diesel. I side-eyed Dad. Maybe he would see reason and call off this whole “adventure”.

But no. He didn’t seem troubled at all by the van’s obvious mechanical unsoundness. He just seemed eager to go. “Our new life awaits,” he said, and I looked around at our old life, the only life I’d ever known, and I was struck by how normal the day was. Just any old day. It felt like the last day before the end of the world, but it looked like Saturday. There were no fireworks, no parade in our honour. Dad shifted the van into drive.

“Wait!” I shouted. “Not yet. I gotta . . . I gotta say good-bye to Duncan.” Duncan was our neighbour's cat. I unbuckled my seatbelt and jumped to the sidewalk, running up our neighbour’s walk before my dad could say anything.

I knocked on the door. No answer. I sighed. Not like I actually needed to see Duncan, or Duncan’s always angry owner. What would I even say? “I’m moving away forever, bye!” I stuck my hands in my pockets and got in the van. I was all out of delaying tactics.

Dad shifted the van into drive and pulled away from the curb. From our house. Behind us, in our car, my mom and sister followed. Dad turned on the radio just as Axl Rose started singing the smash hit of the summer. Dad exclaimed, “Paradise City! What are the chances? That’s a good omen if I ever heard one. And if I’m wrong I’ll eat Slash’s hat. Take me down to the paradise city…Edmonton is the paradise city, buddy. Trust me. You’ll love it.”

I looked in the rear view mirror at our rapidly receding house. I wasn’t so sure.

*

Maybe it wasn’t Paradise City but Edmonton wasn’t all bad. It wasn’t even all that different than home, just more of it. Lots of things to discover and learn and see. I don’t even mean the big touristy things like the Mall or whatever. For me it was simply exploring my new home, figuring out how things work. Streets go North-South, while Avenues go East-West. Kind of mind blowing. And the numbers made a grid that, once you understood the code, meant you could find your way around much easier than in Hinton, where all the streets were named after trees or people or who even knew. 

Armed with this knowledge I was able to navigate the transit system half-decently. I felt confident enough in my new skillset that I took the bus to my first day of high school, a few weeks after we moved. Couldn’t be seen getting dropped off at school by my mom on the first day, right? But I missed a connection and wound up being a few minutes late. Clutching my schedule, which told me English 10 was my first class, I searched the unfamiliar halls and found a closed door.

I knocked.

Teacher answered, and I apologized for being late. She checked my schedule and pointed out that I was in the wrong class- this was Physics 30, a Grade 12 class. All those adult-looking grade 12s laughed at me. I scurried away in embarrassment.

The day didn’t get much better after that.

*

Edmonton was scary as hell. And high school- I didn’t know the rules the way I did back home in Hinton. Back home. Edmonton was my home now, and I needed to get used to that. 

At least I learned where and when all my classes were. But even those were strange and unfamiliar. The kids all seemed so grown up and mature compared to me. Like they took school seriously which was kind of a foreign concept to me and everyone I went to school with in Hinton. It made me want to do better but it also just kind of exposed to me how terrible my work habits were and how ill-equipped I was for a school where the students actually gave a fuck.

I was falling behind fast, which had a sort of negative feedback loop effect since I felt less and less comfortable taking part in class discussions. I hated feeling like a small-town hick in front of all these strangers. So I learned to keep my mouth shut, but I listened intently.

“Anyone read the newspaper this morning?” Mr. Brownstone, my social studies teacher asked. Many hands shot up, but not mine. My family didn’t get the paper.

“Last night some racist shitheads- excuse me- skinheads knocked on the door of K___ R___ and viciously assaulted him with a baseball bat. They were mad about some antifascist things he’d said on his radio show. He’s alive but in intensive care. Police have the perpetrators in custody.”

Fuuuck. Edmonton was scary as hell, see what I mean? Dangerous! There were literal neo-nazis walking around attacking people in their homes. How could you ever feel safe in a place like this? The discussion carried on without me, as my stomach had tied itself up into such a dense knot it actually turned into a black hole, swallowing me whole. At least, that’s what it felt like. I thought back to Hinton and wished I could be back there, playing outside with my friends.

I hid on the bus ride home. Not like under the seat or anything, but I wrapped myself in my jacket and didn’t look at anyone. I didn’t want any skinheads following me home.

The next day I had to run my daily gauntlet yet again, ducking past the headbangers smoking outside the main entrance, arranged on the steps like the lion statues outside marble buildings. They utterly ignored me every day, but I didn’t like taking any chances, and always tried to scurry by as quick as I could hoping to avoid any attention whatsoever. On this day, though, they were all focused hard on their stereo system. I found myself- inexplicably- slowing down to listen too. Such a pretty song! What was it? I had to know. Against my better judgment I approached one of the, uh, music aficionados, a tall muscley guy with super long hair and a t-shirt that said “Metal Up Your Ass”.

“What are you listening to?”

“This is Knocking On Heaven’s Door. Bob Dylan wrote it, but this version is a cover by GnR.”

Of course- who could mistake Axl Rose’s voice for anyone else? “I like it. Bob Dylan, hey? Did he write Paradise City too?”

The metal dude laughed. Then he popped the cassette out of the deck and handed it to me. “You can borrow it if you want. I think I prefer the Dylan version. GnR’s a little light for me. Here, take this one too, it’s way heavier. Fucking insane but catchy as hell. You’ll like it.”

I was gobsmacked. This guy had no idea who I was and he was just lending me tapes! I looked at the fucking insane one and the garish, almost cartoonish painting of a guy wracked with disease stared back at me. Death. Leprosy. I’d never seen anything like it.

“You’ve never heard anything like it. Tell me what you think of it, ok? Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. Ok.

On the bus after school, I pulled out my yellow Sports Walkman and the tapes. I meant to put the Guns N Roses one in but the bright pink Death album pulled at me like a corpse dragging me to hell. I put my headphones in and pressed play.

It was loud. It was heavy. It was chaos. It was awesome. It was just like how the metalhead described it. If this was hell I wanted to live there. The songs were not just noise, they were melodic and catchy. Kind of surprised me. And the singing . . . if you could call it that. It sounded like a ghoul that had been dead for a thousand years, screaming and growling about being left to die. I was so enthralled I almost missed my stop. At the last minute I pulled the cord requesting a stop and ran off home.

I listened to Leprosy a hundred times that night. No, six hundred times! And sixty-six. I couldn’t wait to go to school in the morning and see what else my friend listened to. Maybe he would lend me more tapes!

*

“Empire Strikes Back is on tv!” my Mom called to me. I was in my room listening to Sepultura. But I couldn't pass up a chance to watch my favourite movie. Maybe not the most exciting Friday night but far from the worst, right? Anyways I loved the opening scenes on Hoth so much- reminded me of Hinton.

The Imperial Walkers were making a mess of Echo Base when there was a knock at our door. Mom said, “I wonder who that could be?” and she peeked out our front curtains. “Oh. There’s a scary looking guy out there.”

My heart skipped a beat. I thought about the radio announcer who was still recovering in hospital from the skinhead attack.

“What’s he look like?”

“He has really long hair and a leather jacket.”

I jumped up. “I’ll get it! It’s for me. That’s my friend. We’re going to go listen to heavy metal. Bye!”

I closed the door behind me before she could object. A small gesture of defiance - more symbolic than anything else especially since I knew the door would be unlocked when I returned.

*end*

Alright. I only snuck in the names of two Death albums and one of them was Leprosy which isn't really a sneak. It was hard to casually drop the phrase "Individual Thought Patterns" into this story. Or "Scream Bloody Gore." Next time. 

But yeah. My talk was all about mining our pasts to find things that resonate, and using those resonances (or dissonances too) to create a story. Couple that with the idea of discontinuities which is a geological term to show when rock strata aren't continuous, but I use here to express any kind of state change, preferably a sudden one or one where an event clearly delineates a before and after. Alive/Dead is an obvious one. Singe/married. Married/divorced. Healthy/sick. Or, in the case of this story- small town/city. 

I realized that I've written a ton of stories about growing up in a small town, but almost nothing at all about living in a city. When I saw that on paper it really struck me- like, why not? What's going on there? I have lived in Edmonton for over 2/3 of my life now, so why do I keep going back to that first third? With the idea of exploring for the future I decided I would write a story primarily on the other side of that discontinuity. 

So, knocking is a recurring motif here, did you notice? The skinhead attack really happened like that, and I remember being kind of freaked out about that. And I really did see the metalheads all gathered around listening to Knocking on Heaven's Door. And most resonantly for me in real life, it really is true that I was watching ESB with my mom on a friday night when there was a knock on the door. In real life it was my two best friends, Travis and Jon, sneakily brought to Edmonton by my mom to surprise me for my birthday. And in fact Travis and Jon saw us off on the day we left Hinton in that U-Haul. But for story tension fictive purposed I realized I had to cut my two besties out of this story altogether and instead talk about the awesome power of heavy metal which helped me cross over that crucial discontinuity of going from being afraid to being unafraid in my new home.  And then there never was a Duncan the cat and the U-Haul probably didn't knock when it fired up. Anyways thanks for coming it was tons of fun! 

I love how zoom or remote conferences and such have been normalized in this deeply unnormal time we are still in the midst of. Yeah, zoom can be quite awkward and frustrating but I love that we can just say, "Hey let's do a literary festival this month, it will be fun" and no one expects you to buy an airplane ticket or anything. You just show up. I think that's really cool. Anyways all that is to say I am . . . presenting? ... speaking? ... teaching???? I dunno the best term but I am one of five featured writers taking part in this litfest on November 27th. It will be fun!

I definitely feel impostor syndrome for this one. I've been writing for a long time but I don't know that I have anything very useful to offer to other writers, many of whom are way more accomplished than I. But, this topic is shaping up bit by bit so I am looking forward to seeing how it goes.  I might not know the most about writing but I do know the most about mining! Although my old coal mine isn't returning my calls a bout me borrowing some shovels and trucks for the seminar. Hopefully I'll get that sorted out before the 27th. Hope to see you there!

 Happy Halloween! Oh and also, I think today or maybe yesterday was the 19th anniversary of this blog! I have coworkers who are younger than this site. Anyways I totally forgot about this bloggiversary, as we used to say, but even so to celebrate, here is a new volume of The Ursus Verses! The Halloween themed volume!

If you are asking yourself how you missed volume II, don't worry, it isn't out yet. It's ready to go, I just don't have a clear idea of the path forard with it as far as print edition and whatnot. I'd like to do a Kickstarter but I'd also like to not do one. You know? But with Halloween fast approaching I wanted to get volume III out as soon as possible. So, enjoy!

 It's Read In Week! I get to zoom or google meet into Naia's class and read to them. The theme for this year is "To Each Their Own Story" so, I wrote something especially for them today- last year I had just written the story "Curse of the Dad Joke" and read it to the class, and they loved it. So, in a similar vein, here is

The Portal To, Uh, Some Other Place

 

Every day Pallas and Naia walked to school with their Dad, and every day their Dad warned them about the hole in the path. Now, ‘hole’ is kind of a strong word- maybe ‘slight dip’ would be more accurate. Nevertheless, their Dad always shouted a warning- “Girls! Watch out for that hole!”

            The girls never fell in the hole. Sorry- slight dip. In fact, even if the girls had tried to fall in the hole they would have found it very difficult to do so. They would have had to put on a show worthy of grade 5 boys playing soccer, trying to convince everyone that they had just been fouled. 

            One day Naia decided to just that- pretend to fall in. “Argh! Ouch!” she cried, and Dad almost jumped out of his pants.

            “Naia! Eyes on the prize or everyone dies!”

            Naia just looked at Pallas and winked. Somehow they managed to make it to school safely every day.

            But then one day- the day of the Halloween party at school- Dad said, “Hey, I know! Why don’t we take the puppy to school today. It’s getting closer to Halloween and pretty soon it will be too dark and cold to take her.”

            “I don’t know, Dad,” said Naia, “every time we’ve tried it before it’s always turned out to be a bad idea. A really bad idea. Remember that time she chased that rabbit and dragged you by your face down the road? What if she chews on my Halloween costume?”

            “Nah! It will be fine,” said Dad, with all the confidence of a middle-aged dad who obviously didn’t remember all the times before when it most definitely was not fine.

            But you know what? It kind of was fine. At least as far as the Remedy. “See?” Dad said. “She’s not a bitey little foofball anymore. She knows how to act right. Wagh!!” Their puppy- Ahsoka- chose that moment to lunge for the hole, yanking Dad’s arms badly.

            Ahsoka disappeared down the hole.

            Dad’s mouth fell open, kind of a black hole not unlike the one on the path, only deeper. Naia called out to him, “Dad! Do something!” 

            When Dad just stood there, staring open-mouthed, Naia and Pallas grabbed the leash and pulled as hard as they could.

            Ahsoka popped out of the hole, tail wagging. There was something in her mouth.

            “What the heck is that?” Dad shouted.

            “Leave it!” Naia said, and Ahsoka dropped the thing that was in her mouth. Which immediately wiggled away in a disgusting, slithery, slimy sort of way that didn’t quite make sense to the eye. But Naia saw it had a face full of tentacles and eeny weeny wings probably too small for flying. Decoration, maybe. It was kind of green, and kind of not. It was definitely gross, though, and if it had just slithered away that might have been the end of the tale- just one of those weird things that happened as one walks to school, kind of a shruggable “what a strange day” sort of story you tell your friends when you’re bored in math class.

            But Dad decided to give the thing one of the treats he had in his little fannypack he used for training Ahsoka. The thing caught the little chunk of hot dog in its tentacles, and Naia was sure she saw its eyes glow red, and it jumped up much higher than you would expect, and flapped its widdle wings and attached itself to Dad’s face. Then it grew humongous, and then it swallowed Dad.

            This was no longer just a strange day. This was a bad day.

            The thing looked down on them with its red eyes. It spoke. “Hear me, mortals. I am a Great Old One, and this whole world belongs to me now.”

“Wrong!” said Naia.

“Wrong!” said Pallas.

“You don’t look so great to me,” said Naia. “But you definitely look old.”

“Yeah and anyways we are even greater young ones and we banish you to, uh, some other place as long as it’s far away from here!” 

“Either that or you can just explode, we don’t really care. But let our dad go!” Both girls held up their Halloween costume props, which were just sticks they had found at the park and stuck some glitter gems to make them like wizard staffs or whatever.  The sisters had coordinated their Halloween costumes so that they looked like twin sorceresses, Naia in a black robe, Pallas in a white. They had planned to be superhero space robots but had run out of time, so. Witches! Or whatever.

The Great Old One shrank back from the dual assault. “The Staff of ulhuhtC- where did you get that??? How dare you command me? Ouch! Ok ok just don’t poke me with those staffs, they are very poisonous to Great Old Ones.”

Naia and Pallas looked at each other, with their sister power looks that only they knew how to read. They winked, and together they threw their staffs at the monster. Who exploded. Such a mess- Esther Starkman School and the Remedy café, and everyone in the vicinity -including all of grade 5- were covered in chunks of brown-like green-tinged goo. And at the centre of it all sat Dad, nearly unrecognizable beneath all the slime. He looked at his daughters. “What just . . . did that… that thing didn’t just poop me out did it?”

“No Dad,” Pallas replied. “Naia and I made it explode. We rescued you!”

“OK, um, thank you. Uh. Wow. Anyways. We are late for school so we should probably get going.”

“Sure, Dad.” Naia said. “Just watch out for that hole. It’s deeper than it looks.”