Eh?! Why it's Christmas Day!

'Twas the noche before Navidad

A Spanish/English version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas from Spanish-Translation-Help.com. They also have some links to traditional villancicos (Spanish Christmas carols) and some English faves sung in Espanol.

‘Twas the night before Christmas y por toda la casa,
Not a creature was stirring-Caramba! Que pasa?

Los niños were tucked away in their camas,
Some in long underwear, some in pijamas,

While hanging the medias with mucho ciudado
In hopes that old Santa would feel obligado

To bring all children, both buenos y malos,
A nice batch of dulces y otros regalos.

Outside in the yard there arose such a grito
That I jumped to my pies like a frightened cabrito.

I ran to the window and looked out afuera,
And who in the world do you think that it era?

Saint Nick in a sleigh and a big red sombrero
Came dashing along like a crazy bombero.

And pulling his sleigh instead of venados
Were eight little burros approaching volados.

I watched as they came and this quaint little hombre
Was shouting and whistling and calling by nombre:

"Ay Pancho, ay Pepe, ay Cuco, ay Berto,
Ay Chato, ay Chopo, Macuco, y Nieto!"

Then standing erect with his hands on his pecho
He flew to the top of our very own techo.

With his round little belly like a bowl of jalea,
He struggled to squeeze down our old chiminea,

Then huffing and puffing at last in our sala,
With soot smeared all over his real suit de gala,

He filled all the medias with lovely regalos-
For none of the niños had been very malos.

Then chuckling aloud, seeming muy contento,
He turned like a flash and was gone como viento.

And I heard him exclaim, and this is verdad,
Merry Christmas to all, y Feliz Navidad!

Chickens! Concert Series (#32): Three Days Gace

You may not remember Three Days Grace from the time I went to their concert in S'toon when they were touring for One-X (this was pre-blog, I only vaguely remember it myself and most of that is due to KW reminding me). Anyway, the Trews and Default opened for them.

They stared with a cover of Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down" and then some police sirens and spinning red lights. They played some new stuff from their 3rd album called "Life Starts Now" and a bunch of old stuff. I loves me some 3DG! Good times. We missed Default though but quite frankly I'm fine with that. Here's the setlist:
1. Break
2. The Good Life
3. Pain
4. Bitter Taste
5. Wake Up
6. I Hate Everything About You
7. World So Cold
8. Home (they had flames shooting up from the stage in this one, good times)
9. Drum Solo (they
10. I Don't Care (Apocalyptica cover)
11. Last To Know
12. The Chain (Fleetwood Mac cover)
13. Never Too Late
14. Riot
Encore:
15. Lost In You
16. Just Like You
17. Animal I Have Become

Change Blindness

Also known as "Inattentional Blindness" is the inability to recognize visual changes that occur in your direct field of perception because you are paying attention to something else. An easy example would be something like not noticing that a street light changed colour even though you are looking right at it because you are listening to your friend talking to you. This is related to our ability to block out extraneous information and focus on specific stimuli. Which is advantageous when you are trying to listen to a single conversation in a noisy room, but not so good when you are called on to be a witness to a crime that happened right in front of you while you were busy. Some people have taught themselves to pay attention to specific stimuli above all else because it holds some special fascination for them. These are people who have a "good memory for faces/details/colours/bones/etc". And some people have trained themselves to be more conscious of changes in their surroundings in general, these are people who are "cops/spies/nosy/etc". Anyway, now that you are forewarned that that is what we're doing, here are a few good videos on the issue. Good times being nerdy!

First, here is one discussing an interesting experiment on the subject:

I know most of you have seen that awareness video with the ball passing and the bear (here). I think that it is a bit of cheating in these types of videos because they are it intentionally telling you to focus on something else to trick you. These types of awareness tests are easy if you ignore the "task" you are given and just watch normally:

But try and do the task AND find the change. It's still hard to do even if you know to be looking for something crazy. It's so hard to focus on two things! This one is a good one because it is just distracting you instead of actively telling you to do something else:

Here is a good one done by the same city of London bike safety guys to do the moonwalking bear mentioned above. These series of ads were to raise awareness of people's lack of awareness of cyclists on the road. McShanty points if you find more than 3 changes (the bear turning into a suit of armor doesn't count because it's too obvious, find a harder one dang it!). This one is tough because even though you know to look for the changes, a lot is happening at once and you don't know where the changes will occur so it is hard to know where focus your attention. FYI there are 21 changes during the course of the video.

p.s. Without looking, did you see a red wagon behind the gorilla on the picture at the top of the post? Did you have to look before you knew the answer?

Borden System Words: British Columbia

BC is a gold mine of good words! Please bare in mind that many of these are probably in the water, especially those with the upper East-West designation (third letter) of V, U, or T. We also still have a few slackers: DQ, EP, EQ, FQ, IV, IU, IT, IS, and IR all have no words and I already used up the words from DP in the Alberta words post. However we still have quite a few:

HU – haut, haul
HT – hits, heth, hats, hath, hate
HS – hiss, hest, hast, hasp, hash
HR – hire, hers, hero, herm, herl, here, herd, herb, hart, harp, harm, harl, hark, hare, hard
GU – glut, glum, glug, glue, geum, gaur, gaud
GT – gits, gets, geta, gats, gate
GS – gist, gest, gast, gasp, gash
GR – girt, giro, girl, gird, germ, gars, garb
FU – flux, flus, flue, flub, feud, faux, faun
FT – fits, fete, feta, fats, fate
FS – fist, fish, fisc, fess, fast
FR – firs, firn, firm, fire, fern, fere, fart, faro, farm, farl, fare, fard
ET – efts, eats
ES – else, east, ease
ER – ecru, ears, earn, earl
DS – diss, disk, dish, disc
DR – dirt, dirk, dire

That's a grand total of 96 potential Borden words! Outstanding! Especially compared to Alberta's abysmal 16 words even after I took out a bunch of the sketchy words that the Scrabble thing churned out and for which I couldn't find any good definitions, like "hets", "hist", "hisn", "hern", "gaun", "fets", and "feus". I also took out a few crazy Scots words like "dirl", "girn", "fash" and "eath"(this is despite certain Diana Gabaldon books that I may or may not have read and from which I learned several of these), and a dialect word or two like "gaum" and "dere". FYI: "heth" is the eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, a "herm" is a monument or statue consisting of a four-sided column tapering inward from top to bottom with a bust of Hermes on top, "firn" is granular snow accumulated on high mountains and subsequently compacted into glacial ice (or a field of same). Anyway, BC is good because it has several key dirty (both symbolic and literal) words including "fart" and "germ". Fart is clearly the front runner here so far (much better than Sask/Alberta with "dink". No swears yet though. We'll just see what Manitoba has to say.

Firelight

In my continued blog-warfare based battle to get little cp to give her last MTC post, here is the recent spoof that SNL did of a certain movie. Take that!

p.s. Taylor Swift's opening monologue was pretty funny too.

Borden System Words: Alberta

Continuing in our search for filthiness in the Borden System, we move on to Alberta. There's sure to be some bad words in there! What with all the oil rig workers and such. Unfortunately, 1/4 of the upper borden grids have Qs in them! Lousy Qs!

Turns out that Alberta has significantly fewer BSwords than Saskatchewan (IQ, IP, HQ, HO, GQ, FQ, FP, EQ, and EP had no words at all...slackers). Here they are by upper borden block (keep in mind that, as we learned last time, the lower North-South bordens only go up to l and the lower East-West bordens only go up to x, which means we miss out on some good words like "fool" and "grog" and "goon", but no swears though):

IO – ikon, icon
HP – hips, haps
GP – gips, gaps, gape
GO – glow, glop, glom
FO – flow, flop
EO – egos, ebon
DP – dipt, dips
DO – dhow

Bah! I guess glop is good because its literally dirty, but that wasn't what I was going for. Oh well, I'm 0 for 2 so far, but we'll see next time.

p.s. A "dhow" is a traditional Arabic sailing vessel. Learning is fun!

Mind of Pi (#4)

Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar...

...and doesn't.

Chickens! Concert series (#31): Priestess

You may remember Priestess from previous posts, in which I almost saw them but was trapped in the line that was 1 million kms long. But that injustice was redeemed last night! I must say that I like their first album (Hello Master, 2006) a lot more than the newest album (Prior to the Fire, 2009). I was getting a little worried when they got through almost their entire show without playing any of my favorites songs from Hello Master, but then they did "Lay Down" (some of you may know this song from Guitar Hero 3) and "I am the Night, Colour Me Black" plus "Talk to Her" and I was all happy.

The new songs are much heavier and more "progressive" sounding. That's OK, but I wouldn't have liked the band as much if their new album was the first I had heard of them. Although their new songs are interesting to listen to, often with twists and turns in the music. The openers were pretty decent too. I liked Trigger Effect's music more, but Early Man had a tighter performance.

This is the setlist from the Ontario concert but it seems like it was the same from what I remember (except I'm sure they played Run Home at the beginning somewhere):
-The Gem (this was like a 10 minute song!)
-Raccoon Eyes
-Two Kids
-It Baffles The Mind
-The Firebird
-Trapped In Space & Time
-Lay Down
-Sideways Attack
-Lunar
-I Am The Night, Colour Me Black
-Lady Killer
Encore:
-Everything That You Are
-Talk To Her
-Communicating Via-Eyes (this one is about werewolves...good times)

Borden System Words: Saskatchewan

The Borden System divides Canada up into chunks based on the lat/long system to provide a handy way of designating unique site names based on the site's location and the order in which it was found (just like the Stonecutters!). It was created by one Charles E. Borden in 1952, while teaching at UBC. Borden is known as the grandfather of BC archaeology. This is despite the mild handicaps of having been employed in the German Department (although he was made a lecturer in archaeology after his first 10 years there) and being an American citizen. See a good bio from the CAA here, also American Antiquity printed an obituary for him. His contributions to BC archaeology (and archaeology in general) were numerous. Among other things, he excavated many important sites, was instrumetal in the pressuring of provincial government to pass the 1960 Archaeological an Historic Sites Protection Act, and of course developed the Borden Grid System which all Canadian archaeologists know and enjoy today.

Let's look at how it works shall we? Say we have the site FfNm-1 (that's South Branch House).

"F" is the Major South-North locator. Each North-South block represents 2 degrees of Latitude going from "A" through "U" (no V through Z). While "f" is the Minor South-North locator (the minor blocks for "F" range from "a" through "l"). For both the North-South and East-West, each minor block within a major block represents 10 minutes of latitude or longitude respectively. from south to north (a-l). "N" is the Major East-West Locator. To the South of 62 degrees, each of these blocks represents 4 degrees of Longitude from east to west (A - W). However, North of 62 degrees each major block represents 8 degrees of longitude. FYI: Because the distance between lines of longitude get smaller with increasing latitude, the Borden System changes at 64 degrees north latitude, from a width of 4 degrees of longitude to a width of 8 degrees in order to keep the area within each designate roughly the same. Lastly, "m" is the Minor East-West Locator, each block represents 10 minutes of Longitude from east to west (a - x). North of 62 degrees each minor block represents 20 minutes of longitude. The full Borden designation, FfNm-1, represents a roughly 16km x 16km area and the 1st site found within that area. Upper Borden grid maps are downloadable at the Canadian Museum of Civilization here.

Now rumour has it that Charles Borden went to great lengths to prevent cussin' via archaeology in his system and hence omitted several key potential Borden designations. That sounded like a challenge to me....

So, Saskatchewan (see the upper Borden grid to the right, click to embiggen) includes these Borden letters:
North/South - D(g-l), E(a-l), F(a-l), G(a-l), H(a-l), I(a-l)
East/West - O(a-l), N(a-x), and M(k-x).

With quick use of a scrabble cheating device (here), I found that the following 51 words can be spelled using the Borden system in Saskatchewan:

dims, dine, ding, dink, dins, dint, diol, elms, fane, fang, fano, fans, fems, fend, fens, feod, find, fine, fink, fino, fins, floc, floe, flog, gamp, gams, gane, gang, gaol, gems, gene, gens, gent, genu, gimp, gink, gins, glob, hams, hand, hang, hank, hant, hemp, hems, hens, hent, hind, hins, hint, idol

I guess "dink" is kinda dirty and "gink" is a slang word for a person or fellow that is often used in a derogatory context. Also, a "gamp" is an umbrella. It's not dirty, I just didn't know that before. Anyway, as it stands Saskatchewan is clean as a bean. You win this round Charles! Nonetheless, I remain undaunted in my task and will continue to scour Canada province by province for giggle worthy words!

p.s. I wonder if french words count if they're in Quebec.

Bohe-muppet Rhapsody

A (late) BD present for those of you who love muppets:

p.s. Is it me or is animal looking a little funky?

You have the right to remain fluffy...

p.s. Where's my Chile post?!

If swashbuckling gentlemen thieves had to deal with sports news

from the Onion (these guys are hilarious!).You may remember the Onion from past posts.

Bad Boy Fencing Star Implicated In Yet Another Daring Jewel Heist

p.s. This reminded me of the Scarlet Pimpernel. I got the 1934 movie for Christmas one year and loved the black and white goodness! It's public domain now so is available for free (legal) viewing or downloading here.
p.p.s. Thinking of the Scarlet Pimpernel reminded me of Daffy Duck as the Scarlet Pumpernickel. One of my faves!

Salsa Dog

I continue to wait for little cp's Missing the Chile: Epilogue post. Beware for I will be merciless in my postings until my demands are met!

p.s A sighting of the great FSM's visage in Chile, truly it is a blessed country.

Misheard lyrics #3

Manfred Mann's "Blinded by the Light" (cause we talked about it yesterday). Weee!

What you actually heard:

[Chorus]
Blinded by the light,
revved up like a deuce,
another runner in the night
[repeat 2x more]

Madman drummers bummers,
Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin' kinda older,
I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasin', sneezin' and wheezin,
the calliope crashed to the ground
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was...

[Chorus - repeat 4x]

Some silicone sister with a manager mister told me I go what it takes
She said "I'll turn you on sonny to something strong,
play the song with the funky break"
And go-cart Mozart was checkin' out the weather chart to see if it was safe outside
And little Early-Pearly came by in his curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride
Asked me if I needed a ride
But she was...

[Chorus]

Blinded by the light
She got down but she never got tired
She's gonna make it through the night
She's gonna make it through the night
But mama, that's where the fun is
But mama, that's where the fun is
Mama always told me not to look into the eye's of the sun
But mama, that's where the fun is
Some brimstone baritone anticyclone rolling stone preacher from the east
Says, "Dethrone the dictaphone, hit it in it's funny bone,
that's where they expect it least"
And some new-mown chaperone was standin' in the corner,
watching the young girls dance
And some fresh-sown moonstone was messin' with his frozen zone, reminding him of romance
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was...

[Chorus - repeat 9x]

Blinded by the light

Madman drummers bummers, Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin' kinda older,
I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasin', sneezin' and wheezin,
the calliope crashed to the ground
Now Scott with a slingshot finially found a tender spot and throws his lover in the sand
And some bloodshot forget-me-not said daddy's within earshot save the buckshot, turn up the band
Some silicone sister with a manager mister told me I go what it takes
She said "I'll turn you on sonny to something strong"

Misheard lyrics #2

The Clash's "Rock the Casbah" has always baffled me. In all honesty, I only learned the real lyrics just now.

What they actually said:

Now the king told the boogie men
You have to let that raga drop
The oil down the desert way
Has been shakin' to the top
The sheik he drove his Cadillac
He went a' cruisin' down the ville
The muezzin was a' standing
On the radiator grille

CHORUS
Sharif don't like it
Rockin the casbah
Rock the casbah
Sharif don't like it
Rockin the Casbah
Rock the Casbah

By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy Casbah sound
But the Bedouin they brought out
The electric kettle drum
The local guitar picker
Got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the sherif
Had cleared the square
They began to wail

CHORUS

Now over at the temple
Oh! They really pack 'em in
The in crowd say it's cool
To dig this chanting thing
But as the wind changed direction
The temple band took five
The crowd caught a wiff
Of that crazy Casbah jive

CHORUS

The king called up his jet fighters
He said you better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the minarets
Down the Casbah way

As soon as Sharif was
Chauffeured outta there
The jet pilots tuned to
The cockpit radio blare

As soon as Sharif was
Outta their hair
The jet pilots wailed

Chorus

Sharif don't like it
Rock the casbah
(He thinks it's not kosher)
Rock the casbah
Sharif don't like it
Rock the Casbah
(Fundamentally he can't take it.)
Rock the Casbah
Sharif don't like it
Rock the Casbah
(You know he really hates it.)
Rock the Casbah

CP sez "increase your wordiness":
Casbah - specifically the citadel of Algiers and the traditional quarter clustered around it. More generally, a kasbah is the walled citadel of many North African cities and towns.
Muezzin - a chosen person at a mosque who leads the call (adhan) to Friday service and the five daily prayers (salat) from one of the mosque's minarets.
Sharif - a traditional Arab tribal title given to those who serve as the protector of the tribe and all tribal assets. Can also refer specifically to a descendant of the prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima.
Bedouin - desert dwelling predominantly Arab ethnic group (previously nomadic but presently mostly settled).
sheikh - Arabic honorific term commonly applied to an elder of a tribe
rāga - refers to melodic modes used in Indian classical music

Misheard Lyrics

Spurred by a recent discussion of the incongruous nature of misheard lyrics, I had to share this video highlighting the hilarious reality of singing along with the often incomprehensible Eddie Vedder. I especially like the "I said I don't want a whale in a box or a bag". Fantastic.

FYI here are the real lyrics to Pearl Jam's "Yellow Ledbetter" (curiously, I can't really tell which lyrics make more sense):

Unsealed
On a porch a letter sat
Then you said I wanna leave it again

Once I saw him
On a beach of weathered sand
And on the sand I wanna leave it again

On a weekend wanna wish it all way
And they called and I said and I want what
I said and I call out again

And the reason oughta leave her calm I know
I said I know what I wear that a box or the bag

Oh yeah can you see them?
Out on the porch
Ah, but they don't wave
I see them
Round the front way, yeah
And I know and I know
I don't wanna stay

Make me cry

I see
I don't know there's something else
I wanna drum it all away
And I said
I said I don't know where there's a box or the bag

Oh yeah can you see them?
Out on the porch
Ah, but they don't wave
I see them
Round the front way, yeah
And I know and I know
I don't wanna stay
I don't wanna stay
I don't wanna stay

p.s. You may remember Pearl Jam from this post.

Animal Mummies

National Geographic has recently published an interactive article about Egyptian animal mummies. Interactive articles...they teach you while you learn! Hurray! Also, it has a lot of interesting tidbits like how the Egyptian Museum of Cairo's artifact ID numbers all begin with the letters CG. Did you know that hundreds of thousands on mummified cats were hauled from a mass grave near the village of Istabl Antar since their discovery in 1888. They were used as fertilizer in England. Much like the innumerable quantities of bison bones from mass kills here...but I digress. Besides that's all behind us now and current research is using these amazing specimens as windows into daily life in ancient Egypt, employing zooarchaeology (of course), experimental archaeology, and advanced imaging techniques to examine what species were present, their uses, and how the mummies were created (among other things). Cool beans!

The Egyptologist and zooarchaeologist featured in the National Geographic article is Dr. Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University at Cairo. In the following video from this article at Heritage Key, she explains some of her work.

Super fun Halloween bonus references (oooo scary!):
-Herodotus explains mummification
-The Apis bull and associated cult explained at the Virtual Egyptian Museum (see image to the right)

The Shock House 2009 (plus Zombie musings)

Scary fun for everyone. The Shock House is in Regina this year (it was in Melville the last 3 years). It was 8000 square feet of zombie fueled good times.

To go along with this theme, I will also share some zombie-related tidbits I've been saving up.



You know, I recently read "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" (which is funny and also inspired me to finish reading Pride and Prejudice so I could compare and contrast).










As a taste, here is the first line comparison:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession
of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

vs.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

And so it goes. Anyway I enjoyed it for sure.

It also reminded me of how I promised LP I'd do a post on the Zombie Survival Guide (which he gave me for Christmas last year). Thanks to this book I size up houses I see for potential survivability in a zombie attack. I'm ruined forever now (but I love it). For example, when picking a house to hole up in during a zombie outbreak, remember to find one with a second floor that cannot be accessed from the ground, then you destroy the stairs and voila! Safe zone (but be sure to fill up the upstairs bathtub with water and stash as many tools and provisions upstairs as you can get your mitts on beforehand). For practice, here's a link to a fun flash zombie survival game.

Lastly, here is a link to Jonathan Coulton's song "Re: Your Brains". He did a project where he wrote a song every week for a year. This song is my favorite (careful it gets in your head...much like a zombie... hahaha! Weee.), but he has many other awesome ones. It was featured in How to Succeed in Evil "Cheap Labor" Part 2 (there is also part 1 and 3). How to Suceed in Evil is a podcast/comic book about Edwin Windsor, evil efficiency consultant.

Go Riders Go! (#2)

You may remember the Riders from past posts in which I watched the Scotiabank West Semifinal game between the Stampeders and the Roughriders (and then they went on to win the 95th Grey Cup in Toronto). Well, after some 5 years in Saskatchewan I finally went to see a Rider game at Mosaic Stadium. Although I had seen them previously playing against the Stamps in Calgary back in the day (like 2003 or '04 or somethin'). Anywho, what a sweet game! Pure awesome sauce I tells ya! As this article tells it, the Riders beat the BC Lions 33 to 30 with a thrilling overtime interception that snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Woohoo! It was super close up until the end there and when the Lions got their last touchdown some people got up to leave but there was still over 2 minutes left! Come on! And then the Riders tied it up and there was a sweet overtime that we were all standing for the entirety of. Good times. See the CFL game recap here.

p.s. Also, KW made me an awesome green and white scarf to wear, which I promptly spilled hot chocolate on, but it was OK because it came out with dish soap. Huzzah!

Früli and Pneumatic Transit (Chickens! Concert Series #30)

Sweet, sweet Früli (link, link, link). The best pseudo-beer ever. Tasted at Beer Brothers whilst on a mini-pub crawl with the peeps to celebrate my first week in Regina (Update: they now have this on tap!). This was the first stop, then to O'Hanlon's pub for crazy grape-flavoured vodka. Then to the Freehouse, where we had weird ginger beer based drinks and some sweet potato fries and heard a good Canadian band called Pneumatic Transit (accidental concert series entry). And finally to Crave, a martini bar, for fruity martinis. We sat on the patio under a heat lamp. Then we got sleepy and had to drag ourselves home. What a super-fun night! Thanks guys!

Fun things to learn and know:
Pneumatic tubes are systems in which cylindrical containers are propelled through a network of tubes by compressed air or by vacuum such as those used in large plants and office buildings. A pneumatic transit system functions in this way to transport cars full of people. The creation of such a public transit system has been attempted repeatedly but always abandoned as economically unfeasible.

Chickens! Cultural Moment: The Dalai Lama

A whirlwind trip to Calgary for a delightful afternoon with LP and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama (here's his office's official website). He was in town for the UofC's NOW festival to speak on peace through compassion. CBC news report on Dalai Lama's visit to Calgary here, Calgary Herald here, The Star here, CTV here, etc. What an inspirational speaker! It especially resonated with me when he spoke of secular ethics and how it is important for humanity to embrace morals and ethics separate from religion to be functional. I will do a bio post on His Holiness later (I promised LP) when I have more time.

There were several openers, the childrens sang and did a shadow-based interpretive dance. I especially like the singers who did the national anthem in English, French, and Cree. Also, an amazing cellist, Trevor Fitzpatrick, played for us. Here is the song he did:

Comedy Tour

Funny times were had at the "Investors Group Comedy Tour" which featured John Wing, David Merry, and Ryan Belleville. I didn't even get suckered into investing anything (The joke's on them I don't have any money! Ha!)

Here's a bit of John Wing's schtick from the comedy network (most of the jokes in the clips he told in his act for us although he didn't sing any songs). Wing was the MC, I guess, as he opened the show and went after each of the others. He was quite funny, although I knew a few of his jokes already from Comedy Now specials (or something like that, whatever would have had him in it that would have showed on the peasant-vision channels). David Merry was the least funny, he kept prompting us to laugh more. We laughed as much as your jokes were worth dang it! But the magic was cool. Ryan Belleville was absolutely hilarious! I laughed and laughed! Wee!

Chickens! Concert Series: LP edition (#1)

LP had the good fortune to enjoy the Virgin Festival in Calgary as an early birthday present from his buddies this year. Unfortunately he is worse than his little sister at giving me blog post fodder so I'll wing it. I know he got to see such bands as Pearl Jam, Billy Talent, Mother Mother, and Metric. I believe they were all good. Umm... and they may or may not have played some old or new songs. Also, LP went into the mosh pit, which made the security guys sad because he is big and hard to drag down from up there. Stay tuned for updates if they become available (hint hint).

p.s. Pearl Jam has a new song that I like. Have a look as they performed "The Fixer" at Calgary Virgin Fest 2009 on August 8th.

Educational sidebar: Polaris

While camping at St.Louis, I learned about how to find the north star using the Big Dipper. It's edu-tainment!

1. Locate the Big Dipper and the two stars that form the outer edge of the cup of the dipper.
2. Draw an imaginary line straight through the two stars of the dipper edge and follow this line to the handle of the Little Dipper.
3. The brightest star in the Little Dipper is at the end of its handle. This is the North Star.

Creepy Gnome

Sweet zombie Jeebus! Little cp better keep on her toes if she goes back to Argentina! The gnome sightings in Argentina are apparently part of a chupacabra-esque craze that came to its climax in 2007-2008. The story was reported by El Tribuno in Argentina, then The Sun in the UK, and then picked up by Fox News. There is of course the usual he said/she said back and forth that surrounds all urban legends, with skeptics saying reports of the extremely high percentage of locals that belive in or have seen the creature are unverified (which is true) or exaggerated (which is probable) and that the video or photographic evidence is faked (which is easily done). However, locals have apparenlty reported seeing gnomes (or duendes) for several decades already, but reports of sightings vastly increased in 2007 after some railway workers reported seeing one running around the tracks.

Argentinian teens shot this video of the infamous "creepy gnome", whch is the most well known evidence. And it struck again in Clodomira, province of Santiago del Estero, Argentina!


p.s. This post is in lieu of a We're Missing the Chile!:Epilogue post that may never come from little cp (hint hint). Be forewarned! I will continue to post creepy things like this about your beloved South America if my demands are not met!

The Chickens! How to Guide (vol.4): Making an Excavation Screen

I drew up some plans for some large excavation screens I made. I went uber-low tech and drew them in Paint too (it's easier than you'd think once you figure out your scale lines). The plans are also in the latest issue of the SAS Newsletter so they're even published (kind of). The reason I put these up here is because my first instinct when I was going to build new screens was to look for wood working plans on the interwebs. But to no avail because the best I could do was a plan for a tank-like shaker screen (but I wanted ones to be hung from from a tripod, hammock style from two trees, or what have you). So I thought I would do my social duty and post my plans here for other archaeology types to try (click to embiggen). They also work for geology soil sifters or compost sifters. Hey and if anyone out there downloads/uses the plans please leave a comment, I'd be interested to know if my social work was useful.

p.s. I put metric measurements because I don't care what the lumber industry says dang it (What are we? In the time of Charlemagne!?). But, since board types are named for their imperial height and width measurements (and S4S boards are subsequently finished to slightly less than that), you can check the "Did You Know?" box for S4S board dimension conversions.

Chickens! Cultural Moment: Midsummer Night's Dream

Part 2 of this year's Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan festivities. One of the most commonly performed comedies of all time is Midsummer Night's Dream. It is not really known when exactly this play was first written but it was probably some time in the mid 1590's. The SotS took a 20s(ish) take on it with colourful suits and jazzy songs and all of the characters were in the military. Delightful.

This play features three interlocking plots sandwiched between opening and closing scenes relating to the celebration of the wedding of Theseus of Athens and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta. Primarily, we have the love quadrangle between Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander are in love but Hermia's father Egeus wants her to marry Demetrius. Demetrius loves Hermia but she doesn't love him and Hermia's best friend Helena loves Demetrius but he doesn't love her. What jolly farce! We also have the story of Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen. They are in town for Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding but are estranged because Titania won't give her page-boy to Oberon to be his minion because the boy is the son of one of her peeps who died. Oberon wants to go upside her head for being so feisty so he gets his henchman Puck to get him a love flower so he can make Titania fall in love with something or other and become too distracted to care about her page-boy any more (and also to be used to sort out the four aforementioned fools who are by now chasing each other through the forest at night). This leads us to the third story, that of the "mechanicals" (laborer/peasant folk) who are to put on the play-within-a-play about Pyramus and Thisbe that is to be the entertainment at Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. While rehearsing, one of the mechanicals, Nick Bottom, shows himself to be an ass and Puck decides to transform Nick's outsides to reflect this and points him at Titania (who was hepped up on love flower by this point). And bestiality ensued. Eventually, once Oberon gets what he wants, he gets Puck to put everything back to normal except that Demetrius is now in love with Hermia so all is well and all the couples get married and the mechanicals perform their play (badly) and there is much rejoicing. The end.

Now, let's talk historical references shall we:

This play draws on both Greek (Theseus and Hippolyta) and Roman (Pyramus and Thisbe) mythology. He was fathered by the Athenian king Aegeus (as in Aegean Sea, see: Minotaur myth re: throwing himself into the ocean) and Poseidon. Interestingly, this idea reflects the Greek understanding of reproduction at the time as they believed the mixture of semen from the two fathers would give rise to a son with characteristics of both. Theseus is also featured in the lesser known Shakespearean play "The Two Noble Kinsmen". In mythology, Theseus does marry Hippolyta, the Amazonian queen he meets and kidnaps in while traveling with Hercules. However, in some stories it is not Hippolyta, but her daughter Antiope that he abducts and marries. Being an Amazonian gave Shakespeare licence to have Hippolyta talk back to Theseus so forcefully during the play (actually Midsummer Night's Dream is touted as having very strong willed female characters throughout). Anyway, of course this caused a big ol' war between the Amazons and the Athenians. The Amazonians lost because they failed to reckon with the fact the Athenians had two demigods on their side (Duh!). He later ditched Hippolyta (or she may have died) once he became King, for Phaedra who was the daughter of King Minos. Theseus is most famous for defeating King Minos' minotaur in Crete (with Phaedra's older sister Ariadne's assistance) when he was a princely whipper-snapper. But, Phaedra falls in love with her son-in-law Hippolytus, Theseus' son by Hippolyta. In Euripides' play "Phaedra", Phaedra sends her slave to tell Hippolytus how she feels, but he is shocked and appalled by the news (he's chaste don't you know). Phaedra then accuses Hippolytus of rape, Theseus has Hippolytus killed, and Phaedra kills herself not necessarily in that order, and in some versions of the story she doesn't commit suicide at all).

The story of the star-crossed lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, is from the Roman poet Ovid's epic narrative poem Metamorphoses (the 15 books of this collection of relatively unrelated tales of love, seduction, and history were completed in 8 AD). Among other things, this story explains why mulberries are red. Shakespeare liked this story so much he based Romeo and Juliet on it (which he is thought to have written around the same time as Midsummer Night's Dream). Shakespeare also took the name "Titania" from Metamorphoses, as it was the name given to the daughters of titans. Before this, traditional folklore held that the fairy queen remained nameless. Oberon, however, dates back to 13th century french literature as a fairy dwarf in the "chanson de geste" (transl. Old French - songs of heroic deeds) "Les Prouesses et faits du noble Huon de Bordeaux". As in many fairy tales, this one finds our hero charged with completing various impossible tasks for whatever reason (usually princess related), which he is only able to accomplish because early on in the story he was nice to a magical thing of some sort, in this case a magic dwarf. Other likely candidates for helpful things to befriend in such scenarios include: old people (especially crones), talking animals (also preternaturally smart but mute animals), things that are trapped inside of other things, water creatures that like music (only to be attempted if you have some sort of musical instrument handy), and deceptive earthly incarnations of deities. So keep an eye out for those.

Chickens! Cultural Moment: Antony & Cleopatra

You may remember Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan from past posts (Twelfth Night, The Tempest). The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra was first published in the "First Folio" in 1623 (see right, click to embiggen). It is set in Rome/Egypt in 40–30 B.C. and follows the love affair and downfall of Mark Antony, one of the triumvirs of Rome, and Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh of Egypt's Ptolemaic dynasty.

According to the S on the S website:

"Mark Antony is Rome’s most honored soldier; Cleopatra is Egypt’s most beautiful queen who captures his love. Their passion blazes with infinite fire but makes Antony compromise his responsibilities to Octavius Caesar and Rome. To solidify political relations Antony must marry Octavius’s sister; but when he is lured back by Cleopatra’s mesmerizing charm, battles rage; Antony must choose between passion and honour. Antony and Cleopatra is a heart wrenching tragedy that will conquer our stage and your heart this summer."

Personally, I appreciate the more mature tragic romance of this story than of something like Romeo&Juliet (whom I always felt were idiots). Both the main characters are big (and often flawed) personalities and they have burdens and responsibilities and life experience behind their decisions and influencing the courses they take. Good times.

And now for some fun things to learn and know about Cleopatra VII and her whole deal:

-The degree of inbreeding in the royalty of Ptolemaic dynasty was so great that Cleopatra VII only had four great-grandparents and just six great-great-grandparents (four of which were descended from the other two). Click here for a Ptolemaic genealogy.
-Although Cleopatra is rumored to be the only pharaoh of this dynasty to speak Egyptian, her time was during the Hellenistic period in Egypt and so her main language would have been Greek (the Ptolemies ruled for about 300 years from 305 BC to 30 BC when Cleopatra committed suicide).
-Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy XII, died in March 51 BC leaving 18-year-old Cleopatra and her brother, the 12-year-old Ptolemy XIII as joint monarchs. Due to economic and political strife and Cleopatra's ambition, trouble a-brewed until she was ousted and sent into exile in 48BC. Later, Ptolemy screwed himself over by having Pompey assassinated in a misguided attempt to gain favour with Julius Caesar (with whom Pompey was embroiled in a losing military conflict) when he sought refuge in Alexandria. Cleopatra was quick to take advantage of Caesar's bilious humours regarding Ptolemy, so she had herself rolled up in a carpet and delivered to the Caesar. She had to do this because Caesar's palace was on lock down and she wouldn't have been able to walk in the front door. Anyway, apparently Caesar thought that was pretty cool and nine months later Cleopatra gave birth to their son Caesarian in 47 BC (Caesar was 52 and Cleo was only 21 when the two met). This also led Caesar to abandon his plans to annex Egypt and instead he backed Cleopatra in her attempt to recapture the pharaoh-ship (which she succeeded in doing after 6 months of war and the subsequent drowning of Ptolemy XIII in the Nile). Although this time she had to share with another younger brother, Ptolemy XIV.
-Once Julius was assassinated in 44BC, Cleopatra returned to Egypt with her son and brother where Ptolemy XIV came down with an unfortunate bout of poisoning. She then aligned herself with Mark Antony in opposition to Octavian (who was Julius Caesar's legal heir which made Cleo mad because she had hoped that Caesarion would be heir, being Julius's actual son, if illegitimate). She also had Mark behead her sister.
-Mark and Cleo spend the winter of 41BC together in Alexandria, then she gave birth to their twin children Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene II. Four years later, Antony returned to Alexandria while en route to slaughter the Parthians. He got Egyptian married to Cleo around this time (which made a lot of Romans mad because he was married to Octavian's sister Octavia too) and they had another baby, Ptolemy Philadelphus.
-Then some other stuff happened (i.e. war with Octavian, Cleo turning tail and running during battle, Mark Antony following her, etc.) and she committed suicide soon after Mark added some speed holes to his own torso. Famously, she did this by inducing an asp to bite her on the arm (although Shakespeare says it bit her on the breast, probably for shock value...or artistic license whatever). While this seems melodramatic of both of them (and it was), they were probably going to be executed by Octavian for all of their tomfoolery anyway so it's not like the pulled a Romeo & Juliet or anything.

The future is an adventure...

"Nihilism" courtesy of xkcd.com comics by Randall Munroe.

p.s. If you're curious about the fine print at the bottom of the xkcd page, here's what it says (I don't get it):

We did not invent the algorithm. The algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The algorithm killed Jeeves. The algorithm is banned in China. The algorithm is from Jersey. The algorithm constantly finds Jesus. This is not the algorithm. This is close.

Little known facts...

European pizza species are identifiable by their enlarged tubercles on the axial bones.






p.s. from the comic "Unstrange Phenomena" by Ed Allison

Blackfly

The 1991 NFB of Canada animated film based on the song of the same title, written and sung by Canadian folk singer Wade Hemsworth about his personal experience surveying in Northern Ontario, with back-up vocals by Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Recently recounted to the field school peeps camping at St.Louis last week.


p.s. Turns out St.Louis has a pretty sweet free camp ground with water, power, and flushing toilets. They also have a giant statue of Bison antiquus (of questionable scale, but still cool).

Baldy Lake

Super fun camping times at Baldy Lake. Located in Narrow Hills Provincial Park, a lovely little lake with a very low smeatness ratio. Also, went on the challenging version of the Gem Lakes hike (apparently). Some nice lakes that were pretty (although not as trippy as advertised).

South Branch open house

Sunday, July 25, 2009 is the South Branch House open house day. All are welcome. Be there or be square! The summer excavations at the late 17oos fur trade post site of SBH are run by the SAS and go from June through July (volunteers welcome! Hint hint!) with the SBH Fieldschool to be held from July 23rd through 26th. Come and view the twisted archaeological riddles that dwell within! Marvel at the meandering southern excavation trench and the stockade wall to nowhere! And two, count 'em TWO, sets of cellar depression/chimney mounds! Amazing!

View south branch house in a larger map

p.s. There is also a SBH geocache (for the non-muggles among you).

We're Missing the Chile #17: Brasil Edition

Now for more Brasilian doings straight from the little Cp's brain to your eyes.

Sites seen and purchases purchased:
- Capoeira - in the streets. It was cool. The instruments are played in a row called the bateria. The rhythm of the bateria is set by the berimbaus (stringed percussion instruments that look like muscial bows). Other instruments in the bateria are: two pandeiros (tambourines), a reco-reco (rasp), and an agogô (double gong bell). The atabaque (conga-like drum), a common feature in most capoeira baterias, is considered an optional instrument, and is not required for a full bateria in some groups.
-Cuíca - "you know in the samba music that goes squicky-squickey-squickey, it is the instrument that does that"
- bought bikini at Bumbum (hahaha), a fancy bikini boutique.

Fruits tried:
-obvious ones include manga (mango), abacaxi (pineapple), passionfruit ("maracuja" is passionfruit), and guava ("goiba" is really good and it is a common pop flavour)
-dragon fruit (maybe) and possibly guanabana while in Bolivia (check this post for notes on guanabana)
-acai, it's a berry. ya i ate that. it is ok, not great but meh
-acerola, ya i ate that too, but i do not remember what it is, but i remember i liked it
-caju I haven't tried yet (it's where brazil nuts come from), but i have seen them (see photo) and they are cute
- caja is good
- mangaba
-pinha is one of my favouites...it reminds me of an alligator

The Art of Patrick Douglass Cox

Some of you may recognize the archaeologist depicted in this painting. I think we can all agree that MP has embiggened our culture with her cromulent archaeology modeling. The piece is called "The Archaeologist", (2008, egg tempera, 21x29in, $15,800). It is available through the Masters Gallery Ltd in Calgary, which specializes in historic and contemporary Canadian art. More of Patrick Douglass Cox's work can be seen on his website here (the interesting writeup about him/his family's history on the Masters Gallery site comes from his biography page).

Increase your wordiness:
Tempera (aka. egg tempera) refers to a type of paint (or paintings done using this type of paint) made from coloured pigment mixed with egg yolk (or maybe some other glutinous water soluble binder like glue, which is used to make the tempera called poster paint). Egg tempera is very resilient and was a primary method of painting until the 15thC, when oil paints were invented.

p.s. Click here for past posts defining "embiggen" and "cromulent".

Red Harvest

2009 is the 80th anniversary year of the first publishing of the book "Red Harvest". This was author Dashiell Hammett's first novel and arguably one of the most influential works of American literature of the 20th century. Hammett was also the author of such books as "The Maltese Falcon", which gave rise to the character of Sam Spade the hard-boiled private eye - sometimes confused with his contemporary Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe character, which is understandable because they were both played by Humphrey Bogart ("The Big Sleep" is also considered a seminal work of American 20th century fiction). Anyway, Red Harvest started the gangster novel genre and blurred the lines of mystery and detective/crime fiction. While employing Western elements, he painted his characters in shades of grey, which contrasted sharply with the stereotypical white hat/black hat western mentality. And it was the originator of the pervasive "man with no name" antihero archetype and the plot device of the hero playing both sides to achieve his ends (and coming out victorious, but a little the worse for wear). This book gave rise to many influential movies including Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo", Sergio' Leone's "Fistful of Dollars", and the 1996 Prohibition era period film "Last Man Standing" (to which Kurosawa contributed his writing talents).

Name related ramblin's:
Red Harvest is also a decent Norwegian heavy/industrial metal band. And it's the title of the second album by the alternative metal band Bloodsimple (who clearly read the book because "blood simple" is a quote from the last line). I like them, they're vaguely Metallica-y and Godsmack-ish. "Blood Simple" is also the title of the neo-noir crime thriller that was the Coen brothers' directorial debut. The term describes the addled mindset in which people find themselves after periods of prolonged immersion in violent situations. The film is lesser known but it did make Bravo's list of film's 100 scariest moments.

Six degrees of Bruce Campbell:
Did you know Joel Coen also worked as an editor on Evil Dead? It's true. He also worked on Spies Like Us (1985) with James Daughton who was in Animal House with Kevin Bacon! Hahaha! Bacon number of 2! Click here for the Bacon Oracle, which can be used to connect anyone to anyone in the movies. It's default setting is Kevin Bacon but I think I'm going to start connecting people to Bruce Campbell just because mentioning Evil Dead just now reminded me of him (in fact I may make this into a sub-section called Six degrees of Bruce Campbell...there I did it). Let's see... Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon, which was made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart who was in Deadline - U.S.A. (1952) with Dabbs Greer who was in Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1990) with Bruce Campbell! Booyah!