Lion-o, Lord of the Thundercats vs. He-man of Castle Greyskull‏

Since I've returned home, I've spent a little time going through my 
inbox hoping to purge old bits and pieces. I found this. Full credit 
goes to Michael for this piece, which he claims he wrote in 3 hours at work in 2006.

"After painstaking research and much intense deliberation, I henceforth
present my findings on the subject of Lion-o, Lord of the Thundercats vs.

He-man of Castle Greyskull.
 

To start, I must emphasize the utter ridiculousness of such a proposition; 
everyone knows that these cartoon characters do not exist on the same 
planet.  It is an indisputable fact that Lion-o is an inhabitant of the 
planet Third Earth, a realm existing slightly to the future of ours, and of 
parallel to that of the hobbit.  In fact, it is widely accepted that the 
climate is not unlike that of the Middle-Earthian Shire.  Both have proven 
ideal in supporting hairy anthropomorphic life forms.  For that reason 
alone, Third-Earth shall henceforth be referred to as the wussy planet with 
all the pussycats.
 
He-man, conversely, valiantly roams Eternia protecting the immense power of 
Castle Greyskull from the forces of evil.  After he has spent the day 
courageously and benevolently shit-kicking all the evil down in the dark 
hemisphere, he resumes the noble role of Prince of Eternia.  Here we also 
see, in contrast to Lion-o, a feline having no complex about the size of his 
manhood.  Battlecat cunningly presumes the meek role of Cringer, where he 
will lull all that is evil into a false security, setting them up for a 
repetition of this day's shit-kicking, tomorrow.
 
At this point I shall present an objective and balanced critique of their 
powers.  He-man, of Castle Greyskull draws his power from a damn cool 
castle, shaped like a skull.  He also has the ability to talk to the 
Sorceress of Greyskull using only his mind - that's telecommunication, Kyle.

Furthermore, He-man shows undeniable similarity* to MI6 secret agent Sir 
Sean Connery (henceforth reverently referred to as He) who, using a 
combination of multi-variable calculus and a Schrodinger's equation, has 
been mathematically proven to be the coolest guy ever.  Also, and this may 
be the coup de grâce, He-man has a green tiger.  Simply put, by the power of 
Greyskull, He-man is The-man.
 
*Figure 1:

He-man has Man-at-Arms to develop wicked-cool new weapons     
He-man is a prince in his spare time                                            
He-man is rather muscular, with manly-handsome hair                  
He-man always prevails over evil, and has a pussycat                    
 
He has Q 
He is a knight
There is no disputing the manly-handsomeness of Him 
He always prevails and ends up with a woman called Octopussy, Pussy Galore, or Holly Goodhead.

Lion-o, for his part, fits the technical definition of freak of nature.  A 
child wandering around in an adult's body, he feels the need to compensate 
for this shortcoming (though most definitely not his only shortcoming) with 
his sword.  According to the world's foremost authority on everything and 
infinitely accurate resource, Wikipedia, “When unused, the sword is no 
larger than a dagger.  But when excited it will extend to full size.  Also, 
by pointing the sword in any direction and using a battle cry of "HO!", the 
sword is able to fire devastating energy blasts.”  This overt phallic 
compensation leads us to the important question of whether the Thundercats 
would cease to exist if not for that sheltered, wussy pussycat world of 
theirs.  To an analytical mind it would seem the driving factor behind this 
team would disappear in a technologically advanced world such as ours, where 
"fast and proven methods of penile-enlargement" and "wet, naughty 
schoolgirls" arrive in our email on a thrice-daily basis.  To the unbiased, 
scientific mind the answer to this conundrum, and possibly the resolution to 
the unending war on Third-Earth, could be gleamed from the wisdom of Dr. 
Phil: “Anger is nothing more than an outward expression of hurt, fear and 
frustration.”  Supplementary to the latter, it is of curious importance to 
note that Lion-o's company seems to be predominately male.  But before we 
start to lose our objectivity, we must finish our scientific look at Lion-o. 
  He seems to always have in his possession a pretty little jewel, to which 
he credits all of his strength.  This, it shall be observed, is not 
necessarily a unique weakness.  It is, in fact, a plight suffered by many of 
history’s great warriors from the likes of Samson, to Golem, to Linus Van 
Pelt.  To sum him up, Lion-o puts the pussy in pussycat.
 
In conclusion, I propose that if these two forces ever came across each 
other in battle it would look something like a Shamrock-Ortiz fight, 
specifically the second and third editions.  Furthermore, I propose He-man, 
the valiant and just warrior that he is, would not accept battle from an 
anthropomorphic freak of nature.  A statistical analysis of the situation 
reveals the most probable outcome is Battlecat engaging Lion-o in a fight to 
the pain, and finishing said fight in approximately 3 seconds of pure 
awesome.
 
 
Q.E.D"

Things I have lost.

I lost my wallet in New Zealand.  I have a pretty good idea where it is -- it probably fell out of the van at a remote DOC campsite we stayed at the night before we did the Tongairio crossing (I’m pretty sure one sock also fell out with it).  By the time we realized it wasn't in the van we were 3 hours north and decided it wasn't worth the trip back to look for it.  I find that a little funny.  I used to really worry about losing my wallet, but then Sarah had her pocket picked in NY, and we realized it isn’t that big of a problem.  I was only carrying a credit card and driver’s license.  It hurts, but it had very little effect on our trip.  The biggest downside is without my driver’s license, Sarah is now the designated driver.  The upside is I have an opportunity to take an inspired new driver’s license photo.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

The campsite where I lost my wallet looks nothing like this place.

My phone died a couple weeks ago too.  The USB connector wore out so there’s no way to recharge it.  I looked into getting it fixed, but it’s cheaper to wait a month and get a new contract when we get home.  Crazy.  That was my camera.  Luckily I’d been backing up all my photos on the laptop and online.  We still have Sarah’s camera and, until recently, the green waterproof one.  Turns out that it is no longer waterproof.  Pretty lucky we can afford to lose two cameras and still no worries.  If we lose Sarah’s camera or the laptop, then I’ll be worried. 

The laptop is still working, mostly.  It died in India, which I suspect may be due to some undesirable harmonics in the power system, or maybe spikes when we lost power and the hotel’s generator switched on.  Not the kind of thing you’d ever think about in Canada.  It came back to life in Singapore.  Now the battery has quit again, though it still works plugged in.  Sarah’s phone reboots on its own sometimes, but still works most of the time.  

The top of Diamond Head

We went for a hike to the top of Diamond Head in Oahu.  The original temple on top of it was dedicated to the god of the wind.  It’s pretty obvious why now -- my hat and sunglasses became an offering to the wind god.  The glasses were on top of my hat when a gust of wind caught it and I watched both of them sail over the cliff.  That hurt.  But Sarah bought me shaved ice at the bottom of the hill, which made things a little better.

Sarah has been trying her best to lose her wallet this entire trip, but it keeps coming back to her.  The pockets in her shorts are so shallow that it’s fallen out at least three times, but luckily she’s noticed and run back onto the train to get it, or I’ve picked it up, or someone has found it on the beach and brought it back.  I now carry both her wallet and camera in my pockets, which is pretty ironic.  I’ve informed her they’re mine now.  My precious.  Sarah disagrees. 

The downside to losing my driver’s license is Sarah now has to drive for the rest of the trip.  Good thing the driving-intensive part of our trip is over.  We put just short of 5000 km on the campervan in NZ.  I have a photocopy of my driver’s license and, surprisingly, it was accepted by Avis when we rented our car in Samoa.  Sarah drove from the airport to our B&B on our first night and hit a police roadblock which was checking for licenses.  I figured I’d try driving to the ferry the next day and was pulled over also, for a different reason.  I went straight through an intersection in the left turning lane and, unfortunately, a cop was standing directly on the other side of the intersection.  I suppose they were there to do license checks.  When he pointed it out, I could see a faint arrow painted on the road.  Then I had a few tense minutes explaining about the license.  Fortunately, he let me go but we decided Sarah’s the designated driver now.

This is the closest to driving I've come in the last month.

 Our rental car in Samoa was a 2013 Toyota, which turned a lot of heads there.  I guess they don’t see too many (almost) new vehicles here.  It’s so much of an attention getter, when we parked downtown Apia to check out the market, we had someone waiting for us when we returned, who tried to scam us with a story which is surprisingly similar to one I fell for at home in Vernon 5 years ago.

I’m aware how good life is, in general.  I try not to lose sight of that.  If this isn't nice I don't know what is.  I’d been thinking about this when feeling a little down about losing my wallet and phone and sock.  I don’t need a scare to remind me how lucky we are, but we got one.  We narrowly avoided being T-boned at highway speed in NZ.  We were on a country road, which are all 100 km/h in NZ.   I was turning right (akin to turning left in North America), had the blinker on, slowed down and started to turn when the guy behind us tried to pass on the right.  I stopped and he nearly hit the ditch swerving to avoid us.  I have no idea what he was thinking.  He even came back to give me a piece of his mind, but I still don’t know what he was thinking.  My best guess is, “this can’t possibly be my fault, so it must be yours.”

And that’s everything that’s happened in the last 6 weeks.  Blog updated.

Climb Ev'ry Mountain!

I originally wrote this post almost 2 months ago.

Oh, Tasmanina. You, of cool waters and pointed mountains and sandy beaches and silly looking creatures, I embrace you fully!

I spent a week driving from Hobart (in the south) to Devonport (in the north) and back again with Michael, but we really did need more time. We stayed a couple of nights with a lovely couple that you could say we’re loosely related to…by marriage. (Michael’s uncle’s wife’s brother [Glen] and his wife[Wendy]) They were incredibly gracious not just to let us stay with them, but they took us sailing on their yacht. Their yacht. And on the evening we met them as we’re chatting over drinks, Glen asks “So, how do I know you again?” Tasmanians are obviously extremely welcoming, friendly people.

While in Hobart, we visited an art museum/winery/distillery called MONA (Museum of Old and New Art), which we learnt was built by a wealthy gambler who had lots of art and decided to showcase it to the public, for free. (Unless you’re a foreign tourist like us) Mostly, it was filled with modern art pieces. The piece that –erm – evoked the greatest response out of me was this:

This is a mechanical digestion machine. It’s called Cloaca. The artist adds “food,” and it follows the line through each chamber to break down until it…well, until it turns to shit. “How is this art?” you say? Well, here’s the artists description:

“Cloaca makes the ultimate criticism of modern art – that most of it is crap…that the art world has finally disappeared up its own backside…When I was going to art school, all my family said I was wasting my time, and now I have made a work of art about waste.”

For the record, that piece smelled horrendous. Like, warm curdled milk and vomit. I couldn’t stay to look at it very long.

After that cultural adventure, we drove south to Port Arthur and the penal colony. We missed the daytime tours, so we opted to take a ghost tour after dark. We were able to do a quick walkabout before sunset and gained some insight into the conditions of the colony and some of the more intense areas of lockup (if a prisoner was especially bad), we were primed and ready for ghost stories. The tour was interesting/spooky enough (including  the guide coaching a little old lady – a self proclaimed skeptic – into a cottage from a distance, and then slamming the door on her in the dark to see if she’s spook. The little old lady just muttered “what a crusty old toad” when the guide had her back turned), after we’d already been given our “certificates of bravery,” we had to return to our motel room alone. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue. In this instance, though, we’d chosen a motel that had a little gate access to the historic site from the back side. This meant that once the tour dispersed from the interpretive centre at the front, Michael and I were forced to cross the colony campus alone, in the dark and without a flashlight.

We may have sung silly songs out loud to keep from getting spooked by shadows…

We spent a week driving from the south to the north of Tasmania, and took on a few wonderful hikes, including Wineglass Bay...

Lookout to Wineglass Bay.

 ...and Cradle Mountain.

Top of the rock! You can actually hike to that sharp, peaky ridge, too

 We made sure to stop to see the wildllife along the way. There were several very domicile wombats grazing along the Cradle Mountain track.

come here, widdle wombat. Me cuddle you!

 And we decided to visit the Trowunna Wildlife Park. Unlike in the mainland where we were able to see plenty of local fauna in the wild, several of Tasmania's best known animals are quite difficult to find.

Michael getting up close to a 'Roo at the petting-zoo portion of the park.

While here, we most notably visited with some Tasmanian Devils. Devils have been blighted with a very unusual form of facial cancer - a tumor that can be transmitted from one to another through physical contact. And Devils spend a great deal of time defending their territory by biting each others' faces. So several parks have sprouted up to segregate the healthy Devils from those who might be infected, in hopes that once the infected ones have all died off, the island can be repopulated with the remaining healthy ones.

But I think Michael most liked getting to cuddle a baby wombat!

Sort of like a large guinea pig, except with a bony plate at its bum that is incredibly strong, and can be used to kill predators by smashing their skulls up against the walls of its burrow.

Animals (by Michael)

We've seen a lot of new animals in Australia, which I'm super stoked about.  I think we've seen nearly every stereotypical Australian animal, except the elusive platypus.  I hear they're elusive.  We didn't actually go searching for one though.  Here's a recap.  We went swimming with a pelican in Perth.  Admired trees full of colourful loris and galahs.  Saw fields full of roos in Margaret River.  Bumped into black swans all over.  Watched a blue penguin waddle out for a swim in St Kilda.  Hung out with some possums in the park in Melbourne - they were in the trees directly above the metal bands supposed to keep them out.  Had a one-sided chat with a couple koalas in Otway National Park.  Snuck up on some emus at Tower Hill.  Almost slept with a scorpion in Hobart.  Saw Wallabies and Paddymelons all over Tassie.  Pet a wombat at Cradle Mountain.  And were laughed at by a kookaburra.  We managed all this without visiting a zoo, but on our last day in Tassie we still hadn’t seen a Tasmanian Devil, so we decided to go to a wildlife park. 

Possums in downtown Melbourne

 On a side note, there is a whole lot of roadkill in Tassie.  I think this has to do with having mostly small, nocturnal animals, and winding roads with ambitiously high speed limits.  The limit is 100 kmh most places, but the roads are also full of sharp corner caution signs.  The upside is speeding is nearly impossible.  The downside is cars often come around the tight corners hugging or over the centre line.  Back to roadkill -- in one day of driving I counted 4 dozen.  They looked like mostly possums or paddymelons with the odd wallabie mixed in, but I’m assuming there must have been at least one devil in there.  Sarah said that doesn’t count as a sighting though.

This guy did some figure-eight laps of the pen, but unfortunately no tornado spinning.

 The wildlife park we went to, Trowunna, is one of a few devil sanctuaries on the island that are maintaining populations of devils in isolation, while the wild population is being devastated by the recent emergence of devil facial tumor disease (that's a sad looking devil).  Trowunna was one of my highlights of our trip so far.  We didn’t just see devils, we got to pet one, hold a wombat and a ringtail possum, and hand-feed kangaroos.  We also saw an echidna at the park, who was doing his best impression of Papillon pacing back and forth along the wall.

Food?!

Roos looking pretty casual, until we approached with food

Feeding roos

Echidna pacing back and forth, presumably working on his escape plan.

 Including the camels, stray dogs, and rat temple we saw in India, and the customs beagle that jumped up and sniffed my pack at the Christchurch airport, I’m pretty happy with the amount of animal encounters on this trip so far.  My goal for New Zealand is to see a kiwi.  We have 4 weeks to achieve this.

Half Way Along

This week, Michael and I realized that we had surpassed the half way mark on our adventure. Half way! It seems like a strange time, though. Walking the Great Wall seems both like yesterday, and forever ago. There’s just been so many things happen in between that it’s difficult to measure the time properly. And today we start in on a fresh new adventure. We’ve stepped into our 5^th country – New Zealand – and into a 4 week long caravan road trip from Christchurch to the southern tip of the country and all the way up north to Auckland. Michael and I each have goals:

Mine:

     Hike a tall glacial mountain

     See Hobbiton

     Watch a sheepdog trial

     Find some spectacular NZ wool (even though I truly don’t need any more yarn in my collection)

     Take a Mud Bath at Rotorua

Michael’s:

     Canyoning

     Skydiving

     Bungee

     Ziplining

     White Water Rafting

     Zorbing

…I’m sure Michael has other goals but when we discuss our New Zealand needs, it mostly sounds like I’d like to be a granny and Michael would like to tempts the Gods of Water, Earth and Air.

There will be a happy medium achieved, I think.

Mostly, I’m really extremely looking forward to our campervan rental. I can’t wait to really set up shop in our traveling “home” (though it’s really just a glorified minivan), and to hit up a grocery store. I can’t wait to cook my own supper.  After all this time, making my own supper feels like a luxury!

Can I tell you about Christchurch? We’ve been here exactly one day, and it is not like anything I’ve ever seen before. After the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011, Christchurch was leveled. I remembered hearing about it on the news and seeing some crumbled buildings on tv, but after seeing this city in the flesh – three years after the earthquake – I certainly underestimated the magnitude of the disaster. Sure, there seems to be constant construction work going on; road work and cranes and support beams. But walking around the downtown core, you’d think you were in a ghost town. “Oh look! A Starbucks!....oh wait. It’s closed.” Most of the buildings are either so visibly damaged that of course there wouldn’t be a shop in it anymore, or else they have enough structural damage that the shopkeeper needed to board up the windows and leave anyway. Most of the tourist spots in downtown are now centred around the post-earthquake life. We visited a shopping district called Re:Start. It’s made up of colourfully painted shipping containers and houses everything from tourist souvenir shops to cafes (we ate breakfast in an upstairs window!) and Lululemon. It’s clearly an area that’s vibrant with locals who want to reclaim their city.We also visited a museum which explained Christchurch’s experiences with the disaster and their drastic (but slow moving) plans for rebuilding. We walked past the crumbled Christchurch Cathedral (amongst others), and found ourselves at a pop-up arts and community centre called the Pallet Pavillion. Hundreds of blue-painted pallets are stacked up tall to form walls, and inside you can get a coffee or a beer and snacks and watch local artists perform, or join an open mic night, or participate in a local dance troupe’s jig! We left just before an activity which would have involved about twenty xlyophones…

Around Christchurch Cathedral

With so many empty spaces where commercial buildings used to be, Christchurch is doing a fairly good job at keeping the city “full.” They insert art pieces or murals. They give restaurant licenses to people who want to open up a burger joint out of a couple of parked city buses. They construct temporary performance spaces and keep plenty of the barricades colourful! It’d be a grey place to live if not for these interesting additions. Though, it does seem like most people have moved away from downtown. Like I said – for the most part, it looks like a ghost town. (I’m told there’s a “new downtown” somewhere, and I assume that’s where most of the shops and restaurants and people have gone to). I definitely think that this will be an excellent place to revisit in 10 years.

Our swanky bus-shaped dinner spot

 But I haven’t written anything about Tasmania yet, have I?!

I’ll put it in another post very soon. I was sadly absent from the interwebs in Tasi as most of our lodging either didn’t have internet or wanted to charge us actual money for the use of the WWW. Pfft. Here’s a teaser:

IT WAS AWESOME.

Ma'avelous Melbourne

We've now been in Melbourne two days and I'm neck deep in its funky artsy-fartsy culture already.

For a few years now, I'd easily call Vancouver my home. Even though I haven't lived there for a year, when I meet mew friends along the road I tell them I'm "from Vancouver." Why not? It's a beautiful city, and one that's consistently rated among the top 5 most liveable cities in the world. But now I'm in Melbourne. Melbourne has been ranked the #1 most liveable city in the world for the last 3 years (you can read the latest report here), and it most certainly deserves it. Melbourne may not have breathtaking mountain views from the city centre, but it does have a visually interesting skyline (imaging a quirky mix of old stone buildings, tall skyscrapers, and modernist architecture at intriguing angles), and a hip arts scene.

How hip?

Well, on the evening that we arrived we stumbled into a massive street arts festival, called "White Night." In it's second year, officials estimated that 500,000 people crowded a few city blocks during the overnight festival (it ran from 7pm-7am). Michael and I wandered about for a while early in the evening and spotted some fun light displays and projections, but soon decided to hightail it out after a couple of "adventures" trying to cross the street. You see, crossing the street took about 20 minutes and involved heavily reducing one's personal space bubble. It was like being a spawning Atlantic salmon - trying to swim upstream (though in reality the 'stream' flowed in every direction) when the water molecules were made out of other people. There was that, and also that attempting to see or do anything other than the street light projections involved a massive lineup.

But Michael's a trooper, and agreed to go back to the hostel to sleep, and then go for another walkabout at 6am! The streets were much more comfortable...

We had much better luck seeing installations in the wee hours of the morning...

At 9pm, there'd been an hour and a half lineup for this installation, called "Purple Rain." Prince's song of the same name played on circuit as purple lights illuminated a mist. Visitors were provided with umbrellas. We stayed about 3 minutes.

 And then there was today. After a nice long sleep-in (after staying out very late to catch the men's Olympic hockey gold medal game! Go Canada!), we joined a walking tour about the city. In general, it was a good tour. But then, but then, we were shown some of Melbourne's fantastic street art! It's of varying quality, but I was in love with the energy and the colour of it all - filling up alleyways from bottom to top! Yeah.

bird lady

This one was about 6 feet tall

...I couldn't help myself.

Karri in a Hurry!

We've been on a delightful road trip with Michael's Uncle Keith and Aunt Sue this week. It seems they know everybody around these parts, and have been able to stay with other extended family members or friends as we've traveled south from Perth to Margaret River and to our current "home" in Denmark. We made plenty of detours along the way, including to the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, the South-Westiest point of Australia. I feel like I've seen lots of lighthouses in the last 12 months....(but it really doesn't get old!)

But while we've been driving, I've spent plenty of time gazing out the car window curious about all of the new and interesting flora and fauna. So many new things! Especially so are the trees. These Australian trees really are quite special, though I mostly notice only two types: the Karri Trees, and the Xanthorrhoea (commonly known as "Blackboys." But a politically correct person in public might rather use its scientific name...).

The Karris are straight tall giants - gum trees that shed their bark and look smooth and blonde. They're so tall, that they were used as fire lookout posts. One of those posts remains accessible to the public, and courageous travelers can try their luck at ascending the seemingly impossible re-bar ladder. It's called the Gloucester Tree. The refurbished lookout at the treetop is about 72 metres from the ground.Wikipedia says that only 20% of people who start up actually continue to the top, and for good reason. That ladder is fucking scary! There's absolutely no way an attraction like this would exist in North America without a required signed waiver and safety ropes.

But we did it! And I didn't fall!

Sorry, mom. Better to beg forgiveness though, right?

I've just started up the ladder. They'res a wire cage to the outside of the latter to keep people from sliding off to the side, but you're on your own if you fall straight down....

 Now, the Blackboy trees are really interesting, at least from my vantage point. These guys grow impossibly slow, which is the reason for their blackened trunks; forest fires are a regular occurance in Western Australia (WA), and they've all been charred. But they survived!

Just how long do they survive? Well, check out the photo below, with Michael for reference.

The human is 1778 mm tall. The Blackboy is taller than this.

 These "trees" grow at a staggering rate of only a few milimetres per year. Based on math, where we'll guess this baby grows 5mm in a year (1778mm/5mm), a Michael sized tree is 355 years old. But this one is taller! I reckon this one is at least a half century, at the least! Rad.

But here are some other cool things:

The smallest busker in ever. His dad watched on from another park bench. He rocked some sweet lulabys.

Darn tootin, I put some shrimp on the barby!

I've seen my share of 'Roos, but these two were large Western Grey Kangaroos! REAL LIVE KANGAROOS!