Waaaaaaaaaaay back on April 19th, a group of super-awesome people converged on Edmonds to declare their allegiance to motorized sports. I had always been under the impression that it was my lack of endurance that prevented me from excelling at group sports; however, riding around in bumper cars that whiz around at 3-4 mph (faster than it sounds, really, on a court that isn’t huge, particularly since the cars lack brakes), I learned an important lesson: It is my lack of coordination that truly contributes to my overall suckitude. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here is a description of the game, as ripped directly from the Whirlyball website: “Whirlyball is best described as a combination of Basketball, Hockey and Jai-Alai played while riding an electrically powered machine, similar to a bumpercar, called a WhirlyBug. Although the WhirlyBug resembles a bumpercar, it is a far superior machine. Quicker, stronger and far more maneuverable, the WhirlyBug powers you and your team down court in a five on five game. The objective is for each team to effectively pass the whiffle ball between team members and successfully toss the ball through the hole in the backboard of the opposing team. In one hand the player has a Jai-Alai style plastic scoop and in the other hand a steering crank. The ball being tossed around is a softball sized whiffle ball. At each end of the court there are vertically hung backboards with a 15 inch hole in the center. Behind the hole is a netted swing gate equipped with a buzzer or light to notify the referee when a score is made. “ I proved my sports mettle by near immediately dropping my scoop onto the court and, being midget-sized, could not pick it up with my wee-man arms. Then, I ran my whirlybug into a corner and struggled to get out, blocked a member of my own team, and ran over the ball. I became the ‘please don’t pass it to me’ girl. I think I would’ve been more aggressive about trying to play and less self-conscious had I known people out on the court; travelbothroads had injured herself playing football and didn’t want to aggravate the injury, la_roja and evillin sat out, and aelius27 and ravenmimura rotated out as I rotated in. After my humiliating performance, I decided to sit the rest of the games out, but ended up really enjoying watching everyone else. People ended up getting really into the game; you could tell someone was particularly invested when they began pumping their hips when they smacked their car into someone else to give it extra ‘ooomph’. Now that football season is almost over, we’ve decided that a return to Whirlyball is in order this summer, only this time, in post-apocalyptic costumes. We’re calling it WHIRLYBALL: BEYOND THUNDERDOME. Who is in?

On Saturday, I met with Lanny at the PacSci center in Seattle to see Lucy, the fossilized remains of a homonid that lived some 3.2 million years ago. We also saw an IMAX movie, bud sadly, not the one about dinosaurs in 3-D. While waiting in line for tickets, I learned two important things. One: That day was some kind of ‘educator discount’ day. Two: If the people behind me in line were representative of our state’s educators, perhaps we should ask the question ‘Is our children learning?’ more often. The specially priced educator tickets had sold out before the people in line behind me were able to buy them, so all I heard for the next ten minutes was “TWENTY DOLLARS? I can’t believe how much they’re charging for tickets. GOD, this line is slow. Wait, what’s this? It says regular exhibits are $11. Why would it say $11 if they’re charging $20 to see Lucy? Maybe if I point out the sign, they’ll sell us the tickets for $11.” And on. And on. And on. After I bought our tickets, Lanny showed up with coffee, and we waited for our time slot to be called for the Lucy exhibit. Immediately before we entered, the rules were laid out: No cameras. No cell phone cameras. No phones turned on, period. Well…rules were made to be broken. Lucy exhibit people: I’m sorry, I know you must have spent a lot of money and time and effort on putting this whole thing together, but I’ve got to be frank. Everything before we started getting into bones was, well…boring. Way boring. When I walk away from a display knowing more about how much Lanny’s pearl-clutching ex-roommate spent on gay porn over a period of a week and exactly how much anal blood he seeped into her sheets, you didn’t engage my attention enough. I also find it really, really, weird how much you tried to emphasize how big Christianity is in Ethiopia, even going so far as to write the sentence “Christianity is the predominant religion in Ethiopia, even though there are as many Muslims.” How does that make Christianity predominant? Wouldn’t that make it equal? Are you trying to make the exhibit less threatening to the American audience? I don’t get it.

Also, what was with putting that phrase next to your big display of Qur’ans? Here is the Qur’an on stilts. Here is a Qur’an bound in leather. Here is a Qur’an on a goat. Here is a Qur’an spanning a moat.

I know what they modeled that jug after. Don’t tell me Ethiopians aren’t hip to the horns! Also, I looked pretty carefully but couldn’t find the carb on the ‘vase’. I bet Michael Phelps could.

Here are some arm band weapons and even after some discussion, we’re both confused as to how they work. I mean, I get that loads of people have thinner arms than me, but some of the holes seem even too narrow for bones to pass through, much less bones plus muscle tissue plus skin.

Hello, nightmares.

Here I am, touching some fossilized dinosaur poop. At first, Lanny tried to be slick about her photo-taking. After a while, she just got more and more brazen. One employee even watched us taking photos but assumed the phone was some sort of measurement tool for us to compare the size of the skulls.

    Jim-bob Duggar might say that we didn’t evolve from apes. Well, to him, I say: Vagina. It’s not a clown car.   We stood in front of the stand-up exhibit for a while, trying to figure out how to take pictures with people watching us like hawks. And then we went “DURRR this is the replica and the real one is right behind us lying in this case.” Which, incidentally, was much easier to photograph on the sly.

  We then went through the gift shop, where they sell little fragments of Ethiopia for $400 apiece. And Indiana Jones hats.

One of the male patrons was walking through the gift shop, loudly singing ‘Hakuna Matata’ which nearly made me laugh as hard as this painting, entitled “What Would Lucy Think?”:

And then we photoboothed.

  After which we did penny pressing and saw animatronic dinosaurs and had a clonebaby together and took a mini vacation in the tropics at the butterfly exhibit:

And then we watched ‘Mysteries of the Nile’ which was an IMAX movie about a group of people who had a goal of riding the Nile all the way from its source into the Mediterranean Sea, which no one has ever done. Annnnd no one still has ever done it. They claim to have done it at the end of this film, but sending the boat by itself through some stretches of river doesn’t count. Getting out of the boat and riding camels through Sudan doesn’t count. Either you rode on the Nile the whole way, or you didn’t. And they didn’t. I really wish they’d had tickets left for Dinosaurs in 3-D instead of this film, which really should’ve been titled “Lying McBoring”. I also think it’s amazing that they supposedly have all these cameras around 24/7 for the whole journey, and yet when something exciting happens like a crocodile attack, NO ONE HAS FOOTAGE, it’s just them talking about “Oh I was scared, it was so scary, wasn’t that scary?” And then we had Mexican food and got some free sex from this guy ’cause he was giving it away.