On our second day of adventuring, Melis’ and M’ris started out by getting crabs. And making them dance. I swear to you, if I could have found a way to straddle the barrel in which they were residing in order to provide you with the most disgusting and shameful portrait of all time, I would have. Afterward, we went to Seattle Center to wallow in clown vomit, also known as the Experience Music Project, conceived by Frank Gehry in what must have been either a hungover stupor or an act of revenge against the city for some perceived slight. Sooooo, I’ve been to the Sci-Fi museum something like seven times now and I STILL can’t seem to remember to bring a piece of paper/pen to write down the names of all the important sci-fi books I haven’t read. I’m nothing if not consistent. However, with the aid of modern technology and astoundingly sneaky hipshot photography abilities, I can show you that it is inevitable that one day M’ris and I will wander around town wearing this headgear: There was a block-printing exhibit at EMP, some of which extolled the virtue of food on sticks. I hope you are aware that food always tastes better on sticks. Afterward, M’ris used her mighty strength to prop up the Space Needle. We could use her Herculian services year-round; for the heart of the city, Seattle Center is pretty much in shambles. The monorail that runs for something like three blocks is involved in a shocking amount of collisions. The Fun Forest is decrepit and slated to be torn down at the end of this year. For the most part, I love thrill rides. We went on the Fun Forest’s ‘Windstorm’, where a nearby sign advised that in order to ride this ride, you ought to have: *1 or 2 working arms *1 or 2 working legs *No back injuries *No fetii inside *No pre-existing heart conditions That sign should be amended to include ‘no fear’. Holy crap on a cracker, I’ve never been so afraid for my life as I was on that ride. For a rollercoaster, it skims awfully low to the ground. I was quite certain that at one point, I was going to fall out and become Mellzah Pate. The carny laughed at my fear. He sees this sort of thing often, I take it. Afterward, I added shock and sadness to my veritable cornucopia of emotion, when I realized they’d shrunk a majestic pirate ship down to fit the lollipop kids. ‘Tis a sad pirate I be. No visit to Seattle Center is complete without a stop in one of the multitudes of tacky gift shops at the base of the Space Needle, and we both ended up with shot glasses that have Sasquatch climbing out of them, rendering any beverage drunk out of them into something that’s been marinating in large, hairy, bipedal homonid ass. On the way to drive M’ris to the airport for one of the world’s saddest partings (I cried. She cried. Strangers cried. Three wolves cried to the moon somewhere where it was dark.), we stopped at Top Pot to procure doughnuts and coffee. As you do. Crying requires a proper level of blood sugar. I performed pretty much the world’s shittiest parallel parking job, and didn’t even give a flip. I didn’t feed the meter, I took up two spots, and was hanging out into the road. I felt like a surly New Yorker for one glorious moment.

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?