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.