Best Vacation EVAH!

My summer has been taken up with work. Lots of it. Work coming out of my ears. Work up to my eyeballs and past my jugular.
Summer ended, luckily for me, and it was finally time for vacation. Jones & I packed up the civic and hit the road...
Blissful stoneydriving with my bestest friend, we hit Gorst and feel lost. without panicking, we turn around, only to remember we were going the right way to begin with. Lots of goofy talking, somehow there is always so much to catch up on; even though we spend our whole lives together, we always are talking.
Through Gorst to Sequim. Washington has the best place names. Sequim, for those of you readers who've never been there, if there are any of you, is pronounced "SkWim" rather than "see-kwim" as it might seem. We passed the sequim gym, where we giggled and listened to spank rock; we passed the sequim lanes, smaller than the garage; we couldn't pass the sequim nature trail, which lead us past Kitchen-Dick Road.

Crossing Kitchen-Dick Road, we searched for the ocean. We arrived at a de-scalable bluff, and finished our americanos. We decided we could live in Sequim, if it came down to it.

From Sequim to Port Angeles is a short geographical distance, but miles and miles mentally from Seattle. By the time we hit the hilarity of Sequim, WA, we had lost our urban tensions. Years and their ascended trouble-lines were floating outside of the care-able planes, and things were all superlative. {Aside: I had driven from seattle to port angeles a week before, and the same effect was felt. also, i knew what was coming up on the roads.)

There was a small winery on the left, and we decided to stop, it being 3pm monday and all, it was totally wine-time.

The bartendress was 2.3 sheets to the wind and was Very Generous in her pours. One wine (a Syrah) was so so so so better than the rest, it was way a steal for $25 - we bought 2. And i loved a particular sweet-ish chardonnay that we could chill and take up to our campsite. So we got that too. And then Jones got another glass of the awesome Syrah and we sat and watched the road go by and daydreamed about having a winery and an onsen and then set off, dreamy and sated, to find a campsite.

Camp found and staked, Hurricane Ridge visited and scared, we were well on our ways to relaxation. Delicious motherfuckign food, dark darkness, Night fell, we forgot to get enough firewood, we were soggy and sleepy and slept poorly; there were owls too many and too loud for that.

The next morning, we debated how early nor late it might or might not be. No decisions were made. Breakfast was delectable.

We chose to hike a mountain. It was hard. We smoked and fucked in the national forest.

Back to camp, enough firewood for the night. The mountains echoed "jones" and we ate a delicious crab bisque from cups. The next morning, we were almost ready to leave; almost forgotten about our regular selves, not ever forgetting about our lovely kittens nor our hot shower; dreams of bears turned out to be just dreams. We drove to Sol Duc hotsprings. Past the unbelievably magic Lake Crescent, over the hills and on the other side, we arrived at the lodge. Sulfur and delicious. A deer fed on the lawn of our cottage.
We soaked, and talked, and ate and did adult recreational things. The next day, after pretty much doing all those things again, we took what would be my first legal trip to a casino. We chose Seven Cedars Casino, in beautiful, Lucky Sequim, and I proceeded to lose money. Not Jones, though. He lost a little, won a little, then found his lovely lady slot machine, which was a penny slot called USA FOREVER or something stupid like that, and proceeded to win close to $600US.

We called it a good vacation and came home richer, not only in experience but in dollar value too.

All photos can be viewed HERE.

art show

Hey all in seattle -
i'm having a quick little art show at Jalisco Mexican restaurant in South Park tonight as part of the South Park Arts Walk.
More about the organization can be found here.
Most of the art I'm showing can be found here.
XoXoX

Nasty Pussy

Friday night, 15th of September 2006. End of Summer, Seattle-style. The Freaks are out, in full force. A house party first, which turns out to be lame. Skeet-daddle to the Decibel festival, where I am psyched to go to Neumo's / Bad Juju to see the only friend-from-grade-school-who-I've-ever-caught-up-with-in-my-later-life's band, Telefon Tel Aviv. The show was awesome. The sound got kinda muddy towards the end, but it was really good bassy noise and flashing lights and pretty people. Who knew there were all those glitchcore fans in Seattle!
Loose some pals to drunken horniness. DT & I walk back to the lame house party, where Jones has ended up. Jones is definitively 1.85 sheets to the wind, and DT and I are both hungry. It's 12.55 and in seattle, that means that there is no Good Merkin Food to be got. (1am is the late-night cut off for Merkin restaurants with ranges in addition to deep fryers.) So we decide to go to Sea Garden.

The last time Jones & I were at Sea Garden, we eavesdropped like hungry-ear-compys on a conversation being had at the table next to us. It was some sort of off-hour first date, we were there around 12.30, and the couple was a Wedgewood-type naturalist / ecofreak man with a very FOB Asian lady. The man was trying to explain psychedelic mushrooms to his companion. Unfortunately, the details elude me, now that it's 8 months or so later, but it went something like this:

She: "OOh, this has mushrooms in it! I love mushrooms!"
He: "I like mushrooms too. I especially like the mushrooms that allow you to talk to spirits!"
She: "Spirits? What do you mean? Like television?"
He: "There are some mushrooms that let you see *inside* things. Like the spirits in the plants and animals."
She: "I want some! Let's see if they have any here!"
He: "You can't really buy them."
She: "So you have to find them? Do they grow here?"
He: "No, you buy them, but it's sort of underground."
She: "No, no no, you can't have a black market for mushrooms! I am sure they have them at Uwajimaya."

This time, we were seated next to a table of very obnoxious asian kids. They were all about taking calls and meeting people and doing deals of some sort, loudly, but un-funnily.

We started our stoner feast with an order of fried scallops with pepper. They were fucking awesome, and we ate them so fast that no photos were taken. Slightly sated, we had the presence of mind to order some additional dishes.

me: OOh, i want tofu with crab!
jones: OK but-
me: OOh, and I want shrimp vermicelli hot pot! And pea vine with garlic! And ...
DT: And I want Wonton.
Jones: Let's get some pork. You [DT] & I can split it, there will be enough food. What do you think?
me: OK with me.
jones: OOh, let's get steamed pork with salted fish! that has everything delicious! Fish, salt, pork! I will love it! Yah Yah Yah!
DT: sounds good to me too! Let's get that!

We ordered the tofu with crab, the vermicelli hot pot, the wonton soup without incident. However, we should have known something was amiss when the waiter was extremely reluctant to believe that Jones really did want to order the steamed pork with salted fish.

Our dishes arrived in the haphazard and inscrutable way that only Chinese restaurants can manage to work out. We were delighted by the crab & tofu, though it might have appeared to the uninitiated to be a gelatinous mess superheated to a near-liquid viscosity. The tofu itself was a perfect silky squishy firm, the crab pieces succulent claws. The wontons were "fluffy and plump," the broth slightly spicy and buttery. The vermicelli hot pot was fucking NUCLEAR hot (heat-hot) - it arrived at the table boiling and steaming; hissing a little bit, too.

We all were really enjoying the feast we had, and I believe both Jones & DT were psyched to try some other odd-ass delicacy from the Sea Garden.
...

A smell approaches our table. I feel a sort of proustian nostalgia come over me, but when the dish lands on the table, all i can say is "that smells like pussy you don't want to eat." And it did. It smelled just like a pussy that was frequently available to eat, and only 1 time did i act on that availability. The memories that smell brought were strong, but not as strong as the smell itself. Pungent, meaty, and very sour fishiness.

DT took a bite, and said "EWW. Pbttbttbtt." and shuddered, before launching into a short monologue about the very short list of Foods he Doesn't Like, which had just gained a new entry. Jones, who does, in fact, like Century Eggs, and loves pork products like many people like, say, oxygen, won't let the smell nor DT's review stop him from trying it. Though later, he says that his stomach was doing flip flops and he brought the chopsticks to his mouth Against His Better Judgement, at the time, he made a wonderful impression of someone enjoying what he was doing to himself. He took the first bite, not without a grimace, but without trepidation. And the second. And the third. And then the facade fell.


The photo shown above does no justice to the actual dish it's presenting. But as is evident, there is pork floating in some sort of pussy juice. and Jones ate pretty much all of what's missing from the dish.

So please, go to Sea Garden. It's a great late-night restaurant on 7th & Weller. But for the love of all that is good & holy in the world, avoid the steamed pork with salted fish. You may be lucky enough to have never had a girlfriend with that sort of snatch-stench, but save yourself from finding out what you've missed all this time.

i like television

It's weird to say, but i do. Only animation. Somehow watching actual people do actual things is less (believable? entertaining? watchable?) fun to me than watching animated characters do actual things.

It all started with a milkshake. A milkshake who said things like "you have the computer, look it up" and " I will...redden their buttocks." and "Teeth are for gay people." I loathed that milkshake. I especially loathed how the milkshake would suddenly posses my fiance, at inappropriate times of the early morning, or when we were being serious, or making out or in the throes of power tool usage.

Then something changed for me. I started to love the milkshake. I found myself possessed of this same desire to say "I am the Leader! Make us a pool, from the Sky!" and "Come up to room for drink, nude be me!" My self esteem didn't plummet. Nothing came out of my nose inappropriately. Somehow, I didn't feel stupider.

Coming to terms with my love of the milkshake allowed me to move on to other, harder animation. I started watching Drawn Together, and singing ripoff disney songs to myself. Then I discovered the joy of lying in bed, watching cartoons from adult swim. And that has improved everything. Everything.

I'm fully 'onna change my name to Nathan Explosion and drive the Kennedy assasination-mobile. Or I want to, anyway.