PlatKat.com

maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

millie befriended a stranded star
who’s rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.”

I decided to try my luck at traveling by commercial aircraft and spend a short weekend in San Francisco. Sea-Tac reorganized the security line for the N/S gates, so it’s no longer “choose your adventure”. This freaked me the fuck out, but I didn’t get selected for a scan. After the Great O’Hare Grope hot on the heels of Grandma’s funeral, I was ready to simply not fly at all. I’m still not too crazy about the idea.

My first stop in the Bay Area involved a Cal-Train ride to Palo Alto. The amount of transit happening that day was bizarre. I took a train to Sea-Tac, a plane to SF, the BART to the Cal-Train, and John’s car to Advantage Aviation where we flew over San Jose and Santa Cruz. That’s where Zoey and I would take weekend roadtrips and eat fried oreos on the boardwalk. Mega-nostalgia in effect.

Then John and I headed to the Fark party. It was yet another reminder than internet people in real life are still internet people. Although I’m no stranger to internet meetups, I like that Fark parties don’t happen as often and tend to be more special affairs. We always douse a lot of that “getting to know you” crap in alcohol so it’s not as painful.

I stayed at the weeeeird Hotel Vertigo and took a foggy walk to Zeitgeist to reunite with the group. After some kielbasa and a breakfast beer, we did a little tourin’. Most notably, we attended the Folsom Street Fair, which made Seattle’s Capitol Hill look conservative and uptight. Most of the pictures in that link are not safe for work, and some of the undocumented stuff I witnessed was not safe for just about anyone. But people were having fun, and that’s what matters.

Although I didn’t participate in ass-slapping, name-calling, mask-wearing hoopla, I let Kink.com leave their (removable) mark on me. Since I haven’t messed with fake tattoos since I was a kid, I didn’t know I’d need to scrub it off my body to get rid of it, so I walked around like this for about about a week.

For awhile I forgot I was even wearing it, but for those who recognize the site, it probably looked more like an advertizement for the wearer rather than the company. I probably looked as obnoxious as those people who walk around with their underwear sticking out in attempt to look sexy. I was mostly in dark rooms covering Decibel Festival anyway, so I doubt people noticed.

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Sunny and 68 degrees. See?

The weekend was pretty cool too. Although the weather wasn’t quite as nice as today’s, we still got a lot done.

I found a great shoe at NextFest:

I always wondered what happens when you shove a Gameboy into a pair of Candies. As soon as they make another one, I’ll be the first in line for my own pair progressive platforms. (It’s where the “plat” comes from, you know.)

We also went to Toys “R” Us. ARRRRRRRRRRRR! …Backwards! That’s actually an indoor ferris wheel behind us, but there were no pirates on it as far as I could tell.

And I got a good shot of the biggest booger in board games, Plumpy from Candyland:

Did I mention I’m a fucking tourist? I thought I’d stop all foot traffic on my block of Times Square to take this amateur, poorly lit photo. I’m awesome!

We joined some other tourists at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum (but not as many as we thought we would, which is a good thing). Gus liked this plane:

We went inside this plane:

We thought it would be cooler than it was.

And of course, no loosely thrown together photo blog post of mine would be complete without a dead bird.

We found this one in the train tracks as we departed Paoli, Pennsylvania a couple weeks ago. Besides the new BlackBerry Pearl (slick!), it was probably the most interesting thing we saw in Paoli. What the hell were we doing in Paoli? Meeting some interesting people at the annual Boathouse Bash. I drank my first shot of SoCo since high school and remembered all over again why I’ll go at least another 10 years without touching the stuff. Bleh!