From being oppressed by the man, to being the man

Well today was a pretty great adventure of a day. But I think I should pick it up from the tail end of yesterday. So, we had visited the Seattle downtown area. I saw some interesting things, checked out the Space Needle. The moutain wasn't "out" meaning we couldn't clearly see Ranier (and being Seattle, also that it was still in the closet), but the rest of the views were really impressive. I gathered a large crowd as I used a large exclamation point as a phallus and testes. As I posed for my pictures the tour group was pretty well in stitches. Very lude and very fun. I was already making my mark on Seattle, in accordance with the prophecy.

After the needle goodness, we checked out the E.M.P. which sadly has nothing to do with an electronics crippling pulse, and much more to do with a weird ass building and painfully high admission prices. It's a museum built by Paul Allen, who for those not into the world of PC's is Bill Gates' right hand man. He's basically the Darth Vader to Gates' Palpatine. So what I'm saying is that the bastard didn't need to charge poor college students 25.00 to get in. This would be the first time we were oppressed by the man. And just from that, I felt more soulful, more alive, more prone to write blues music. Loudly I shouted "Fuck the corporate world, biiatch!" I then applied for a job, got coffee at Starbucks, and updated my resume. But seriously, I was pretty tired at this point from touring Seattle all day. So tired in fact, that when Nathan drove us down Broadway I could only do 5 minutes of material on the store called "Gay City" with the sign on the door that said "Entre Hermanos" (for the Spanish Impaired it says: Enter Brothers). Still, it was pretty funny stuff.

So on the way back to Nathan's happenin' pad, I fell asleep in the car a few times. Which is quite a thing considering that (traffic permitting) he lives about 15 mintues from anywhere. Quite the geographic oddity. Anyway back at Nathan's place I fell asleep in what was described as the most awkward position in the history of time. Including those in S&M magazines. Who described it like that you ask? Me. Just now. To describe it. Deal with that. Anyway, I woke in a daze late at night, wandered into the room I was sharing with Barrett, muttered about how I refuse to share a bed with a man and promptly slept even more awkwardly on the floor. With my lack of sleep and timezone hops, I had no idea when it was that I woke up, but I felt refreshed. And so it was on to today.

Nathan was already gone (to work, the corporate sellout), so me and Barrett talked to his aunt (who I was meeting for the first time on account of having been passed out on her couch, well mostly on the couch) she gave us the skinny about... ALL OF SEATTLE. Very talkative gal this aunt of Nate's. Very nice though. After hearing about various places to go to we set out to find that which caught my ear the most: a legendary "hot Starbucks girl". Also, we wanted to see the mall. Here's a fun fact, all those rumors about Seattle having a ludacris amount of Starbucks's? PAINFULLY TRUE. We were briefly at an outlet mall that I swear to you had TWO Starbucks in it. One on the west end and one right in the center. I'm getting a picture of this for the world to see. It's worse than the ones in Texas across the street from one another. These are literally 1500 feet apart. I could see myself working there and asking for a transfer because the other one is closer to my house... FIVE PARKING SPACES CLOSER TO MY HOUSE. It's insane.

Anyway once Nathan got done being responsible, it was time to go have adventures. Our first outing for the day was to visit Snoqualmie Falls. Beautiful place, let me tell you. My issue with it was this: you couldn't get anywhere near the falls or the water. We could look from far above the river as the water crashed down, but that wasn't good enough for me. Then Nathan told us about the trails that go to the lower observation point. I liked the sound of it and we set off down the mountain (mostly through trails that bypass the main trail) to the bottom observation deck. We stood there and looked, but that still wasn't good enough for us. So, I decided I wanted a closer look. It was a pretty easy thing to hop the guard rail and climb down the rocks so... that's what I did. Right past the sign warning me not to. Nathan got a pretty hilarious picture of that sign, then the next one of me climbing down to the river.

Once down there my brazen recklessness swayed the others and they too climbed down to the base. From that vantage point we got some amazing pictures. We climbed around on the rocks, got hit by the waterfall mist, then noticed how rediculously exposed we were in the valley 1,300 feet below the lodge/upper lookout. Feeling like Gandalf as Saruman's birds approached in the Fellowship of the Ring, we ducked behind some rocks. As long as we had been out there, drinking moutain river water, skipping rocks and generally acting like idiots, someone had to have seen us. It was at this point Barrett mentioned something about the severe warning they gave about tresspassing on government property.

The fact that we weren't terribly far from a hydroelectric power station didn't help our case any. So we stealthily headed back up the trail. While we were on the main trail we heard something that didn't quite belong... something strangely like an ATV... but ATV's aren't allowed who would have... RANGERS! Realizing this we ran like Frodo from the road. I was telling Nate and Barry about the Nazgul on the road and to hide. And with that, we ran from the road up into the hills on a secluded path. Whether or not we were actually running from a ranger or heard something from a road didn't really matter at that point. We were getting the hell out of there. And that we did. Back to town.

Later that night we went out to a Mongolian Grill. On the way a crazy black guy jumped out from near some trashcans waving his arms. Nathan, naturally walked around him. There was hardly any reaction. But the black guy got offended. "You just jumped like that because I'm black didn't you". Apparently I'm a bad influence on Nathan because he looked the guy square in the eye and gave him a sarcastic "Yeah" that I was pretty proud of. Then he quickly said "no." This furthered the crazy black guy's rage. CBG launched into a diatribe about how we're racist and asked Nathan what mix he was, and if we were college frat guys. I smartly replied "No we don't even go to college man" to which his friend replied "right on". At that point he said "good because I'm gonna stick [as in cut, stab, murder] the next damn frat asshole I see". There's more to that exchange but I can only do it in person, and by now, my fingers are about to fall off. I'm out for tonight, tomorrow: Canada.


- Scott