27 February 2013

Rat City Returns

Just in case there are any other Seattle-ites out there who also had bad dreams after staying up late streaming The Walking Dead on some obscure eastern-European TV-piracy hideout: I bring you...The Seattle Doomsday Map.

In addition to being beautiful and geographically/architecturally accurate, the map “provides valuable information,” Dowler [the artist] writes. “You can find out the location of the radiation leak in Sodo, who sells fresh produce in Belltown, and what’s the worst threat to your safety in Cal Anderson Park.” (Answer: zombies, duh.)  The preparation for Seattle being taken over by the undead really seems to make sense, given that hipster culture is a form on early-onset zombism.

For me personally, I lived in the middle of that flesh-colored ruin to the center-left of the map last summer and currently work next to the bright green square at 11 o'clock on the map-- it looks clear but the Whole Foods across the street has apparently been overrun.  In case of Zombie Apocalypse, you can find me atop the Space Needle, eating $18 chocolate-chip pancakes until the biters learn to use elevators.

**Rat City is a once-and-future nickname for Seattle.  Other nicknames include Emerald City, Queen City, Rain City, and my personal favorite "Gateway to Alaska."
Fitty-fi forms for fibbing:
 

25 February 2013

Half-full



Busking at its best.  Although I do like Pike Place's piano man.

24 February 2013

Itching

Each year of elementary school, the nurse would come talk about lice. Sometimes the class would have to file up one by one to have a comb run through our hair, just to make certain we weren't infected/infested.  Sometimes we just sat at our hinged desks, itching and hoping that it was just our imaginations.

In first grade, Tabitha got lice.  Tabitha was an intellectually disabled girl in my class, and her limited speech and ignorance to the incontrovertible social cues of 7-year olds made her a schoolyard target.  We saw, but did not understand, the filthy yellow dress and unkept hair, and so the sing-song insult "You like Tabitha" became the standard recess rebuttal.  It was a small cruelty, or rather a full-sized cruelty by small people.

No one was really surprised when the nurse's comb stopped at Tabitha.  She had to stay home from school for two weeks, which may have been a relief for her.    

Thinking about Tabitha makes my soul itch and hope it's just my imagination.

"To this Day" by Shane Koyczan