Parkway

Today I went strolling with a friend and his canine companion in the late afternoon, beside a creek and under the interstate. There was gridiron training, and children with sticks, and robins, and clean air.

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Egypt

THERE IS A WHOLE FREAKING EGYPTIAN TEMPLE IN THE MET. A WHOLE TEMPLE. YES. WITH GRAFFITI AND ALL. A TEMPLE. PLUS MUMMIES AND SARCOPHAGI AND STUFF. WTF. The wonder of which a camera cannot capture. So you don't get to see those. There are various study halls around the Met in which bits and pieces of 'stuff', ie, "we're not sure what this is or it isn't intact enough for exhibition but is still of interest and value, so..." are crammed into display cabinets. This one swallowed me to distraction with all the interesting little bits and pieces, and it is photos of these inglorious little fragments that I am most enamored of.

Herbie did his best in the low light, but I still had to do some colour corrections. Badly. Eh!

High Line

The High Line is a nifty lil park on the west side of Manhattan, narrow and stretching some blocks north to south. The overhead railway lines, decommissioned and derelict, have been reclaimed and made over into something that is more a work of art than a park. It's a landscape sculpture of urban decay, floral hardiness and some fabulous design.

Sadly, my camera and my photographerbrains were not of a high enough skill to capture the awesome (also I couldn't get enough distance nor break in the people strolling), so here are just a couple of wee tasters.

The park was fairly busy even on a Monday morning, and I believe it when I'm told that on weekends and in summer it is almost a no go zone. There are plans to expand it with further lines reclaimed, and if they don't put a neat little bar in there it would be a shame.

City Lights

Did a last minute dash up the Empire State Building and took a few snaps. I'm not particularly happy with the way any of them came out, the HS10 night mode is not...I probably just need to play with it more. At any rate, the city glows.

Not the same Bladerunner feel as Tokyo, but nevertheless surreal. Manhattan, she is very pretty at night. She sparkles with so many homes.

Celebratory Peanut Brittle

As far as afternoons go, this was a pretty good way to spend one.

Things They Do Not Warn You About In New York

Puppies.

We popped out of the Met and it must have been dog walking time because there were little scrappy doggy things everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Being a cute and happy and doggy! I half thought maybe there was some rule about dogs in New York, restrictions on pounds per inch, but today I spied quite a few larger breeds, including a gorgeous golden retriever prancing about Central Park.

We even stumbled upon a store on Lexington Avenue that sold puppies. This store was called, wait for it..."Puppies".

AND THEY WERE SO CUTE. WE DIED.

Actually the conditions were horrific. But nothing subtracts from the cuteness of a gleeful climbing puppy.







So, I am warning you. New York = puppies.

The one redeeming feature of "Fashion Valley": LEGO

It's a good thing this is multiple choice, 50% chance I'll get it right.

I am leaving the internet. I've a last day in fabulous San Francisco before jumping on a metal bird and returning to the future, 'cause this is the future, and we totally have the technology.

I will be reattaching myself to people I haven't seen in a couple of weeks, so to avoid any social malfunctions in recognition, here is a current, taken right this second, photo of me:



You peeps I just spent ridiculously hilarious weekend with, I loff you. I bequeath you the northern hemisphere, with which to do as you please. Hopefully, 'as you please' means you will turn it into a giant ball pit.

See you on the otherside of the date line.

Columbus and Broadway

Today I met an albatross, and she was so existent I stopped breathing.

"If the white covers my whole eye, I'll die."

The above was said to me by a beggar who pounced me not a block from the hotel I'm staying at, the Adante. I'm afraid I didn't believe her.

This hotel is unbelievable. Originally I'd booked a hostel, but on further reflection didn't like my chances of surviving the flight across the Pacific and not feeling like the Bilges of Hell, so sucked it in and paid for a proper hotel room with private bathroom and my very own toilet to curl around and chunder in if I needed it.

Aside from free wifi (FREE! WIFI!) (I didn't think I'd be touching the internet for the whole two weeks) (SURPRIIIISE!) and a window with no screen (I could fall out! Yay!) it has TOUCANS. YES. TOUCANS.



AND FISH. IN THE BATHROOM.



And a dewy-eyed doe above the bed, which doesn't seem to be in keeping with the otherwise tropical jungle feel of the room.

My decision was a good one because I felt bad when we landed. Bad. Very bad. I threw up on the plane. Then I threw up just before going through immigration. I thought I was okay then, shyte, but okay. Collected my bags, went through customs, found the BART station, boarded a train - you can see my mistake right there.

I didn't have much to bring up, which is good, because I didn't have anything to bring it up and out into, so I vomited in my mouth. And swallowed.

That is why I fucking hate long flights.

You didn't need to know that at all, but it grossed me out, so I'm sharing it.

The walk from the BART to the hotel was only a handful of blocks, which normally I wouldn't bat an eye at, and didn't when I booked it, but oh holy hairy horse scrotums, it was the longest most horrible walk of my life. It was a death march. Only I wasn't going to die, I was going to vomit and/or faint. In a foreign city. Good stuff. But the stubborness is mightier than the dehydration/exhaustion/nausea/on a stick, and I made it to the hotel without puking in public, fainting, or dying. Go team!

This was followed by an intense two hour nap that involved dreams in which I was cross-dressing to pose as some tart's fiance so we could run off to another country but her mum and lawyers found her anyway.

And this was followed by a shower (oh!) and teeth-brushing (OH!) and I ventured out to jump on the Muni to Pier 39 and the SF Aquarium. Trams, awwwww. They're just as rattly as the City Circle trams in Melbourne. (The stops are very confusing to figure out, because this country drives on the wrong side of the road.)

Pier 39 very touristy/kitschy/quaint. Aquarium s'alright. Better than the Melbourne Aquarium at least. Probably on par with Sydney, although I haven't been to Syndey's aquarium in a very long time. There were white sturgeon, which was great to see. They're beautiful fish. I did get to pet a bat ray and skate, though. They're both lovely soft creatures, delicate, slimy or incredibly silken. They shiver and wheel away when tickled too much.







Have viewed the sea lions.



There's a lot of them. They like to carry on. Distinct bouquet about them.

Dinner, or lunch, or the first meal I'd eaten since lunch when I first got on the plane which was I don't know how many hours ago in another time zone and I'd puked it all up again anyway, was at Chowders.



Picked at random as I was walking past. Although I didn't feel hungry, nor didn't like the idea of putting anything in my stomach, my body knew best, and started near quivering at the sight. I'm no expert on chowder, and so when the woman behind the counter recommended the white clam chowder, I went with that. Best. Chowder. Ever. Even if I don't know what I'm talking about. Just thinking about it now I want some more, in a nice touch sourdough trencher.

The Muni home was driven by a character. He reminded me quite a bit of my Dad. In fact I assumed he was Chinese until he started drawling away in Spanish. It's amazing the similarities between the two races. He'd pull up to tram stops, pop on the outside speaker and say, "We're a rolling sardine can, we are packed like sardines, so I'm not stopping, just passing by...byyyyyyyeeeee!"

Feeling like utter incapacitated shyte is one of the best ways to permanently ruin your perceptions of a place, but San Francisco is so...SO. Just so! That it steamrolled through my shyteness and I'm quite enamored of it, even the tiny little bit I've seen. I walked past a Dr Suess gallery on the way back, and there appears to be a King Tut exhibition on somewhere in the city. Shall find it.

San Francisco has this comfortable air about it. I don't really feel I'm in a strange city. There are echos of Melbourne here.

When in doubt, flee the country.

Bags are packed, Tim Tams purchased, and I know where my passport is. I would take my heart to San Francisco, in order to leave it there, but I can't find it. Clearly, I did not keep it in a safe place, like my passport.

For those I am going to be seeing for the first time in years, or in fact for the first time at all, here is a true-to-life-taken-right-this-second depiction of the front of my face:



So now you have no excuse not to recognise me (and are free to flee on sight, I'm considerate like that).

The rest of you, keep the internet warm while I'm out.

Now, tally ho! What!

Oh yeah, right, forgot about this.

I'm crossing the Pacific on the 26th of October. I'll spend a couple of days in San Francisco, head down to Monterey to go to the aquarium, and then on to San José for World Fantasy. Which is already looking to be insane and will probably burn out my people tolerance for another year, but what the hell. That's what you expect of hermit crabs, right?

Thursday night is the Last Drink Bird Head / Finch / Booklife party, which will also feature the first Last Drink Bird Head Annual Awards. Preorders for everything available, and everything worth preordering.



Friday night is a fancy schmancy dinner.

Saturday night is the Gigawatt's birthday party, featuring zombies and cupcakes (science-fictiony mortician's dress? check), followed by the Weird Tales party.

Sunday night I crawl around gibbering and looking for somewhere quiet to sleep.

Followed by a couple more days in San Francisco, and then another long flight back across the Pacific, to the future.

There's lots of people I know that I'll be meeting for the first time, lots of people I know I'll be meeting for the second time, and lots of people I don't know I may or may not be meeting at all. Should be interesting, at any rate.

(There is not at all enough time to prepare for this argh.)

Because I can't help but make a LIAR out of myself.

I was rummaging, and found this photo. I took it when I was tooling around the States a couple of years back, it's on the Skyline Trail at Paradise, on the slopes of Mt Rainier in Washington. It was August at the time, and not much further up I was walking through snow and looking down on glaciers and generally making alarmed and amazed squawking noises.



Do you SEE? It's a flower-filled meadow!

I DIDN'T BELIEVE THEY EXISTED.

It's entirely possible that Australia possesses, somewhere, at some point in the seaons, flower-filled meadows, but I haven't seen them, and they wouldn't be nearly this green, and there'd be snakes and nasty biting things hiding in the flowers, and there would not be BAMBI dozing in the middle of it, as there was in this case. And the damn flower-filled meadows were everywhere. Ev. Er. Ee. Where. I felt rather like I'd fallen into a Disney movie, and that I should be singing and frolicking. In the flowers. That were everywhere.

I found it a shame that the others with me, Europeans and Kiwis for whom the alpine environment was not at all a new thing, didn't see the marvel before them the same way.

Even though I have that memory, and I took this photo, I find that my belief in flower-filled meadows has diminished. They're too pretty for the suspension of my disbelief.