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All of the Boobs at the Seattle Pinball Museum: Take Two

Trying again, since the slideshow is not friends with mobile devices. D’oh.

Welcome to Deviation Obligatoire's exploration of Boobs in Pinball. I can't think of anyone better to welcome you than the Mistress of the Dark herself. Have you ever thought about what her head is shaped like under there, considering that front-and-center part? I didn't until I was taking this picture. Now you can too. Fun fact: there are multiple Elvira-themed pinball machines. I love earth sometimes.

Welcome to Deviation Obligatoire’s exploration of Boobs in Pinball. I can’t think of anyone better to welcome you than the Mistress of the Dark herself.
Have you ever thought about what her head is shaped like under there, considering that front-and-center part? I didn’t until I was taking this picture. Now you can too.
Fun fact: there are multiple Elvira-themed pinball machines. I love earth sometimes.

My spirit animal for this undertaking. From basically the Bechdel Test of pinball machines.

My spirit animal for this undertaking. From basically the Bechdel Test of pinball machines.

Continue reading →

Font Cues from Seattle Buildings

In a rad post on the Seattle Times blog, I learned about an ongoing classroom project at Seattle Pacific University, wherein designers find lettering on a Seattle building and turn it into a font.

This is happening on the regular.

The post focuses on the professor’s recently completed font, based on the Bemis Building in SODO. Behold, the sign:

The Bemis SignAnd behold, the font:

The Bemis FontDat E.

From there, the article takes you on a rather loving tour of the greater Seattle font community. (There is one, and it’s great.) Go, behold, immerse yourself in serifs and Papyrus-slagging. We’re a creative city, and it is marvelous.

Life Just Destroys Me Sometimes

Yesterday, I was transferring between the light rail and the 49 downtown, lugging awesome Uwijamaya groceries with my neighbor. As we walked down Fourth, we encountered a battle royale.

A boy of about five, wearing one of those half-face Batman masks and brandishing a toy katana, was engaged in a swordfight… with an old man in an impeccable suit and hat, who brandished his cane for self-defense. As he was much more enthusiastic than the kid, who couldn’t quite seem to wrap his brain around this much awesomeness, I am thinking the old man picked the fight. And then lost it on purpose.

I stood and stared and felt my heart grow three sizes.*

I’ve looked forward to being older/old for a long time now. And it makes me happy to see exactly the kind of old person I want to be, out there, being rad and making life so much better for everyone.

swordy

My favorite, most relevant GIS result for “batman swordfight.”

*I am actually mostly heart at this point. It’s getting kind of crowded in here.

Hither and Thither #4

A month or so ago, I was walking through Capitol Hill with a friend. We walked by a former telephone pole that is now sawed off about ten feet up; what remains is thickly covered with several kinds of vine. As we walked by, I reached out and let my palm skip across its surface.

“Ok,” he said. “Hold on. I need you to explain what just happened.”

“I touched the plants?” I said.

“I was walking with a coworker the other day, and she did that too. And I see people just, just do that – reaching out and, like, caressing plants. What is that? Why?”

“Sometimes they look soft,” I said. “Or like they have a varied texture. And I want to know what they feel like. I wonder if they’ll be pokey, or soft like moss, or something else altogether. I just do it. I’d do the same thing with sweaters if we were walking through a department store.” This seemed to satisfy him. Somewhat.

This is all just background to tell you one thing: if I visited one of these exhibits, I would need a couple hours just to go around petting everything, just to see what it felt like.

grassy Continue reading →

Tales from the Ladies’

A very small selection of the carefully added graffiti in the women’s bathroom of Smith.

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A fact not universally known: women’s bathroom walls often contain some hot truth. If you need advice, especially on your worth and how to conduct yourself in a relationship, you could do worse.

These pictures are mine, but if you want LOTS more from other people, go here.

All of the Pinball Boobs at the Seattle Pinball Museum

I realized this past Sunday that pinball machine art parallels comic art so far as a certain kind of, oh, liberty taken with the depiction of the female form. I started with the picture in the last slide, and from there, I went to full-on demented documentarian mode.

At one point, having watched me walk from machine to machine, taking very precise, very close pictures of most of them, a man asked me what I was up to. “Oh,” I said, “I just enjoy the art of it.”

Not untrue.

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There are two ways to enjoy pinball in Seattle, because we truly live on god-kissed earth.

Want it buffet-style? Go to the Seattle Pinball Museum. They also serve beer and soda, and you can buy clever themed buttons and your very own pinball. (They have a delightful heft.)

Prefer a la carte? Consider Shorty’s, Add-a-Ball, John John’s, or one of the many solo machines scattered throughout the city.

Bellevue and Pine, 17 September 2013

IMG_0703aIMG_0704aAnd, later, at Cal Anderson, another of the ENORMOUS BEAUTIFUL INFINITE SKY moments I’ve been experiencing lately. I was born in the spring, and I was made to adore the in-between seasons. I’m going to say “liminal” here just so I have an excuse to use that tag again.

IMG_0708aIMG_0709aPeople who get it.