I went to PAX 2009 and all I got was this lousy swine flu.

No, really.

Now, before people start sending me their condolences or (perhaps more likely) asking if they can have all of my stuff, keep in mind that it's really just the flu, swine or not. All of the deaths from swine flu came out of the third world, which is a full two worlds below the one I'm in. It's not like everyone is coming down with swine AIDS or swine Parkinson's.

But the title of this post is not a little disingenuous, because I certainly can't say that disease was the only thing that I took away from PAX this year without doing a serious injustice to both the convention itself, and its incredible community.

Not to get too mushy, but I started meeting people at pre-PAX events over the summer, and in the space of three months I made more friends (genuine ones, not the cheap knockoffs like you find at discount stores) than I had previously managed to garner myself in the year prior. I had thought I was full up on friends at this point, but that notion was shattered when PAX finally came around and I realized that the portion of people I had met were just the locals, and that the rest of the PAX party iceberg was located far below sea level, just waiting to sink my PAX Titanic into the deepest depths of the PAX shenanigans ocean.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. For me PAX started two days prior to PAX proper, when I convinced myself (with little effort) that I needed to tour my own city via the Magical Mystery Tour. For those of you who don't know, the MMT is a two-day guided tour put on this year as a joint effort between Erin Bestrom (our very own MetaverseNomad) and Isha Zubeidi (better known as The Goddamn Omegabat). I'm not sure what the official head count for this year was, but I know it was hovering right around 40 people or so. My day started next to a Golden Pig in Pike Place Market, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Our first stop was the Seattle Aquarium. I hadn't actually been to the aquarium in ages, so it was refreshing to finally go back and look at how little things had changed from the last time I had been there (except that I was viewing everything from higher up). That said, it was still completely aweseome. Cool looking fish and interesting factoids aside (did you know that Tiger sharks are 12 feet long on average, or that they have an Orca-themed set of trading cards?), once again it was the people that made this particular venue. Whether it was imitated whale calls (we have video!) or remarkably detailed plans to start an underwater octopus cage fighting ring, the laughs were in no short supply as we endeavored to put the word "wang" on as many things as humanly possible. Oh, and there were otters! Cute little fuckers.

After that, we went to the well known Underground Tour of Seattle, which despite being a Seattle native for the past 20 years, I had never actually bothered to try and attend before. So naturally I was excited as we all funneled in, paid for our wristbands, and sat down for a 20 minute talk about all of the stuff that people don't want you to know about Seattle.

I don't want to bore you with all of the details, but suffice it to say that Seattle was built on top of mud, every single person that had anything to do with founding Seattle is a dirty scumbag, poop jokes are still funny after the even after the 4th time, and making fun of Tacoma never gets old, ever.

Oh, and don't throw water onto a grease fire in a room filled with sawdust next to several buildings full liquor, dynamite, and ammunition. Just a heads up.

Our tour guide (Steve if you like him, Tom if you don't) was amazing and made the whole tour lighthearted and fun despite being informative.

It was generally agreed upon, I believe, that the most interesting piece of information that came out of the tour was news of Seattle's former "garment disctrict", which raked in upwards of 80% of Seattles income for several years due to a very loose definition of "hemming" which involved the "seamstress" letting someone put his "penis" into her "vagina". You know, if you catch my drift.

So the long and short of it is that my hometown was built on a foundation of mud, shit, lies, sex, and a stolen Alaskan totem pole. I knew there was a reason I loved Seattle so much.

After the Underground Tour, we met up with the bus (yes, we had a bus, and yes, it was awesome). It was on this bus that the trivia game started, wherein Nomad would ask Seattle-related trivia questions and then I would answer them and get buttons. Okay okay, so there were other people who answered questions too, but suffice it to say that by the time we stopped at Essential Bakery (which is apparently famous even though I'd never heard of it), I had nine buttons. This will be important later.

So we descended on Essential Bakery like a school of nerdy sharks hungry for blood (or sandwiches, we weren't picky), and after we had gotten what we'd come for we headed to Gasworks Park for lunch and a rousing round of MarioKart.

I'd like to take a moment here and immortalize a particular occurrence. We had 7 human players and rounded out the 8th with a CPU, upon which Isha announced that anyone that came in behind the CPU was getting their gamer card revoked, to which Nomad agreed. At the end of the round, through a flurry of shells, bananas, and lightning, the only two people who managed to come in behind the CPU were (gasp!) Isha and Nomad. Hm. Of course, they destroyed us in the rest of the races and got first and second overall, but the irony is too delicious not to spread around everywhere.

Also, on our way out I got a call from "Jules Walker with Q13 Fox News" to inform me that I had won a $100 giftcard to Taphouse, defying all logic and somehow making my day even better. Liger, if you're reading this, I still owe you drinks.

After Gasworks we discovered that you can't really get a 58-person bus anywhere near the Ballard Troll, so we moved on to the Ballard Locks. They were locks, and um, they were in Ballard. Also, there were salmon, too. And a salmon ladder. You know, for the salmon.

Moving on, we stopped at Archie McPhee's because everyone, at least once in their lives, should stop in a store that physically carries the Avenging Narwhal playset, or action figures for Poe, Jund, Freud, Einstein, Houdini, and a plethora of other wonderful historical figures who totally deserve action figures but get muscled out by the likes of GI Joe. I mean, when's the last time Snake Eyes revolutionized and entire branch of scientific theory? Or convinced a ton of people that they secretly want to have sex with their mothers? Yeah, that's what I thought. For some strange reason I don't seem to have any photos from Archie's, but that's probably just because I was having way too much fun looking at all of the awesome shit in that store. I mean, where else will you find a pink suede skull less than 10 feet away from a set of band-aids that look like bacon, which in turn is right next to a roll of packing tape covered in Jesus?

The next and final stop was at Trophy Cupcakes. Now, I must admit that my default stance on everything is skepticism. So when everyone I talked to told me that "OMG THESE ARE LIEK TEH BEST CUPCAKES EVER LOL!!111!1" (and they said it just like that, I swear), I remained unconvinced. They might be tasty, but I was reserving judgement until I had actually experienced them for myself.

The verdict?

OMG THESE ARE LIEK TEH BEST CUPCAKES EVER LOL!!111!1

I ended up grabbing one of the Chai Cardamoms, selected purely because it had the word "Chai" in it (who the hell even knows what a cardamom is?), and it was literally like someone had given my mouth a massage with a happy ending. I don't know what the fuck they do to those things, but it works. Also there was a platter (pictured) full of Star Wars themed cupcakes. It's like they knew we were coming, and wanted to welcome us in style.

After trophy we returned to the WSCTC to call it a day and say our goodbyes until the next morning. Oh, and to hand out sweet prizes for the trivia. Remember way back up the post when I said I had nine buttons? Well, that turned out to be about 3 more than anyone else had, so I slid rather effortlessly into first while everyone else did rock paper scissors for second and third. First place earned me a small plastic Playmobil Pirate, which is currently residing on top of my computer monitor.More on him later.

Seeing as how I'm just now through my first day of PAX shenanigans and this post is already getting too long, I'll take blogging about PAX much like I took PAX itself: one day at a time.