YES, PANIC.
By which I mean come see us tonight, Vancouver, and tomorrow, Seattle!
My mom, God love her, has a touch of Marianne Williamson to her, a vestige of her 30 years with healing crystal friends in Southern California. She doesn't have Williamson's anti-science crazy, but she holds the idea that if I talk about my paranoia, my deep suspicion verging on certainty that His Lunatics have already started their shooting war, I am putting it out there in the universe and creating it as fact.
I always yes her. Yes, Mom, yes, I know. Of course, yes. I never argue that we need to be alert to the dangers around us, and that refusing to name the monster will not make it go away.
I am supposed to plump you up here, to assure you that in the case of that shooting war, we will have the military on our side, and we may. But we won't have the small town police departments, or even the Portland PD. I am not supposed to let the shooting war enter my brain at all, or I will ideate their bullets with the 3D printer of my mind. I must be a cheerful warrior, pure of heart and without fear; paranoia is bad for readership, unless your readers are stupid wingnuts desperate to SELL GOLD and BUILD THEIR BUNKERS for the HOLY RACE WAR they've got their sad old boners for.
I have been on vacation I think a week now, and the paranoia hasn't receded a bit.
My husband's grandparents passed down to all the hundred cousins a share each in a 60-year-old cabin in the middle of the ocean in the Puget Sound, or, I'm told, the Salish Sea. There is no electricity. You boil the water for the coffee, and the crab you just caught with a turkey leg, and the dishes. Everything takes a long, peaceful time. You do puzzles at the massive table for three days straight; you take a hot tub stoked by a wood fire and filled with water from the sea; you make sangria and wave to the boats; you do not, like an idiot, check your phone. It isn't until the ferry ride back to land that you look at Twitter and see the president wants to nuke a hurricane. How silly. Everyone knows nukes are for asteroids, and perhaps a volcano. You can not fight wind, you dope. You must call her Mariah!
This vacation has not heartened me, or strengthened me for the (metaphorical) fight, but it has been a cessation from the constant. The constant embarrassment. The constant whiplash. The constant bad-faith whipped-up bullshit. The constant Mitch McConnell, and the constant Trump, more and more and more of it each year that used to be called a "day." And that's as much as I can ask for at this moment in the alternate timeline that produced President Biff. I don't need to be vigilant for another five days; I can look out the goddamned window and try to stay off Twitter; Evan and Dok and the kids are being eagle-eyed for me. Well, I can ask for more: I can ask for more money, as last month and this month have been low-tides for donations, and with one more like them -- no, I'm not going to threaten, or ideate that into fact.
If you are in Vancouver, I hope you'll join us tonight, Thursday, at Spanish Banks (look for the banner!), let's call it 5:30 to 7:30, since we got an RV park way the fuck out of town. (But we'll doubtless stay late with you.) And if you're in Seattle, please do come and see us tomorrow (Friday) at Golden Gardens, let's call that 6:30 p.m. We will potluck, and in person I won't bum you out or get my melancholy on you, it wouldn't be good host-man-like. Instead we will laugh and be gay; we shall potluck and dance. (We probably won't dance, unless you have a feeling you want to interpret through movement, oh fuck it, we totally will.) Whatever it is, we'll do it together. You, knowing you are out there, are my strength.
Aloha nui loa.
Your editrix (me)
She Don't Lie She Don't Lie She Don't Lie SPOKANE
Wednesday night, bitches, come see us!
Spokane, Anacortes, Vancouver, Canada, and Seattle! We are loading up the Wonkebago with gasoline and children and dogs and sausages and watermelon salads (watermelon, lime zest and lime juice, and SHY'S BEEZ HONEY!), and coming to see YOU! Join us, like a common partygoer what loves to be fed and drinked and kissed on their faces!
Spokane, Wed., Aug. 21 (that is tomorrow!), 5:30 to 8 p.m. at Audubon Park, 3405 N. Milton St! May you bring us a dish to share? Only if you feel like it! May you bring us presents of pot? Well we are law-abiding law-abiders, so yes you fucking may.
Anacortes, Thurs., Aug. 22, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Washington Park. Look for the children and dogs! And the Wonkette banner! Same as above!
Then we are taking an actual vacation and leaving Evan in charge because he is that perfect late-30s power-hungry for the job! And we will see you again in ...
Vancouver, Canada, Thurs., Aug. 29, 5:30 to 8 p.m., we don't know where! Kindly to email rebecca at wonkette dot com with your suggestions of a nice park that is transit-friendly and that we can drive our longass housecar to and grill the tofus.
Seattle, Fri., Aug. 30, 6-9 p.m. We don't know where here either! Email me the same. Maybe that Golden Gateway (?) Beach Park we hit up two trips ago, or maybe a different place that is different!
There, now I am on vacation, suckers, and that means seeing YOU! (Unless you don't live in those four places, in which case you can congregate together HERE in this nice OPEN THREAD.) (WHOOPS I forgot I was going to put this up at End of Day, but fine, have an open thread anyway!)
Send money for all the freelance posts we will be needing extra of while I am out, and also the gas and the grass. (We are married, no ass.)
Get In Losers, We're Going To Canada
Wonkebago comin' at you, eh?
If you are like us, you have wondered MANY TIMES over the past 30 months what would be the inflection point, to borrow a phrase from Kamala Harris, at which it would be time to FLEEEEEEE. Mine is "when they seize my bank accounts." Not really any going back from there! Luckily, we have a Wonkebago. And Canuck friends? We have YOU!
We haven't felt the itch to run even once since we got our passports, after some State Department fuckery, in the US mail. (They weren't accepting Old Dad's "birth certificate," from "New Jersey," as a form of ID.) But since we've got 'em, and you've been asking, and it's almost time for a working vacation at Shy's family's cabin*, well get out your calendars and your recreational marijuana because Spokane, Seattle, and VANCOUVER CANADA, we are coming to see you ... temporarily. Consider it a dry run.
The deets to come. (Please post nice park suggestions, for where we can grill up our tofus just kidding we don't grill tofus, in the comments!) But set your G Chat Calendar Book reminder for:
Spokane, Wed., Aug. 21, in the evening.
Anacortes, Washington, Thurs., Aug. 22, at Washington Park!
Vancouver CANADA (NOT WASHINGTON), Thurs., Aug. 29, in the eveningish too!
Seattle, Fri., Aug. 30, evening also!
If you haven't been to a Wonkette shindig before, they are fun, and people are nice, and you are allowed to be introverted and weird, everyone else is too! Bring some food to share but DON'T STRESS ABOUT IT if you are not a cooker, there is always so much more than enough.
*Shy's family's cabin, which his dad helped his grandpa build with their own hands, is on an island four miles out in the ocean in the Puget Sound, and there is no electricity or internet, so when I say "working" I mean "fuck you."
Now is the time when we OPEN THREAD!
Wonkette is ad-free, independent, funded SOLELY by YOU and we spend your donations buying you beer!
GAS US UP!
NEW YORK CITY! Last Minute Drinky Thing With Your Robyn SATURDAY, Come And Drink And Gawk At Robyn!
Just look for 'Young Linda Ronstadt' holding down the bar.
Wonky folk! Our own Robyn Pennacchia is doing something she has never done before, and it is HOST A WONKETTE DRINKY THING in New York City! She is in your fine city from Chicago doing whatever, I am sure she will tell you all about it when she sees you TOMORROW, SATURDAY, JUNE 8, from 3 to 5:30 p.m. at B BAR in the East Village. (40 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003)
Could we have found a cooler place, by which I mean a less cool place? YES. But either they never answered their goddamn fucking phones, or they were like 15 bus stops from the nearest subway, and you are old and would have been :(
Your drinks are on you, but Robyn will be holding my credit card and buying appetizers for everyone, and if you are like BUT REBECCA, YOU ARE BEING SUED RIGHT NOW, YOU NEED THAT MONEY FOR LAWYERS, well, nobody ever said mama makes good business decisions.
EXCEPT EVERYONE!
Now give us money, and GO SEE YOUR FAVORITE CHICK WHAT IS NOT ME.
