escape from mackitraz

So, the neighbs has a good friend (and I daresay I now have a good friend) who spends summers as a historical interpreter at Fort Mackinac, and over the weekend we went up to visit him before the weather turns heinous. It was an unusual weekend for someone like me to be on Mackinac Island, considering the G.O.P. convention was being held there, along with some sort of Boy Scout shenanigans. Between these two groups, Im gonna go out on a limb and guess that it made for more khakis per capita on the island than perhaps any other weekend this year.

In case you're curious, this is where the Republicans stay when they come to Mackinac Island:



And this is where I stay with my friends and loved ones:



In exchange for these accommodations, we were strongly encouraged (or else obligated, Don Juan Dominguez's demeanor is so delightful that who's counting, really) to volunteer, which for the neighbs and company meant donning their Prussian blue woolens and firing rifles. This provided a couple of extra hysterical interpreters up at the fort on a very busy Saturday:



I, meanwhile, obstinately persisted in having a vagina, which means no woolens or rifles. I did manage to fire off the cannon when (almost) nobody was looking though:




This created the loudest sound I have ever personally made, though when I pointed this out the neighbs seemed dubious.

After a long day of being historical, what could be better than relaxing at Sinclair's with the world-famous Pub Runners, singing some raunchy Irish tunes, and watching paunchy trout-mouth homophobes toss racial epithets at the help and try to finger one another through their chinos? Too bad I'm telling this story out of order, because we actually did it the night before. Don Juan Dominguez and I took a moment to put in a plug for our favorite bizarrely-named presidential candidate:



All in all it was a beautiful weekend. You couldn't have ordered up better weather. Fiona and M-Yob(b?) arrived on Saturday in time for a church-basement Irish concert, and the neighbs and Ray got a chance to commune with nature:



I shook hands with Rudy Giuliani down on the ferry dock, and we got to listen again and again to the Ron Paul advocates make this compelling argument: RonPaulRonPaulRonPaulRonPaul. We got scolded by this lady on a bike for walking down the street on an island that has had no horseless carriages since 1898, and watched lots of stuffed shirts ride tandem bikes through horse poop, their quietly-striped ties flapping in the breeze like John McCain's combover.

In conclusion, my loved ones and I took some much-needed time away from our busy lives fretting about who will become president over a year from now to think about the things that really matter: