by Dave Peebles

Having stared fruitlessly for a while at my original uninspiring headline ("‘96 Solstice Party a Success"), I couldn’t help wondering how badly it would have to turn out before I’d be forced to describe it as a disaster. Supposing, for example . . .
that President Jim had been unable to find a turkey, and had tried to make do by chainsawing a gigantic Spam™ into the shape of a turkey. . .
and that Jim’s smoker-cooker had blown up, hurtling the flaming Spam™ into the yard behind his place where huge dogs lurk . . .
so that Jim had to clamber over the fence and engage in heroic battle to save the Spam™ from the dogs, who were trying to mate with it, and had escaped with his hide and the Spam™ only by surrendering his trousers . . .
and that the Spam™ had squirted out of Jim’s hand as he vaulted the fence once more, tumbled down the bank and into the little creek in his back yard . . .
and the little creek, still swollen from the recent floods, had swept the errant Spam™ into the neighbor’s yard, and beyond . . .
so that Jim had to dash with great, giant leaps from yard to yard, squeezing under numerous obstacles, snagging his underwear on more than one hurricane fence. . .
and then, moaning with despair, saw the Spam™ elude his grasp as it plunged into the culvert where the creek goes under Lakeway Drive. . .
and that on the other side a family of huge, homeless, ravenous rats pounced on it and began nibbling it all over with their wicked little yellow teeth. . .
until an entire rookery of raucous ravens descended on it, and snatched it from the maws of the indignant rats. . .
and had flown away with it, until forced by a maurading eagle to drop it into a steaming Bellingham Parks Dept. compost heap, from whence the eagle retrieved it, and, while Jim pleaded piteously with the merciless avian, soared off with it . . .
but that suddenly the eagle expired from having ingested starlings poisoned by fanatical Proposition 48 proponents, and thus dropped the Spam™ into Georgia Pacific’s sewage lagoon . . .
where Jim finally was able, with the aid of a big pointy stick, to spear the Spam™, by now glazed with a tough, resilient film of iridescent sublimates gurgling up demonically from the lagoon’s grotesque chemical reactions. . .
and that, having raided the club treasury to post bail after his arrest for trespass, indecent exposure, and suspicion of delivering a Controlled Substance™ to an underage endangered species . . .
he’d arrived later that evening at Bloedel-Donovan Park, only to realize he’d forgotten to pick up the key from Parks headquarters . . .
and that on trying to pry open a window, he’d set off an alarm as well as the sprinkler system. . . .
and that the club bank account was overdrawn by hundreds of dollars after posting bail for a second time. . .
and that he (and, as it turned out, everyone else) had forgotten to bring any plates, cups, hardware, or anything to drink except for antifreeze in a New Dawn Ultra™bottle. . .
and that the editor had hopelessly muddled the date, time, place, and potluck assignments. . .
so that only seven people were in attendance, and that they’d all arrived anywhere from forty minutes to two hours late, except for one who was a day early . . .
and that none of the seven were kayakers, but thought they were attending a Gregorian Karaoke Chant & UFO Abduction Recovery Group, which the Parks Dept. had accidentally scheduled for the same night . . .
and that all but one had brought the same dish, consisting of “Liver and Parsnip Surprise™” wrapped in Unhandy Wrap™, which melted in the microwave and fused with the unspeakable combination, thus permeating all with petroleum distillates while actually improving the flavor . . .
and that the other one brought instead a plate of sliced green persimmons, which are so astringent that someone who ate them required corrective surgery to unpucker his lips, and as a consequence started a litigation against the club . . .
and that all seven of these people were egregiously uncongenial, and spent the whole dinner ignoring each other except when engaged in heated exchanges of insults and fisticuffs and sporadic gunshots . . .
and that an ad-hoc coalition of camo-dressed Pioneer and Independence County terrorists burst into the pavilion and forced everyone to watch slides of their recent Lummi Island ferry hijacking that failed when an intrepid deck hand tricked them into driving off while in mid-channel. . .
and that these slides were all hopelessly out of focus, as well as all being upside down and underexposed . . .
and that the projectionist droned on and on for hours, mumbling unintelligible gibberish about each and every slide, interspersed with violent, nit-picking arguments with the other terrorists about the deeper significance of certain shots, all the while pointedly ignoring tear gas and pepper spray grenades fired into the pavilion by a Bellingham PD SWAT team, which mistakenly thought they were raiding an international news stand . . .
and that the last 85 slides had to be held up to the light for all to squint at after an especially problematic slide caught on fire and cracked the projector lens . .