Welcome, Baby Salmons!

Welcome to orientation! We know it was a difficult decision for all of you to choose to join us up here in the Northwest, but we’re so happy to see you. Note that when we say “happy”, we mean “outwardly noncommittal”, and that our faces will not change expression. We have long used the “waiting for the bank teller to call us up finally” resting face, as we’ve found that it allows us to approach life with the lack of emotional resonance we crave up here in our corner of the country. Who knows what we’re feeling in the inside!

Many of you have spent a weekend or maybe even a week up here before deciding to make a new life among the evergreens. Your former homes are hot and withered by the sun, or they’re permanently encased in ice. There are no other types of environments in the world, according to us Northwesterners.

Northwesterners. Norwesters? Norwesterners? I think it’s time we talk about our identifying noun. The American South has “Southerners” which, when spoken by a true Suthunuh, sounds great. Suthunuh. You can practically smell the mold growing in the walls of your stately-yet-run-down old mansion on a bayou somewhere. It has all of the must and grime and history one wants in a peoples’ name. I genuinely love it.

But “Northwesterners”? I know that “Southerner” is literally just a place name too, but “Northwesterner” sounds so much more… map-y. Like a word on a big poster-sized map that you stare at when you’re bored in Geography class in ninth grade because looking at it, with all of its frayed and torn edges and faded colors, is still more exciting than trying to feign interest in the droning teacher at the front of the room.

So I propose something new. Something more exciting and evocative of the culture of the area. Let’s see… how about “Salmons”? I think it’s decent. Salmon never really look like they’re listening to you, so that tracks. They stare dead-eyed as you talk to them about your inner fears, which is what the local Starbucks bastards do when I talk about my daily struggles. They’re so rude. I’m not going to leave any more tips.

Where was I? Oh yes, your orientation. Okay, if you reach under your seats, you’ll see our welcome box, and inside you’ll find a few essentials. Some of them will be out of fashion pretty quickly - the “Coexist” bumper sticker is now not quite as prevalent, but the “PNW” X-shaped sticker, with a little outline of a mountain or a tree in the bottom quadrant is still running strong! Good for it. Note that you’re only allowed to put it on one of the two legally allowed types of vehicles here - a Subaru of any sort, or a big black Suburban-type mom-dozer SUV. The latter should never, ever be driven off road.

Now that you have your official sticker, you need something that identifies you as a Salmon (see? It works!) when you’re away from your personal conveyance. So your box contains another important identity-granting item: your new loudly proclaimed political/social opinion-that-will-eventually-become-your-entire-personality.

We have a few choices for you, but you do have to stick with the one you choose, and stick with it no matter what new information you encounter. Let’s start with one of the old favorites: the “Capitalism-is-a-sham”, or CIAS. It’s basically what it says on the box - your new personality is centered around unceasing criticism of the idea of exchanging money for goods and labor. Now, don’t start researching some actual criticisms of the capitalist system - keep everything you say surface-level, preferably easily understood by a stoned college freshman. This personality is at its shiny, grating best while eating in a very exclusive restaurant or absurdly expensive Co-Op, surrounded by other privileged people who are also loudly proclaiming their distaste for the very thing they are enjoying at the moment. The biggest principle to remember in making this personality work for you is to forget any sense of irony you’ve ever developed. Decrying the idea that cars must be purchased and that the current economic system necessitates their very existence, all while driving a brand-new Subaru Outback? Throw in a pristine travel mug and you’ve got it made, baby Salmon.

That really sums it up - you need to be able to both cultivate an obnoxiously vocal persona based around hating buying things, and then completely base your identity around the things you wear, drive, eat, grow, and consume. There is no stricter dress code than the one adopted by the CIAS personality. If you are caught wearing so much as a sock from Abercrombie & Fitch or a pair of jeans from the Gap, you’re out. Pack your Birkies and start hiking, you fake.

You’ll also see “Capitalism-Hater’s” diametric opposite available for you, and it’s a fun one. Forget that you’re living in the nation’s epicenter of liberalism and free-thinking. Forget that you routinely (and secretly, you’ll see why) revel in the beauty of the nature all around you. You are now “Northwestern-Southerner-Confederate-Person”, or NSCP. You are going to have to develop a strangely twangy accent ASAP, and we have consultants who can help you with that. When pressed about your familial origins, just point vaguely in the direction of Alabama (there’s an app for that) and drawl something unintelligible. Others will think you’re talking about the American South, when you actually mean Concrete or Sedro-Wolley, or something similarly soggy and dependent upon Seattleite tourist money.

But the NSCP is so much more than an accent. You have to violently and loudly talk about how much you hate nature and air and water and anything not covered in diesel soot as often as you can, and revel in the idea of world completely covered by parking lots just outside a never-ending WalMart. Never mind that the people you avow to love - Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard - loved the outdoors and unspoilt nature. Oh, and that the “western” and “country” lifestyle is completely dependent on having a working, healthy planet. Boo. Facts are not your friends. Attitude is everything!

Oh, and if you don’t fit into either one of those categories, congrats! You are a fully formed human being with independent thoughts and opinions. I bet you would do just fine for a week without someone constantly reassuring you that you’re right. That’s something truly rare, and therefore you are no longer welcome in our corner of the United States.

That’s right: get out. Conformity is key here. It’s dark, it’s moist, and it’s depressing, and all anyone wants is to go to their designated politically-aligned grocery store (Co-Op? WalMart? Better get it right!) and see other people that look exactly like them, sound exactly like them, and give them that happy warm feeling of sameness that only a homogenous and passive-aggressively xenophobic group can provide.

Good. Glad we got those “iconoclasts” out of here. Who do they think they are? Now grab your respective beers - a hoppy IPA named “Bicycle Chain” for you CASI-types, and a Miller for you NSCPs - and start gloomily accepting your fate. It’s grey almost year-round here, baby Salmons. Time for your thoughts to cloud over as well.