With Bin Laden Dead, My Work Here Is Done

All Wonkette editors leave you eventually. Today, it is my turn. So this is my last post ever. What a ride, etc.! I've enjoyed making fun of politics for this dumb little blog. But now it is time to move on. I came to this site a 21-year-old kid. And now, I can safely say, I'm leaving it a 22-year-old child. Most importantly, we caught Osama bin Laden. You're welcome.

I've been pretty lucky as a writer. In high school, The Onion and Wonkette were two of my favorite things to read. And now I write for both of them. But my role here has evolved since I started with just a few posts a day as afternoon editor. Along the way, Ken somehow got me to wake up before noon for the first time in half a decade, and for quite a while I've had a full-time job here running the blog all day. And, on top of what I do elsewhere, that's impaired me from doing writing I want to do. Writing that would further my career.

I live in New York now, and I came here to get back into stand-up comedy and take a shot at writing for television, but I just haven't had the time. I should've quit Wonkette many months ago when I started to be able to support myself well enough financially otherwise. I still loved it though, even though I found myself routinely burned out on politics, something I apologize for, as it clearly came out in posts at times and was probably not very entertaining to read.

If I'm anything, I'm derivative; Newell "rules" that he talks about in his goodbye post — that's something I've thought about quite a bit too. At times, especially when I'm tired and have to somehow hit eight posts when there's no real news happening, I've broken some of my own. I don't like to make easy jokes. But I have. Kind of often. A few times I've made fun of people who really didn't deserve it, and when it was pointed out to me, I apologized. This sort of thing happens, even when you make a point of trying to stay true to yourself as much as you can, because you're human. Overall, though, out of all the 1,642 posts and countless thousands of jokes I've written here, I can say I'm proud of most of them.

I'd like to thank the Wonketteers, who have all been great, except for the fact that they routinely make funnier jokes than mine in the comments. Also: Josh and Riley, who have always been gracious and fun to work with. And editors past: Pareene, Newell, and Juli. And Jim's car and the cup in it in which I once vomited. You guys were great! And the roster of fine contributors it's been a pleasure to edit. And Ken, who grumpily led this stupid blog the whole time and been a great boss even though he pretty much hates doing this. In the wake of staff departures, he's made a tough decision about the future of the site. I'll let him tell that to you. [WAY TO BE MELODRAMATIC, JACK. WONKETTE IS NOT GOING ANYWHERE, AND THE EDITOR HAS NOT MADE ANY DECISION THAT COULD BE DESCRIBED AS "TOUGH." PUBLICATIONS CHANGE OVER THE YEARS, AND CHANGE HAS BEEN ROUTINE HERE SINCE THE SITE BEGAN IN LATE 2003. -- ED.]

But who cares, the rapture's tomorrow!

Where will I go from here? As I said, in addition to doing a bit more stuff with The Onion , I'm going to use the time to write some scripts and get back into stand-up. But I'll still be doing some freelance work. (E-mail me if you want to offer me something or, really, for whatever other reason: jackstuef[at]gmail.com. I have plenty of time to talk now!) I have a Twitter where you can see what I'm up to. And I just got the domain name for my website:  stuef.com. There will be some other stuff there soon, but for now I have a Tumblr you can follow that will probably be frequently updated and is now my OFFICIAL blog.

But please, don't concern yourself with me. THE RAPTURE IS TOMORROW.

(Also, please stop hating each other, America. And that means everyone: Muslims and gays are Americans too. Ideology, especially this kind, is an ugly thing. Thanks.)