At the county fair
I played hooky from work today, partly to help my wife deal with the mysterious symptoms her car has been exhibiting, partly to go to the Rogers flea market, and partly because it was fair time and I wanted to use the whole weekend for farm work.
The only problem with county fairs is that they are COUNTY fairs, i.e., they have some relationship with government. The animals were wonderful, the rabbit sandwich and sugar-free Klondike bar were tasty, and we even found out what to do about my brush-hog eating PTO pins. But our interactions with government were dodgy at best.
First there was the visit to the county health department. I was idly gazing at their table full of propaganda, and gazing back from a pamphlet was this gorgeous little moppet who had doubtless taken over all JonBenet's gigs, with the politically-proper Heinz 57 features (could be of almost any race, but certainly of no one race). And the title of the pamphlet was: "Food stamps make America stronger." Needless to say, I about horked. The publication did not make a single argment backing this assertion, but instead told us how to do it. (An argument could be made, though personally I think that encouraging weak links to remain weak does not make the chain of "us" stronger.) I started fantasizing out loud about the brochure "Cheese-sucking: your patriotic duty", and Darling Wife pulled me away from there.
Then we visited both branches of the American Socialist Party. Rusty considers herself a Democrat, though a Democrat "in recovery", and I nourish this vain hope that the Republicans will someday match their actions to their rhetoric. The Pugs gave Rusty a fan, and I got a little book that will tell me whether Fran DeWine's cooking is as bad as her husband's voting (at first glance, it doesn't appear to be). Rusty politely gushed about Janet Esposito, the county auditor, who reduced our taxes. Then we went across to the 'Crats. "Look, they're giving out something useful: nail files," said Darling Wife cheerfully. "That's so Democrat women have something to do during sex," I said loudly....getting me pulled away again.
Then there was the site put together by the organization of townships, and each township had its own display (there was also free drinking water, the main reason I was there.) Windham's was much lamer than the others. It wasn't so much that nothing ever happens there, but that no thought was taken in putting it together; it was just a mass of unidentified (and mostly badly-shot) photos. And there was an aerial map of the county, and this woman talked about how her son works for some company called EROS (lovely, that...NOT) which analyzes satellite data for the government. "He says they can read your licence plate from up there. So if they can do that, why can't they find Osama?" The truth hit my brain and mouth at the same time: "Because Osama doesn't use licence plates." That was a big camel-jockey joke to them, but that wasn't the point...which was that if you wear big horking tags identifying which driver you are, you can be identified; that's the whole point of that little exercise.
We had fun in spite of politics...which is more and more the way I try to live.
Comments