I'm sick! But, what a picture to make me happy!

Who could be mad, sad, or sick when Don Dare is hamming it up for the Cub Scouts? Thanks to my bro-in-law Brian for the shot!

About Carnies, Carnivals, and the Hot Dog Nation in which we live...

Let it be known that I have always (and probably always will) loved carnivals. I love the smells of greasy food, sweat, ride grease, and quiet despair and fear. I love the cheesy rides and the crappy games that allow you to win a cartoon animal toy stuffed with sawdust and broken dreams. I love the actual food - yes, even the food. I even once designed a carnival of my own (will upload the pictures at a later date). My father remarked that it was highly probable my family possessed significant amounts of carny blood. To be sure, he did not elaborate on why he felt assured of this particular fact. Yet, he seemed very sure of it, all the same. With this in mind, I recently went to the Tennessee Valley Fair, eager to be amongst my people. I had not been there since, probably, 1986. However, this most recent visit was not for fun. Instead, I volunteered to aid Boy Scout Troop 58 in their fund-raising job of cleaning the fairgrounds after the park closed.

I watched this video, hoping to show something of the fair's true nature. And, to be sure, the reporter's views were not unfounded. But, despite her rosy assessment of the Fair's participants, I witnessed a myriad of strange and disturbing sights, starting at around midnight as the people began to leave.

I could go into graphic details about the trash we picked up under the bleachers at the tractor pull area. I could rail about the dirty diapers I picked up in the parking lots. I could shock you with tales concerning the carny village we walked through at 1:30 in the morning. But the most disturbing thing for me was the amount of wasted junk food littered throughout Chilhowie Park. The United States IS the Hot Dog Nation, as we picked up (conversatively) close to 1000 half-eaten corndogs (funnel cakes...now that's another story entirely). It is little wonder that the rest of the world hates us, what with our wastes and our waists (I know I'm not Charles Atlas, but I can touch my toes and see my crotch without looking in a mirror). The amount of food lying in the dirt under the bleachers there was appalling. Lord help the bacon-clad men from my last post here - the tractor pull / rodeo crowd would probably eat them alive, literally.

Maybe we should reconsider cannibalism a la Soylent Green. We wouldn't waste food, it would minimize our food production costs, and we would only have to sweep up crumbs at the fair (instead of picking up half-chewed up corn dogs). Something to think about...

Another Fallen Friend - A Lament and Eulogy

Yet another casualty has been suffered in the Taylor technology team. My beloved wristwatch, Stefan, was brutally assaulted and suffered the foulest of violations by an errant stop sign pole. The glass shattered into a million pieces and poor Stefan's arms stopped moving. And you know the initial culprit? MY BATHROOM of TECHNOLOGICAL DOOM!

I accidentally dropped Stefan about three months ago. He fell onto the floor and landed face flat with a perfect smack right on the hard tile. Like a buttered piece of toast landing on the kitchen floor. I muttered (actually, roared) "Son of a Bitch!" and was extremely distressed to see a flake of glass dislodged inside the watch face. But Stefan had always been a trooper, and so I just assumed that he would be just fine, albeit with the scars of his wild ride through life with me. Who knew we would encounter Mr. Road Sign Pole? Apparently, Timex's new motto should be "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking...until you let Mike wear it for longer than 3 to 4 years." sniff

I am now in the market for a new watch. But I will never forget Stefan. How he comforted me with his Indiglo in the middle of the night when I awoke from a fit of the Delirium Tremens! How he was with me, like my cell phone, during many hallmarks of my life! Getting my MA finished, getting a girlfriend, getting my hair cut, passing my foreign language exam for my PhD, learning cross stitching - an amazing panoply of events that could probably be summed up in a Hallmark card. But this will have to do:

Enjoy!