The Fair

Fair point. For a country famous for wasting stuff we sure do like to trot out our old bullshit in a shiny new wrapper. For example we are currently having a government shut down. We had one before back in the 90's. Several in the 80's. It's politics as usual. This is not to be confused with the government default which will happen in a few weeks if we don't raise the debt ceiling. Mmmm! default. It also has nothing to do with the sequester, which congress passed on condition of raising the 2011 debt ceiling which cut last years budget and will continue to cut budgets by taking an ax to each of them when the pinheads in congress can't agree on a budget that doesn't raise the new debt ceiling. Wow, that was quite a mouthful, but doesn't it all sound vaguely familiar? Blah blah doom, blah blah screw them, blah blah.... blah. Just the same old stuff over and over again. Hell it's even in the bible.

It's Ecclesiastes, you have to believe Ecclesiastes. That's a bible top 10. and look! a fern!

Well none of this sat well with me. What do you mean it's not a concern? Just because it sounds like the same old bulls#@t doesn't mean it is the same of bulls@#t....

This doesn't prove anything...

... but even if it is the same old bulls#@t that doesn't mean it isn't harmful. Isn't it possible that the ruling class in this country wants us to think everything is the same old thing so we all; left, right, and me; think 1) that whatever is going on confirms our deeply held beliefs 2) the only side that is right is our side. In this way continues the status quo with profit and political safety trumping actual solutions. I had to defeat this paradigm at all costs so for you I took the ultimate risk...

... I went with a friend to the Topsfield Fair. Oldest state fair in the country. Yes, I do things so you won't have to. I haven't been to the fair in over 20 years, and I loved it as a kid...

Cider donuts hot out of the grease! Yeah baby!

... after all what's not to love. Giant pumpkins, fair food, crafts, prize winning farm products, cute animals, fair food, a colorful carnival midway, manly demonstrations of work skills, ladyly( I know this is not a word) demonstrations of domestic skills, fair food... it is all things America enhanced with deep fat frying...

Like donuts, only worse for you. Mmmm worse!

... but where do they get the Twinkies now that the unions have selfishly destroyed the Hostess Baking Company? I'm guessing the Gov'ment has space people in Roswell New Mexico churning them out ( talk about illegals) in order to keep real Americans at their proper weight. In any event I enlisted a friend and trekked off to Topsfield MA to see if the more things change the more they stay the same.

$15! Per person. Just to get in. Throw in another $5 for the car and we were already down $35 before we even got close enough to get a whiff of deep fried anything. They didn't even hand you a guide to the fair. The Lowell Folk Fest was free and they were handing out colorful schedules enhanced with a map of downtown Lowell, but that was a bunch of crunchy granola hippy pukes grooving on polka music and sea shanties. I had hoped that my admission money would have included a cup of powder sugar covered deep fried Crisco but I would have to weight (irony intended) for the goodness to start until I was inside. After all the whole thing was about American farm traditions...

Yep, heading out to the north 40 just like in colonial days.

WTF? How do you milk that thing? More importantly why would you strap little kids to its' back? You could go to you tube and type in "rampaging elephant" but I already did it for you. Domesticated American farm animal or highly intelligent, often angry and exploited killing machine? I report you decide. Still I seem to vaguely remember non farm type animals at the fair during my youthful visits and I don't remember the ticket prices so the old was still new for now.

Still if you have ever seen a video of the way elephants are trained and what the can do when they decide they don't like it you might have second thoughts, or third thoughts, about strapping your kid to one. Fortunately the great white shark petting tank was closed so we went to look at the actual farm animals. Now as an admitted meat eater I have to say it would be hypocritical of me to go all PETA on you right here, but a quick tour of the animal pens left me a little flummoxed...

Why there's almost enough room to turn around.

... I mean I don't want to be judgmental here but...

... living, eating, sleeping and pooping in a wire mesh box the size of toaster oven pretty much has to suck. At least the cow gets to be murdered so I can have some tasty hamburgers, but Bugs? What sets him free? Does anybody besides me even eat rabbit? Show of hands. I didn't think so. So a coat maybe? or a quilt? I know, I know, no judgements. So off to the produce barn and worlds biggest pumpkin.

Not the worlds biggest and technically not a pumpkin.

 Sadly it is actually a giant gourd so us rubes were being sold a bill of goods which come to think of it is a fairly ongoing common and old school theme. For the scientifically obsessed there were a couple of big arsed real pumpkins to look at. Both of them had been lying around past their expiration point. In fact the whole place had the fetid smell of a compost heap. Because that's what happens when you pick a vegetable, pin a ribbon on it, and then leave it out for a week with no refrigeration...

...because wasting food in the name of prizes is always OK

... I guess onions and potatoes are OK but tomatoes? Broccoli? Cilantro? I'm no farmer but I'm pretty sure the latter 2 shouldn't be brown and the tomato shouldn't ooze and smell like my armpit. Here's a suggestion, after awarding the ribbons couldn't they just go to the supermarket and replace the veggies every day with fresh? I would be too dumb to know the difference and you could give the day old ones to a soup kitchen or homeless shelter. Or maybe put a number on the back of that $15 admission ticket and have a lucky winner get to take the veggies home with them at the end of the day. I myself would rather have the Crisco and powdered sugar, but who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth. Wasting food? Gratuitously? Check and check still the same old crap.

Of coarse there was the midway...

Ooo...sparkly!

...and while it is possible that the rides are overpriced compared to the good old days I have no point of reference to make that claim. One thing that hasn't changed is the midway games with their weighted bottles, narrow slightly tilted basketball hoops, and everybody wins a prize games where the prize would have been cheaper if you just went to the dollar store and bought it for yourself. Then I saw the holy grail, something completely new and different... the Fair trade pavilion, Wo Hoo!

There are new things under the sun. We aren't in an endless cycle of repainting the same barn. Pleased that a small smattering of awareness for small time 3rd world farmers crushed by unfair government subsidies to first world conglomerates like Conagra and Monsanto I strode up to the door of that brie smelling, eastern elite, guilt inducing barn and marched inside to...

 ...That was the first booth I came to. There was swifters, there was replacement windows, there was car detailing... I threw up a little... there was insurance and window treatments for your replacement windows and big screen TVs and a place to lay your soul when it dies. It wasn't about "fair trade" it was about Fair( Topsfield Fair) trade. Why anyone would buy replacement windows at a state fair I'll never know, but I guess you had to buy something at the fair since you couldn't buy homemade jam, locally sourced honey, or a bag of vegetables. This was the big change? The new thing that was going to replay the old with a shiny coat of consumer paint? I wanted to cry. I always loved the fair...

... but that was it! I loved the fair when I was too young or too uninformed to think that animals might not like spending the day in a tiny box or that the rides were overprice. I wasn't smart enough to know that the arcade games were rigged or that government farm practices in America contribute to hunger in Africa and Asia. The Fair was obviously just the same

old thing with hot tubs replacing the homemade jam. Fine. I was the new thing. Me and everyone else that struggles with loving the things we used to love before we knew better.

It doesn't have to be more of the same old thing. And we can still have fried dough... Mmmm! Fried dough!

Yeah!

It's easy as long as you ignore the mess.

1. Buy some pizza dough at the supermarket.
2. Add enough oil to a cast iron skillet to come 1/3 up the side.
3. Divide the dough into 4ths per 1 pound package of dough.
4. Flour your hands and press out each piece into a rough circle 1/4 inch thick.
5. When the oil starts to shimmer toss in a small dough ball, if it sizzles you're ready to rock.( you could use a thermometer, don't touch the bottom of the pan, to see when it reaches 350 degrees.)
6. Make sure your stove fan is running on high.
7. Lay in a dough circle.
8. 2 minute, flip with tongs.
9. Place newspaper or paper towels on your counter, cover with a wire cooling rack. You should probably do this before you start not as step #9.
10. Place the golden circle on the rack, douse with cinnamon sugar and eat with a Woodchuck hard cider. Coffee or milk if you are a sissy.
11. If you don't want to eat as you go you can hold them in a 200 degree oven until you have cooked  all dough circle. Just wait on the sugar until you take them out of the oven for consumption.
12. Butter them first, Mmmm butter, if you want them to be extra bad for you.