Chuck Wagon dog food

I think that might be a skunk on her right thigh.

One does encounter the frightening side of humanity at the Ohio State Fair- or any other public festival-type gathering. It wasn’t as alarming as I have observed in years past, or perhaps I’m getting a bit jaded to the freak show. The Marion Popcorn Festival is coming up, which makes the Fair look positively tame. I’ve also found that it’s a lot easier to take pics with the Note 3 than with a traditional camera because people just think you’re texting or something when you are really taking pics. Maybe that’s mean of me, but I run even worse than I fight.

Toasty tobacco flavor!

I wonder if Red here is disabled or if she just figured it was worth $10 to ride around in a Mart Cart all day. I think she weighs less than 300#, so they probably don’t let her ride the cart in Walmart. She is setting a lovely example for her (grand?) son though. Even while she is lecturing another offspring (?) spousal unit (?) on the dangers of wearing just socks without shoes in public.

Told ya ta wear some shoes, dumbass!

The dog had Barbie dolls with better hair than poor Red. I say “the dog” because Suzie, the deranged Dachshund my parents had when I was little, appropriated certain of my sisters’ toys for her own personal use- when she was done eating their socks and underwear, that is. Suzie didn’t like very many people, but she adored me. Go figure. I never had a problem with her, but my sisters couldn’t touch her, or get their toys back once Suzie decided she liked them.

I figured, with Suzie, possession was 9/10. If Suzie wanted it who was I to stand in her way? Although I could do anything with Suzie, including getting toys back from her, I wasn’t about to do that for either of my sisters. I liked Suzie better than either of them.

Shorts and cowboy boots?

I saw a number of people at the Fair wearing cowboy boots with shorts. I don’t know why this particular fashion choice bugs me, but it does. At least she’s not wearing Daisy Dukes. And she was nice enough to cover up her back fat, unlike this unfortunate girl:

Girl, you need a rear view mirror.

Perhaps I am being a bit harsh on fashion choices- after all I dress for comfort most of the time, and especially so if I am going to be traipsing along outside in the heat. It wasn’t as hot as it normally is which may have cut down on the freak factor this year.

The talking Smokey the Bear is freaky though.

When I was a little kid I always wondered about Smokey’s preoccupation with forest fires. I knew too many kids who were only too happy to fry ants with magnifying glasses (yes, I did do that) or set stuff on fire with Zippos (Steve-o,,,) I always wondered why Smokey talked about not playing with matches, but never mentioned Bics or Zippos or magnifying glasses.

Not a flashlight substitute, either.

Then again, central Ohio is a swamp and it’s usually raining, or there’s some form of precipitation at least every other day or so, so wildfires generally don’t happen, and when they do, they generally don’t spread much. However, the perpetual dampness never stopped the slumlords from burning down non-profitable rental properties to the point that in certain locales it is expensive and well-near impossible to get home owner’s or business insurance. There’s always accelerants, you know, if you really want something to burn. Too bad the ass-pilots that use them usually have very little understanding of forensic science. They can tell you doused the place with gasoline before you torched it.

Smokey seems a little quaint and outdated for these times. Nobody wants to intentionally burn down forests, because you can’t get insurance on a random forest. Maybe Smokey should be talking about arson? “Hey, kids, only you can decide not to burn down your non-profitable rental properties, ” or, better yet: “Hey, kids, don’t drop your crack pipe and burn down your crack house!” Especially if you just spilled gasoline on the floor.

Mi underwear – Su underwear?

Somehow, some things just aren’t meant to be shared.

I haven’t thought about poor Suzie in a long time. She was always in fragile health and died at the relatively young age of 7 years. I believe her early demise was largely due to being willing to eat vast quantities of anything, including socks, underwear, marbles, Army men, and things my mother served that were sort of supposed to be food. Mom’s cooking was rather disastrous a good deal of the time, so there was a lot of food left over to go with Suzie’s Chuck Wagon.

On second thought, maybe we should have just eaten the Chuck Wagon.

mmmm…Meaty! in a meat by-product-y sort of way…

Or, if you’re poor and don’t have a dime for the pay toilet, just slide your skank ass under the door.

I haven’t seen a pay toilet since the Hills store got closed down in either 1981 or 1982. Perhaps someone finally realized that the skinny girls simply slipped under the door and used the john for free, and the fat ones just dropped their deuces on the drain in the middle of the floor. That was something very nasty to walk in on- someone’s steaming pile sitting on the drain, reeking and drawing flies. Acck. Back then I was one of the few who neither being waif-thin, nor coordinated enough to make it under the door, would generally either scrounge a dime somewhere or wait until I got home. I am proud to say that I never stooped to dropping a deuce on the floor drain.

‘Tis sad if my list of greatest accomplishments has to include refraining from crapping on the floor.

There are certain odious advertising jingles that tend to stick on one’s head. The Shower-to-Shower jingle has to be the all time most annoying of all time. I do have to appreciate the fact that in this particular commercial they gave the Woman Who Forgot To Sprinkle her very own private dinghy so she wouldn’t stink up the yacht for everyone else. That’s compassion for you. It’s better than what the poor People Who Remembered to Sprinkle had to endure in the elevator with the Non-Sprinkler du jour. (I should not be old enough to remember these commercials…)

Today for some reason someone mentioned Colt 45 Malt Liquor, which I’ve always thought to be glorified cheap beer, but then I’m not a drinker, and I’m certainly not a beer drinker, (I think all beer tastes like earwax smells) so how would I know if it’s tasty or if it’s pisswater, or whether or not white people do actually drink it? So I had this lovely little tune running through my head for half the morning.

The list of absolutely horrible 70’s and 80’s commercials is virtually endless. The good point about them is even when they were horrible, they were at least original. Today there is such a dearth of creativity in advertising- they just dig up an old Heart song and try to make it apply to the damned Swiffer thing that isn’t worth two shits to pick up dog hair- or anything else for that matter.

I blame the popularity of free love and way too much LSD for this one, even though there’s (thankfully!) no jingle in it: 1970’s Chuck Wagon commercial. They sure did make that dog’s hallucination look real and they sure did make that dog food look tastier than most of Taco Bell’s menu. Despite the originality and creativity of this ad, I don’t think that particular brand of pressure-cooked lips and assholes and other meat by-products we humans would rather not know exist is still being marketed. I am sure that Chuck Wagon, like every other cheap dog food of that era, was the end result of the final disposition of diseased livestock. I still wonder if it was the Chuck Wagon or Mom’s dreadful cooking that led to Suzie the Dachshund’s untimely death. Suzie loved the Chuck Wagon- but she also loved socks and underwear crotches, and Mom’s mashed potatoes with the big uncooked lumps and big black burnt flakes, so Suzie wasn’t exactly a picky eater. Most dogs aren’t terribly picky.

I have always liked Dr. Pepper and Diet Dr. Pepper, but this 70’s Dr. Pepper Commercial is almost enough to make one shoot oneself in the head to end the insanity. It seems sort of Communist too- I can imagine the Soviet version: You must all be Peppers!

Sometimes when I’m bored I find it entertaining to look at all the crap I don’t need. Lighted slippers? If you’re that freaking blind turn on the light.

Jerry has decided I need to go with him and his sister to the fair next week. I enjoy going to the fair, but I hope that the current stygian heat tones down a notch- hopefully somewhere below 90 degrees- otherwise they might end up having to call the squad on me. I don’t tolerate heat worth a damn, and I’m pretty much confined to the Great Indoors when the temperature is much above 85. So I really hope it cools down a bit.

I bet the chickens would be happier if it cools off some too.

Better yet, just leave me in the refrigerated room with the butter cow.

I think that most young kids in the Central Ohio area- the Columbus metro area especially- only get to see farm animals at the fair. I don’t know if that’s entirely a good thing. Even though I grew up in the middle of nowhere, I did live in town and therefore never really had hands-on experience dealing with livestock- except for the heifers in Taco Bell and Wal Mart, but that’s not quite the same thing.

The only animals that (miraculously) didn’t scare the bejeezus out of me as a child were dogs. Big dogs, small dogs, even dogs that other people branded as “mean,” never gave me any trouble. I got in trouble with Dad one time for climbing the fence and cuddling up to a neighbor’s Rottweiler, but the “mean” dog didn’t bother me at all. He was quite friendly toward me, and the other kids were too afraid to mess with me when I was in the dog pen with the Rottie.

No problem at all with the dogs. If only other humans were as easy to interact with…

ELYSIANHUNTER, ALWAYS INCITEFUL:

Because comedy is the flipside of tragedy

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Let’s All Go to the Fair (‘Kay…) as If I Had Faith in Humanity to Begin With

Monumental Moments in Advertising, More Crap I Don’t Need, and Let’s Go to the Fair!