I WANT A PIECE OF COW!

I want a steak. I want an effing hamburger. I want a piece of cow! And make it a good piece! ... No tripe.

Just kidding.

Well, not entirely. Today was kind of stressful because of work and school. I've been up since six o'clock this morning working on a stupid response paper that I started three days ago. In my head it all made sense, but trying to put it on paper was not working. And so the paper was late AND it was crap, which made me very angry at myself. And then I had forgotten about a piece of campus bureaucratic BS that I had to turn in today and so after turning in my paper immediately began working on that. And now I have to finish grading papers, and I have a feeling that will take me until at least 12:30 tonight (or this morning-- I worked 3rd shift for years and still can't get that straight) if not later. Plus, I have some in-class writing from Thursday I have to comment on.

I know I have no one to blame for this but myself. I totally should not have gone for those walks in the park this weekend.

Actually, yes, I should have. They made me feel really good. (My psychologist would be so proud right now. Ha!)

Anyway, with today's stress I finally took a break to decide what I wanted to eat. Well, what I wanted to eat was a hamburger...or a steak...or a philly cheesesteak. And I thought about it. And I salivated a little bit. And I got my car keys.

And I put my car keys down, got out the romaine lettuce from the refrigerator and made a Caesar salad with lots of croutons. And I ate the whole damn thing. And when I was done, I washed my dishes, put them away, and grabbed my car keys.

And then I put my car keys down, opened the freezer, took out a bag of frozen seasoned potato wedges and dumped some in a baking dish and prepared to make cheese fries.

Eating vegetarian does not always mean eating healthy. Hey, a potato is a vegetable, right?! But, at least I'm eating vegetarian. Everyone's gotta have a release, right?

If you don't understand my Liz Lemon reference, you must click here.

A Fair is a Veritable Smorgasbord, orgasbord: Part 2

(This was supposed to be posted when the fair actually happened, but not only am I a terrible blogger, I'm now gainfully employed. So that takes up a lot of my valuable time. I'm posting it anyway despite the fact that I ended up abbreviating it just for the sake of time. New Year's resolution: be a better blogger.)

If my first day at the fair was about animals and weird pop culture sightings, my second day was all about the food. As soon as we walked in we headed straight for the food booths. Collectively we consumed:
-Fried mac and cheese bites. Not bad. Pretty much like mac and cheese with crunchy topping.
-Deep fried mashed potatoes. Not so great. Very bland, despite the fact they had bacon bits in them.
-Deep fried pecan pie. Pretty tasty! A nice, chewy dough on the outside and the inside got all melty.
-Chicken gyro. Disgusting. Bad call on my part, because there's no way it would've been good. For one thing it was covered in nacho cheese. That should tell you all you need to know.
-A whole dill pickle for 50 cents. Love pickles, love the price, end of story. And they were handing out scratch and sniff pickle stickers that really did smell like pickles.
-Hand-cut fries. So wonderful and and salty and greasy, the way a good fry should be. So much better than the ribbon fries from the night before.
-Krispy Kreme Burger. I didn't actually try this one, but my friend did. He ate the whole damn thing and said it was amazing. 2 doughnuts, a fried egg, a burger--it should come as no surprise that Paula Deen has her own recipe for the Kripsy Kreme Burger.

Templeton would be proud.

In between stuffing out faces, we took in the sights.
The genetically mutated animals. Personally, I think it's really nice that they call the animals amazing and ask for them to be loved. Cyclops pigs need love too.
The giant, prize winning produce. My friend asked how they grow that big and apparently it's a type of seed that produces big pumpkins. Learn something new everyday!
The prize winning livestock. That is a really pretty cow.
And the food stand vendors. The guy that worked here looked like Santa Claus. It makes sense he'd work fair candy stands during his off season.

The one thing I regret (0ther than the chicken gyro) was getting on a spinny ride after eating my fries. Really, really stupid. I couldn't even enjoy it because my friend kept talking about how she was gonna barf, which in turn made me focus on my own nausea. Luckily, neither one of us did.

I came, I saw, I ate. Until next year!

A Fair is a Veritable Smorgasbord, orgasbord: Part 1

(This was supposed to be posted when the fair actually happened, but not only am I a terrible blogger, I'm now gainfully employed. So that takes up a lot of my valuable time. I'm posting it anyway because [believe it or not] I put a lot of work into it. New Year's resolution: be a better blogger.)

A lot can be learned from E.B. White's children's classic Charlotte's Web. The wonder of friendship. Everyone is special and contributes something to their society. The beauty and cruelty of nature. And the gluttonous wonder that is the State Fair. Whenever the fair rolls around my mind immediately goes to the fair scenes in Charlotte's Web, particularly the scenes from the animated movie where Templeton fantasizes about the food he will eat and when he actually runs around collecting, ingesting, and gleefully rolling around in scraps from the fair. For me, this encompasses the fair: it's trashy, it's flashy, and sorta bad for you, but there are these little crumbs of joy (and sometimes bewilderment) to be found. It's a smorgasbord of sensory overload that can leave you feeling elated or sick to your stomach. Or both.

It's fair time once again, and for some reason I agreed to go not once, but twice. There's a lot that I like about the fair, and some things that I don't. And even with the things that I enjoy, I recognize how strange or downright wrong they can be outside of the context of the fair. Because it really is this ephemeral experience, and the things that make up "The Fair Experience" make total sense in context, and yet somehow still don't. For example: Anything deep fried. It's perfectly acceptable to eat, and to want to eat deep fried things at the fair. It's almost a given. And yet it's still considered absurd, and we know it's not healthy to eat deep fried candy bars, but it's just this one time a year, so it's okay. And despite the fact that it's the same rides and same vendors in the same places, the experience is always a little different. So, here are my two days at the fair.

Saturday I went with Luann and the Count. As soon as we walked through the gates things got weird. From a distance I could see that there was this guy handing things out to people, and not liking to make eye contact with people who are handing things out, I turned my head as we walked by, pretending to be interested in renting a Rascal. Awkward crisis averted, I then heard the guy say, "FREE HARLEQUIN NOVEL! GET YOUR FREE HARLEQUIN NOVEL!" Um, what was that? Free Harlequin novel, you say? There's no way that is for real. They are handing out free harlequin novels at the fair? What is this, Christmas? But it was real.
Based off the cover (and blurb on the back) I think it's about a woman who falls in love with a cowboy. The only thing that could make this better if it was called A Fair to Remember and was about a woman that had an affair with a carnie or a side-show freak. But I'm not even sure what the title is. I think it's Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch, which sounds like a cowboy-fied Nancy Drew. Who ever okay'ed this cover is crazy, because why would you make the title so difficult to see? Forget it, Jake; it's free harlequin romance and mystery town.

Anyway, we continued walking and first stop was the food. A steak sandwich for the Count, ribbon fries for myself, and a giant turkey leg for the ever classy Luann. She ate it like an ANIMAL. A classy animal. But what really amused me was that while we were waiting in line to get her leg, I happened to look over and see a can of Faygo orange soda sitting on the edge of the grill. Talk about an Easter egg for the juggalo fans! In my mind, one of the guys working the grill was either a juggalo, a fan of Faygo, from Michigan, or D all of the above. What are the ODDS?

We decided that we'd go in search of the livestock next, but on the way we got sidetracked by more food. Deep fried Reese's cups for me; deep fried 3 Muskateer's for the Count. The Count's was pretty good as it was nice and melty. Mine on the other hand was meh. Too much dough; not enough Reese's. So I ate the peanut butter out of the middle LIKE AN ANIMAL.

We took yet another pit-stop and decided to pay a dollar to see Big Willie, the 3 foot wide, 13 foot long gator. The signs out front said "ALIVE" and truthfully it wasn't false advertising because he was once alive.
The pennies thrown into the cage make me laugh. "Here lies Big Willie. He was once the king of the swamp, and now he is a wishing well. RIP, Big Willie." Honestly, I don't know what we expected. And even though this isn't what I expected, I'm not really disappointed because it's so stupid and ridiculous. They even had ambiance in the form of little gnomes or something carved into cypress knees along with snake skins and a tarantula specimen. It's like we're in the BAYOU! or the EVERGLADES! I can almost feel oppressive heat and itching mosquito bites.

Anyway, we found the animals soon after that. Feeding them was one of the highlights of the fair. I could feed animals as long as they would let me. The Count made a crack about how a carrot diet might affect their digestion, but I figure they will at least have good eyesight. And they have so many great animals! Goats, capybaras, kangaroos, cows, buffaloes, camels, (when I went last year with the Professor and Waldorf I politely asked a camel if I could touch their hump. They seemed cool with it, and their hump was so soft and lovely.) And the alpacas! Oh, do I love an alpaca. With their fuzzy looking fur and tufts of hair on their heads. Best. Ever. I was truly giddy, as evidenced by my blurry animal photos.
After leaving the petting zoo we stumbled across this:

The Michael sightings have begun. When I first saw this I thought I was hallucinating, because What. The. Fuck. Even that polar bear behind him is like, "what is this, I don't even..." Can you just imagine the thought process of the people that decided to make this? "I know, let's make Michael dolls! The Michael fans will be all over it. Everybody loved This Is It. And it's been a year, so it's time! It won't be creepy at all. Great idea. Likes this." After realizing that this was in fact real and not a product of my deep-fried, dark and weird mind it started to make sense in a way. Of course this exists. How can it not? This is Michael filtered through endless lenses of pop culture, and we all saw that Michael had become a cartoonish figure. He had become a persona, the epitome of fame itself. He was materialistic consumption in the form of hit singles. He wasn't Michael Jackson, a person, he was Michael Jackson: the King of Pop. In a way, this is more Michael Jackson than the real Michael Jackson ever was.

And now for something completely different: arts and crafts!
You know, I'm starting to think the fair is the ultimate celebration of pop culture. Yes, that is a gourd painted to look like a snork. A SNORK! I'm always amazed when people remember The Snorks, because they were like an aquatic, low-budget Smurfs. But that gourd really does make a perfect snork, not to mention the amazing yarn hair.

I'm not sure if that's a shark eating fish, or a shark making chum, but either way it's pretty awesome.

There was so much other stuff in addition to the gourds. Lawn gnomes, sock monkeys, felted turkeys, fudge, a Lego stormtrooper and T-Rex...pretty much anything you could imagine was there. Soon after that we decided to watch the fireworks and leave. But I'd be back the next day...