Things I learned at the fair

First of all, if you don’t eat deep-fried food really at all, and then in one day you ingest roughly 8 pounds of it, you will be sorry. Very sorry. And so will everyone who has to be in the same room with you for the next 18 hours.

Secondly, if someone rams her SUV-sized wagon/baby stroller with the covered cab and the Big-Gulp-sized DRINK HOLDERS into your leg, and then you turn to look at her and she’s wearing fake boobs and a McCain/Palin button, she should realize that she’s lucky that you didn’t rip off her Ooompa Loompa-orange face, deep-fry it, sprinkle it with cinnamon and sell it to the Pachucos from El Monte. She should also recognize that the only thing that saved her was your realization that the laws of the LA County Fair means that you would have had to take her crew-cutted brats and raise them as your own. And readers, there isn’t enough Xanax in the world.

But, on the bright side, I learned that locally-brewed Lug Nut Lager is good for what ails ya.

Ditto pig racing.

Also, there’s not much wrong with bunnies, skinny-ass roosters with crazy feathered feet, Hampshire lambs, goats of any size or shape, and beautiful fawn-colored gentle Jersey cows.

And if they want to charge you $5.00 to slide down the 3-story monster slide on a hunk of burlap, it is well worth the price, readers. Well worth the price.

Because Angelinos don’t scare easily. If we did, blah blah blah insert joke about the 405 Freeway. Seriously, if we did, we’d still be locked in our houses. And perhaps this has something to do with the fact that we are overwhelmingly Democratic. Yes, finally scientific, or at the very least, pseudo-scientific research has discovered that contrary to popular belief (but right in line with mine), conservatives are, fundamentally, big ole’ scaredy pants.

But I knew this. And readers, make no mistake, so do the Republicans. Something the Republicans have always realized and exploited is their hunch that about 90% of the decisions that the voting public makes happen at the lizard brain level, and that voters then use their intellect, such as it may be, to justify that choice.

How else do you explain Hillary supporters voting for McCain/Palin? Given the chance to vote for a candidate whose positions are, for all practical purposes, identical to Hillary’s, they instead make vague noises about “not trusting” Obama and pledge their support to a duo that negates Hillary’s entire platform. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which their dislike of Obama can be described as anything other than skin deep.

But this is to be expected in a world where roughly half of us advocate the status quo, no matter how screechingly awful it may be, where half of us believe that a machine hack with a talent for sucking at the government teat is a “reformer,” and where a deregulation groupie, former Keating 5 influence peddler, and lobbyist lover can remake himself as someone who’s going to get tough on Wall Street and change the way government works.

There may be a sucker born every minute, but that sucker ain’t me. When the sign on the fake façade says that the giant steer is “alive”…

I know better. That big boy is long gone, my friends. He may have walked the earth long ago, but his body’s been stuffed full of saw dust, and his feet have been nailed to the plywood floor, and anyone who lays down a buck because they want to believe that he really does exist, deserves to kiss their moola goodbye.