decidedlyodd

So, today Bev, Kinitra, Michael and I went to the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh. First, let me say I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much fried food in one place. Apparently, the fried twinkie and the fried candy bar are big hits at fairs across the nation these days, but there’s just something more odd about fried dill pickles. Well, open arrival Bev and I got some funnel cake, while Michael got a fried twinkie and Kinitra a wholesome sausage. That combined soon after with a fried Snickers bar comprised Bev’s breakfast.

After that we watched a pig race. But not just any pig race, a pig race where all the pigs’ names were puns on the names of NASCAR drivers and where there were biblical quotes posted on the side of the track. Ah yes, sometimes I forget what North Carolina is like outside the bubble that is the triangle. I think about this time, we started seeing all these people wearing Bush-Chaney stickers, which just hammered this home even more. Then Michael one a big purple dog playing some carnival game. Then we went on that ride where you sit in the swings and the thing goes up in the air and spins around.

Somehow we ended up inside of the building where they show the award winning vegetables. They had some big yams, big pumpkins and some bees. Then we found the place where they were giving out the Bush-Chaney stickers, which seemed to really upset Kinitra and Michael. Bev of course got a sticker from the kid (who couldn’t have been more than 12) who was handing them out, just to piss Michael and Kinitra off. Man, they really do need to get out of Chapel Hill-Carrboro more often into the scary world of the red state that is North Carolina. Eventually, they found their Kerry-Edwards stickers and were pacified. I think that’s the point where the woman running the Libertarian booth (who was holding a baby) trying to talk to us. Unfortunately (for her and us) she had no stickers, so walked away briskly.

Perhaps most disturbing part of this whole sticker ordeal and repeated numerous times in other mediums at the fair, was the prominence of confederate flags. There were a bunch of seemingly ordinary people with stickers of said flag, but we never actually saw who was handing them out. The most amusing confederate flag instance was that there was this stand selling these (for lack of a better word) paintings, where it would say “John & Jane Forever” above various images, one of which was a confederate flag. I mean, what better way to declare the permanance of your love with the symbol of an entity which only really existed for a whopping four years? On the way out, there was some redneck kid wearing a confederate flag t-shirt who was trying to explain to these African-American girls why they shouldn’t be offended. Uh ya.