Aside from the many farm animals and a variety of non-farm exhibits,
therewas a full-spectrum variety of people to see and observe at the Fair. I
wasstruck by the prevalence of tattoos. It used to be that carnival workers
anddirty bikers and ex cons and pirates sported tattoos. Now, it seems,
almosteveryone has a tattoo. Frankly, I find them shocking and offensive.
I couldn't agree more. People now seem to be hell-bent on being completely immune to being ashamed of anything. The more debased and degraded, the better. And if you make an observation like the one Herrick made (or like the one I'm making now), you'll see plenty of eye-rolling and hear plenty of talk about how judgmental you are. But the fact is that your average 16 year-old girl now looks very much like the guy who used to dismantle the Tilt-A-Whirl at the county fair when I was a lad.
Speaking of debased and degraded...I took MeeMaw out to eat this past Saturday. We decided to go to a Chinese restaurant down on the far end of Stone Drive. It's called China Star.
When we pulled into the parking lot and got out of the car, I glanced over at the car next to us. In the back seat was a dirty-looking fat fellow, holding a piece of stiff cardboard on which was a small pile of white powder. He was chopping the powder with a credit card. When he saw me approach his side of the car (I was opening the door for MeeMaw), he made the scantiest attempt to hide what he was doing (this consisted of his leaning forward just a bit), and then proceeded to produce a straw, insert it into his nostril, and snort up most of the powder. We went into the restaurant. After we were seated, guess who sauntered through the door, tank top a flappin', baggy shorts a-baggin', eyes glittering and nose all snorking like he had a sinus infection? He sat at a table near us, with a morbidly obese woman, another young man, and an infant. I kept wondering if the women knew this shaven-headed tub of guts sitting next to her child had just been outside snorting drugs.
By the time the evening was over, I felt like snorting drugs. There must have been so much MSG in that food, it wouldn't spoil if left overnight in the Gobi desert. By 9 pm, my head felt like it was in a vice, and I really didn't recover until about 24 hours later. Come to think of it, the place didn't look very clean, and the food was tasteless and carelessly prepared. This is the third incident with me getting a nasty headache after eating Oriental food. The first was about a year ago, the last time we ate at Tommy Thai's. Then back around Christmastime, we ate at Ming Garden, over near the new Food City. And now the swanky China Star. I think MSG is some really, really bad stuff (I've done a little research on it, and it's interesting to what lengths food processors will hide its presence in their products). And I plan to stay away from it. No more Chinese restaurants for me.
Oh, and by the way...MeeMaw and I were the only two people in the restaurant who didn't have a tattoo. We were also two of the very few who seemed to have bathed that week.
I love postmodern America.
