corny dogs

I was sick yesterday morning, then spent yesterday afternoon wrestling with my hard drive. (Around 1 p.m., it decided that installing a new operating system was far too much stress. As the afternoon went on, I could actually see files disintegrating, one by one: old email, a web page from 1996, my resume, etc. I’d like to publicly pledge my first-born child to the very nice people who make Disk Warrior, which officially saved my ass.) And of course, Wednesday brought news of some of my coworkers getting laid off.
So there was a heavy burden on last night’s trip to the state fair with my friend Natacha to lift me out of the doldrums. Luckily, it worked. Observations:
– I was very disappointed to learn that, according to the lady in the coupon booth, there was no butter sculpture at the fair this year because “they couldn’t finish it in time.” I have this horrible vision of an aged butter artisan — probably a Swedish grandpa from Wausaukee, Wisconsin — crouched over some half-human form, burying his head in his hands, bawling his eyes out over his inability to finish carving in time for the fair.
– I feel sorry for the people who run fair events with an international theme. The Moroccan horsemen have started putting American flags everywhere during their act for fear that the small-minded will start making the Moroccans = Arabs = terrorists equation and start making glue of their horses. Even the Belgian waffle stand made a few changes; on a sign that says autocratically “Waffles only!” they’ve put a small American flag. (I had no idea the Belgians were linked to terrorism.)
– I wonder how the Flying Men of Veracruz get insurance.
– Growing up in Louisiana, corn dogs appeared pretty regularly on our school lunch menus. They were uniformly awful: a bland, doughy breading, a lukewarm frankfurter, etc. So I was skeptical when I heard of the glories of the state fair corn dog. I was wrong. They truly are a glorious foodstuff.