Soapbox

    I was taking some sort of chemistry class. Every day I was supposed to check in and read the days assignments, do homework or take a quiz. I had thought that now, being older and wiser, I would be able to figure chemistry out. But almost from the first assignment I started getting confused, and after a while stopped doing the work.
    Then one day the teacher came to see me, and I thought Here it comes. But instead of chastising  or failing me, we sat down and she backed me up, started asking me some beginning questions until she found the missing pieces of my basic understanding. 
She helped me fit them in, then went forward and I began to see how all the other things I had struggled with came from these few missing foundational blocks. I got excited and began to think that I could really do this…
…and then I woke up and lay blinking at the ceiling, convinced that the head pharmacist has decided that I will never really 'get' this job, and isn't really going to try to train me for my big typing test. She's just going to let me run the drive-thru and put away bags until I fail and get sent to work in the cheese shop.
   
   If this was something I could study for: if there was a book to read or flashcards to run or simulations to do- I could get this. I know I'm not actually stupid, but every single day, at some point in the work day I think ..but I may as well be, because I just don't get this.
    I'm supposed to just pick things up, puzzle things out and remember from something someone showed me one time 6 weeks ago. And obviously there are people who learn that way- the pharmacy is full of them! And there are things that I could learn that way- but they don't involve computers.
    If this were a musical ensemble jam session and someone stuck an instrument in my hands and said "Here- just watch and join in" I could actually do that. Not saying that I would magically have any skill on the instrument, but I would get what was going on and see the chord changes and repeats and bridges and it would all make sense. I wouldn't stand there in frustration saying "But why are we starting in D this time when before we did this part in C?" 

   But this is complex computer work, and it's all done in real-life. When the pharmacy is humming like a beehive on crack and people are showing up for their kids antibiotics or their anti-anxiety meds, you can't say "Sorry. I know we said they'd be ready in a half-hour, but we put the trainee on the typing station and the second script she got had a weird insurance problem and she slowed the whole line down".
   So I just don't get assigned to do typing. The few times when I have, there's no time for me to poke about trying this and that to see what works. When I get hung up, someone nudges me out of the way and just does it for me, and when the pharmacist sees me looking over their shoulder, trying to understand and remember what they're doing, chances are she'll say "Tracy- what are you doing just standing there? There's someone at the drive-thru".

   I think that will be the epitaph on this job in the pharmacy, But hey- she ran the Drive-thru like a pro.

Dear Ohio Attorney General DeWine,

    On behalf of my husband and myself, I would like to express our abiding gratitude for your tireless efforts to keep us together as man and wife. 
     As my daughter plans her wedding to the woman she loves so dearly, I breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that you are on the job, spending my tax dollars to keep them legally apart, so that her father and I can retain the sanctity of our own marriage.

    I know that some today think it is ignorant and undemocratic to cling to primative prejudices and deny some citizens equal rights simply because they think and feel differently than the majority.  But without you to defend marriage from people like her who want to get married, who knows what the future might hold?
    Thanks in no small part to you and your courageous actions before the courts, we may never have to know the horror of these two young people being able to have the full protections of matrimony as they save to purchase their first home, build their careers and plan their family. Why even unto death, you are vigilant, making sure that they will have to move to some other state if they want to call each 'spouse' on a death certificate. Because what greater threat could there be to the stability of our beloved Ohio than that?

    It is a relief to know that, if her partner becomes the biological mother of their children, my lovely daughter will never be able to have legal custody rights to the family they raise and sacrifice for together. And my husband and I will never, in the eyes of the state, be the grandparents of the beautiful babies we bounce on our knees.

    And so, for these and all the other special things you have done to for us, I would like to extend to you an invitation to the ceremony they are planning. Please come and see the flowers, hear the music, witness their trembling hands and flushed faces at the altar and gaze into the misty, joyful eyes of their loving family and friends, so that you can fully appreciate in your heart just what it is that you have protected us from.

    Because without your efforts to defend us, when the big day arrrives and we all throw rice and cheer, those two happy young people might walk back down the aisle- not just together in their hearts but also united in wedlock. 

    So f**k you for saving us from all of that. Yes, f**k you so much from the very bottom of our broken hearts.

    Sincerely-
          A lot of Ohio parents, who wouldn't vote for you if you were the last candidate on earth.

Dear America- Racism is not a problem in America. Talking about racism, though, is causing all kind of trouble! 

    The good (white) people of FOX News want you to know that they are not racists, nor are they entitled. Anyone who says they are, clearly IS a racist: a reverse racist, which is totally a thing.
   Yes, there would be a lot more peace and unity in America without all those minorities who talk smack about the majority in power. Those reverse racists are really stirring things up, so much so that white folks can't even walk around Walmart with a semi-automatic rifle while not being shot at without someone 'making it about race'.

   There is simply no need for America to have a dialogue about race- unless it's to talk about how unfair it is to call someone a racist. But to talk about racial bias, about the ways the system punishes black citizens more harshly than whites for the same infractions is playing the race card.
    The only proper way to deal with what you perceive to be racism is to shut the hell up about it! Just ignore it and be on your way. Well …if you can be on your way… if you're not face down on the side of the road in zip cuffs.
    But you know what-  if you are, it's probably your fault!

   Sean Hannity knows for a fact that this blather about black folks getting roughed up by cops more often that white folks is just race-baiter whining, yessiree.
   And the way he knows is that when his rich white ass gets pulled over by the cops- he just speaks to them respectfully, lifts his shirt and shows them the butt of the legally registered firearm that he has tucked into his pants… and they say "Nice piece, Mr. Hannity. Love your show, by the way!"
    So you see? If a rich, famous white dude can get along with the cops, what are you inner city hip-hop thugs whining about??

    And America- you have got to stop bitching about white cops shooting unarmed black people!

    First: because black-on-black crime!! Black people shoot black people too! And that negates the bi-weekly shooting by a white cop of a minority citizen, just the way your 2 kids getting into a fight means shut up and stop complaining about me stealing your car.
    And second, can we please stick to facts and stop talking about this unfortunate Michael Brown incident as a case of a cop shooting an 'unarmed teenager'?! That's totally misleading and unfairly biased against the officer involved!
    Michael Brown was over 6 feet tall, and over 200 lbs. And it's a well-known fact that size adds years to a person, so at that size, he was at least 21 or 22 and not really a teenager at all. (Hey all you beefy high school football players out there: you may be only 16, but if you're wearing size 13's and ducking through doorways already, FOX wants you to know that you are an adult now. So go have a cold one on them!)
    And please! Any black man of that size IS armed folks: he is armed with a whole shit-load of blackness! All that minority rap-Muslim-brotherhood-roaring black-panther-power is almost as dangerous as a Tec 9 (and clearly way more dangerous to a cop than anything Sean Hannity carries in his pants).
   And if he's black, and he's a little belligerent, and walking down the street all sagging and gangsta ball cap-ish- well any cop knows he has a gun! And if it's not actually with him at the time he gets shot- that's just a technicality. He probably left it at home and was gonna use it tomorrow, or has a picture of himself somewhere on social media, posing with a gun… or maybe a B-B gun, which Ohio cops know is the same thing.
   So when a police officer is faced with a not-teenager, not technically armed with a gun or knife but filled to the brim with all that deadly minority stuff, what else could they do but shoot 10 times!!… several shots as he was running away, the rest while he had his hands up? I mean: did I mention that he was black? And jaywalking. And really, really black? 
   But look- I'm not saying that in a racist way… it's just a fact.

    Talking about racism all the time implies that it's white people's fault that so many criminals are black! It's not that we've got all the power, the jobs and the opportunity: you're just thugs.
   Well ok, some of you probably aren't, but how are we supposed to tell? A black person once broke into my house, so I'm permitted- nay, I'm supposed to be afraid of all black people.

    And no: the fact that so many officers from the Ferguson PD have been caught saying incredibly violent and racist things isn't evidence that there is a racism problem in America.
   Nor is all those people donating money for officer Wilson's defense / vacation fund while saying things like "one more animal put down" or 'he should have done us all a favor and shot a few more- I'll buy him the bullets".
  That's TOTALLY not their fault! They wouldn't be saying things like that (…in public media where everyone can see it) if all the black power agitators hadn't goaded them into it by protesting their kids getting shot!

   The Ferguson police didn't put on riot gear and tear gas people in their own front lawns and fire rubber bullets at camera crews and preachers and break into churches to steal Maalox because they are authoritarian power-freaks! Don't be silly! 
    They did it because the black people forced them to do it… by getting together in such large groups and being black (which as we have already established, is a clear and present danger).
   …And by complaining to the media. It's really outrageous to make a fuss about what you perceive as injustice towards people like you!
    Well… unless your beef is that you're being discriminated against as a Christian, because wow- that is totally a thing in America today! And anyway, Jesus wants us to talk about that on TV.
   And ok, it's true that atheists in riot gear aren't exactly shooting at Christian kids who are singing Christmas carols or using the term "Christmas tree' and then saying that the kids have too much wealth and too much Jesus to be considered "unarmed teenagers' … but it could happen! Obama says "Happy Holidays" after all!

    In conclusion, America:  stop all the protesting and making speeches! 
   Unless you're the Tea Party.
   Or open carry gun patriots.
   Or a guy who doesn't want to pay his grazing fees. That's different. That's about something important: government oppression. Kids getting shot just happens, people! You can't turn back the tide!
    And stop complaining about the police! And thinking that shoplifting or changing lanes without a signal shouldn't carry a death sentence. Sheesh.
   And stop all the voting. The only things worse than protesting racism is getting reverse racists to register to vote. That's  playing the race card and the voting taxpayer card, and we're not going to stand for it.
    And for sure, stop taking pictures of the cops shooting black people!  If you stop filming every random beating and shooting that happens and then bitching about it, I think you'll find that there will be a lot fewer stories like that in the news.

    And if you could manage to stop being black… that would really be great. Thanks.

Dear  National Organization for Marriage,

    Since the 6th circuit has been hearing arguments about overturning gay marriage bans in several states (including my own) I wanted to address your most recent attempt at justifying your bigotry.
   The main thrust of your argument was to quote G.K. Chesterton and say that if a chair is different than other chairs then it isn't really a chair.  From this devastatingly brilliant remark  we are to understand that since a same sex marriage is not fundamentally  like a heterosexual marriage,  it isn't really a marriage. Sure,  same-sex couples can get something called a marriage license in some misguided states, but that will never make it a true marriage, because it doesn't conform to what society defines a marriage as being.
     You gay folks can call your horse a dog, too, but good luck getting it housebroken.
     Chairs. OK.
 
     Well, I would argue that in all of the important ways, same sex chairs ARE like heterosexual chairs. (Chairs? Really?)  The only way the two cannot be considered fundamentally the same is if you  believe that the single, salient, can't-be-changed-without- calling-a-bed-a-chair characteristic of marriage that makes it a true marriage is heterosexual intercourse.
    And that definition presupposes that the point of marriage is procreation by the married couple, with each other. And that isn't true. Look around! Millions of infertile couples,  middle-aged  newlyweds  and childless-by-choice couples would vigorously argue that procreation is not why they married at all.
   You insist that marriage is all about sex.
   The rest of us think marriage is about love.

   Except you don't really think that marriage is about sex, or about procreation either, as your next point makes clear.
   You go on to say that banning same-sex marriage is not at all discriminatory, because gay people can still get married any time they want to. They just have to marry someone of the opposite sex.  
   Think about what you just said:  the legal  union of a man and a woman who have no physical attraction to each other, who may be fond of each other but will never be in love and may never have sex…  THIS fits your definition of 'marriage' .
    But two people of the same sex who pledge to love each other, support and shelter each other, who wish to be a family together until their death- THIS does not? A Brittney Spears quickie marriage in Vegas with someone you barely know is 'a chair' but lifelong companions who adopt and raise children together is Soooo different that it's a bookcase?
    If you are seriously saying that  a loveless, sexless marriage is acceptable in your eyes as long as it involves a man and a woman, then marriage, to be a marriage, does not require love, procreation or even intercourse- just gender! But if marriage doesn't require sex- why do the parties have to be of different genders?

    When you remove God (which you have to do, because atheists can marry) and love, kids and sex from the requirement for a 'real' marriage,  what remains of marriage is a social and legal contract pertaining to joint ownership of property, custody and financial responsibility for children, insurance coverage and inheritance of estate after death.
    What is there in the above definition that precludes the contract from being made between 2 women or two men?
    Nothing. If two men can enter into a legal contract to form a company, file taxes, hire employees and provide goods and services,  then they can sign a marriage contract.
   Sorry, but the way your own arguments keep turning back on themselves it really does seem that. by your own definition. the gay marriage chair really IS just a slightly different chair. 

      Your final argument against same-sex marriage leaves furniture behind and ventures into musical theatre, since it is basically just Reb Tevye standing with his milk cow, shaking his fist and singing,
                     Tradition! Marriage should be arranged by the Papas!!
    We have never had same-sex marriage in America before, you say, so we can never have it.

    Ok, but we never had free public education for all children… until we did. Never had interracial marriage… but when we changed that, the country did not fall apart. Cats and dogs did not start living together- people didn't forget how to use a chair.
    We used to have slavery- and then we changed that. Women were not allowed to own property or to vote, but time went by and ideas and laws changed… and yet fundamentally things stayed the same. The sun still comes up in the east every day, even though women can vote and even run for office.
    And so it will be when Americans are allowed to marry the person they love the most, whether it be a man or woman. Tradition, after all,  is not necessarily good thing- it's just a thing.

    I'm sorry that you NOM types want society to stay frozen in place in 1776… or maybe 1576.. but society doesn't work that way. That which does not change eventually ceases to exist. Society adapts and evolves, just like everything else on the planet. I'm sure you don't like hearing me toss around ideas like 'evolution'- a lot of you probably think Noah had dinosaurs on the ark. And you can believe that if you want to. Isn't that great? But you cannot make me  believe it, or force me to live as if I do.
    So sure, you can believe that a same sex marriage is not an actual marriage because a horse is not a dog and a bed is not a chair, if that makes you feel safer. But marriage is a social and governmental contract- that's why it requires a license. It's a law, and new laws are being written and old laws are being amended every single day. It's called 'progress', you see?

    Earlier I compared you guys to Reb Tevye, crying for his tradition- but that's not really fair. In time Tevye came to see that what mattered more than 'the way things have always been' was the love and happiness of his children.
    He was a much wiser man than you.

     "This food is not nearly bad enough" Ted commented as we sat in the shade and ate our Bourbon chicken. "This is the State Fair: we can do much  better."
      By which, of course, he meant 'worse'.
      Well the state fair is nothing if not filled with opportunities for bad food. I'm told there are deep fried Doritos this year. Aren't Doritos already fried? Are these batter dipped and fried again? Wait- don't tell me. I don't want to know.

      Because the donut burger they came out with a few years ago is not quite disgusting enough, this year the Krispy Kreme (never trust a doughnut that can't spell) folks offer a "Sloppy Doughnut" too: manwich between 2 glazed doughnuts. 
      Also on my "WTF?" list: the dairy barn now offers "Sweet corn" as an ice cream flavor. Yes, this is a thing. I'm not sure it should be. No, I did not try it, being (in my old age) something of an ice cream snob. Perhaps it is quite yummy.
      But I don't think so.

      We don't do rides or games, but if you poke around, there's lots of stuff to see, even though it's usually always the same stuff. Tradition! I enjoyed looking at the native Ohio prairie flower exhibit and the whole tent about bee-keeping, where I bought some heirloom seeds which I was assured bees like.
    We waved at Smokey the Bear and reminisced about bygone years when the kids were so amazed that Smokey knew so much about them. As we walked on I heard someone behind us say "Wait- Dad, how did Smokey know my name?" and smiled.

    There were a couple of signs where fair urged visitors to take a selfie with the Butter cow and post it to Instagram. Like this is going to go viral, and soon people at other state fairs will be bummed because those wild and crazy folks in Ohio get a butter cow to take selfies with. Maybe it will: life is just that weird.

    We skipped the fair last year and while I'm sure it will always be one giant freak show that smells like a french fry left out in the sun too long, I wondered if there had been some changes. There were.
     The Sky glider seems to have been shortened by at least one giant pole. Since this is the ONLY ride we ever do, I felt a teensy bit cheated.
    The big-ass Bar-b-Que place with the entire dead pig with an apple in its mouth is gone. (As a kid I finally decided that the pig was plastic, because it looked the same every year, and how long could a dead pig- even a cooked one- sit out in the sun? That reduced the gross-out factor every time I walked by quite a bit.)
     At the horse show they did not have anyone playing that weird, "Take me out to the Ballgame" organ. Instead, they just played recorded music, including, while the guy in the John Deere zambonied the ring, "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy". I don't know if this is a permanent change or if the old lady who plays organ was out sick today. At first I loved the change. Then I began to feel nostaligic for the organ. Tradition! Such is the perverse nature of the human heart.

     I definitely saw some new events at the Horse show. When we walked in, they were running Mule team agility. Only one hitch was actually mules, the others were draft horses. They had to navigate an obstacle course and I swear one team did weave poles! OK- weave cones. And it was really slow. But it was a thing!
    As we watched these teams performing what was once a useful skill, I remarked that, when society collapses, the folks who own draft horses who know how to pull and turn and back up with be sitting pretty while the rest of us dig up our front yards with our hands to plant potatoes.

     A competition was announced called "Unicorn hitches" which I was excited about. But, it turns out this is NOT teams of unicorns pulling wagons (which was a massive disappointment) and was just teams of 3 horses with a single horse out in front.
     And then we saw– a horse dressed like a unicorn. This was an exhibition of 'reining' which basically consisted of the horses twirling around in circles and then running around the ring and then stopping quickly. And the first horse had a golden horn strapped to its forehead. It looked a little bit embarrassed, frankly.
    The second horse in that exhibition had a ton of glitter all over it's rump. Like 'a 3 year old decorating a picture for mommy' ton. Ted wondered, since the first horse was a unicorn and this one was all sparkley, maybe he was supposed to be a vampire horse? But the song he ran around to was about being a star.
    We also saw break-dancing on horseback. It was a bunch of fearless kids doing something called "vaulting" – somersaulting and hanging sideways and jumping on and off the backs of some incredibly patient horses.
     The last competition of the afternoon had only one entrant and one horse. She trotted around the ring a few times and ~surprise!~ they gave her a blue ribbon. I totally called her the winner as soon as she came in. Do I know my horses or what?

    I don't remember the NRA being such a big presence at the fair before. They had a booth and a tent. Yay guns. There was also a booth selling 'humorous' signs to put on your house, a large number of which proclaimed the owners absolute right to shoot you dead and bury you in his back yard, which is totally hi-LARious because it's not like people in this country ever shoot innocent folks who come to the door asking for directions or anything.
    There was also a booth selling really disturbing… ok, I'll go ahead and call them "Religious" t-shirts, even though they were more sado-masochistic fettish-ist than Christian. One featured Christ's flayed and bloody back and said "Read Between the Lines". Another showed 3 men dying in the most god-awful way mankind ever dreamed up with the caption "Public Display of Affection".
    Right.
     Another vendor was selling personalized flags to hang by your front door. The example they had up showed a bottle and said,                            "It's 5 o'clock somewhere! The Johnsons"
Which tells people driving past, "No matter when you knock on our door… we're probably gonna answer it drunk." Awesome.

    After we had digested lunch we got a cup of french fries. Probably about once a year everyone should have a cup of State Fair fries: the long thin ones that hang out the top of a cup- greasy, salty and crisp and volcanically hot, then dipped in a ton of ketchup. This is necessary for medicinal purposes. Sure your arteries take a hit, but when you bite into the first one, the endorphin rush is incredible.
   After we had digested them, we got a funnel cake to share. I know- more fried food. But I was careful to select a booth that also sold deep fried twinkies, deep-fried Snickers bars and chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick. I figured, with so many calories in them, there would be very few left over to be in our little funnel cake. (Though at the fair, "light on the powdered sugar please" turns out to be 3 giant shakes of the sugar sifter instead of 6).

    I always like to hit the craft exhibit: quilts and cakes, etc. I would say that quilting will also be useful after the societal apocalypse, but these amazing creations weren't Amish quilts- they were machine made, and not with a treadle machine. But the knitters and crocheters and heck yes the gals who still spin wool: they'll be a hot ticket!
    There was a case of things made from 'repurposed materials' and featured a wedding dress made from- and I am not making this up- used dryer sheets. Unlike the cute belt made from aluminum can pop-tops or the purse made from the top of a pair of jeans, a wedding dress made from dryer sheets is not actually a useful thing, even if it does have a slip made from grocery bags so it's not completely transparent. Obviously, "useful after the apocalypse' was not a requirement for the category.
    I guess this year's 'wacky' category was shit made from Brillo pads, because there was a display featuring everything from  a dolphin sculpture to shoes and a coat, all made out of Brillo pads. The coat used pads without soap but the dolphin was all pink and wooly, and if there was a sprinkler incident, it would probably start to foam.

   Well, people can make things with anything. I haven't figured out why- but then, with so much of the fair I haven't figured out why. Like those sloppy doughnuts.