As if the end of summer isn’t depressing enough (to be honest, I’m happy to see the hot weather go; I love the cooler fall temperatures and the red, orange and golden leaves against the clear, crisp blue autumn sky; not crazy at the prospect of it getting dark at 4:00 though), there was another very sad moment for me yesterday. I’d gone to the store, and needed some extra room for the frozen stuff I bought. So, in a very emotional moment, I took the beer mugs out of the freezer in what I used to think of as my beer refrigerator, and put – of all things – food in it. Food in my beer fridge. This is what things have come to. 😥

I know you’re all on the edges of your seats, so I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. The NYS Fair did not hit the one million mark yesterday – they fell 155 people short, which was still good enough for third place. Had they not fired all the union workers before the start, I feel certain they’d have crushed the record. As it is, f*ck ’em. And what the hell is it with all the goddamn country music? This is New York State, not Alabama, fer chissakes. The ‘entertainment’ this year consisted of country music, geezers (like Rush and Aerosmith), and teeny-boppers. That’s almost as bad as food in you beer fridge. Whatever happened to the good old days of my youth, when they had class acts like the Cowsills and Sonny & Cher?

I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but we’re really into the political ad campaign season here, and I’m already extremely annoyed with these things. The Republican Gubernatorial primary pitting perennial loser Rick Lazio against Buffalo “businessman” Carl Paladino (who looks like a cross between Danny Devito’s “Penquin” character in Batman, and Madeline Albright) is getting lots of play up here, at least as far as Paladino is concerned. He’s been on the air attacking both Lazio and “Liberal Elites,” in ads that appear to show him wearing a bowling shirt out at the company clam bake (Carl really puts the “goober” in Gubernatorial), and has claimed that Barack Obama isn’t a Christian, because he “worships himself” (well, at least he aint a Mooslam). I’ve yet to see any Lazio ads, but maybe he figures it’s a lost cause up here, and he’ll focus on his home turf downstate.

Speaking of election season, it seems that Republicans are poised to make huge gains in Congress this November, thanks to the “sucks” factor. The economy sucks, the Democrats suck, and the President sucks. That’s Sucks³, which is pretty hard to overcome. Even harder to overcome will be the second-coming of the Republican Revolution. I think it’ll pretty much do us in, and I’m just hoping I can continue to hang on and do my best to ignore everything that’s going on around me. Good thing I’m white, I guess, and while I don’t live in Canada, at least I live in a relatively progressive state (even if its government is corrupt and dysfunctional) and have a job that (for now, anyway) provides fairly decent health care.

I just need 15 years to pay off the mortgage and then retire. Hopefully then I’ll get a good 10 years or so to enjoy myself before I have a stroke or runaway global warming wipes everything out.

In the meantime, though, hi-ho.