This week, Ricky tells us all about this year’s Ratsville County Fair—complete with People’s Choice election-fixing tips from Myles.
Podcast Script (not including ad-libs):
Well, well, well… what a week… Did y’all have fun at the Ratsville County Fair this weekend?
I know I sure did. Well, for the first few hours…
I mean, how could you not? There’s all the food trucks, all loaded up with mini-donuts and cheeseburgers and pizza and corn dogs and nachos and all sorta candy, man… and I had ta have it all! Mama always did say I must have a hollow tail the way I eat and still stay skinny, and she might well be right. Sure seems like it every time the fair comes around.
And then there’s all the rides. Naturally, I got me a three day ride pass and I went on all of ‘em.
I mean, sure: I did puke my guts out on the Zipper seven times on Friday night, but that just meant I could stuff my gullet full o’ grub again seven more times, and different grub each time.
Y’know, I didn’t learn a whole lot in history class, mostly ‘cause I wasn’t listening, but I do recall that Mr. Goudasen said the Romans used to do the same thing at their banquets, only they didn’t have no Zipper to help the process. Hell, they didn’t even have old school wooden rollercoasters in them days, man, or so Mr. Goudasen said.
But they did do the barf and binge thing, and they were the world’s greatest civilization, and I figure the two gotta be related somehow. And they definitely would have ridden a giant Zipper ride stuck together with duct tape and gum by methed-out ex-cons… if the option had been available to them.
Hey, wanna know something else cool about the Romans? They invented pizza. And cheeseburgers. And fast food. Also UFC, but I think they called it something different back then. Plus it wasn’t pay per view, it was live in person and it was free.
They also invented toilets, which means it’s their fault I gotta clean the ones at the studio, so that kinda sucks, but hey: no one’s perfect.
Anyway, so on Friday me and my cousins Darren and Billy went to the fair, just the three of us. And we didn’t even bother with the beer garden… mostly ‘cause it was cheaper to smuggle our own liquor in in some empty water bottles in Darren’s backpack. And we rode the rides and chugged the grub and had a great ol’ time.
Well… until we ran into my girlfriend Baby’s half-mouse cousin Myles, who was wandering around in a suit and tie with a couple half-naked babes wearing tiny, tight “VOTE 4 MYLES” t-shirts.
Now, Darren and Billy don’t care for mice, and I get it, man, mice kinda suck. I mean, that’s why we—er, I mean, some folks—go over to Mouseton on Friday nights to beat ‘em up… but, half-mouse or not, Myles is Baby’s family which means someday he’ll be my family, so I warned Darren and Billy to be cool. Billy said fine and Darren growled, but he walked away to take a leak behind the Tilt N Hurl, so it was all good.
And I waved to Myles and I asked him how he can wear a suit at the fair. I mean, if I wore a suit, I’d’ve ruined it within the first 20 minutes of being here.
“Some of us are evolved beyond the level of filthy barn animals, Ricky.”
“Barn? Oh, we ain’t even been over to that part of the fair yet, man. Hey, you wanna go cow-tippin’ with us?”
Myles rolled his eyes. “I’m busy.”
“Right… I gotcha, man. Best time for cow-tippin’ is after dark when everyone’s busy watching the tribute bands. See ya behind the cow barn in a few hours!”
He shook his head and wandered off with the bimbos, each of whom was a whole head taller than him, and then they had on high heels on top of that, but that just meant Myles was eyeball-level with their boobies.
Not that I was looking, of course. Especially since the boobies were with my girlfriend’s cousin and the last thing I need is word getting back to Baby that I was looking at anybody’s boobies but hers.
In fact, forget I said anything about their shirts. I have no idea what their shirts said, ‘cause I wasn’t looking at ‘em. No siree!
By this point Darren had returned and he was still all sullen about half-a-mouse having dared to stink up our fair… he’s usually not like that, but he had polished off a whole water bottle of vodka on his own by this point and sometimes that makes him get a little bit mean.
“The fuck is this ‘Vote 4 Myles’ bullshit?”
“Oh, I dunno, Darren. I think Baby said Myles is full of get rich quick schemes, so it’s probably one of them.”
“I thought her family was rich already.”
“Well, I guess so, man, but it never hurts to get even richer just to be sure.”
Sensing something ugly might go down, and well-versed in Darren’s Friday night hobbies, Billy suggested we get some cotton candy and drop some acid and go listen to one of the lesser tribute bands. Y’know, the ones that aren’t big enough to play after dark so they gotta play when it’s still light out and there’s toddlers running around? Those ones.
And I figured that was a good idea because Darren can be a real asshole sometimes, man, but when he’s trippin’ balls he turns right into Santa Claus, and I didn’t want no trouble with Baby’s family.
So me and Billy dragged Darren over to the little stage area and it turned out the tribute band had just stopped and it was a magician gonna start his show so there was a whole bunch of little kids there and their mamas… and before I could partake of the acid, my own mama showed up all mad.
“Richard! Get over here!”
I left Billy to mind Darren. Mama grabbed my wrist and dragged me towards the big gymnasium where they put all the quilts and knitting and pies and stuff. And she was cussin’ up a storm and that could only mean one thing: Jane Rathoway musta beat Mama for the first place blue ribbon.
Now, I ain’t got no problem with Mrs. Rathoway, OK? Me and her twins Mark and Nate used to be the best of friends back in kindergarten and she even used to babysit me and Becky and Mama and her used to get along just fine.
But that all changed in third grade (more specifically, the first time I was in third grade). And it was all ‘cause of the fair.
See, Mama likes knitting and quilting. Well… actually, I dunno if she really likes knitting and quilting per se, but she likes entering things she’s knitted or quilted into the fair and getting first place ribbons.
And Mrs. Rathoway never used to knit or quilt and only entered flowers from her garden in the fair and that was all fine because Mama can’t be bothered with the garden.
But then I guess Mrs. Rathoway’s sister came to visit and she taught her how to knit. And Mrs. Rathoway made this shawl that she put in the fair. I remember it like it was yesterday, man: it was a real pretty shade of cheddar orange and all lacy, y’know.
And Mama had entered a cream knit shawl in the same category, and she was expecting to win, but when she came to the fair to gloat about her blue ribbon, the judges done gave her a red one instead.
And that’s second place, not first.
So then Mama lost her shit, man, screaming and demanding a recount from the judge and making a big ol’ scene. And we all thought maybe she’d just have a tantrum and tire herself out but she threw the knitting display tables all around the hall and even smashed a couple holes in the walls.
And then she pulled a pair of scissors outta her purse and chopped up Mrs. Rathoway’s prize-winning shawl.
We was all embarrassed but Papa Rat was just mortified, man. I think it was not long after that that he started looking for job postings in Florida and it took him a year or so but he did find one with the cruise ship company and he’s been down there ever since.
And I think you can figure that Mrs. Rathoway and Mama ain’t been friends no more since that day neither.
I tried to stay friends with Mark and Nate, but… I mean, it’s hard when you’re not allowed to play at each other’s houses, y’know? We’re still cordial and all, but we drifted apart, especially after I got held back a grade ‘cause of my bad spelling.
The fair banned Mama from participating or even setting foot on the grounds for a full five years and in that time she plotted her revenge and vowed to never let Mrs. Rathoway beat her again, so ever since she knits up a storm, but I’d say overall it’s about 50/50 for who gets the blue ribbons.
Besides, Mrs. Rathoway also swore her own revenge on Mama.
And even though they eventually let her back into the fair, to this day, they got Mama Rat’s photo at all the admission gates with a stern warning to any staff or volunteers that they absolutely MUST check this woman for scissors, knives, or any other weapons that could harm a shawl.
Mama growls but also she keeps trying to guilt trip me and Becky into sneaking in scissors for her, which is why I always make sure I come separately with Billy and Darren, and Becky won’t come by with her kids and husband til the last 3 hours of Sunday afternoon when Mama’s already stomped off.
But back to this year. I knew by the tone of Mama’s voice that Mrs. Rathoway musta beat her and it was my job to try to placate Mama and tell her the judge was an idiot and he don’t know what the Hell he’s doing and—y’know, come to think of it, that’s the same thing I gotta say every time I pick Darren or Billy up from the courthouse.
Weird.
Anyway, so Mama was pissed ‘cause this year the judge picked Mrs. Rathoway’s cabled capelet shawl over Mama’s Estonian lace shawl, and I don’t even know what either of those things mean but Mama kept insisting that Estonian lace is way harder to knit and takes way longer and I guess I gotta taker her word for it ‘cause it’s not like I know nothin’ ‘bout knitting.
Other than I knew to tell Baby to never take it up ‘cause just imagine the shitshow that would come if Baby knit something that got a blue ribbon over Mama’s knitting.
But Baby said that wouldn’t be a problem because she likes making embroidery instead and Mama ain’t got no patience for embroidery, so I guess that’s good.
Anyway, so Mama was going on and on and I was doing my usual thing of telling her her knitting is obviously nicer but the judge is an idiot and Mama then demanded I help her win the People’s Choice prize by stuffing the ballot box when the fair volunteers weren’t looking, and I know what’s good for me so I said, “OK.”
And she gave me a whole big ol’ Ziplock extra-large freezer baggie of ballots to fill out and stuff when the volunteers weren’t looking, and I went to go do that in privacy and then I remembered Myles probably knows a thing or two about voting, so I went to track him down.
I found him shaking hands along the midway while the bimbos handed out brochures with his campaign promises in ‘em.
“Hey, Myles, I got a question about this whole voting thing.”
“Yes, Ricky, you can vote drunk or hungover, that’s why the Ratsville city council elections are on Saturday November 2.”
“Oh, no, I meant about the people’s choice thing for the knitting here at the fair.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Well, my mama wants to win it, and I figure you know how to win these sorta things.”
Myles looked at my ziplock baggie full of people’s choice ballots and sneered. “Ballot-stuffing is for amateurs. As Stalin once said, ‘The people who cast the votes don’t decide the election, the people who count the votes do.’”
“Yeah, I’m not good at counting.”
“I noticed.”
“It’s too late for this year’s fair. You need to get them to institute electronic voting for next year and then you can hack into the system and change the tallies as needed.”
I just stood there and scratched my head. “Electronic… is that, like, using an iPhone?”
“Exactly. Get an apparently reputable third party to create a voting app and have them leave you a backdoor entry to the database. That’s how the CIA does it.”
“You mean like how my cousins never lock their kitchen door and we all just wander right in whenever?”
“Hmm… you’re not as slow as I thought, Ricky. That’s exactly how it works.”
“But what’s that gotta do with that cop TV show?”
“The what?”
“You know, the one where there’s always a murder every week and a bunch of nerds figure it out in their lab? C.I. something?”
“No, you’re thinking of CSI. The CIA is… oh never mind.”
“OK, so I gotta borrow someone’s iPhone and stick stuff in it for the ballots… but… um… well, how exactly do I do that?”
Myles sighed and rolled his eyes. “Go ask Bono, he can tell you all about stuffing shit in iPhones. Now beat it: I still have another six hours of campaign trail bullshit today.”
“OK, but you’re gonna come cow-tipping with us later, right?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Then Myles and the bimbos wandered off. It wasn’t til they were gone that I realized if I was gonna ask Bono anything I was gonna have to ask Big Mike to introduce us first and he was gonna be all kinda pissed off if I asked him two favours in two weeks after getting him to let Billy in the C-RAT Infestation show last week.
And time was short ‘cause we only had til Sunday afternoon to get the ballots all stuffed for the People’s Choice award. And I figured Bono’s probably busy this weekend and wouldn’t have time to tell me how to rig an election with my iPhone.
So I was gonna have to figure that out… in the meantime, I went and found Billy and Darren. Darren was tripping balls and hugging a garbage can ‘cause he figured that Oscar dude from Sesame Street might be in there and Oscar was his favourite character in the whole wide world when he was a little rat, so he was waiting for him to pop out of the can and say hi.
And Billy… well, Billy has a tolerance built up, so he was just sitting there watching the kiddie stage magician and laughing at all the lame puns and dad jokes, but he was lucid enough to remember what to do with all them People’s Choice ballots so he and I sat there in the back row and filled them out.
Then I had an idea: See, the volunteers all know who I am from previous years’ stuffing, and they were watching me any time I set foot in the gymnasium. It sure would be a whole lot easier to help Mama out if I could get some new recruits them fair volunteers don’t know.
And as I watched the little kids all eager to help the magician do his tricks with pulling stuff outta a hat and picking cards and stuff, I has one of them lightbulb moments. So then I went around to all the little kiddos at the end of the magic show and I told ‘em Santa Claus would be extra good to them this year if they each took a ballot and put it in the big pink box inside the gymnasium next to the sweaters. They were all super happy about that, so I snuck around all the fair recruiting kids to commit election fraud for me and Mama Rat.
“Psst… hey kid, you wanna know how to get on Santa’s nice list this year?”
“Yeah!”
“OK, you take this little piece of paper, you fold it up, and you go into the gymnasium and you find the big pink box next to all the grandma knitting and you put it in that box and Santa’ll give you extra cheese at Christmas. You got that?”
“Can I have four pieces of paper?”
“You sure can!”
And I watched a whole stream of little kids go running up into the gymnasium, hooting and hollering and cheering waving their bits of paper.
Well, it didn’t take too long before I was all out of the 600 little bits of paper Mama Rat had given me and I figure even if just 100 of them found their way into that box then Mama was gonna win by a landslide, ‘cause usually it only takes, like, 17 votes to win people’s choice. (I mean, if you do it all proper and don’t do any ballot stuffing cause the volunteers are watching.)
With that chore done, and after a couple more cycles of stuffing myself and then going on the Zipper and barfing it up, I figured it was time to go find my cousins and drop some acid and take my place with Darren waiting for Oscar to say hi, so I headed back to the stage area, but I ran into Myles and Myles scowled at me and shooed the bimbos away and dragged me in behind the bumper cars.
“What the Hell are you doing, Ricky?”
“I’m going to get ripped with my cousins.”
“I mean, what the Hell are you doing talking to kids?”
“Well, I figured it would be less suspicious if a whole bunch of kids stuffed the ballot box one at a time than if I went in with a whole Ziplock baggie full of ballots.”
“You idiot! All the parents are freaking out that some weirdo’s telling their kids he’s Santa!”
“Hey, now! I never said I was Santa, I said if they took that little bit of paper and stuck it in the box next to the sweaters in the gymnasium that Santa would give them extra cheese at Christmas.”
“You can’t be talking to other people’s kids! They’ll think you’re a creep!”
“I ain’t no creep, I’m just trying to get Mama Rat off my back!”
Well, Myles grumbled and I still don’t know what I did wrong, but he insisted we swap clothing, which is weird because we ain’t even close to the same size, but he was quite certain that we had to do that before the cops got there so we swapped.
It’s funny, man: Myles is a lot shorter than me but he’s a pudgy little dude so, like, his pants were practically falling off of me but also didn’t come much past my knees and fortunately I’m pretty skinny so his shirt and jacket just barely fit around my shoulders but they were way short and floppy around my belly. And Myles insisted I wear his tie, even. Plus he tried to smooth back my spiky hair.
Meanwhile, he couldn’t button my pants and had to roll the bottoms way up. And my leather jacket drooped down the sides of him but there was no way he could zip it up but at least my tank top was stretchy and long enough to hide that the fly was undone. Then Myles insisted we should leave but go the long way around, out the side of the rides area, in behind the tractor pull and the outside edge of the parking lot til we got to his car.
Which I didn’t really fit too good in, but I managed with my knees up
Fortunately it was getting to be dusk and we didn’t really get spotted by anyone, and we swapped our clothes back when Myles dropped me off at home with strict orders to lay low the rest of the weekend.
“But I paid for a three day ride pass!”
“I don’t care. Stay home.”
“But I’m s’posed to take Baby tomorrow!”
“I don’t care. Stay home.”
Well, he wouldn’t listen to reason but he said I was the one not listening to reason and I said we needed to get Baby to cast the deciding vote. Myles groaned and we went over to the Rattsen house, where Baby wasn’t home but her daddy was and he agreed to hear us out and be the judge.
So Myles said his bit first and Mr. Rattsen grumbled and nodded and then it was my turn. I told him the whole thing, man. Right back to the cheddar-coloured shawl and how Mama chopped it up. The more I talked, the more horrified he looked, but in the end he did proclaim that this was all Mama Rat’s fault, not mine, ‘cause I was just trying to so something nice for family.
“That said, son: you’ve pissed off all the parents in town and they’re planning to string you up if they catch you.”
“But I promised Baby I’d take her to the fair tomorrow!”
“You can’t take her to the fair if she’s grounded.”
“Right, but she’s not grounded.”
“The night is still young.”
Now, I didn’t quite know what to make of that except then Baby and her sister Martina came in the front door all giggly, and Mr. Rattsen said, “Barbra! You left the house wearing a dress that short?!?”
And Baby got all mad ‘cause she’s worn that dress a whole bunch of times but Mr. Rattsen told her she was grounded for sassing back at him.
Well, I guess that solved that problem.
He did say that because me and Baby had plans prior to Baby getting grounded that we could have a movie date there in the house on Saturday but he was gonna pick the movie and chaperone and not turn the lights down too low, which sucked but I guess it was cheaper than a fair date would have been.
Myles bought out the rest of my 3-day ride pass, so I guess there’s that, too.
Oh, and Mama Rat won the People’s Choice award by a record setting 545 votes to Mrs. Rathoway’s 19. Mrs. Rathoway called foul but security cameras proved that neither me nor my cousins nor any other member of my family was seen to be putting any ballots in that box this year, so suck it. If hundreds of small children voted for the candidate they believed was in their best interests with Santa Claus, well, that’s their right, now ain’t it?
That said, Mr. Rattsen strongly suggested I ought not to run that sorta campaign again next fair, but I guess we’ll figure that out then.
Links
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