Snarky Behavior

Ringling Bros… gotta love ‘em.

This weekend I flew home to see the family. It took me approximately 10 hours to get from Omaha from DC via Minneapolis. For that reason I’d like to give a big fuck you to North West Airlines (putting shame to the acronym “NWA”) and the incompetent people at Terminal A, Ronald Reagan International Airport. Really guys, I wish the worst things in life happen to you, and only you.

Moving on…

My parents, in their infite wisdom and generosity, decided to treat my niece to a trip to the circus, claiming that it was I who had provided said treat. For this reason, she was super-stoked about my visit. (For those of you who haven’t tried it: it’s pretty awesome to have a 4-year old who thinks you’re amazing. I almost developed a God-complex about it.)

Now, unlike most people, I actually have positive associations with the circus, and even fairly neutral feelings about clowns, even though I had seen Steven King’s IT. I attribute this positive association to a book I used to have when I was about 6-years old that was one of those customizable picture-books you can buy at the mall, where you insert your name and the name of your family members into slots and it becomes “your story.”

The story was about how “Jonathan” went to the circus with “Melanie, Manga, Baba, Mom and Dad” and was chosen out of the crowd to join the circus clowns and perform with them. I suppose I used to read that book and imagine it were true. Freud says such daydreaming is destructive masturbation of the mind. Yeah, like he knows anything about psychoanalysis, or clowns, for that matter.

Now, my niece has seen the above from Dumbo probably 18 times. Conceding the blatant racism (we work all day/we work all night/we never learn to read or write), this scene is a tragic reminder about how circuses destroy familial relationships and cruelly exploit animals. Well… my niece could care less… she just wants to see an elephant flyyyyy!

So when we ran into some PETA hippies out front on our way in, and they had some crappy coloring books with bears crying in cages, my neice wasn’t phased. Thank God! I hypothetically paid 60 bucks on these tickets, and could’ve easily had a full-melt down because some crunchy birkenstocker couldn’tt help put smear her guilty liberal conscience on my 4-year old neice.

(The reason I’m so callous on this issue is because there are human beings in the world dying of starvation and preventable diseases like dysentary and malaria. Not to mention half the world is tied into a global economy that forces unsanitary and inhumane working and living conditions. In that context, is it a big deal that we force tigers to jump through hoops for our amusement?)

So we get through Round 1 of the circus gauntlet only to be caught unprepared by round 2: the concession stands. Seriously, it’s like a casino for kids. Complete sensory overload. If you can make it through the endless carnies, teasing your young ones with stuffed animals and popocorn and oversized hats and cotton candy and whirly doos, and on, and on… God bless you.

The crowd at the circus was suprisingly small, which quickly drove home an overwhelming and deeply penetrating sensation of profound depression as soon as the show started. I watched these young people in leotards doing their pathetic song and dance for a crowd full of corn-fed, partially hydrogenated slack-jawed yokels. (Not to bash on Omahians, but they tend to represent the uncontrolled excesses of ingnorant American affluence: the fat, under-educated, Wal-Mart shopping, born-again Republicans that make me question the value of democracy.)

Some of the circus-freaks carried giant poles with cloth birds attached, and just waved them around so the birds were “flying.” Seriously? You travel the country in a circus just to do that? Others did the whiteman overbite dance in place while twirling a white disc that resembled pizza dough(?) (My neice thought this was spectacular. It’s like taking her to the zoo and watching her freak out about how a squirrel ran across the rhinocerous cage.)

So yeah, even though the circus was quite a show, and my niece had a great time, I left the place with the same feeling you have after leaving a strip club. Kind of like you debased yourself through entertainment.

I definitely felt more sad for the humans in the circus than I did for any of the animals.