So I’m sitting in the bus on the way to the Fair, and I open up the hated laptop to start blogging. This is our first date, in tech terms. For some reason it autoboots Excel. I do not need spreadsheets at the Fair. I close the window. I try to find Word, which isn’t in the taskbar, has no shortcut, and is nestled deep within the Folders of Mystery. A simple FIND brings up the shortcut, which appears to be a shortcut of a shortcut on a network disk. Great. But I find another icon, call it up, shoot Clippy, then start to write. LOW BATTERY. The machine dies. And so the day began.

It was a damp inaugural effort, but fun - a shakedown cruise for the 10-day voyage. I hate writing on the laptop, though. Can’t post pictures. Can’t auto-spellcheck. Can’t dump from Word into the site, or it formats everything in 48pt type. Why? No fargin’ idea. Ability to override? Zip. 

Anyway, who cares. There’s always this site, the silent unspoken adjunct to buzz.mn. I can’t send people here from there – not because there’s any edict on the matter, but because it’s just not wise to mix this and that. Buzz.mn is the brand, and if all goes well the front page in a year will be chock-a-block with all sorts of voices from hither / yon, and my connection will be evanescent. Anyway, by the time you read this, there should be a new buzz.mn video up re: day one.

Some other highlights:

People don’t believe this, so it must be repeated and reinformed and reaffirmed: we deep-fry candy bars here. It is our way.

This is a close-up of a deep-fried Snickers bar. Its resemblance to a severed limb is coincidental:

It was damp on the Midway, but that yields interesting reflective perspectives:

To my surprise, most of the rides were the same as last year. Most. This was new:

The Eighties font speaks wisdom: NO, indeed. Dude needs less neck and more face.

Infinity presents itself in the most unexpected places:

Elsewhere, a big surprise: the Freak Show is back!

Somehow I think the union would have forbid that.

The little-known follow-up to ZZTop's "Sharp Dressed Man":

Ben a lon tim, ben a lon tim, ben a lon lonly lonyl lonly tim:

As I said, it was wet day. Attitude Sol taunted us throughout:

I hope for sun tomorrow. Join me @ buzz.mn - you'll get the full Fair Report from yesterday, PLUS a bonus video posted while you slept. See you there!