I'm back!!
and so here i am; i can't believe that a whole week just buzzed right on by, but it did. unfortunately i couldn't get online the whole time due to the tres remote locations i was plopped into, so i'm trying to take it easy tonight before the mad assault of playing catch-up at work begins tomorrow.i had the best time!!i'm not sure when my fascination with the dakotas began; it was a long, long time ago, though. i remember one of the directors at a preschool i worked at like six years ago telling me about snirt storms, so i know it was back then. i remember thinking in my head that i'd find some country dyke with the same fascination, move out there, have one child and live on this big hunk of land. this later morphed into a vegan AR cowgirl with rescued farm animals and maybe one child...then i just had to shake my head and go what the heck am i thinking? my life isn't on this path.but whatever. a girl can have her fantasies.i shouldn't even mention the cowboy dildo that almost found its way into my collection, should i?it was brown with hats and boots all over it, though, and when i went back for it, it was gone.but anyway!i digress.south dakota did NOT disappoint. no, no - the infatuation rages harder than ever.i should also apologize in advance...if i diss on your state, please forgive. i'm sure my peek in the window wasn't enough to form a real opinion and it's quite different depending on the person doing the peeking. so south dakota ROCKED. yeehaw and all that good stuff; i got my snowglobe and i shook it. surprisingly we weren't far from mt. rushmore so that's where i got it...never thought i'd be there! it's very surreal. i'll go through it from the beginning:flying armadillos in georgia (wtf?), or minneapolis. i forget which layover this was, actually.OK, so this was definitely minneapolis. MOOOSE!first demo: rapid city, SD, followed by leafleting at all three shows Saturday. we met some really cool activists (i knew there had to be more there than we knew about!!), including a girl who came out with her moms and a sign she made. way adorable. we were well-received and made the front page of the paper the next morning (including my first quote!). it was great. great! thrift stores everywhere...i got this tacky cowboy boot necklace and some cowboy rawk sunglasses. it was really too much for me to handle. nice people, good food, and a putz n glo (blacklight mini-golf!!!) all at arms' reach. dreaming. one day, ringling, your ass will be grass. your animals will be free and your child-molesting clowns will all need to go home (USDA documented).this dino taunted me the whole time during the demos. why was there a dino on top of the black hills? why? he kept calling to me, so on the way to rushmore we discovered the myth to be true - there was a dino-sculpture park in the middle of town.me + rushmoreup close. that's how they make it seem so LARGE. i mean, it's big and all, but far away it doesn't seem to live up to the grandness the legend has built (?!?!).in spencer, iowa, we made the front page two days in a row. yep. that's what this demo will do to people.now a little bit on iowa. it was OK. it was f'n FLAT as anything, though. cornfields for miles, but factory farms left and right which was upsetting. i saw a truck of cows in transport to the slaughterhouse, but luckily (?) all the others i saw were empty. *sigh* i couldn't live here with all this so in my face. in SD they sure do love their meat, huntin' n fishin' but all the animals i saw there had *enormous* room to roam. IA was factory farms and feed lots. meet your meat. however, the demo was great! people were SO nice and one woman, after speaking to elizabeth and i said, "you know, i feel horrible. i had no idea and if i had my tickets with me i'd give them to you...i don't want to support this." she sadly walked off, then about ten minutes later she showed up - she'd gone home to get them! two front row tickets for tonight totaling more than $50, and a heartfelt promise that she'll never attend a circus with animals again.this was a very, very small town. topeka, ks. another great demo.kansas, however, wasn't what i expected. i was probably in the wrong places. topeka to kansas city, ks, to kansas city, mo. it all seemed blah to me. we had some GREAT activist meet us there, plus a girl who was watching for the longest time and decided to join us when i invited her. they were way sweet and made this a great success.if you'd like to watch the news coverage it can be found here:http://www.wibw.com/home/headlines/1842621.html bahahahhahahahahahha c'mon now. KUM and GO?? ahahahahaha *cry*and just in case you DARED skip all that i will now force you to see me on a jackalope at wall drug, SD.dakotas forever, baby.*pitter-patter*and please don't go to circuses with any animals.thank you.next tour in december with myself as the imogen model in florida (another place i never thought i'd go, however due to the flying albino cockroaches it isn't on the dakota-pedestal).