St. Remedius Radio: “End of the Line”

The Rise and Resurrrection of Big Tex

(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)

In the years since the disappearance of St. Remedius Medical College and its supporting organizations and facilities, many stalwart traditions in Dallas, Texas changed forever. The Greenville Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade became an annual mass fratbro spaying and neutering effort, attracting them with green beer, closing gates and traps upon getting a critical mass, then beating them with pool cues until they submitted, fixing them, clipping the tips of their ears, taking weight and tooth measurements, inserting anal probes in order to track them via GPS, and releasing them back into the wild. The Dallas Halloween Block Party gradually transformed into the biggest collection of free-form gonzo from all of time and space since the St. Remedius Time Traveler Balls, acting as much as a diplomatic effort as an excuse to mingle with the peoples of the present time. The most drastic change to Dallas traditions, though, involved the metamorphosis of the State Fair of Texas to what became known simply as “Big Tex.”

By the end of the first quarter of the Twenty-First Century Gregorian, the original State Fair, running on the grounds and around the buildings of the 1932 World’s Fair, was at a crossroads. Political infighting among hopelessly senile business leaders about which ones and their failchildren would run the Fair, ever-increasing ticket and concession prices, and the exploding cost of insurance to protect the city from civil and criminal suits for malfunctioning and misinspected Midway rides combined with a significantly decreasing general attendance, to the point where even predictions from its harshest cynics turned out to be hopelessly optimistic. Most of the State Fair’s existing sponsors were hopelessly tapped out, potential new sponsors followed another grand Dallas tradition and flaked out when presented with invoices, and one assessment suggested that without massive changes, a State Fair admission and food tickets for four would cost more than a typical four-bedroom house in North Dallas by 2050.

With any other state fair in the United States, the obvious choice would have been to become less exclusionary and lower general prices to attract more attendees. Dallas, though, went differently and doubled down.

The biggest factor changing the State Fair to Big Tex was the discovery of a large cache of St. Remedius anti-kaiju Kirby Suits near Waxahachie. Just as the United States’ first efforts at space travel involved captured German V-2 rockets, the current legal status of St. Remedius’s existence emboldened the city to claim the Kirby Suits under eminent domain laws. Starting the week after the previous Big Tex, a Kirby Suit was pulled from storage, dressed up as the old State Fair icon, and sent on a leisurely perambulation around the Dallas city limits. Over the year, residents and visitors alike watched as the New Tex waded through wetlands, sloshed through the Trinity River basin, and acted as a roost for egrets and herons, gradually coming, day by day, back to the old Fairgrounds. When the now-ragged cowboy trudged his last step to the center of Fair Park, Big Tex started.

Oh, and what a spectacle, a week-long orgy of public sex and untrammeled violence only previously seen in Dallas during the Republican National Convention in 1984. Admission started in the tens of thousands of dollars per day, with areas of industrial park around the fairgrounds turned into camping facilities for the serious participants. An agreement with the Big Tex organizers ensured that Dallas or State of Texas law enforcement deferred to private crowd control officers, whose only concern was keeping the festivities from pouring into unsuspecting residential areas. Inside the perimeter, laws were vague recommendations, social mores were taboo, and the only thing limiting the participants was the occasional thunderstorm, which only washed off the blood and other bodily fluids and giving the attendees extra energy. Ostensibly, Big Tex featured art exhibitions and live music, but the real draw to its premium attendees was being able to stomp in mud in ridiculous costumes while ripped on only the best designer and experimental drugs, posting everything on the few still-existing social media and video outlets the whole time.

Every party has to end, eventually, and the end of Big Tex involved its namesake. At the end, every attendee circled the new Big Tex, and one lucky individual got to torch its now-decrepit jeans and boots. When the whole suit caught fire, accelerated by fireworks fired directly at it, Big Tex screamed “I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE AND I BRING YOU FIRE!” and then launched into the sky on tremendous boot rockets, rising up into the upper atmosphere before exploding in an EMP burst that set off an aurora over the entire Dallas area. The participants then returned to their lives as television executives, commercial real estate developers, print newspaper editors, and state legislators, knowing that no matter how mundane their lives were upon returning, another Big Tex would happen in only another 364 days. At least, so long as the cache of Kirby suits held out. That was quite a while.

And while you’re at it, the request lines are now open, complete with playlist.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

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