Happy Mardi Gras!

I started to list Mardi Gras as a black thing that I love, but since it's actually a Catholic thing and not a black thing, it doesn't really qualify.

[This is Brian. She's not from New Orleans, so she doesn' t know about the foul debauchery that takes place at Congo Square (the corner of Rampart and Claiborne). There's nothing remotely Catholic about that!]

True, I have never been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Nice Catholic girls from Southwest Louisiana were not allowed to go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras (or any reason really) for fear that we would be turned into drunken sluts as soon as we crossed the city limits. (Though, to be fair, it is considered conventional wisdom at home that only tourists flash their tits for beads. Native girls know someone might see you and tell your mother, and you can't have that.) No, all of my Mardi Gras celebrations were spent in Lafayette, LA. You could take your kids and your grandmother and eat and drink and be merry for five days straight before you fasted and contemplated the sacrifice of Jesus for 40 days.

We are really missing Mardi Gras today.