Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Living in a vacuum


Today is Mardi Gras, in celebration of which I have Larry here cleaning the house. You can hear the vacuum cleaner from miles away.

Clackety clackety clack clack clack!

That is Larry vacuuming up my Mardi Gras beads.

That picture above? It is of the inside of the vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner is called the Shark and it eats everything.

If you leave anything lying around anywhere Larry will vacuum it up. Anything I really need to protect, I have to take it upstairs and there is a place I put it, on top of this pile of Leonard Pennario records. The Mardi Gras beads were not on top of the Leonard Pennario records so they have been vacuumed up.

You know what, it does not matter. Mardi Gras is starting to bug me.

I liked Mardi Gras more before it got so big. It used to be strictly in New Orleans. Back then if you made red beans and rice for Mardi Gras you would feel really hip.

Now Mardi Gras is everywhere so as they used to say in Monty Python, "Oh, you're no fun any more!"

And here is one other thing.

No one who celebrates Mardi Gras ever does Lent!

Mardi Gras is supposed to be this big blowout you get to enjoy right before Ash Wednesday ...


...descends and you are stuck. You have Lent for a whole 40 days and you are supposed to be living austerely and doing charity and almsgiving. Almsgiving, that is a word I love. Not that I am so good about doing it.

In this History Channel world that dumbs everything down, this has all been lost. And all anyone knows about Mardi Gras is, it is this festival. Probably they think it is supposed to brighten up winter, or something.Who knows.

But you can tell how ignorant people are by the way people are holding Mardi Gras parties next weekend. That is so wrong-headed! You cannot have Mardi Gras next weekend. It is already Lent!

You can hold your Mardi Gras the weekend before but not the weekend after.

As usual nobody asked me.

Am I the only one vexed by all this? Well, there is nothing to be done.

I should just have a Hurricane and forget about it.

2 comments:

Bingles said...

I agree Mary!! What are people celebrating?? How can you have the feast without the fast?? Sad.

Larry said...

Huh? As one of the ignorant ones, I always thought that it was just a drunken party without cause. Hey, I saw on 'Cops' on TV, how they do it. Drunkenness, nakedness, dopiness, sex, violence etc. Glad I live a long way from there, lol!