need more guesses for the Mystery Squiggles -- you prefer KFC?
Here's the Good News: No matter how the Bush Administration fucks things up, no matter how powerful Katrina was ... history makes it abundantly clear: New Orleans will rise from this disaster and become a spectacularly nifty and wonderful city again. SWMBO and I are making plans to celebrate at the first resurrected Mardi Gras. I hope they can recover enough over the winter to have Mardi Gras cooking in 2006 (Ash Wednesday: 1 March). If not we'll be there for Mardi Gras 2007 (Ash Wednesday: 21 February).If anybody says it'll take longer than that ... get another President and another Governor and another Mayor.
~ ~ ~
MEANWHILE ...
One guess at The Mystery Squiggles. One guess so far. And it wasn't a biology thing.
Maybe it's the Pizza. Tell Vleeptron what the Mystery Squiggles are, and this one's worth some KFC -- original recipe or extra crispy, your choice. Mashed potatoes and cole slaw.
posted by Vleeptron Dude | 03:02
3 Comments:
Instead of pizza can we have Cajun cuisine in New Orleans??
there's a bumper sticker in the South: The South Will Rise Again.
well, probably not the Confederacy, I think they were permanently shut down in 1865.
but New Orleans is one of the most famous cities on Earth. In good times, in terrible times, throughout its long history, owned by Spain, France, then USA -- people have always loved to live in New Orleans. Jazz was invented here -- the word "jazz" is slang for sex, and it was born in the brothels in the Storyville slum section around 1900. (Like tango was born in the brothels of Buenos Aires.) New Orleans and Montreal are the "European"-class great cities in North America. They stand out as culturally rich and thrilling cities which are not under the grim Puritanical umbrella of the rest of the Calvinist continent.
and yes the food is remarkable. Cajun of course is slang for Arcadian -- these are the French-speaking people whom the British forced to flee from the French colonies in eastern Canada after the British defeated the French at Quebec City around 1755. Thousands were put on ships and just sent out into the Atlantic. Many managed to make it around North America to the French city of New Orleans and the Catholic parishes to the west of New Orleans, and became Cajuns.
I certainly don't want to discuss or debate the differences between Roman Catholic theology and Calvinist/Protestant theology. But I will say this: The Catholics throw much better parties. You get to wear far skimpier clothes and stay much drunker for much longer. (Then you don't eat good things or have any fun for 40 days.) Some cities, if I danced down the avenue wearing nothing except a g-string and glued-on sequins, I would immediately be arrested. In New Orleans (or Rio) I could do it for a week and my neighbors would consider that I was observing a Religious duty. There is something Positive to be said about aspects of this philosophy. I intend to experiment with it on the first Resurrected New Orleans Mardi Gras.
Our two trips to Monserrat in the years after the big erupting volcano started calming down were wonderful: We were privileged to witness the astonishing human spirit rebuilding their community after an unimaginably terrifying natural disaster. Ordinary human beings, knowing their home could again rain red-hot flying death boulders on their heads at any minute, but this is their Home, and they came back, and they're rebuilding. It's a very unusual and very wonderful kind of tourist destination. New Orleans will be no different. If you meet us there for cajun cuisine and Mardi Gras in one or two years, I guarantee you will feel unbelievably proud to be a member of the same human species as them. We're not cowards at all. The "average" human being is incredibly strong and brave. Hurricane, volcano, earthquake, tsunami -- we'll be back, we'll rebuild! We always do!
I own a very excellent power tool, a belt sander, manufactured in Hiroshima. After the nuclear holocaust, the only thing for survivors to do is ... start manufacturing power tools and industrial equipment! Grieving is just grieving ... it's not supposed to stand in the way of Living.
CORRECTION (before someone sends a Comment that I'm an idiot) ...
not ARcadian, but ACADIAN, from Acadia (Acadie en francais), the French colonized and francophone areas of eastern Canada -- Quebec and the French settled parts of the Maritime Provinces. Also the French-settled regions of Louisiana. And from this, the shorthand Cajun.
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