Nice Beads
Happy Fat Tuesday, y’all!
Here in Austin, we get to vicariously celebrate Mardi Gras. They play a lot of the feigh do do music on the radio and pretend we’re close enough to New Orleans to count when, in actuality, it’s about a 10 hour drive or something. Still, we’re in the south, they’re in the south, we were both on the same side of the big war and all so, I guess, that makes up neighbors or close enough for government work. (Louisiana is like just that way, over that there prairie, y’all.)
Something you can file under the “I didn’t know that, I don’t really care, and I will probably forget ten minutes from now” category is that I used to speak a little Swahili. It’s true. Not as well (or as much, I should say) as I speak Pali, but a little. At least, I once learned how to say “Hello,” “Goodbye,” and a few of the other 12 odd words or so you’re supposed to learn to make yourself polite company. My main goal in life was to learn and comprehend the words and meaning of the song Iko Iko. I never did. I think I get the gist of it, but never mastered enough Swahili to fully translate it, word for word. So much for good intentions (what’s that they say about the Road to Hell? Oh yeah, it’s a song by Chris Rhea.)
I think there’s still hope that, one day anyway, I’ll actually be able to speak a little Pali, and that I may actually make it to New Orleans for more than like 10 minutes when it’s not nine hundred degrees in the shade with “swampy moist” humidity or when it’s not actually Mardi Gras, at which point I will avoid the place like the plague (or the bucket of debauchery that it turns into.) That and, probably Chris Rhea is not the optimist you once thought he was.
Until next time…
