* * * Check out: Groundhog Day Louisiana Style: New Orleans T-Boy, Baton Rouge Boudreaux
From Denny: Well, New Orleans, Louisiana, blew it out for this year's Mardi Gras in the French Quarter. And have I got the photos to prove it! Fresh from the guys over at Flickr.Mardi Gras is celebrated in Mobile, Alabama in the USA and Cadiz, Spain (my great grandmother's home town) and even in Nice, France (OK, not my home town, the homestead is over at Lyon, France.) But no one does it like New Orleans with the cheekiest irreverence for just about anyone and everything!
New Orleans has a particular fondness for lampooning the politically incorrect taboo subjects of sexuality, religion and death. This year they went at it full tilt and certainly did not disappoint.
These tacky photos will definitely make you laugh out loud. If you suffer from sexual prudishness you probably don't read my blogs but just in case, look away. Actually, it's pretty tame - but tacky stuff, not good taste - which is what New Orleans Mardi Gras is all about.
The Spanish Town parade here in Baton Rouge is far tackier where they give out "throws" of condoms and other sexually explicit gay sex toys. And absolutely no one takes it seriously, all done in mocking fun of all society. They pride themselves in meeting the absolute lowest rung on the debauchery ladder. I wonder if they also award themselves medals? :)
Baton Rouge has been greatly affected by New Orleans ever since Hurricane Katrina when half of New Orleans moved here, most remaining to this day. Well, this year was the first I noticed that businesses, schools and banks have started closing for Mardi Gras just like in New Orleans across the city. They treat it like it's a federal or religious holiday and now Baton Rouge is drifting into the same custom.
Typically, New Orleans has always been a party destination draw for Baton Rouge folks. This year over 270 teachers were missing in action - "calling in sick" - the Monday after the big Super Bowl win because they were partying in the French Quarter in New Orleans! :)
Anyway, I was doing that "wondering thing" about how to follow up the big party blowout of Fat Tuesday the day after when the thrill is gone. Of course, the Christian Lenten season has officially begun, a time to think of dialing it back on the excess meter and tuning ourselves to more inner reflection.
What better bridge than to laugh at the Four D's to get folks over their embarrassments from Mardi Gras that even their grandchildren will never hear the tales? The Four D's are Debauchery, Decadence, Denial and Diets. Enjoy the funny quotes, laugh 'til you fall off your chair Mardi Gras photos and news videos about the festival!
To keep your game face on, remember there is hope for the perpetual party person because this is the progression:
Debauchery is what you climb out of to get up to the next level of Decadence. You know, it's called graduating college and leaving behind your partying ways. So, you enter the oh, so adult life of Decadence known as credit cards, mortgages, shiny new cars, deep in debt and a few children dotting the backyard suburban landscape.
Before you know it you are done with Decadence after a decade or so and step up into the new house of Denial. Denial is when you experience Empty Nest Syndrome, hoping those screaming kids you so wanted to leave a few years earlier decide to come home to roost and make the house interesting again. Denial is also about figuring you might one day actually get to afford to retire. In those hopes you begin the process of trimming down your debt as your employer trims down your salary.
Eventually, you wake up and figure out you have to leave it all behind and go on a Diet to purge yourself of so much happy excess in order to function in life. What do you do? You retire, picking out your favorite destination and then go on perpetual holiday in New Orleans to begin the partying life all over again. And that, my friends, is why they call it the fast track Life Cycle... Oh, where did all the time go? :)
Debauchery Quotes
* May you - Work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt, dance like no-one is watching, screw like its being filmed, and drink like a true Irishman. - Anonymous
* To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love. - George Santayana
Green makeup almost nude by Infrogmation @ flickr
* My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income. - Errol Flynn
How 'Bout 'Dem Beads, woman? photo by Infrogmation @ flickr
* Debauchery is perhaps an act of despair in the face of infinity. - Edmond de Goncourt
Funny white hairs photo by sfmission.com @ flickr
* How utterly futile debauchery seems once it has been accomplished, and what ashes of disgust it leaves in the soul! - Edmond de Goncourt
Men wearing fake female photo by sfmission.com @ flickr - I wonder what PETA would have to say about this? :)
* True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person. - Albert Camus
Lino Villaventur 2010 shoe collection
Decadence Quotes
* Decadence Definition: America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. - Oscar Wilde
* Decadence is wonderful. - Jack L. Chalker
* First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined. - Milos Forman
* The inside operation of Congress - the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building - is a story of such monumental decadence that I believe if people find out about it they will demand an end to it. - Bella Abzug (said back in the 1970’s, not much has changed. This sentiment was also said by other politicians back in the 1800’s which seem so reflect the state of mankind more than anything.)
* * * New Orleans is expert at putting on the show for parades and decadence. They were ready at a moment's notice to pull off an impromptu Super Bowl win parade that only New Orleans could have accomplished in such a short time:
Big Chicken parade by Infrogmation @ flickr
* The desire to build a risk-free society has always been a sign of decadence. It has meant that the nation has given up, that it no longer believes in its destiny, that it has ceased to aspire to greatness, and has retired from history to pet itself. - Henry Fairlie
Leopard drummers by Infrogmation @ flickr
* I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence. - Christopher Hampton
Mardi Gras feathers by Infrogmation @ flickr
* A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its self-respect. - E. M. Cioran
* As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. - Gore Vidal
* Dandyism is the last flicker of heroism in decadent ages. - Charles Baudelaire
Jackson Square New Orleans Mardi Gras by Infrogmation @ flickr - someone is in need of a push-up bra or corset...
* Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them. - Emile Durkheim
Photo by Infrogmation @ flickr - Only in New Orleans at Mardi Gras can you walk into a coffee shop without your shirt on if you are female.
* In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it. - Cal Thomas
* The difference between our decadence and the Russians' is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic. - James Thurber
* Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts. - Ernest Hemingway
* The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence - luxury, scepticism, weariness and superstition - are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next. - Cyril Connolly
Denial Quotes
* Your denial is beneath you, and thanks to the use of hallucinogenic drugs, I see through you. - Bill Hicks
Unique grocery - I'll say! - photo by sfmission.com @ flickr
* I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it. - Garrison Keillor
Santas in the house photo by sfmission.com @ flickr - Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. - Victor Borge
Coffinmobile three wheeler by Infrogmation @ flickr
* It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept. - Bill Watterson
Mardi Gras alien by Infrogmation @ flickr
* Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. - Mark Twain
Blonde Beth photo by Infrogmation @ flickr
* Denial is a common tactic that substitutes deliberate ignorance for thoughtful planning. - Charles Tremper
Bike riding lion photo by sfmission.com @ flickr
* Hope is the denial of reality. - Margaret Weis
Stimulus check costume photo by sfmission.com @ flickr - The Human Race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. - Mark Twain
* Ostensibly rigorous and realistic, contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button. - Christopher Lasch
Welcome to Viagra Falls photo by sfmission.com @ flickr
* Denial of one appetite sharpens the others. - Mason Cooley
Hoda and Kathie discuss the current Winter Olympics and Mardi Gras, showing off the beautiful King Cake:
Funny Diet Quotes
In Louisiana, we all blow our diets from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year's to the Super Bowl, all the way up to and including Mardi Gras. Ah, the debauchery of too much fine dining!:) Once Lent starts (oh, thank you, God, for inventing it) we all start to dial back on the excessive life style, eat less and focus upon dropping those extra pounds. Even if there are those among us who managed to not gain any weight during this long festive season (who are you and where do you live?) we all catch up on some seriously much needed sleep.
Big Melon Babe Watermelon costume photo by sfmission.com @ flickr - definitely the new fruit diet
* No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office. - George Bernard Shaw
* The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you're off it. - Jackie Gleason
* The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life. - Cyril Connolly
* Food is an important part of a balanced diet. - Fran Lebowitz
* To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed. - Francois duc de La Rochefoucauld
* I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond. - Mae West
* The right diet directs sexual energy into the parts that matter. - Barbara Cartland
Gorilla and woman photo by sfmission.com @ flickr - Well, I'm on the gorilla diet of "eat all the bananas you want and it seems to be working for me... don't you think?"
* Inside some of us is a thin person struggling to get out, but they can usually be sedated with a few pieces of chocolate cake. – Anonymous
* I have gained and lost the same ten pounds so many times over and over again my cellulite must have déjà vu. - Jane Wagner
* I've been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I've lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet. – Erma Bombeck
* A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand. - The Cookie Industry
Funny Mardi Gras stripes photo by sfmission.com @ flickr - looks like the drinking man's diet
* It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears. - Plutarch
* What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease. - Alexander Pope
* I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on. - Jean Kerr
* There were years when I was a beer and tequila guy, then I got real fat. And then I found that you could actually go on a diet and drink scotch. Then I got hooked on scotch, and if you get hooked on scotch, then everything else just tastes wrong. - Ron White
* The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook. - Julia Child
* Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. - Jim Davis
Some Serious Quotes about Denial to help us happily slide into the reflective mood of the new Lenten season:
* Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd. - Annie Besant
* Delay is the deadliest form of denial. - C. Northcote Parkinson
* Evil, what is evil? There is only one evil, to deny life. – D. H. Lawrence
* How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him. - Frank Herbert
* The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid. - Richard Bach
* Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. - Stephen Jay Gould
* You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory. - J. Donald Walters
* Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. - Melody Beattie
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