That's the spirit!

Van Morrison - "Brown Eyed Girl"
Owl City - "Fireflies"

In order: The cute one of the organization with some huge beads that she caught off a float at the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade, establishing her ranking as #1 in the bead procurement game; A venison-kabob grilled by the kind folks with which we paraded. I could quite happily eat only venison forever. The kabob looks like an archipelago; Grilled Spam on a biscuit! We are a pro-Spam family - it is integral to our version of onigiri - but I was surprised to see a Joe Hunter type putting this on the grill. It was thick enough to be juicy, which, if Spam already grosses you out conceptually, should gross you out worse but, yum y'all; The requisite parade Bloody Mary. I was a bit let down that they didn't pop in the pickled okra, as is the custom here, but it did the trick that Bloody Marys do; The masses. We caught the parade not in Spanish Town proper and I have to say, I enjoyed the parade part much better this way. STown is much more suited for the mayhem aspects of post-parading; Finally, myself reflected in the baubles of one who I love, which seems a fitting thing on this Valentine's Day.

Not pictured: the poor dude who was trying to get back to where the hell he parked with a bag of beads perched precariously atop his rolling ice chest. He took a turn wrong and the beads fell off, out onto the concrete, which prompted his equally drunken spouse to publicly exclaim, "GODDAMMIT Fred! You are such a fucking idiot!" That's the spirit! Somehow I think this was not the dumbest thing Fred has done, even that day, nor was the incident really a product of his proclaimed stupidity.

Maya heard "Brown Eyed Girl" booming out of some soundsystem during our epic hike to the parade catching site and said "Hey, I know that song!" I'm glad she has mastered the musical sophistication of 90% of everyone. She also heard "Fireflies" from Owl City from another camp and surprised me by knowing most of the words, despite her radio station of choice being exclusively Country Legends 107.3. It's good to be worldly.

Speaking of, I started reading Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux, about his late life revisit to Africa, going from Cairo to Cape Town to wallow in the continents misery and celebrate its joys, but also to be incommunicado for a while. Upon leaving he proclaims

I am outta here, I told myself the next Web site I visit will be that of the poisonous Central African bird-eating spider.

I don't share his desire to be off the grid at all but again, that's the spirit!

I will have a video of the famed lawnmower brigade of Spanish Town Mardi Gras up shortly.