Boil and Trouble

So I had the opportunity to attend V-Day V to the Tenth this weekend in New Orleans. I.e., a bunch of women, some of them super famous such as Oprah, talking about their vadges (or in the case of Oprah and her disciples, their va-jay-jays). I decided not to go for a few reasons: 1. My friend who was supposed to go didn't go, B) I was not on paid assignment, and B.2) At this point, I've heard enough women talking about their vadges. No need to go out of my way to hear more if not getting paid.

Instead, I did something I'd never done before: I went to a crawfish boil.
Hi, I'm Colleen Kane. I used to be a strict vegan! Then I ate delicious cheese again. (No regrets.) Then I moved to Louisiana, and now apparently I will eat cockroaches of the sea boiled together with various items such as sausage. (Regrets, I had a few.) Here I am being menaced by a giant crawfish. After the jump, thousands of his kinsman, slaughtered and devoured!Won't you join me?

So, after the sculpture of the giant crawfish, which you'll see is entitled "Crawfish," the next sight at the boil amounted to a crawdad holocaust.

Seeing that kid playing with a cooler-ful of live critters with their pincers, beady eyes, and antennae didn't exactly get my appetite stimulated. Nor did seeing them get poured by the hundreds into hot kettles. Here's what the end result looks like. Or, really, here's what the middle stage looks like.

The makeup of the one-kettle meal seemed to be about 90% crawfish and the rest was potatoes, corn, mushrooms, lemon, garlic, and onions, some sausage I guess, and of course, a generous amount of spices. (They sell it in local markets by the throw-pillow-sized bag for just such occasions.)

As part of Operation: Try at Least Some Louisiana Cuisine, All of Which Contains Some Sort of Animal, I was game to try this. I made the fiance do the dirty work, though. And it was quite a bit of work for the little bit of edible part you get.

(If you're a crazy Cajun, you're supposed to suck the spices out of the head part. Oh hell no.) And...it was fine. But it's not my cup of crustacean, so I was over it by a few minutes into the event, gnawing away on a too-spicy red potato and/or corn cob segment. Everyone else, however, was splitting crawdad after crawfish like there was no tomorrow. Me: "Am I the only asshole here wearing heels?" Fiance: "Of course."

Time to go hang out with some pastoral f'in cows.  Hey guys, I'm your friend! I don't eat you.  ...Yet!

So then we took a trip back to our place with our pal Jonathan, who just moved here last week from Nashville. Jonathan was like, "I have this job offer in Baton Rouge. Should I move there? Let me see if there are any blogs in Baton Rouge." He found my blog, contacted me, I showed him around a little bit, and despite all that, he still moved here. So now it's his first week living here and he came to the crawfish boil with us. Jonathan makes me feel slightly better about living here because it's kind of like my freshman year, however difficult it was, is over, and now we're not the newest ones here! Now he is like, "What is going on?" and fiance and I are like "Oh, just wait."

So. Back making a pit stop at our place, we were on our way out again when Cooper was going too fast, got tangled in a cord, and pulled my laptop off my desk. You know, the computer that I make my living with? I pretty much knew immediately that the monitor was shot...again. The monitor that I had just charged $500 to fix back in January. The monitor that had broken when Cooper knocked it to the floor last summer, back when it was the bf's computer.

[canned laughter]

Seriously. I made some attempts to be miserable about this particular trial, but after enough computer trouble, what can you do but go on a murderous rampage laugh. The splintered screen actually looked kind of organically pretty.

Life went on, even though I now no longer had a way to earn my living. We returned to the crawfish boil with the dog who had ruined my life, who would be grounded if he only understood what he had done. I felt decidedly less like socializing and more like just going catatonic like Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off after his dad's precious sports car gets destroyed.

And then I had to admit what a beautiful day it was to be lounging around in a field with good people and a beautiful view and a bunch of dogs running around.
Cooper, true to form, was being a total assclown, trying to hump other dogs and humans, and attempting about every few minutes to take a dump in front of the remaining folks at the boil who weren't playing volleyball. While attempting this business, his lipstick would inevitably emerge from hiding. Thus, Cooper brought shame on the family, as usual. It was a good time to say, as we have many times in the past, We probably shouldn't have children. What if we had human children and they liked to take dumps in front of audiences while also sexually aroused? What if they also destroyed Mommy's career by wrecking her computer? And we'd love those jerk kids anyway, because what else are you going to do?  Also on this day, Cooper met the black Lab Maggie, who is slated to become his babymommy when we breed him later this year. I took the opportunity to say, Why are we breeding this dog? So his progeny can destroy my future computers? Awesome.

[canned laughter]

Then someone brought a goat named Dixie, whose arse-end was the most obscene sight I've witnessed since leaving the porno office. But whose front end was super adorable.

I want a goat. That's the only kid I want right now.

I hooked the laptop up to a flatscreen monitor we inherited. But true to form, there has to be some weirdo quirk to any computer system I ever have. This time around, everything appears too big on the screen, so it's like I have this Fisher-Price computer for little kids. So if anyone reading this  has a sweet hookup for me, say a 25% employee discount at Mac, and wants to hook a sister up, I would not be opposed. If not, I'm fine for now.

Yep, juuuuuust fine.

Comments

[the cajun boy]

i'll try this again...my mouth and underwear are both moist right now.

[elder_flowr]

I Ell-Oh-Elled at Cooper's lipstick bringing shame. My Dingo (the best creature on the planet, 2 kids I birthed notwithstanding) has those exhibitionistic tendencies, too. I always tell him "Soldier, holster that weapon!" Then I crack up because I think I'm hilarious.

Love me some crawdaddies, but I don't suck crustacean head. As you put it so well, I quote-"Oh hell no."

[cokane]

got it, cajun, twice. ewww.

elder flowr, glad you LOL'd--I like your blog & tried to comment but it wants me to join Live Journal.