Happy Quirinalia!

I live in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the whole of the United States. There are as many international embassies as there are Starbucks, and a veritable hairball of diversity clogs the drainpipes of the historic boulevards and bare, concrete streets. You can barely move for tripping over snooty gay French men with their minute handbag-dogs, tweed hats and custom spatter-bleached Paper Denim jeans.

But did anyone wish me a Happy Quirinalia today? Hell no. I was out there at the crack of dawn making my offerings of corn to Fornax, but did anyone stop by to say a little prayer with me, or maybe burn a little corn? No. Bastards. Everybody just hurried by and averted their eyes. Fornax is watching you. He know, oh yes, he knows--somebody's going to get a little leaf blight in their crops this year.

The world is too secular these days. Take, for example, Lupercalia, which was callously overshadowed by the vile, commercialized ritual of Valentine's Day, with its cloying saccharinity and soggy romance, symbolic of the vapid, gluttonous decline of modern culture. Lupercalia is a heady holiday, masculine, redolent of musk and viality. Everybody else was just too busy eating chocolates and rolling around in rosepetals to celebrate a real holiday. I was standing outside waiting all day for a chortling youth in a loin-cloth with dog blood smeared on his forehead to give me a sound drubbing with a fresh, steaming goat-hide, thus ensuring my fertility.

And why was I the only one partaking in the drinking and general revelry? I spent weeks catching larks and cutting out their tongues so I could marinade them in red wine. And what about my fried sheep's liver? And the souffle of small fishes I made? And the milk-fed snails? Why didn't anybody eat? Sure, people picked at the Lucanian sausage and the lentil stew. I spent ages cooking and preparing! The least they could have done is tried it. I mean, if they didn't like the taste of it, they could have always just poured on some Liquamen, which I made seven days in advance by letting sardines age in a pot with salt.

People have no common courtesy anymore. You're all invited to my next party, which will be Terminalia. We'll go decorate boundary stones with garlands, and have some roast wood pigeon and boiled goose. It'll be fun!

Listening to: "The Power is On" by The Go! Team