Available now: Le Monde de Merde

Parade Map

With an early Mardi Gras, Carnival krewes have less time to get their floats and costumes ready. Plus, the marching groups had to do the Super Bowl shuffle to make way for the Big Game. The parade season tone-setters of Krewe du Vieux - who are already under the gun for this year's Jan. 19 march - could be complaining about being in a world of shit as a result of these developments. But, as always, they've simply released Le Monde de Merde for the rest of us to roll around in with glee, and announced a theme that cuts off all feelings of misery and misfortune marked by daily life in the City of Dreams at the head.

Krewe du Vieux's 2013 theme is "Krewe du Vieux Comes Early," according to their recently-published annual newspaper, Le Monde de Merde. After summarizing a year of Bounties, TP cutbacks and the Crescent City's usual political tomfoolery, the krewe that relies on old-fashioned ass-drawn floats and outrageous satire announced once again that only one krewe can cut down all that is sacred, and turn all that is proper into sexual innuendo and bathroom humor.

"The pre-mature Krewe members will come early and often come hell or high water until the cows come home," the paper heralds.

This year's Queen is New Orleans Musicians Clinic executive director Bethany Bultman. As the director of the organization that provides health care to the city's many players and one of the many state health care providers made to feel ill following Bobby Jindal's budget cuts, Bultman "has come to the forefront of our cultural preservation efforts," according to the Krewe.

As ever, Le Monde de Merde also gives Carnival watchers a sneak peek at some of this year's satire. Floats themes this year are heavily targeted in the direction of the Newhouses and the Times-Picayune, whose decision to cut back publication to three days a week took up the city's civic conversation for most of the second half of the year.

Krewe of Comatose will march with "The Times Prickayune Fails to Deliver," while K.A.O.S. will hold up "Black and White and Dead All Over." Drips and Discharges, meanwhile, announces to the Merde that they're "Fresh Outta TP."

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is also a piece of red meat for the skewer, as the Saints' Bountygate scandal gave the city an Enemy No. 1, and tanked the Black and Gold season before it started.

Krewe of SPANK will unveil their ultrapostmodern classic "Waiting for Goodell," while Krewe of Underwear will show how the "NFL Penetrates Carnival." Meanwhile, the Mystic Krewe of Inane will get us ready for Super Hole XLVAG," while Mama Roux will prepare the way of the "Stuper Bowl."

But it's not all football and newsprint. T.O.K.I.N. will introduce the masses to YoMamaCare, while the Krewe of Spermes will take the parade's theme to new scientific heights by exploring what truly came first, the chicken or the egg? Proving that this year's krewe is extraordinarily fowl, Seeds of Decline will allow us to Choke More Chikn.

Having ready this handy summary, NoDef is fully aware that readers will have no idea what any of this looks like. Pick up a Le Monde de Merde at newsstands around the city, or head to Krewe du Vieux at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 19 in the Marigny and French Quarter (route pictured) to see it in the exposed flesh.