Soca music blaring, feet pounding the pavement, and your trusty water bottle to stave off the heatstroke. Looks like you’re ready for Carnival 2012!

I’m not going to presume to be any kind of carnival guide or soca expert (mostly because somewhere on the internet lurks a pack of soca uberfans waiting to pounce on me for the slightest mistake), but I will add my own brand of hype to non-stop disco that is Carnival.

Before we start, maybe I should make sure everyone’s on the same page.

1. Soca is awesome.
2. Carnival, bacchanal, crop over and kadooment as the natural offspring of soca (and since the gene for awesomeness is inherited in an autosomal dominant manner) are also awesome.

Whether you’re rocking the road march in Trinidad or ‘wukkin’ the kadooment in Barbados, carnival is all about having a good time. When else can grown men and women dress up in skimpy costumes and parade around the town gyrating on each other? (If you’re from Jamaica and answered every day, you’re correct!) Even though carnival has interesting roots in the colonial and post-colonial eras, all it pretty much boils down to today is shaking up your body. And paint. (Yes, paint.).

Carnival is all about the vibes.

Watch the dancers in that one – en pointe all the way.

The music is infectious. (I’m trying really hard not to make this post a soca-spam. Can you tell I’m trying? Because I really am.)

(BECAUSE IT WOULD NOT BE BACCHANAL WITHOUT MACHEL, GUYS)

It’s a tradition. It’s an establishment. It is my constitutionally approved right to jump and wave and ‘get on bad’. In case you couldn’t tell, I love carnival. And I say this having been to only one, slightly disappointing, Jouvert. The magic of carnival is such that even freezing your bum off, covered in kool-aid mix, missing your best friend, and being packed together tighter than pickles in a jar with a thousand other people in the exact same condition, it remains one of the top ten highlights of my brief life. True facts.

AndI’msorrybutonemorebecauseILOVEMYKES. :D

Pax.