Erin, Go Fuck Yourself

Wow, didn't think I was gonna miss that many days. Work got all kinds of crazy and I wasn't paying as much attention to this blog as I told myself I would, you see. I had a choice between sleep and updating this blog, and being the lazy bastard I am I chose sleep.

Anyway...

So, it's St. Patrick's Day. Woo-hoo, I guess? It's kinda silly this is a high-profile holiday at all. Not many saint's days are, apart from St. Valentine's Day (in honor of the saint who discovered a heretofore-unknown scriptural passage specifically allowing the exchange of chocolate for sex--that the passage was in handwriting closely resembling his own is universally considered irrelevant), Halloween (named of course after the Hallowed St. Ween, who forbade the practice of putting razorblades in children's apples unless you really, REALLY want the little fucker dead), and of course today. And at least you get candy out of the former examples, unlike on St. Patrick's Day. So why, then, did it take off?

As with so many other things in life, we can blame this on the damn Irish. This country is home to many a long-distant descendant of those potato-snarfing bastards, many of whom think being one-eighth Irish is their most interesting personality trait. Most of them are right. So, come St. Pat's they celebrate by congregating in urine-soaked bars, getting piss-drunk on watery Guinness (sorry for the redundancy), loudly complaining about the blacks, watching The Boondock Saints (the alcohol having dulled their sense of artistic taste to an appropriately low level) and staggering home to beat their fat crucifix-fondling wives, bellowing like the damned every step of the way. You know, the same thing they do every Saturday. You'd think they'd switch things up a bit for the occasion--getting piss-drunk on watery Killian's Irish Red, watching Leprechaun: In The Hood (too many black people?), walking home quietly and beating their numerous children, for example.

Oh, and somewhere in all that there's something about wearing green, on pain of getting pinched. Not being one to kowtow to the Paddy O'Furniture I of course refuse such nonsense, indeed going out of my way to not wear green that day. This year I'm going one better--I have successfully developed the "anti-green", a hue which is the exact opposite and antithesis of green. It turns out to be a sort of brownish-pink color, like the stuff that comes out of a cyst. I plan to slather myself head-to-toe with anti-green paint before I head out to work today. Sure, it might be frowned upon, but it's not specifically prohibited in the employee dress code...on account of it being insane, but the point still stands I think.

Unlike every other holiday observed by the American public at large, St. Patrick's Day has resisted the encroachment of the greeting-card industry with surprising irascibility. I mean, you see green paper plates and crepe streamers, along with the odd leprechaun-festooned party favor, but they're usually pushed into one lonely cardboard display rack shoved in wherever there's space between the Easter candy. No, the real money in the holiday has always gone, and no doubt always shall go, directly into the pockets of producers and purveyors of alcoholic beverages. Because the Irish and all their half-blood ilk are all filthy, irresponsible drunks and inordinately proud of the fact. Did I mention that yet? I keep getting the feeling I forgot something.

And the leprechaun--Stickly, there's something else. Has any mythological creature undergone quite so much badass decay as the Fair Folk? Back in the day they were some nightmarish combination of Cthulhu and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac--now they hang around pools waiting to refill your life hearts. (A similar point can be made concerning the modern-day depiction of angels versus how they were portrayed in the actual Bible, but that's neither here nor there.) What, you think I'm making shit up? You ever see Darby O'Gill And The Little People? That movie scared the piss out of me as a kid, and not just because Sean Connery sings in it. I never cease to be amazed by the human race's tendency to reduce mythological pants-shitting horror to children's entertainment (i.e. fairy tales. Yes, all of them).

You ever think that's gonna happen to us? Like, centuries from now they'll be making animated movies featuring Freddy Krueger breakdancing and singing about friendship? Actually, that sounds kind of awesome. Never mind.

Couldn't suck as much as the Irish, anyway.