The yearly American tradition of people with the name Pietrazola, Weingarten, Yerkovich, Liu, Gonzalez, and so on wearing green to show solidarity with an ethnic group they are not a member of, only as a pretext to swill shitty green beer until they vomit through their noses onto the shoes of the other idiots out making asses out of themselves.
I’ll not be taking part, but if that is your thing, Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
Kryptik
I can legitimately say that I’m Irish, John, even if I’m not of the ethnic group. One of the few things about Charleston Catholic to be grateful for. XP
cleek
i’ll drink some Scotch. that’s close enough. i wore a green shirt today – not on purpose, however.
freelancer
It’s Officially White Boy Day.
Tonight you get your country back.
Tomorrow, we return to collect, with interest.
RedKitten
I have a little bit of Irish blood in me, and so feel perfectly justified in celebrating Saint Paddy’s Day.
Green beer is gross, though. I’ll have a Kilkenny instead, thanks.
srv
I’m 51% Irish and I’m already +4 on the left coast.
WTF is your excuse?
inkadu
I always thought the tradition began because people were so depressed about being Irish they had to drink themselves unconscious.
r€nato
I’m not the least bit Irish, but any excuse to have a Guinness or three works for me.
By the way, since we’re speaking of the Irish and a Catholic-rooted holiday… I’m terribly offended by all the anti-Catholic prejudice in the media. They should not tar the entire church just because of a few bad apples in every parish.
Pete
I do love the new taglines
New Yorker
I’ve got the opposite problem: my name is Ian Gillespie, so people immediately assume I’m 100% whiskey-drinkin’, rugby-playin’, U2-listenin’, FDNY-joinin’ Irish and want to party away today.
Actually, 3/4 of me is not of Celtic heritage (Lithuanian and Austrian) and the other 1/4 is represented by my great-grandfather Frank Gillespie, from outside Glasgow, and my great-grandmother Jenny O’Brien, who was a Protestant from Derry (that always riles up the crowd!).
In addition a lot people think I’m Irish based on my fair-skinned, blue-eyed appearance, but some people (old ladies in my neighborhood) try to speak to me in Polish for the same reason, and I had German tourists try to speak to me in German in Prague for the same reason too.
gbear
Early this evening, I made the mistake of driving into downtown St. Paul via W 7th Street where all the popular bars are located. It was already a frickin’ green zoo.
jl
Looks like Groundhog day at B-J: two happy St. Patrick’s Day posts, and one could make the case that niether is quite in the proper spirit.
Why does Balloon-Juice hate the Irish? Huh?
The following statement by Mr. Cole is unfair and just plain wrong:
“as a pretext to swill shitty green beer until they vomit through their noses onto the shoes of the other idiots out making asses out of themselves”
Excuse me, but all minor holidays in the United States are evolving into this type of procedure, with minor variations.
New Years has a variety of alcohols, and we do it later than usual. Memorial Day and Labor day, it is piss beear and we stuff ourselves first. Halloween, we do not wait until we’re drunk to make fools of ourselves.
I hope to live long enough to see how MLK, President’s Day and other such minor holidays (and come to think of it, Groundhod day itself) evolve into similar rituals.
Mnemosyne
The two people who most enthusiastically decorated our office for St. Patty’s Day are Jewish and Filipina, so make of that what you will.
I’m past the days when getting blind drunk was fun (actually, I never really found it fun at all) so it’s turned into more of a relaxing evening at home with corned beef and cabbage in the crockpot and “Father Ted” on the TV. And brownies made with Guinness Stout this year.
I did have to fight for the very last bottle of Magner’s at BevMo at lunchtime today. If I were McMegan, I could claim that I now knew what it was like to live in Ulster with the IRA blowing shit up right and left.
srv
When are we going to get a Tunch punching a hippie T-shirt?
Fergal
Irish people in the US usually have bright red faces, because we are genetically not built to deal well with sunshine. We can spot each other from miles away.
Pat
Is this the Liberal War on Saint Patrick?
G Newman
The whole Chicago political machine used to turn out, under Mayor Daley (the current one’s father, who was also mayor), for the march down State Street.
It was like friggin’ May Day in Moscow, with different ward delegations marching down the street, with its green center line, and the urinals in nearby bars overflowing.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
That’s already the direction that Armenian Genocide Day has gone in my majority-Armenian city. For quite a few guys in their 20s, nothing says, “Genocide commemoration” like driving around drunk while honking their horns and waving Armenian flags.
It’s a strange little city that I live in, but I like it.
demkat620
One quarter Irish, one quarter English, one quarter German Dutch and one quarter Slovakian.
And I married a sicilian.
Uniquely american, isnt it?
No green beer, Harp.
demkat + 2
Napoleon
OT, I guess, but I have noticed that one of the local Penske dealerships is running ads for their Mercedes dealership with a woman they have been using in the past who in the last couple of days calls herself Shelly Sanders, when over the last year or so she never identified herself (I suspect she is used in multiple markets even though the ads are customized for the market). Well a few days ago ago I noticed an ad where she used “you bet ‘cha” in an ad, Sarah Palin style.
They just ran one where she used it 3 times in the same ad. Anyone notice the same thing?
Gus
Jeez, so judgmental. How about if I stay in and drink more Summit India Style Rye ales than I should?
SiubhanDuinne
Wasn’t it just two years ago during the Dem primaries that our future POTUS made the case for being Irish because his name was *O’Bama*?
My own name looks Italian but is actually Irish. But I don’t drink anything green. Red wine for me!
+e
jl
@Mnemosyne: Armenian Genocide Day too? That is awful.
Do you live someplace in Central or Southern California?
Fresno came to mind from your comment, but if it is Fresno, I don’t see how your Armenian friends’ behavior is much different than many other groups on many other days.
Except for the swells on the Van Ness extension.
Joshua Norton
McDonald’s Shamrock Shake and Jameson Irish Whiskey.
The end.
SiubhanDuinne
Oops, I mean +2 ! Damn BlackBerry keyboard.
4tehlulz
Does Ross Douchebag celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?
Corner Stone
@srv:
HAHAHAHA!
Everyone knows that cat’s too morbidly obese to catch a sundial.
The t-shirt or coffee mug is the perfect medium.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Has Ross Douchehat shared any other pearls of wisdom about how St. Patrick didn’t start raping kids until he’d been in Ireland a while?
Could be worse. You could be high yaller and have Indiana rednecks hating on you because they think you’re a job-stealing Messican and East Coast fReichtards giving you the stink eye because they think you’re a terrist Ay-rab.
And let’s not even talk about the mess when Southern rednecks’ can’t decide what the fuck you are and therefore don’t know what insult to yell and therefore }KABOOM!{ head assplosion.
Corner Stone
@New Yorker: Stop being a whiny little bitch.
4tehlulz
@Mnemosyne: Watertown?:
jl
Clearly Balloon-Juice hates the Irish. Some one needs to lay an Irish curse on this miserable politically correct lefty blog. I would, except I learned curses from my Swiss side not my Irish side, and they are a different breed altogether.
And I need to go look for a vat of green beer about now (look at that, I waited until work was over. Why do I hate the Irish so?)
schrodinger's cat
@srv: Tunch doesn’t punch, he only looks down upon you with utter disdain.
dr. bloor
@G Newman:
For some reason, this reminded me of all those old jokes about Paul McCartney being in a band before Wings.
Carol
Got Irish ancestry somewhere in my background too….Believe it or not a lot of African-Americans have Irish ancestry too.
I just think it’s an endearing American trait: we’ll celebrate any holiday that’s inclusive enough, anything for a party-Mardi Gras, Cinco De Mayo, Juneteenth, Chinese New Year. As soon as there are enough Indian-Americans to move the advertising numbers, we’ll find some obscure Hindu holiday to add to the mix as well. And with all of the blended ethnic families, and it’s a wonder that we don’t have some sort of holiday every other day or every other week.
No wearing of the green-I was home today, but tomorrow I’ll take advantage of the half-off prices on green cupcakes and St. Paddy decorations.
@renato: it’s not anti-Catholic to admit that the Church has been and become very dysfunctional. I’ve always have felt that the whole celibacy thing tends to attract people with real issues regarding sexuality.
Restrung
@gbear:
I did that scene once. ONCE. Nursing/carrying puking women by 2pm. The buses are free!
+4 and at home. My tits are green. Wait, that wasn’t me. ?
jenniebee
Am I the only one who’s noticed that US acceptance and assimilation of non-British populations is directly correlative to the excellence of their drinking holidays? Germans have Oktoberfest, so we’re down with them. St. Patrick’s Day makes us all a little bit Irish, so we’re all happy to wear the green. Tom Tancredo probably has a margarita on Cinco de Mayo. And for the rest of the year we’re basically Italian because they never stop drinking (disclaimer: I’m French/Italian/German/Irish and troublingly sober atm)
It’s possible that the real reason Kwanzaa hasn’t gone platinum is that it didn’t come with a signature cocktail.
New Yorker
@Corner Stone:
I’m whining? Where? It doesn’t bother me in the least when someone says, “you’re Irish, right?” or when someone speaks to me in Polish. I find it amusing.
Brian J
I don’t particularly care for the day, but I am glad others do. Still, I don’t get the need by some to drink so heavily only to feel like shit for several days after, particularly if you already feel like shit for a couple of days before. One guy I work with, who is very heavy, still smokes, and has diabetes, takes terrible care of myself most of the time. He’s consistently out of work for one reason or another, or trying to get out of it, and yet today, he talked about nothing but drinking Guinness after work. I hope he was just being festive and won’t go nuts. It’s his life, but man, you’d think he’d realize there’s a connection between how he acts and how he feels.
Oh well, maybe I am just bitter that I’ve lost my ability to handle alcohol as well as I used to. Two drinks leaves me feeling like I am dead.
jl
@4tehlulz: checked out Watertown MA, and saw a picture of Eliza Dushku.
We clearly need a holiday for the Albanian-Danish-English community.
Cat Lady
@Restrung:
Downtown Boston today. Sunny and 60 degrees, college town, Celtics playing at home, and it’s a state worker holiday. Yes, it’s “Evacuation Day”. Fuck yeah!
Maude
OT
Here in NJ, Christie announced his solution for the budget deficit.
A lot of cutting support systems ala Raygun.
What stood out was he wants to expand the food stamp program.
It struck me as funny.
I know I am a bad person, but have you gotten a look at this guy?
Brian J
@New Yorker:
I went to a college that was heavily Jewish, and during my sophomore year, I lived in a dorm on a floor that had several members of a Jewish frat who I became friends with. As we were walking on campus one day, one of the Jewish groups was passing out Hanukkah bags. The girl only handed one to me. And no, none of my friends were involved in any of these groups, so it’s not the girl knew them and figured they had one. I was also somehow on the Hillel e-mail list, although someone speculated that’s because there was a lot of cross-registration between that group and the College Democrats.
Anne Laurie
@inkadu:
In the very Irish community I grew up in, we were told it’s because it’s so depressing for us to spend so much of our lives explaining stuff to you dumb… non-Gaels.
We try and we try, but it’s an uphill battle all the way.
Roger Moore
@jenniebee:
Are you sure that it isn’t that the corruption of an ethnic holiday into an excuse for drunken excess isn’t proportional to that ethic group’s acceptance and assimilation?
Crone
@RedKitten: I thought Kilkenny didn’t export! Where in the States can you get it? I’ve been wanting some ever since my trip over to the island.
PS: I always thought it odd that we celebrated the man who brought Catholicism to Ireland by getting shit-faced and falling down.
debit
No Irish in me, just German on one side and French on the other.
@Open Thread: why isn’t my bike done yet? I wanna go riding.
Ash Can
We have real Irish bars in my neck of the woods (as in, run and populated by folks off the boat), and I heard some reports from my Irish neighbors that there were some pretty good music sessions at them over the past week or so. Now that I’m sorry I missed — not the Near North/Bridgeport horseshit. We’re all home tonight, happily stuffed from corned beef and cabbage, with Guinness and Bell’s on hand and nary a drop of that green shit in sight.
Evolutionary
Lets celebrate! Let’s go driving around with loaded firearms. No, I better take the bullets out there are kids in the car…. Bang, Oops!
Pasquinade
To celebrate I’ll write “Éirinn go brách” on my hand in green ink, and add some green olives to my beer.
New Yorker
@Brian J:
Heh, that reminds me of the one group that doesn’t think I’m one of them: the Lubavitch Hasidim. When I walk by one of their eager young men staked outside of a “Mitzvah Tank”, he never tries to hand me his literature or talk to me about his beliefs.
demo woman
@Crone: Kitten lives in Canada.
She has health insurance too. Irish beer and universal coverage.. Wow!
Restrung
@Cat Lady:
Nice. But are the buses free? Brilliant f’n day here in St Paul, too, btw.
freelancer
@jl:
Oh, Aye.
Start limping, Juicers.
@Cat Lady:
“Evacuation Day” sounds really shitty.
/wink
jl
Early Irish Catholicism preserved much of what we know about Western civilization before the Dark Ages. They saved many of the great books.
Let’s get up a Balloon-Juice campaign to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by going to the library and reading a good book! Hey, kids, we can do it, for the good of the nation!
Once you get the libraries to stay open late, they would be good places to go puke and sober up.
It just might work.
Anne Laurie
@New Yorker:
Hah! Since we moved from his Midwestern birthplace to the Boston area, my red-headed, blue-eyed, Norwegian-American husband regularly gets asked “So, you’ll be celebrating St. Paddy’s in the traditional way?”… and usually he manages not to say “What, with rapine, pillage, and arson?”… out loud.
Fun fact: The name “Finnegan” means ‘son of the fair-haired foreigner’. The “original” Irish are black-haired and blue-eyed — all us green-eyed redheads whose grandparents emigrated from Connemara have some Vikings in the woodpile, just like the the hero of that most stereotypical Irish drinking ballad.
gbear
@SiubhanDuinne:
I bet you could have found some green wine it you’d wanted.
Honus
@demkat620:
That’s what I had to explain to the kids in my office today, no green beer, Harp or Guinness. And I’m Lebanese and German, but I am catholic and have a lot good Irish friends, and I drink to them today, not the least of which is the late Jimmy Kilbane, God rest his fine soul.
And on June 20, I celebrate West Virginia day.
demo woman
@SiubhanDuinne: I got a call from an organization pushing for an increase in the cigarette tax to help balance the budget in GA. I should have asked who they represent but they transferred me to my local reps office so I could offer my support. I left a message supporting the tax increase with a message that I was quite distressed about the cuts in schools.
Sentient Puddle
I has a homebrewed Irish ale. Not green. But good.
daveX99
Gosh and B’gorn Mr. Cole! You slay me as surely as if you’d dashed in me head with a shelaigheighly.*
*spelled fonettikly.
Anne Laurie
@4tehlulz:
Yes, for him it’s a quiet, homebound day of mourning and penitence that those people are still permitted to run riot with their primitive sectarian superstitions.
I suspect that’s also the way he celebrates Columbus Day, not to mention MLK Day, but that may just be my own prejudices showing.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
Glendale — the southern California one, not the one in Humboldt County. I didn’t even know that there were two until I went to a conference in San Jose and confused the heck out of the northern Californians.
Dave C
I’m studying population genetics tonight so one–or more–of you lot is going to have to do my drinking for me. ‘Tis a heavy burden, but I’m sure somebody is up for the challenge.
Crone
@demo woman: Canadians get all the luck!
If I were closer to Canada I’d just drive across the border, but for this year, I’ll be having my last two Beamish I bought before they stopped exporting.
And I second the reading thing. I mean, I’m all for drinking into the occasional stupor, but I’d rather read some Irish history or whatnot to commemorate my ancestor’s homeland.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
My wife put up a flag, so I declared it “Irish Nationalist Day”
RAM
Corned beef! Guinness! Any excuse for imbibing both is a great excuse. Right now our house smells so good I may just sit here and breathe through my nose all night.
jl
@Dave C:
“one—or more—of you lot is going to have to do my drinking for me.”
Done.
I’ll take my payment in drinks after I sober up, if you don’t mind.
Mnemosyne
I have a 100 percent Italian name and the Italian is the most recently arrived in this country, but I’m closer to 1/4 Italian. The rest is German, English and Irish.
I did get the wonderful Irish curse of rosacea, though I didn’t get the red hair to go with it. G is about 3/4 Irish (and 1/4 Swedish) so if we ever do reproduce, we’ll probably have little redheads.
jeffreyw
The Eating of the Green.
Ash Can
Mm-mm. Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. Yum. And tomorrow’s our anniversary, so that means dinner out. Good chow and drinks. And then the next day is St. Joseph’s Day. Chow and wine. And Sunday is the St. Joseph’s Table at church. More chow and wine.
And to think I wanted to lose a little weight during Lent. ::burp::
PurpleGirl
I saw a man this afternoon in a mint green suit, emerald green tie and pastel green shirt. He was getting on a bus heading to Manhattan. I also saw the usual bunches of people in strange Cat in the Hat style/sized hats in green stripes and other green accessories of all kinds. The guy really looked weird.
My ancestors came from Austria and Sicily… I’m not Irish, even on St. Patrick’s Day and I avoid Manhattan like the plague on this day. I went shopping at a yarn store (grin).
jibeaux
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
A friend of ours who is “generic ethnic” looking came down to visit and killed some time in a local dive waiting for us to come home, a place I wouldn’t set foot in. He was told he looked like a terrorist. It is a tribute to his enormous charm and good humor that he left that evening having not paid for his drinks and with them joking that they were having such a great time that they were ready to die, he could go ahead and pull the pin. I don’t think I have that kind of tolerance for redneck humanity.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
I am one fourth German , a fourth British, a fourth Italian, and the other half American Hillbilly.
DougJ
@cleek:
I assume someone has already set you straight on how wrong that is. Why not have a “black-and-tan” while you’re at it?
SiubhanDuinne
@Demo Woman: I liked the $1 cigarette tax too, but heard on WABE on the way home tonight that the bill’s sponsor has withdrawn it. He’s ten votes short of the number he needs. Apparently, the convenience store operators are opposed and have a powerful lobby.
Karen in GA
3/8 Irish, 1/4 Polish, and 1/8 each German, Dutch and Swedish.
Had some proverbial luck o’ the Irish today, though — I aced a phone screen job interview this morning, and was called back this afternoon to schedule a face-to-face interview for Friday. My first interview in weeks.
Not much of a drinker, though. I was going to get some snakes, let them loose in the house, and then drive them out — no set plan on how, but I figured God would provide. But my husband said no.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
I’m plenty Irish – descended from potato famine refugees and all – and I don’t drink. If anyone wants my shitty green beer, help yourself.
Sláinte!
Crashman
Half Irish, half Italian. Now time for a couple cans of Murphy’s. Here’s to you, County Cork. The store was out of Beamish.
Mnemosyne
@DougJ:
Why not have one in brownie form?
Everyone at work was very intrigued by the idea of Guinness in brownies and the whole pan was gone by the end of the day. I think my baking powder was lacking oomph, though, because the “tan” part was pretty flat. That, or it was because I got impatient with creaming the brown sugar and butter and didn’t wait until they were smooth.
Max
I am not Irish. I did not wear green today. One of my staff members wanted to pinch me and I said “go ahead, but after you do, I will punch you in the face”.
Thankfully, I have a good relationship with my staff, otherwise, there might be a little call from HR headed my way.
:)
Omnes Omnibus
Back when I was a partier, I looked down on St. Pat’s as Amateur Night. Bunch of 30-40 year olds who go out two or three times a year and try to drink like they could when they were 21.
Now that I am well into that age group, I won’t go out on days like this because I am not going to be that guy.
Nylund
This is my first St. Patrick’s Day in Texas.
What I’ve learned is that not even this holiday can get these folks away from Miller Lite. If ever there was a day I thought the locals might drink decent beer, it was this day where everyone is obligated to drink the at least from the likes of Harp and Guinness. But nope. Miller Lite is still their king.
Forever and always.
SiubhanDuinne
@General Stuck: Which side of the family are the mathematicians?
Leelee for Obama
I celebrated my Irish heritage today by not wearing green, cause I don’t own anything that color that I can wear. I didn’t drink anything, cause my alcohol allergy makes me break out in stupid, and I’m starting my new job tomorrow. I did eat a chicken nugget shaped like a shamrock, but that was unintentional and somewhat accidental. My Daughter cooked them and handed me one!
However, I got my haircut today, for the new job, and spent the entire time talking to my skeptical hair cutter about how good the HCR bill would be and how the Stimulus Bill had saved many people like her husband and her from going bankrupt by subsidizing COBRA. Then, I explained how that action mimicked the European plans that are through private insurers but subsidized by the government if you lost your job. Also, explained that the numbers of people losing their health care this past year did indeed go down, for the very reason that the stimulus bill helped many to keep their health insurance even though they lost their job. When the last clip was clipped and the blow dryer came out, she said she hadn’t heard this explained before like I had and would be re-thinking her ideas about the HCR bill and the stimulus, which obviously had done a lot of good. I threw in the bone that I gave Charlie Crist credit for supporting the stimulus bill, for the good of the citizens of Florida, because his job was to look out for his people.
It was fun, and I think I may have driven a snake or two out of the area!
Happy St. Paddy’s Day!
Davis X. Machina
Go réaba na gráinneoga mioscaiseacha do bhall fearga.
(May malevolent hedgehogs tear at your manly part.)
Knock yourself out here….
SiubhanDuinne
@Karen in GA: Yay on the interview and LOL on the snakes.
Where in GA are you? Anywhere near Atlannta?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
Good luck tomorrow Leelee!! First day on a new job always gave me butterflies in the tummy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: Go n-aora paca Fomhórach ólta do bhrachán
(May a pack of drunken Fomorians satirize your porridge.)
Beautiful.
Morbo
I had my green beer on Monday. I wasn’t buying the pitcher, so it was Bud Light, blecch.
Wednesday is wine night, St. Pattie’s or no.
Brian J
@Leelee for Obama:
Is your new job working as of Rahm Emmanuel’s minions? From what you were saying to your hairdresser, that’s what it sounds like.
Seriously now, what is your new job? Congrats, by the way. I got an e-mail from a law school that still has me confused. I had to send the school a reply asking whether I was accepted or not, and for what program. And judging from one of the law school boards I visit, I am not the only one.
Leelee for Obama
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Thanks, Stuck! I’m a little fluttery, but just really stoked as well. I have to get some paper work filled out, and then I’m hitting the hay. Tomorrow will be busy. I don’t have to be there till the afternoon, but getting ready will be a process I haven’t done in awhile.
Hawes
Ahhhhh, Erin Go Fugyerself
Omnes Omnibus
@Leelee for Obama: Cheers and congrats.
Leelee for Obama
@Brian J: That’s a job I’d love to get, but somehow, I don’t think DC would show me much love. Now, if I could make a living at it, explaining things to people that they just find scary and confusing, I’d consider it. I speak ordinary really well.
I’m starting at Panera Bread-counter/bakery, cashier-a good beginning for me-it’s the kind of stuff I’ve done before and just start to wriggle my way up the ladder! Fingers crossed!
I hope the law school was telling what they accepted you-guess they start using couched language right away, eh?
Leelee for Obama
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks much!
Leelee for Obama
@Karen in GA: Congrats on the interview, and good luck to a fellow snake chaser!
SiubhanDuinne
@Leelee for Obama: Good luck, Leelee, and congrats. Such good news for you, and generally encouraging for everyone who’s ooking.
Joel
What’s long and green and has an asshole on each end?
John O
What if you happen to be born on St. Patrick’s Day?
Leelee for Obama
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks! I feel the same way. It’s like the sun is finally coming up after a very long night, for everybody.
Brian J
@Leelee for Obama:
I’ve gotten one rejection so far, but I don’t particularly care about that one. Some of the others haven’t even started evaluating my application yet. The ones that have haven’t made decisions yet, as far as I know, which either means the process is longer and more formal than I realize or there’s a debate about my application, or something else I can’t think of. Either way, as Washington & Lee said, if I don’t hear a decision, that means my application is still being considered…or however they phrased it.
As far as the response I got today, it started out sounding like a rejection, but then talked about how great I was. (Really easy thing to do, lemme tell you.) Then they proceeded to indicated there wasn’t any room left in the program I applied for, but there was room left in other ones, possibly, which may make it easier for me to get ahead for the programs that there was no more room for…I think. Anyway, I was invited to visit the campus and speak with people and put down a deposit, despite the e-mail not being clear what I was accepted for, or even if I was accepted.
As far as PB goes, I like that place, but for some reason never go. I should go more frequently. There’s one very close to my house. And listen, when you are running the company, just give me a card for some free soup or something…okay?
jeffreyw
Mrs J has done her share of snake chasin.
Now with correct link, sorry.
Leelee for Obama
@Brian J: It sounds like they want you at their school, so I hope it’s where you want to go. That Washington and Lee statement is similar to what I was told at my first interview, that she’d call me either way after I met with the GM. I didn’t hear back until 2 weeks later, and the one thing I kept saying was , no call with “no” in it means “yes” is still an option!
If I get as far a you said, I’ll definitely be buying some soup!
Omnes Omnibus
@Brian J: Some schools have a formula based on grades and LSAT. If you get get above a certain score, you are automatically admitted. Below another score, you are automatically rejected. In between, they look at the rest of your application.
binzinerator
@SiubhanDuinne:
I rather liked +e. I thought it was scientific notation or something. Which is pretty damn funny.
My surname is English. Given name is Celtic (and I don’t want to hear any of youse basketball idiots out there pronounce it Sell-tick). Half my ancestry is either English or Irish.
The other half, Italian and French-Canadian, keeps me sane.
Yeah right.
Is French-Canadian an ancestry? Dunno. But it’s what I got so I’m rolling with it.
‘Yah, eh?’ and ‘strunza’ are both found in my family lexicon.
I like English and Irish beer and red wine. And ‘whiskey’ means it comes from Ireland, although I very much liked the Welsh whiskey I’ve had (Penderyn, which I believe is the only whiskey distilled in Wales.) Bourbon is a waste of a perfectly good glass container. Won’t even use it for hot toddies when I’m sick, drowned with lots of lemon juice and honey. I like lemon and honey, damn shame to waste ’em that way.
+some Fibonacci prime
Leelee for Obama
@jeffreyw: That looks so fabulous! I love spinach in any concoction!
jeffreyw
@Leelee for Obama: LOL, you were too quick for my edit.
JD Rhoades
I got depressed, drank whiskey, and wrote.
Which is, as my wife pointed out, an extremely Irish thing to do.
Leelee for Obama
@jeffreyw: That IS a horse of a different color, now ain’t it!! Is that one of the rattly ones?
LLeo
My great grandfather came to america cuz as a member of Irish independence movement the Brits put a price on his head. Our family name is a clan name. Three cousins and a bunch of uncles are NYPD and FDNY. As a stereotype Irish-American I welcome everyone being honorary Irish for a day. Remember God created Whiskey so the Irish wouldn’t take over the world.
Brian J
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, absolutely. The fact that I haven’t been rejected so quickly at any schools (that I know of), aside from one, gives me hope. Pittsburgh told me that they started reviewing my application three weeks ago, so while I hope to hear a decision soon, every day I don’t still gives me a little hope.
Dee Loralei
@SiubhanDuinne: Yea, you’re remembering correctly, Obama is Irish from his maternal great,great grandfather. In the last St Paddy’s day post, I linked to this song, but I was late to the party so no one saw it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkw8ip43Vk&feature=related
And LeeLee, you sound so excited it’s just damned cute! And good job on the defense of HCR and the stimulus ^5.
Leelee for Obama
@JD Rhoades: Yes, it is. I hate to say that alcohol in large quantities can be beneficial, but some of THE best writing had been done by depressed, drunken Irishmen.
Leelee for Obama
@Dee Loralei: Thanks on both counts. I do feel just little giddy about it. Part of it is that I really love Panera, and always have. Part of it is I was really getting scared that my age would work hard against me. And I’ve been out of the working world for awhile, taking care of my Mom-so I feel like I’ll be so involved in the world again-
On the Politics-it was really fun and it showed me that carefully outlining the facts to someone who’s not screaming at you, who’s willing to listen is possible and necessary.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Leelee for Obama: some of THE best writing had been done by depressed, drunken Irishmen.
Indeed – case in point, Brian O’Nolan and his Parade of Pseudonyms (personal favorite Myles na gCopaleen.)
kay
I like Saint Patrick’s Day because everyone uses fractions to describe what they are :)
I didn’t wear green, because I once again realized I don’t own anything green.
That happens every year, and still I’m caught off guard.
binzinerator
@Leelee for Obama:
I’m not depressed, I’m tipsy but not drunk, and I’m only part Irish.
Goddamn it, no wonder I can’t write for shit!
Don’t wanna be depressed. And I can’t do anything about who I was born to.
Soooo…time to up my ‘plus’ rating.
Only thing I can do, right?
n+1
jeffreyw
@Leelee for Obama: Yup, a six footer. 3 days before that pic was taken he bit my dog and killed it. We beat the bushes until we found it. Mrs J was vocal in her condemnations as she cycled the six shooter through it’s load.
Karen in GA
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m about 40 miles northeast.
Leelee — congrats to you on the new job! (And nice work on the hairdresser, BTW.)
Leelee for Obama
@jeffreyw: Guns make me vewwy nervous, but I can’t say I blame her for her single-mindedness. Killed your dog and didn’t have enough sense to get the hell out of town? Mean and nervy, that snake!
kommrade reproductive vigor
May I just say I’m sorely disappointed that the Balloon Juice balloon isn’t green today?
Oh well, maybe John dyed Tunch.
TJ
Corn Beef, red potatoes, carrots, Walla Walla Sweet onions, Ah John my man, ya don’t know what your missing. Oh and a touch of guinness to wash it down makes it a day worth living.
tj
Jager
Wasn’t a St Patrick’s Day but I spent one helluva evening with friends named Doyle, Wayland and Mulally. Doyle’s Grandfather’s younger brother was visiting from Ireland and apparently been on his best behavior while with the family. We were well into the evening when the old gentleman leaned over to Doyle and said, “Ya better chain me to a radiator, because you’re about to see a side of me that you’ve never seen before!” My girl friend came to pick me up about 2 hours later and she was fortunate to get away with her clothes intact…holy shit was the old boy wild!
PTirebiter
Scotch-Irish with a healthy dose of Cherokee. Makes for a interesting mix of complexions in the fam. My brother tans, I stroke, he’s a mean drunk, while I was so cheerful I ‘d often neglect to stop drinking for weeks on end. No beer for me tonight, maybe just a dime bag of China White, a virgin Gin Rickey or two, and the soothing ancestral stylings of the Pogues. May you all arrive in heaven an hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.
tams
evening juicer’s – cole, i’ve gotta call you out… saying you aren’t partaking in the luck of the irish this evening is a fib… you cannot lie to your balloon juice buddies… poor lily being left at home while her daddy goes out and drinks the green beer… well, that might be a stretch, the only thing you are having that is green tonight is the olive in your vodka martini.
happy st. patty’s day to those of you sweet irish folks.
mr. whipple
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Sully stole all the green for Iran.
Susan
I celebrated my Irtish heritage by using a green scrubbie to help clean my kitchen for Passover.
Radon Chong
Hey! MY name is Weingarten, but I didn’t even wear green today. Maybe I’ll drink a beer though.
bago
RT @Mike_FTW: Every bar I’ve driven by today is filled with people concerned about the situation in Iran. (via @dcwumpus)
bey
Go read How The Irish Saved Civilization. Fun book. The Thomas Kinsella translation of The Tain Bo Culaigne is featured prominently. I’m especially fond of it since he taught me how to ride a two-wheeler back in the dim days of my youth.
schrodinger's cat
Green Tunch! oh noes!
Admiral_Komack
I’ve been drinking from a bottle of Powers Gold Label Irish Whiskey all day yesterday (3/17/2010-4 shots, max).
Good whiskey.
Dennis caves, the President goes on FOX and does good.
It’s been a good day.
Martin
Almost all of my relatives (over 90%) trace nicely back to Ireland. The families started coming over in the 1840s through the late 19th century. Lots of Irish Catholics marrying other Irish Catholics until the whole scheme fell apart with my parents (He married a Protestant! Oh noez! At least she was Irish!).
Today is a pretty steady holiday for me – mainly because I prefer non-religious holidays, plus I like to cook. So I’m stuffed up on corned beef.
Martin +lost count
YellowJournalism
@Joshua Norton: They still have shamrock shakes in your area? Hubby and I found out tonight that they haven’t had them for two years here!
Andy K
@Carol:
Eh, not so much. More like a lot of Scots-Irish ancestry, and the Scots-Irish are really just lowland Scots who were used by the English to conquer Ireland, and, later, the American south.
Not that there aren’t cases like you describe- during The Famine many of Irish took passage on coffin ships bound for the major ports in the South. But the Irish tended to settle in Savannah and New Orleans rather than spread out inland.
Yutsano
French-Canadian / Jewish / Native American / German / Slovenian, also known as an all-American mutt. Though the more unusual bits of the genealogy happened up north, so take that for what it’s worth. No Celtic blood in me however.
Mnemosyne
@Andy K:
Okay, you seem to be implying that black people only lived in the rural South and the Irish only went to Southern cities, so therefore it’s impossible a black woman and an Irishman could meet in, say, New York or Boston or Chicago, fall in love, and get married.
Yes, the South is mostly Scots-Irish, but the North and Midwest are mostly Catholic Irish and in the days when the Catholic Irish were considered subhuman, it was not unheard of for them to marry their fellow subhumans, ie African-Americans. Henry Louis Gates decided to do his PBS series “Faces of America” because he investigated his genealogy and discovered he had more Irish ancestors than African ones. This website has some good, basic information about immigration patterns and your assertion that the Irish mostly went to Southern ports is completely unsubstantiated.
Martin
@Mnemosyne: My namesake ancester was supposed to land in Savannah ultimately headed west as part of the homestead rush but the Union blockaded the port after the ship sailed and they got turned north and landed in NY instead. They got to NY nearly penniless and just stayed. Among the numerous Catholic Irish (the real Irish, TYVM!) immigrants in my family, most were originally aiming for New York and northern cities – and a few just sort of wound up there by happenstance. What drew many of the antebellum immigrants were the rapidly expanding job opportunities in the north. Post-war, it was the Homestead act that appeared to be the bigger draw, which is why much immigration shifted toward the south.
Interestingly enough, in the family photo album, alongside lots of redheaded Irish cousins are more than a few black ones.
Martin
@YellowJournalism: Menu items are chosen by store. My wife chewed out the local McDonalds manager a few years ago and he brought them back. Personally, if I’m going to put back a $3.50 drink, I’m going to want to show ID to get it.
Andy K
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, I’ll admit to the first point there, because the vast majority of black people in this country were in the rural South until the assembly lines of the industrial North started looking south to fill jobs on the lines in the 1920s and 1930s. But to the second point, you misread or misunderstood what I wrote. Take a look again:
[Emphasis and article added]
Now I’ll admit to one poor choice of words there: I should have used “But those Irish…” rather than “the”, but I’ll stick by my assertion that those Irish stayed close to the ports in which they landed, as opposed to those Irish who landed in the North, a good percentage of whom rapidly moved west to build railroads, mine, work in steel mills and stockyards…and farm, because land was cheaper and much more plentiful in what was then known as the West (now what we’d call the Upper Midwest) than it was in the South.
Lastly, I acknowledged that there was a probability that there were Irish/African-American relationships ( “Not that there aren’t cases like you describe….”), but my main thrust was that it’s most likely that in most cases the Scots-Irish involvement in the relationships are misidentified as Irish- and the Scots-Irish are as Irish as a European-American is a Native American, no matter how long his family has lived in Sioux City.
Anne Laurie
@Davis X. Machina:
Acht, that’s just beautiful. It deserves to be one of the new rotating subheads, but that Mr. Cole probably doesn’t agree…
RedKitten
@Crone:
I’m not in the States, hon. I’m in Canada. They sell it here in most every liquor store I’ve seen.
Hey, at least Canada is a less expensive flight than Ireland….
4jkb4ia
At the Irish pub there was live music! (This operation is a real Irish pub that was brought into the boutique hotel a mile away as its foothold in the United States) (This hotel is known for its food service) (Also: we split a Guinness. My husband can take very little alcohol)
I get the paper today, and the headline for the whole sports section at the bottom of the front page is “The Ball is Tipped…” Perfect!
All ODNI FOIA staff should be fired. This document dump is a mixture of very good information, very lousy information, and simple lobbying information.
4jkb4ia
“I showered with Rahm and all I got was this lousy blog.” Love it, but “Consistently wrong since 2002” had a sort of dignity.
Toast
You know, the whole “Bah Humbug” thing with regard to St. Patrick’s Day? It’s pretty fucking weak.
4jkb4ia
Yes, I know they have to give you everything that was responsive. I found the missing page, too.
Joe
I always wear brown on St. Patrick’s Day – the color of dead shamrock.
Mnemosyne
@Andy K:
The Great Migration started before that, in 1910. Yes, close to 90 percent of African-Americans lived in the South in 1900, but there were 8.8 million black Americans by that point, so that means that almost a million didn’t live in the South.
I can’t quite figure out if what you’re trying to claim is that, because the Scots-Irish mostly went to the South, they would be the more common source of Irish ancestry for African-Americans, because you then go on to claim that the Scots-Irish stuck to the cities in the South so there’s no way they could have met and married any black Southerners.
You’re simultaneously claiming that the Scots-Irish are the more likely source of Irish ancestry for African-Americans and that the Scots-Irish can’t be the source. What exactly are you trying to say?
Howlin Wolfe
Late, late, late to the partay, as usual. Is there any Jameson’s left?
orogeny
Go n-ithe an Tunche’ thú, is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat!
Andy K
@Mnemosyne:
No, I’m saying the Irish in the South stuck close to the port cities, and that Scots-Irish aren’t Irish.
Anne Laurie
@Andy K:
As someone whose grandparents carried a noble Scottish clan name from Galway Bay, let me remind you that the ‘Scots-Irish aren’t Irish’ claim is the Eurocentric version of ‘the Japanese have nothing in common with the Koreans’. Some of our mid-distant ancestors stopped feuding their way across the continent those few miles short of the Western Reaches, and it served our mutual Great Enemy to highlight the differences rather than the similarities between us. (And, of course, the Vikings further muddied the genetic waters.) But for most purposes on this side of the water, the broader Celtic community is as narrow as we need be.
Andy K
@Anne Laurie:
Anne, I understand what you’re saying. A lot of Scotland was populated via Ireland, and you still hear some Gaelic spoken in the Highlands (and, loosely related, you still hear Rangers fans reminding Celtic fans that The Famine is over, and that the Celtic fans can now go home, but that relates to much later Ireland-to-Scotland migrations).
But the great majority of the Scots-Irish aka the Ulster-Scots- the Jacksons, Boones, Crocketts and Merriweathers as examples- originated in England in the first place and populated the Scottish Borderlands before populating the Plantations in Ulster. And while genetically the English are as Celtic as the Welsh, Cornish, Scottish and Irish, they’re the heirs not of Celtic but Anglo-Saxon, Norse and (at the risk of sounding redundant) Norman traditions and culture. So they- the Scots-Irish, that is- are not really Scots or Irish, but Germans and Vikings.
Andy K
And I will admit to being a Celtic purity troll, with no small part of Irish on one side of the family tree, and Cornish on the other.