Top-o-the-mornin’ to you (“and the balance of the day, to you,” is the appropriate response). Here we are, the only real holiday on the calendar. For some reason, they don’t close the streets of Syracuse until tomorrow for the parade, but I suppose we’ll just have to make a three-day weekend of it, eating corned beef and cabbage (because for some reason Irish Americans have been led to believe that’s Irish), and watching the tourists drink green beer on Tipp Hill (where there is the world’s only – I’m told – traffic light with the green on top, because every time they tried to change it, kids (including one of our future mayors) chucked rocks and broke it, so they finally gave up).

I used to live up that way (it was a fine place, where everyone, it seemed, was named Patrick or Sean or Brigid. To tell you the truth, we hated to see the tourists come along on St. Patrick’s Day, when our nice pubs would be packed with wannabes swilling overpriced beer out of plastic cups, and just making a general nuisance of themselves.

Of course our monkey-faced Republican stooge Congressman Jimmy Walsh will be out and about. It might be the only time the little coward comes out of his hidey-hole until after the elections; he’s refused to have a townhall meeting for years now, the bastid. At least dubya can’t claim to be Irish (it used to sicken me to think that Reagan was, but then he was was Protestant, so I don’t know if that counts 😉 ).

At any rate have a safe and happy day, and to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and all the minions doing your bidding, “May the devil damm you to the stone of dirges or to the well of ashes seven miles below hell and may the devil break your bones. ” Figuratively speaking, of course.

And the rest of you members of the NeoCon Death Cult Christo-fascist Zombie Brigade can kiss my ass, too.