« "Is our children learning?" | English nerd, bored, or both? »
March 17, 2003Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, all! Not only is it my 25th birthday today, it’s a day when three separate circles on the Cosmic Venn Diagram—Irish, Catholic, and alcoholic—all shift into perfect alignment to form one boozy, green sphere. I was excited about the prospect of thousands of people peeing blue today, until I remembered that yellow and blue make green; green and yellow don’t, unfortunately enough, make blue. I suppose I’ll have to content myself with folks peeing chartreuse.
According to legend, one of St. Patrick’s achievements was to drive all the snakes from Ireland.
“What snakes?” you’re mumbling to yourself.
Exactly.
In keeping with my namesake’s noble history of pest control, I would like to announce my very first birthday miracle. As of 12:01 a.m. on March 17, 2003, polar bears will no longer plague the citizens of Riverside County. You might be wondering why I chose to banish polar bears, of all things. You might even doubt that polar bears pose a threat to any town in the Inland Empire, where summers are intolerable and the weather permits snow about once in a person’s lifetime.
That, my friend, is exactly what the polar bears want you to think.
Sure, they look harmless enough. Lumbering, benign beasts to whose enclosure children might flock at the zoo. Anthropomorphic spokesman of everyone’s perennial favorite, the Icee. In reality, every polar bear is nothing less than hundreds of pounds of brutal, arctic death. In banishing the polar bears, I have also erased every sign of their being there. Within a matter of weeks, it’ll be as if they were never even here.
Tune in on March 17, 2004, when I top this year’s feat by expelling tsetse flies and piranhas from the Santa Ana River!
Posted by patrick at March 17, 2003 12:22 AM
CommentsPost a comment