St. Patrick's Day, Revisited

Were it not for St. Patrick, Ireland today could be a center for Zoroastrianism instead of a place with lots of Catholics. And so I reprint my classic blog on St. Patrick's Day. I sound grumpy. Hope you all enjoy your corned beef and cabbage. Thankfully, the days of green dyed beer seem to be behind us.

The Monkees

I wrote about the Monkees today on the sixties blog.

See a man about a horse

Recently I was at the doctor's office and the nurse practitioner was taking blood. I mentioned that the doctor mentioned he wanted to do a urinalysis. The n-p gave me a cup and said go into the bathroom and "letter following 'O' into a cup". I was quite shocked. I never would say the letter following "O" to a lady. Actually I prefer the old English term, "I'm going to see a man about a horse".

"Sir, take this cup and go into the restroom and see a man about a horse". Sounds more proper to me.

Fishtown vs. Belmont

Charles Murray has a new book that's getting alot of attention, almost as much as the "Bell Curve". In his new book, "America: Coming apart" he describes two typical towns, the upper class successful Belmont and the white trashy Fishtown. In Belmont everyone is married, lives in the suburbs, goes to college, attends church on Sunday and has good jobs. In Fishtown, nobody goes to church, graduates from college, or gets married. People might have kids but they don't get married.

In a way, this is true. Most of our bosses are married, have kids, live in the suburbs, go to church and have wives. When they come home, their clothes have been cleaned and dinner has been cooked by their spouses, or possibly their maids. The folks in Fishtown go home from crappy jobs (if they have jobs) to their cluttered dirty apartments and they warm up a tv dinner while guzzling a beer. Ideally we should all aspire to live in Belmont, but somehow Belmont doesn't sound like a lot of fun.

Editor's note: I like the part where he says that marriage civilizes men. I guess it's time to go out in the woods and skin a squirrel for dinner.