2003-03-18 : War Cry/St. Patty's Day leads to an Enchanting Evening
What is it called again? "OPERATION LIBERTY SHIELD" or some shit? Who comes up with these ridiculous names? Is it just one person or a large group of people? How about "OPERATION BOZO THE CLOWN" OR "OPERATION BATMAN AND ROBIN?"...I'm hungover and depressed about what the next few days will bring to this world..I'm not really worried exactly about my OWN safety...I don't forsee anything happening to me within the next week. I just feel so uneasy about the safety of so many others...esp. the folks in Iraq and other parts of the world. Maybe I'm being naive. I wonder when another catastrophe in this country will occur and where it will be and who will be involved and how it will happen? I just have a bad feeling.."I feel a bad moon rising..." and isn't the worst feeling in the world to feel helpless?? Ok, I will now write about fun stuff, mainly my FANTASTIC St. Patty's day evening!

I left work around 4:00 and walked up the Hill in the balmy spring air..people seemed to be smiley and the sky was still blue and the sun was still out. I decided I definetly wanted to do the whole traditional St. patty's day thing, which would include Irish Soda Bread, Corned Beef/Cabbage/Boiled Potatoes and some Baileys (or cheaper equivalent)....so I arrived at QFC (which wasn't too crowded..thank god!) and found out that they had already a prepared Corned Beef/Cabbabe/potatoe meal you could buy from their deli. I decided I didn't feel like cooking it all myself, and got two of the dinners plus a loaf of Irish Soda bread. Then I walked to Blockbuster and rented "The Snapper" (one of my fave Irish comedies..Jay's never seen it so he's in for a treat...we didn't have a chance last night to watch it!) and before arriving at home, I stopped off at the liquor store (which is conveniently located 1 block from our house..being not much of a drinker, this was my first time in there, though) and purchased a bottle of 'St. Brendan's' Irish Cream.

I arrived home to find the blinds drawn and Jay half-napping, half day-dreaming and I announced with a big smile on my face that I'd brought home an entire Irish party in a bag.

We set the table, warmed up the food, got the little liquer glasses and poured the Irish cream. I put on the Pogues and we started waltzing and doing akward square dance moves. It was a great time! Spontaneous dance always cheers me up and Jay was a good sport to get into it as much as I did.

The meal was really delicious (which surprised me for some reason)..the corned beef was really tender and juicy and delicately stringy..just the way it should be. I slathered my meat with mustard and horseradish.

We ate and finished off the whole bottle of the Irish cream and did ridiculous toasts such as "Here's to BONO", "Here's to The Edge", "Here's to Shane McGowan", "Here's to my dead grandmother," "Here's to Sinead O'Connor ripping the picture of the pope on SNL" but I refused to toast his "Here's to Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance"...I despise that man! He is the anti-christ disguised as a twinkly-eyed, arrogant mullet-man from Eire.

We cleared the table and about 8:00 we set off to the nearest bar, The Comet. We had a beer there (it wasn't even GREEN!) and decided that the entire places' complete LACK of celebratory vibe was cause enough to blow the joint.

We were walking towards the Kincora Pub when we struck up a conversation with a homeless-drunk-Irish-American-man-named-Richard-who-was-a-Nam-vet...I gave him $5.00. He said he hated Bush, that his son was over in Iraq in the military and that he'd like to see a woman be elected as the next president. He thought Dolly Parton was the best choice. Then we hugged him and he told us he loved us and we parted ways...it was really sweet.

We pushed ourselves into the packed Kincora Pub (narrowly avoiding having to pay the cover charge, which was nice) and listened to some guys play fairly good, slightly bastardized versions of traditional Irish jigs and reels and hornpipes and such.

I was pretty fucking drunk by this time and talking to anybody that would listen..I bummed a cigarette from a quiet and sexy Ethiopian and started chatting with him and his equally sexy friend (who grew up in Chicago and loves Red Lorry Yellow Lorry...he said he was the only black guy in "the hood" into new-wave in the 80's...we talked about our love of Bad Brains and Big Black,) and I pretty much ignored Jay(not really intentionally, though) who was sitting in a seat down the bar a bit. The Ethiopian (I think his name was something like Gesseffe) told me that he wanted to have a baby so badly but his 3-year-relationship with his current girlfriend was probably going to end in a month because she was going over to Africa for the Peace Corps and would be gone for 3 years and he wasn't waiting for her. The guy from Chicago also said him and his wife have decided that they want children, but he had a vasectomy 4 years ago and now he wants it reversed. The conversation was flowing, I smoked too many cigarettes and finally Jay told me it was time to go home, so we did.

We lit candles and attempted to be romantic once we got home but let me just give you a Dead Kennedy's song title "Too Drunk to Fuck" to explain why we ended up sleeping instead (not that this was MY fault..woman generally are never too drunk to have sex..poor guys..poor flaccid penis syndrome!) We haven't ACTUALLY had sex in 3 months now, but we have attempted to at least twice in that 3 months...I feel like the universe is telling me something about our relationship? I'm not listening, though.

I managed to eat some more of the corned beef meal in my drunken state, and drank several glasses of water. I feel fairly ok today, just VERY TIRED. All in all it was a fabulous night and I felt a great love for many people, Irish and non-Irish alike!

As I was laying in bed, I suddenly had bits of poetry find their way into my barely conscious mind, so I stumbled to the computer and slowly typed out (I can't type worth a shit when I'm drunk!) a poem about last night's experiences. I'll put it here at a later date. It's not too bad considered how brain-dead I was when I wrote it. Today starts my usual habit of sobriety, though. Time to get back to WORK. Bringing in money for the rich doctors of Swedish is so very IMPORTANT. Especially when we are on the brink of war (*sarcastic eye roll*)