What To Do In Cleveland for St. Patricks Day If You are Really Irish and Not A Poser

I finally, after 5 years of having to work St. Patricks Day, got it off this year. That's 5 years of being named Bridget Callahan and not wearing the color green on 3/17 at work. 5 years of the same conversation over and over again. "Bridget Callahan. You're Irish, aren't you? Why aren't you out drinking? Why aren't you wearing green Bridget? Where's your Irish spirit Bridget?"

My Irish spirit is telling me to quit this job, mister. See, most of the time, we don't listen to our Irish spirit, because it tells us to get degenerate drunk and have unprotected sex.

Alright, seriously, my name is Bridget. Callahan. Who the hell doesn't know that's Irish? That's like saying you don't know Maria DiRienzo isn't Italian. Or Olga Napistroika isn't Russian. Napistroika is not a real last name, I don't think, but I sorta wish it was.

Last year I wrote about "stupid rich snots and their Irish Pubs."
2008 it was How Living in Cleveland is Just Like Being Irish
And 2007, R.E.M. was the official band of St. Patricks .
So this year, let's talk about...

What I Will Be Doing Tomorrow Since I Am Actually Sort of Irish (even though we are all technically Americans, which is fine because I would probably make no money, have 12 children, and believe in leprechauns if my forefathers hadn't had the sense to skedaddle.)

1) Going to Church with My Mum.
Alright. This part of the plan is not concrete yet. After all, I'm a hardcore atheist. But my mom is Catholic, and always has to go to church by herself now that my brother's in Columbus. So it would make her happy. Also, I was in church choir for a long time (and every other minor position of power I could insinuate myself into), so there's a nostalgia factor for me. It involves waking up pretty early. But they will have bagpipes.

Point is, you have to go church first, because it's a church holiday, and THEN you go to the bar. DO IT RIGHT PEOPLE OR GOD WILL PUNISH YOU.

2) Eating Corned Beef with My Mum, and Drinking
We'll ( Mom and her friends and me), be going to the ABC Tavern tomorrow morning, so if you wanna come say hi, I'll be the one making fun of my mom for being drunk. My mother is hilariously exactly like me when drunk. Or I'm exactly like her? I like the first way of saying it better.

3) Chasing down short men in green hats, and demanding they give me money.
To be fair, I do this all year round.

4) Voting Democrat.
I know there isn't an election tomorrow, but that's never stopped us before. I figure I can just rig one up in the girls' bathroom. Figure out some way to make it a pyramid scheme. Maybe also have some under the table betting. Kiss some babies. Just symbolically of course, babies are germ infested booger bombs. My ancestors didn't run from the peat bogs just to have some baby spit all over them.

5) Fail At Something Miserably.
Then I will forget I was the one that failed, and blame everyone else. Because I'm awesome at everything I do, so it certainly isn't my fault.
Trust me, this is quintessentially Irish.

6)Overspend on Booze.
See absolutely everything I said above.

7)Apologize to my significant other for being wasted and therefore no good in bed.
Ditto.


So everyone have lots of fun tomorrow, and for gods sakes, use condoms!

I Finally WatchedThe Vampire Diaries A LOT, which should be spelled Vampyr. Really. They're Not Trying Hard Enough.

I have this friend who has been working on a trio of paintings for like, a year. Each one is a city landscape, and he just keeps painting over things, taking buildings down, taking signs down, repainting the signs, changing the skies so it goes from hurricane to mild rain, some sunshine, weird lighting. He was telling me about the newest part over the phone, and I was suddenly really sad that I hadn't been taking pictures of the paintings ever time I went over there. It would show them in every manifestation, and it would be like that movie Smoke, where the guy takes a picture of the same street corner, every day at the same time, for like fifty years. I think the photo journal accompaniment would be cool to have, it would make the triptych into a comment on urban development. Also then he could make an animation of it. MISSED OPPORTUNITY.



Yesterday instead of cleaning I watched like ten episodes of the Vampire Diaries in a row. I don't know why I put it on the recording schedule. CW was doing like a marathon of the entire first season last week, and I must have thought what the hell. I wish very much that at that exact moment, one of you had kicked me in the head. It's one of those shows where everyone sucks, except for one character, which gets all the sarcastic lines, so he's like a walking Writers inside joke. And that's the character played by my boyfriend from Rules of Attraction. This show might have worked way better if Edward (I mean Stefan) was played by Dawson. And Bella (I mean Elena) was played by Susan Sossamon. And there were no vampires. And the vampires didn't have rings that let them walk around in the sun. If we took those rings away, it would cut in half the amount of 90210 drama. Still leaving it with more than 90210 itself. Also, there are no werewolves, yet. What is the point of vampires if you don't have werewolves?

When I was younger, I used to read Anne Rice and Poppy Z Brite. While I would never be tempted to read them again (because frankly I'd rather reread The Babysitters Club), it does seem like I had a better quality of trashy vampire sex novel back then. I think Stephanie Meyers is lowering people's expectation at how hard an author should work to hide that she's writing porn.

When you watch ten hours of something, anything, you are going to start to feel high on it. My emotional take away from this event was that it's totally true, every new person you date is going to be a compilation of traits from previous people you dated, so I can totally forgive this crappy storyline where Elena looks exactly like some vampire Civil War Belle that Stefan used to be in love with. Because even though its incredibly creepy to have some guy with that kind of hair be stalking you for 145 years in various incarnations, and also quite sad to think that even though you keep being reborn, you will somehow always be stuck in this small town, it's kind of reflective of how everyone's relationships are. Right?

Those rings are seriously lame.

Last night I saw some old friends, and I got extremely drunk at ABC. Then, at home, I was walking to the bathroom from my bedroom, and fell head first down the stairs. Even worse, afterwards, I couldn't get unstuck from between the stairs and the front door, which I hit hard. It took me forever to get up. I think it's actually a good thing I was that drunk, I think the alcohol probably made it better, because when I woke up this morning it wasn't that bad and I didn't even have a bruise yet. It has however been developing on several spots on my body, like a bloody fungi under my skin. Up above? That's my lower back. Also on my knee, and a giant bump on my head. It reminded me of the last time I hurt myself that badly, which was back in Kent when I drank an entire bottle of Southern Comfort, and walked across town with friends to go to a club. I was totally fine the whole way there, until we got to the door and I tripped and fell flat on my face. Hard. Also, there was the time when Marty lived in this house, actually the first time I met him, he had a party and I fell down the basement steps, all the way down. In retrospect, I think this house is actively trying to kill me.



I've noticed that I seem to get the most comments on posts I write that are all serious and shit, and never the funny ones. It's like you guys don't think I'm funny or something. I mean, I'm not the funny one in my family, that's my sister. But I think I'm up there on the ladder, somewhere around "not not funny". So since it can't be my writing, I have to assume it is your fault. You guys are way too obsessed with love and beauty and shit like that, like you think it's IMPORTANT or something. How did I get such serious readers?

Anyway, my brother showed me The Bloggess, and she's become my favorite funny blog. She's one of those ones that is SO good, you want to leave her comments on everything, but there's already 214 comments on each post, so what's the point?