I hate California
Me: Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Pub customer: Please. It should be 'Happy Genocide Day.' I mean, he liked wiped out an entire race. I can't believe people celebrate this murderer.
Me (in my head): I don't hit women. I don't hit women. I don't hit women.
posted by Whim @ 7:11 PM
10 Comments:
I'm formalizing my grudge list. Give me her name. She's probably already on it.
Here's an interesting article about St. Patrick, as this St. Patrick's Day draws to a close. Notice how it conveniently leaves out mention of the fact that he was, like, totally genocide happy:
http://www.slate.com/id/77427/
She actually went on some. "I mean, we don't celebrate St. Hitler Day." And then, when the truth of these comments was questioned. "I used to work for Free Tibet. I know all about it."
I don't, however, know the woman's name. Somehow didn't think to ask.
Free Tibet? Why should we free Tibet? So the Dalai Lama can institutionalize his horrifying campaign of mass rape and forced abortion? What? Of course it's true. I used to work for Daughters of the American Revolution. I know all about it.
I can see it in your eyes. You've never even *been* to Burning Man, have you?
Ahhh... there is something about St. Patrick that really brings out the morons.
Let me start this story right: Back in High School...
I had one class worth not killing the whole room of people over, and it was "civics." I signed up for it hoping for a definitive look at the history of small light surprisingly well built Hondas, but was disappointed. What we did do was discuss the news of the day. It was taught by a 4 1/2/ ft tall Texan named Mrs. Sorennson. Her husband was a 7ft tall Scandinavian. They were something to behold as a couple.
Anyway, on that St.Patrick's day we began to discuss St. Patrick. Our discussion was quickly brought to a screaming halt by a screaming jack-ass.
Raven was her name.
She was a 17yr old "feminist" (I put it in quotes, because most of her views were, in fact, the opposite) who saw it as her duty to set everyone on the real path, correct them, destroy their preconceptions, and do it in the most condescending combative way...
Oh, and with no facts, intellect, nor electrical activity in her head.
"St. Patrick killed all the women in Ireland!"
My stomach plummeted.
Everyday I found her more of a waste of space, and it became suddenly clear what a tragety it was that the matter making up her body had not found a better way to amuse itself, say by forming cow shit.
"w..w.. what?" I asked.
"St.Patrick killed all the women in Ireland!" she asserted. "They say he killed all the snakes, but what they really mean is that he killed all the women."
"Do you mean pagans?" I asked?
"The Women" she said, giving me the "Gahw'd, what is your problem?" look and tone of voice.
"Do you mean supposed witches... the pagan priestesses...?" I suggested.
"NO, St.Patrick killed all the women. It is just not in the history books because they are written by men!" she all but yelled.
"Then..." I said, savoring the words and feeling like my brain itself was about to break from my skull and, in full armor like Athena, murder her, "where did these men come from?"
"What?" she ask, clearly irritated that I would put to test her superior wisdom.
Slowly, so she would understand, and understand that I felt her to be beyond stupid, I said "If, as you say, all the women were killed, then there would have been no more children in Ireland, male or female, and there would have been no men to write the history."
Unfortunately, I had underestimated her.
Triumphantly, clearly sure that I was about to be flabbergasted by her knowledge of hidden history, she put up her own headstone: "The Church wrote the history! And later they brought in more women to breed!"
My left eye began to twitch and I started to bang my head into my desk. Sometimes there is nothing else you can do.
Further...
1) Pagans are not a race.
2) Listening to the Beasty Boys does not, contrary to their own ads, make you universally enlightened.
3) Hitler was not a saint.
4) Tibet doesn't want you either.
I've got it!
She got it confused with St.Columbus' Day!
It's ok.
Hallmark created St.Columbus' Day to sell small pox blankets to your mom.
I should know. I used to work for Murderalize East Timor.
I actually wasted a couple hours this morning searching for some kind of Ur-Text for this Patty bashing and found nothing but a handful of blog rants and a confusing screed at duluthpagans.com. One post even made the morally bankrupt assertian that the later Viking raiders were pro-pagan liberators. The Vikings were just making Ireland safe for democracy, who knew?
I did, however, read a couple translations of Patrick's own Confession. It's very moving.
Also interesting is the fact that all the information we have on early Irish religion, we have because Patrick ordered the study and preservation of it, not to mention incorporating many symbols and beliefs into a specifically Irish kind of catholocism. That bastard.
And then there's the other odd group of Protty's who claim that Patrick wasn't catholic, but some kind of early pre-sex-scandal Jim Bakker.
What a world, what a world.
p.s. To be fair, there are a lot of modern pagans who are upset by this misinformation and are combating it on the blogosphere.
Shit, and by Protty's I mean, of course, Protties. Plural, not possessive, dumb shit.
Hey, that is what the blogosphere is for!
Also, that is the first, and hopefully only, time I have ever typed the word "blogosphere." (Son of a bitch! There it is again! Twice! Argh!)
Actually, one of the most fascinating things about Catholicism, to me, is the various forms it takes.
Irish Catholicism is very different from Mexican Catholicism, which is utterly different from Italian Catholicism... etc...
It is great.
As for it taking over Ireland, yeah that is a whole confused story. It is also a utterly incomplete one if St. Beatrice is not mentioned.
Patrick was an interesting guy, and was as much a scholar as a missionary. Of course he saw no divide, but his confessions are engrossing to say the least.
I think the thorns in both of our sides are actually victims of something I am attempting to dub Privileged Retroactively Iconoclastic Caring Kids Stuff, or PRICKS. (I am working on a better acronym, more gender neutral. More soon.)
They know things aren't right, but they don't know what, so they leap at conspiracy theories, don't actually educate themselves, and never EVER actually evaluate any data. They then believe themselves to know the "truth,” and speak to people accordingly.
Thus they make the rest of us look bad by making everyone think of them when an alternative history is offered up as valid.
Poor Howard Zinn.
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