Oh, right, St Patrick's Day

Good things that are at least somewhat Irish include:

1. My childhood hero Denis Leary

"I love to smoke. I smoke seven thousand packs a day, okay? And I am never fucking quitting! I don't care how many laws they make. What's the law now? You can only smoke in your apartment, under a blanket, with all the lights out? Is that the rule now, huh?

The cops are outside, 'We know you have the cigarettes. Come out of the house with the cigarettes above your head.'

'You'll never get me, copper! I'm never coming out, see? I got a cigarette machine right here in my bedroom. Yeah, see, yeah!'"

This routine is nearly twenty years old.

2. The Pogues

"If I should fall from grace with God

where no doctor can relieve me

If I'm buried 'neath the sod

but the angels won't receive me

Let me go, boys

Let me go, boys

Let me go down in the mud

where the rivers all run dry."

3. Guinness: not actually very good, but reliable and omnipresent. When all else fails, when you're in a strange land, when the world collapses around you, when you've forgotten your own name... Guinness can be your inscrutably dense, watery, bitter, cloying anchor.

4. St Patrick's Breastplate Prayer: Did St Patrick actually write it? Does it matter very much?

"Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,

The strong Name of the Trinity;

By invocation of the same.

The Three in One, and One in Three,

Of Whom all nature hath creation,

Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:

Praise to the Lord of my salvation,

Salvation is of Christ the Lord."

Whole thing here.

5. Father Ted