“Water, water everywhere: nor any drop to drink.”
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Know what’s the worst way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? To be in an Irish party, and be sober because you have to peddle bone marrow donation forms, and coerce shit-faced Irishmen into giving you mouth swabs, all for the sake of poor sick snots somewhere out there who’re somehow going to benefit from smears of Guinness-laced spit.

Call me a cad for sounding uncharitable, but did I mention that I was sober the whole time? Yes, hard to believe for some of you. Heck, I find it hard to believe, myself. There I was, bang in the middle of it all: giant screens showing football, a rich buffet, a hearty crowd (whose surnames are, in all probability, Stentor), and gallons and gallons of guinness that were going around and being quaffed down countless gullets, with gusto. Except down mine.

Those coupla hours, I knew exactly what Coleridge was talking about.

Dear Someone Out There Who May Need My Marrow Someday, you owe me a fucking pint. Wait, make that two.