My Dangerous Career

Erin Go Bragh My Arse

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With a name like “Erin” it doesn’t get much more Irish (though in truth I’m only about a quarter to an 8th Gaelic). This does not mean I’m all for green beer (and here in Chicago, green river) and all that St. Patty’s Day merriment. Quite to the contrary, I freakin’ hate this pseudo-holiday. “Fuckin’ amateur night,” a full-blooded Irish pal of mine used to say. Yes, indeed. Especially now, as I sit here in my basement office blasting music to drown out the “Duuuuuude!”s and “Hey, brahhhhhh“s of the pampered white boys (and some girls) Loyola students who have been wearing ‘o the green since early this afternoon.

I soldiered years of childhood taunts of “Hey, Erin, why don’t you go get a bra?” on this holiday just fine. However, I won’t put up with miscreants who spend their parents’ money on Miller Lite kegs and stupid green plastic hats. Take your adolescent endeavors down to Bucktown or Lincoln Park, where you’ll fit in just fine amongst all the same ass-hattery going on this evening. Leave us in the northside ‘hood to drink quietly behind closed doors, thank you very much.

Oh, happy St. Patrick’s Day, all. Go lick a rock or something.

Welcome Back!

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I’m back, yet again, but for real this time! I promise. My vanity project called this here blog has undergone a major facelift of late, as I figured that if I took the multiple hours to hack together my first WordPress theme from scratch, I’d darn well better use the thing. So, here’s what’s probably the tenth “back to posting” note, complete with the obligatory picture of the blog’s patron saint and namesake, Kenneth Patchen.

Pardon the construction dust as I’m still working on bits & pieces here and there. Next big task is to slay all the IE bugs I’ve ignored to this point. So, if you’re viewing this via IE (shame, shame, shame on you if you are; might I introduce you to your new best friend, Firefox), please bear with the kooky alignment of the pretty boxes. IE doesn’t hang with the rest of the CSS-compliant cool kids, so he’s a bit behind the times when it comes to pure CSS layouts. Goodness me isn’t that such an uber-geek thing to say?

Real blogging will commence in the very near future, as I try to stick to my personal commitment (not not not a New Year’s resolution - ick hate those) to post at least three times a week. I’ll be tossing out bon mots, rants, lengthy musings, and brief observations about topics near to my heart or central to my work. If you’re curious to know what I’m reading, eating, drinking, or otherwise doing to occupy my time, head on over to the “What’s Up?” page for regular updates on that sort of minutae.

So, stay tuned. Until then, I leave you with words from Saint Patchen himself:

“I am the world-crier and this is my dangerous career…I am the one to call your bluff, and this is my climate.”