Happy Unofficial St Pats U of I

[G&T]

Not sure where the hell you got that I was blaming the Brits .  All I mentioned is that what goes on here was nothing like what my dad experienced back home and I mentioned that it has been changing there as well.  Sorry, but I will take my dad's (as well as Gramma's and Grampa's) word over an online encyclopedia.

 

I wasn't trying to actually reply what you were saying, I was just using it as a springboard to my thoughts so I quoted it. Sorry about that.

[Jimbo's Drinker]

I never understood the concept of binge drinking = fun.

 

 

 

im so sorry.

[nitetrain8601]

Unofficial St. Patrick's Day is about as accurate at portraying the Irish as if...say, I put on blackface, ate fried chicken and watermelon and then washed it down with a forty in a brown paper bag while calling it Unofficial Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

 

I have chosen not to partake in Unofficial. This is on account of my being neither a virulent racist nor an imbecile so obsessed with finding excuses for inebriation that I am able to shun the analytical thoughts emanating from either my conscience or neocortex. Sporting events are worthy of strong drink. Celebrating one's birthday is likewise a legitimate excuse, if one so desires it. But of course herein lies the problem that people feel the need for a REASON. It is as if a life-threatening and brain-curdling twelve-hour binge miraculously becomes good for a person if he or she puts on a silly green hat and customized single-use t-shirt and does it with thousands of other undergrad sheep.

 

Allow me to give credit to today's celebrants who also believe that Chief Illiniwek is an honorable symbol of Native American culture. At least they are consistent in their views. I, of course, see the Chief as offensive to some but completely harmless in any real terms. If it goes, too bad. It's kind of cool. If it stays, too bad. Some people will still be offended. I would love to poll the Unofficial drinkers on their Chief position. Do I expect to find unanimity? Heck no. I blindly guarantee that a significant percentage of these people will say that the Chief needs to go because it is racist. These people are hypocrites, and need to be labeled such. This is the charming part of the bourgeois liberalism that lurks in the GOP-gerrymandered Congressional districts that turn nearly every American urban metropolis into a blue bullseye on a map. As long as it doesn't affect me, my expensive clothes, my cheap gasoline for my expensive SUV and my cheaply bottled Coca-Cola Classic that together comprise a trip to an Illini sporting event, then I am up in arms. But as soon as they try to take away justification for Mickey Mantle-level favoritism on the liver transplant list, then they have gone too far.

 

But have I, in declaring Unofficial St. Patrick's Day an ignorant and racist celebration, gone too far? I believe not. Allow me to provide a quick history of the legitimate St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick's day is the feast day of Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, the excluded, and protector from snakes (for much of the past half millennium, the first category fit nicely into the second). He converted Ireland to Christianity from paganism and became Bishop of Ireland. This move allowed the Irish monasteries to preserve literacy and much of Western history during the era of the Viking invasions of the late Middle Ages. The legends of Patrick claim that he drove snakes from Ireland (understood now as symbolism for paganism) and used the three-pointed shamrock to explain to the most powerful Irish chieftain the Trinity: the tri-part nature of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

 

Over time, St. Patrick's Day has been transformed from a traditional Catholic feast day into a secular holiday celebrating Irish heritage and culture. Dublin, Ireland, has an annual cultural festival that attracts thousands of people from all over the country and Europe. American cities with large Irish populations, such as New York City, Boston and Chicago have parades. Chicago dyes the Chicago River green (they do so fine a job it stays that way year-round). But this international celebration of Irish culture has been expanded beyond this secular celebration. Granted, the wearing of the green has been accompanied by the drinking of the ale, but the sense of community fostered by this celebration has been demeaned by the perpetrators of this cultural travesty called Unofficial into obnoxiously oafish drunkenness with no socially or culturally redeeming value.

 

Phrases like "Kiss me; I'm Irish" are found everywhere on T-shirts. Non-Irish-Americans and Irish-Americans alike buy into the idea that Everybody's Irish on St. Patrick's Day. While this view could easily take the form of solidarity with downtrodden and oppressed people the world over - donations of money and used possessions to charities or donations of time at soup kitchens or homeless shelters - people (both Irish and not) attach the Irish culture to a simple 4-letter word: beer. Everyone is Irish, so everyone is an obnoxious drunk. They envision Ireland as a nation of alcoholic leprechauns and nothing more. They do this not on St. Patrick's day proper (although I'm sure many do that day, as well), but on an arbitrary, convenient day.

 

Can I blame people for consuming alcohol? No. But thousands of people are carrying out negative stereotypes of the Irish with absolutely no regard for what they are doing. It honestly hurts to see my heritage spat on by thousands of people for the sole purpose of consuming green beer. Irish history is rich and complex, transforming from tribal chiefdoms into thirty-two counties separated into a nation of twenty-six and a captive country of six by British delusions about remaining an empire. People here know basically nothing about Irish history. It's all about the shamrocks, crosses and alcohol. These people wouldn't even be worthy enough to carry Bobby Sands' H-Blocks-issue blanket if they even knew who he was and what he did. Culture to these racists is "f**goty" dancing, not beautiful rebel songs that simultaneously warm the heart and stir the soul. Check out the Wolfe Tones performing "A Nation Once Again," "Joe McDonnell," "The Wearing of the Green" and "Come Out Ye Black and Tans" if you don't believe me.

 

My concern here is St. Patrick's Day as an Irish heritage day, much as Columbus Day and Pulaski Day, respectively, represent Italian and Polish pride days. What Unofficial and its thousands of participants convey as being "Irish" or "Irish-American" is tantamount to celebrating an Unofficial Martin Luther King Day on which thousands of students would smear their faces with black grease paint and proceed to wash down their fried chicken and watermelon with a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor concealed in a brown paper bag. This is not representative of African-American culture. What it is, however, is an abysmal manifestation of our inward unhealth as a society: this crowd of mutant locusts prefers to reinforce stereotypes that demean a minority population at the cost of reifying falsehoods and ignoring countless contributions. Of course Unofficial MLK Day couldn't fly, even if done with the utmost sincerity. Irish is white, so Irish doesn't count. A leprauchan mascot causes much less division than an Aztec warrior or Plains Chief. It's the way it is.

 

I'm not asking for Unofficial to be forcibly shut down. People should be free to do as they please. I'm not being physically harmed by these drunkards (excluding the potential of drunk driving accidents). It's a mental strain, but that's my issue. That's why I'm ranting here as opposed to in the middle of Green Street, yelling, "Come out ye black-and-tans / come out and fight me like a man / show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders / Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away / From the green and lovely lanes of Killeshandra." If you're Irish, or at least have a bit of an understanding of what the history is all about, then you know what I'm talking about.

 

I know that it might be asking a bit much, but stop being so self-serving and ignorant. Green beer is a fine part of St. Patrick's Day. It goes along with the corned beef, boiled cabbage and homemade soda bread you should be eating with your family after the parade. When you're going to partake in a racist, essentializing day of selfish hedonism (This is America, after all. For most people, it is a when question, not an if.), at least perform a little favor for the people whose ancestors' graves you are publically pissing on. Learn something. Anything. Find out about Patrick, Bishop of Ireland. Research the history of the Republican movement. Congratulations, by the way, to Sinn Fein, as it is this year turning one hundred years old. Learn about the hunger strikes. The British oppression. The proposed razing of the Irish table in favor of restarting it with "civilized" British blood. The experience of Irish immigrants to America and what they faced here upon arrival. Something. Anything. Give my ancestors some respect before you go out and piss and puke all over their memory.

 

 

That was possibly the greatest post I've ever witnessed on these boards.

[FlaSoxxJim]

That was possibly the greatest post I've ever witnessed on these boards.

And ironically, it appears to have been penned by a Cub fan.

[FlaSoxxJim]

But the issue lies here. LCR is telling people to stop pissing on Irish heritage, but who allowed it to become a drunk fest? It may have been the Irish themselves so there is no one else to blame. What's there to complain about if that's the case?

Ah, but there is a difference between Irish heritage and the s***e that Irish-Americans several generations removed from Ireland incorrectly believe is Irish heritage.

 

My extended family includes a mix of people where half of them actually knew some Irish history and tradition and the other half just knew all the words to "South Side Irish" and all the bartenders on Western Ave. and figured that made them experts on our ancestral heritage.

 

I blame it on years of drinking too much green beer.

[AddisonStSox]

Brother's. Nine.

 

Call me, Krush.

 

Sobriety just ain't for me on unofficial...crashed out at 4:00PM, time to get back out there.

[Rowand44]

Unofficial St. Patrick's Day is about as accurate at portraying the Irish as if...say, I put on blackface, ate fried chicken and watermelon and then washed it down with a forty in a brown paper bag while calling it Unofficial Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

 

I have chosen not to partake in Unofficial. This is on account of my being neither a virulent racist nor an imbecile so obsessed with finding excuses for inebriation that I am able to shun the analytical thoughts emanating from either my conscience or neocortex. Sporting events are worthy of strong drink. Celebrating one's birthday is likewise a legitimate excuse, if one so desires it. But of course herein lies the problem that people feel the need for a REASON. It is as if a life-threatening and brain-curdling twelve-hour binge miraculously becomes good for a person if he or she puts on a silly green hat and customized single-use t-shirt and does it with thousands of other undergrad sheep.

 

Allow me to give credit to today's celebrants who also believe that Chief Illiniwek is an honorable symbol of Native American culture. At least they are consistent in their views. I, of course, see the Chief as offensive to some but completely harmless in any real terms. If it goes, too bad. It's kind of cool. If it stays, too bad. Some people will still be offended. I would love to poll the Unofficial drinkers on their Chief position. Do I expect to find unanimity? Heck no. I blindly guarantee that a significant percentage of these people will say that the Chief needs to go because it is racist. These people are hypocrites, and need to be labeled such. This is the charming part of the bourgeois liberalism that lurks in the GOP-gerrymandered Congressional districts that turn nearly every American urban metropolis into a blue bullseye on a map. As long as it doesn't affect me, my expensive clothes, my cheap gasoline for my expensive SUV and my cheaply bottled Coca-Cola Classic that together comprise a trip to an Illini sporting event, then I am up in arms. But as soon as they try to take away justification for Mickey Mantle-level favoritism on the liver transplant list, then they have gone too far.

 

But have I, in declaring Unofficial St. Patrick's Day an ignorant and racist celebration, gone too far? I believe not. Allow me to provide a quick history of the legitimate St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick's day is the feast day of Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, the excluded, and protector from snakes (for much of the past half millennium, the first category fit nicely into the second). He converted Ireland to Christianity from paganism and became Bishop of Ireland. This move allowed the Irish monasteries to preserve literacy and much of Western history during the era of the Viking invasions of the late Middle Ages. The legends of Patrick claim that he drove snakes from Ireland (understood now as symbolism for paganism) and used the three-pointed shamrock to explain to the most powerful Irish chieftain the Trinity: the tri-part nature of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

 

Over time, St. Patrick's Day has been transformed from a traditional Catholic feast day into a secular holiday celebrating Irish heritage and culture. Dublin, Ireland, has an annual cultural festival that attracts thousands of people from all over the country and Europe. American cities with large Irish populations, such as New York City, Boston and Chicago have parades. Chicago dyes the Chicago River green (they do so fine a job it stays that way year-round). But this international celebration of Irish culture has been expanded beyond this secular celebration. Granted, the wearing of the green has been accompanied by the drinking of the ale, but the sense of community fostered by this celebration has been demeaned by the perpetrators of this cultural travesty called Unofficial into obnoxiously oafish drunkenness with no socially or culturally redeeming value.

 

Phrases like "Kiss me; I'm Irish" are found everywhere on T-shirts. Non-Irish-Americans and Irish-Americans alike buy into the idea that Everybody's Irish on St. Patrick's Day. While this view could easily take the form of solidarity with downtrodden and oppressed people the world over - donations of money and used possessions to charities or donations of time at soup kitchens or homeless shelters - people (both Irish and not) attach the Irish culture to a simple 4-letter word: beer. Everyone is Irish, so everyone is an obnoxious drunk. They envision Ireland as a nation of alcoholic leprechauns and nothing more. They do this not on St. Patrick's day proper (although I'm sure many do that day, as well), but on an arbitrary, convenient day.

 

Can I blame people for consuming alcohol? No. But thousands of people are carrying out negative stereotypes of the Irish with absolutely no regard for what they are doing. It honestly hurts to see my heritage spat on by thousands of people for the sole purpose of consuming green beer. Irish history is rich and complex, transforming from tribal chiefdoms into thirty-two counties separated into a nation of twenty-six and a captive country of six by British delusions about remaining an empire. People here know basically nothing about Irish history. It's all about the shamrocks, crosses and alcohol. These people wouldn't even be worthy enough to carry Bobby Sands' H-Blocks-issue blanket if they even knew who he was and what he did. Culture to these racists is "f**goty" dancing, not beautiful rebel songs that simultaneously warm the heart and stir the soul. Check out the Wolfe Tones performing "A Nation Once Again," "Joe McDonnell," "The Wearing of the Green" and "Come Out Ye Black and Tans" if you don't believe me.

 

My concern here is St. Patrick's Day as an Irish heritage day, much as Columbus Day and Pulaski Day, respectively, represent Italian and Polish pride days. What Unofficial and its thousands of participants convey as being "Irish" or "Irish-American" is tantamount to celebrating an Unofficial Martin Luther King Day on which thousands of students would smear their faces with black grease paint and proceed to wash down their fried chicken and watermelon with a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor concealed in a brown paper bag. This is not representative of African-American culture. What it is, however, is an abysmal manifestation of our inward unhealth as a society: this crowd of mutant locusts prefers to reinforce stereotypes that demean a minority population at the cost of reifying falsehoods and ignoring countless contributions. Of course Unofficial MLK Day couldn't fly, even if done with the utmost sincerity. Irish is white, so Irish doesn't count. A leprauchan mascot causes much less division than an Aztec warrior or Plains Chief. It's the way it is.

 

I'm not asking for Unofficial to be forcibly shut down. People should be free to do as they please. I'm not being physically harmed by these drunkards (excluding the potential of drunk driving accidents). It's a mental strain, but that's my issue. That's why I'm ranting here as opposed to in the middle of Green Street, yelling, "Come out ye black-and-tans / come out and fight me like a man / show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders / Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away / From the green and lovely lanes of Killeshandra." If you're Irish, or at least have a bit of an understanding of what the history is all about, then you know what I'm talking about.

 

I know that it might be asking a bit much, but stop being so self-serving and ignorant. Green beer is a fine part of St. Patrick's Day. It goes along with the corned beef, boiled cabbage and homemade soda bread you should be eating with your family after the parade. When you're going to partake in a racist, essentializing day of selfish hedonism (This is America, after all. For most people, it is a when question, not an if.), at least perform a little favor for the people whose ancestors' graves you are publically pissing on. Learn something. Anything. Find out about Patrick, Bishop of Ireland. Research the history of the Republican movement. Congratulations, by the way, to Sinn Fein, as it is this year turning one hundred years old. Learn about the hunger strikes. The British oppression. The proposed razing of the Irish table in favor of restarting it with "civilized" British blood. The experience of Irish immigrants to America and what they faced here upon arrival. Something. Anything. Give my ancestors some respect before you go out and piss and puke all over their memory.

 

[santo=dorf]

I passed out around 2:30 PM and woke up with the flu (happened to me the last time I went back to visit U of I) around 10 PM. As I was on my way to pickup a Pizza, I heard a huge "bang" when someone threw an empty keg off the top balcony at Daniel Street Towers.

[SnB]

my goal was to not throw up, i succeeded, just barely.

That bus ride almost cost me.