St. Patrick's Day

When I walk into a bar, I expect certain things.

Beers on tap that a gas station doesn't carry, a knowledgeable bartender, and a socializing atmosphere.

When I walk into a Pub, I expect a few more things: Guinness on tap and more international selection.

But when I walk into an Irish Pub on Saint Patrick's day, I don't expect Sweet Home Alabama being covered by some kids younger than me on stage, and everyone enjoying it.

I'm as much a fan as Lynyrd Skynyrd as the next all-American, but there is a time and place for everything, and Bardstown road, the "Irish quarter" of Louisville, is not the place on such sacred a drinking holiday.

Louisville, thanks for ruining perhaps my last St. Patrick's day stateside for two years. Thanks a lot.

Barnacle Tactics

Our instructor, an Army Captain, is stuck to the wall of a classroom.

He's impersonating a barnacle.

To get there, he told us what he was going to do, and sprinted into the wall with a violent thud.

After pausing frozen on the wall for a few seconds, he dismounts and explains his point: "Offense is about violence and speed. You do not want to be what I just was. Barnacles just sit around, waiting for a fight to come to them. Don't be a barnacle during a fight."

The class laughs, but in the back of our minds we realize that he isn't injecting comedy to avoid the truth.

After lunch two weeks ago he showed us a video of a wounded and unarmed American contractor being killed by insurgents at point blank range.

The point was clear: if it takes comedy to learn the doctrine, use it. But there is no comedy in fighting a war against brutal enemies.