That Old Excuse

People love excuses. We ‘don’t have the time’ to read the news, only like Take That ‘because it is nostalgic’ and don’t buy free range meat because ‘we can’t afford it’. Just admit that you don’t care about current affairs or animal welfare and only like pop music. Then be happy. There is just something about making an excuse which inherently makes us feel better, even if the excuse is little better than the truth. As wee young kids we suggest ‘I lost my homework on the bus’ doesn’t really make you sound like a much better rounded person than ‘I didn’t do my homework’. It makes us look worse in fact – blatant liars. But somehow obscuring the truth by whatever means possible is always preferable to being open about our failings. I am one of the worst at this, frequently excusing myself from the negative feelings associated with not doing much work by sitting on computers at uni all day, where work is done traditionally done. But I just write blogs and stuff.

The worst case of excuse making seems to be when people feel like getting pissed. Seldom do people say ‘I just felt like getting absolutely leathered last night’ but instead it will be their not very good friend’s birthday, which was absolutely necessary to celebrate. The only groups of people who seem to be realistc about drinking are busy city workers, who ritualistically go for a drink after work, and students, who just don’t have anything better to do.

Which brings us on to today, the biggest excuse of a non event for non drinkers drinking – St Patrick’s day. No one carse about saints, I can not see how it could be argued that you do. Firstly, no one carse about religion any more, at least in the UK. Seccondly, any saint which we actually celebrate is absolutely crap. St Patrick rid Ireland of snakes did he? Well if wiping out an entire species isn’t justification to wear green and a funny hat, what is? But he isn’t half as annoying as St George. Many accounts place him as Turkish, having never even been to England. And he killed a dragon, which obviously was never real. Imagine if it were how amazing that would that be – a big fire breathing dinosaur would certainly spice up London Zoo. The only saint who seemed to be nice to animals was St Francis, and I doubt even he could redress the havoc St Patrick and St George could inflict.

So yeah, live a shamefully boring life, make an entire species extinct if you want to be made a saint and drink as much as you can – that seems to be my moral of the day.