The Fifth Season

I don't drink beer.  I have always been grateful, in an odd way, to the beer manufacturers who make it possible for radio stations to remain in business by interminably advertising their product, even while feeling guilty that I have no way of contributing to their coffers.

Today I feel even more guilty, because the Guinness company has not only contributed to my radio enjoyment, they appear to have increased my lifespan.  Apparently St. Patrick's Day, a minor holiday of old transmogrified into a day of sozzled celebration and Irish pride* in this past century, has been morphed yet again, this time at the yeasty pseudopodia of Guinness.  It seems, according to their radio advertising, that today is the culmination of the "St. Patrick's Day Season!"  It isn't exactly clear when this season begins — perhaps contemporaneously with their advertising campaign or maybe when the sun enters buttis the keg — but one assumes that it ends on its eponymous day.  And I suppose it runs contemporaneously with the more traditionally-named season, i.e., northern hemisphere winter, giving the lie to my life-extension theory.  Perhaps next year, after now having primed us for this calendar extension, they will offer a UN resolution to formalize it.  Why not?

Honorable mention to Coors.  I would never have had occasion to discover the rich etymology behind "fer shizzle" had I not been paying attention to their recent ads. 

 *I always wear the green on St. Patrick's day despite a total (so far as I know, of course) lack of Irish heritage.  Today's ensemble incorporated a T-shirt with green swirls in an almost disorienting pattern.