My friend Chep and I were trying to figure out what exactly is a St. Patrick's Day. We couldn't decide whether it was the Fourth of July without fireworks or maybe New Year's Eve with a parade. Chep thought it might be religious for some reason.

We were wondering because I had seen something truly weird on T.V. It was a round green thing in honor of today, and you were supposed to eat it. It was called a "Cookie O' Puss." True story.

It was one of those things that always makes me deathly afraid that intelligent life from space someday may visit our planet.

Because after seeing a Cookie O' Puss, it would be very hard for us to convince them that we were the very same homo sapiens who had made all those wonderful things like Paris and the White Album, and Joe DiMaggio.

"Yeah, sure y'are," they would say. "Sure y'are."

"We can prove it. Here's some other stuff we did," we'd say. "This is called Krushed Kitty. You can put it on your car and drive around looking like you cut a small fuzzy animal in half with your trunk. It's very funny.

"And we also have professional wrestling, which is sort of like the Mort Downey, Jr. show in leotards. And this here is an inflatable person. Normally . . . well, you wouldn't normally use this at all. But -- "

And at this point the aliens would kill us all and eat our heads.

Anyway, I went to the library and got a book called Everyman's Guide to the Saints so I could find out about St. Patrick. I wanted to know what he did that made him a Saint and why he got his own day, and what it had to do with things like Cookie O'Puss.

I had always thought that St. Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland. I was almost positive that's what happened.

But what I found out from reading Everyman's Guide to the Saints is that I'm obviously insane and no such thing ever happened. Or, if it did, it was rats and not snakes, and it wasn't St. Patrick at all.

It was the Pied Piper.

The book said St. Patrick was just a kind and devout man, and an Irish bishop during a time when it was very dangerous to be Catholic.

And, of course, today there is only one way to celebrate this kind of self-sacrificing, exemplary behavior -- drink beer and have a parade.

It isn't actually a fair thing to say because, I think, Americans will celebrate almost anything with beer.

This may be due to beer advertising, which usually shows beer as this confusing, celebratory, black-and-white, elegantly-peopled, piano-playing, dog-party, hard-to-say-when-aging, rock-star kind of thing.

All of which is ridiculous. Because anyone who drinks beer knows the experience is nothing like that.

It's more like having someone tickle you slowly until you're so giddy and stupid you fall asleep, and then while you're asleep they kick you in the groin and pour a quart of sand in your mouth, and whisper hypnotic messages like, "When you awaken, you will feel very, very embarrassed."

This is the way I feel about it anyway. And I like beer.

Or maybe, people drink on St. Patrick's Day because it's an Irish holiday, and the Irish are maybe fond of drinking. I don't really know.

But I do know, that it is the best day to drink beer because they put green food coloring in it. And, for once, your beer will actually look the way it tastes.