St Pat's Day

[nacho]

Oh, god. It's on us again. Everyone has to worship the Irish like a bunch of morons. The flipside is $4 pints all day every day all month at Ri Ra, which actually draws me out. And then, on the 17th, Gaffney's will have some ridiculous drinks menu where you can get drunk for a few bucks.

All I have to do is not try and smash a bottle over the head of some fucko who starts talking about "the homeland" that his family came from (not really) eight million years ago.

So... A month of trying not to be the barroom History Dick where I burst the bubble of people who call themselves "Scots-Irish" by delivering a 30 minute lecture on the origin and meaning of that term.

[RottingCorpse]

Be the buzzkill.

[nacho]

Be the buzzkill.

Okay! I will!  Because "Scots-Irish" was the term used to describe the shantytown people waiting for steerage class tickets on transatlantic crossings, and they were of all nationalities.  The average wait time for a steerage ticket was two years. So everyone from everywhere -- from darkest Africa to Bulgaria to Finland to Scotland -- would live in these shantytowns and be given that label.

I hear it now as some sort of prideful thing. "We're Scots-Irish."  It's basically like a black person saying, with obscene and ignorant pride, "I was once a nigger."

Which is fine. Okay. But, at least, know what it fucking means. There is no magical island of Scots-Ireland. You can't go visit it. You're a fucking deadbeat Ottoman Empire refugee from some shithole country that hasn't been fucking free for 600 years. Your ancestors had no fucking money so they had to sit for two years in a tent eating their own shit and drinking their own piss for a fucking low-rent ticket that's roughly comparable to half a dollar. Then, maybe they died halfway to the New World because that half dollar ticket only got them a room with 22 other families in the fucking bilges.

Then! Then they were put in ghettos.  If they made it. And I mean ghettos, like, Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. There was no getting out.

These fucking people taking pride in an institutionalized poverty and disenfranchisement that rivals anything the Nazis did or slavery did makes me sick.

And not because of that poverty and disenfranchisement, but because they think it's some weird link to Ireland. My whole trip in Ireland -- even in the weird out of the way places -- was haunted by Americans saying "My family came from around here X-hundred years ago. Do you know the last name Slavojicastan? Because That's Irish!"

Seriously. 

Sometimes, yeah, it's an anglo name. But I heard fucks going on and on about names that made me want to scream: YOUR HOMELAND IS SLOVAKIA RETARD! Take your motherfucking tourist dollars over there and FUCKING DIE! Because you're a fucking American and, the second you open you big, stupid mouth, every fucking body in the room reacts like you just pulled the Terminator's hand down a chalkboard and then strangled a small girl. You'll never...never ever...be part of any other country but America.

[RottingCorpse]

"I'm a Jameson's shootin', Guinness sippin', Molly Malone lovin' chip off the the old Blarney stone!!!"

**machine gun fire**

[Cassander]

are you sure these people aren't just saying "scotch-irish," as ink part scottish/part irish?  basically, "my ancestry is from the UK but not English."  a friend of mine always calls himself scotch-german, and I've heard a dozen other mixtures.  i've never encountered anyone who said scots-irish. 

also, you do need to let it go because it is what it is.  just a day to let go for no reason, just like Cinco de Mayo. 

[nacho]

In those cases, the correct response is: "Scotch is a drink."

(Or you can ask them to indicate on a map the location of Scotchland.)

[Cassander]

so, you're basically surprised that after over 300 years Americans have lost a sense of how to refer to European-ness?  and that's a surprise?  I bet no one goes around france scoffing at how, "well, this all used to be so Gallic, but now look at it.  tut tut!" 

i'm just poking fun at you.  being so up in arms about history just for history's sake is just cute.  to paraphrase bruce willis in Pulp Fiction, "We're americans, honey.  Our names don't mean shit."

[nacho]

The problem is just that, though. We are Americans -- but we don't want to be. We try to make our names mean shit, we try so desperately to be something else than "American" so we become "1/97th Cherokee and 1/1672th Greek and 1/854329th English-American."

Where, in reality, you and Bruce Willis are correct.

I think the fundamental problem with American society is that we refuse to admit that we're just Americans. Even when we're waving flags and singing Born in the USA, we still secretly dream of driving around Cork and asking B&B owners if they remember Seamus McFly who left the county in 1780.

[Cassander]

you're right.

[Reginald McGraw]

just like Cinco de Mayo. 

I was in a Mexican restaurant a couple weeks ago. They celebrate with specials on the 5th of every month.