http://www.cracked.c...patricks-day_p2
By: Luke McKinney
March 17, millions of people take the piss out of Ireland by taking the piss and every other bodily fluid out of themselves, as publicly as possible. The Irish don't celebrate Independence Day by guzzling hamburgers until we throw up over crates of machine guns, and even if we did it would be more respectful. Because at least we imported those things from the U.S. For a country so worked up about immigrants a lot of Americans are absolutely desperate to claim any other nationality. Every St. Patrick's Day drunken North Americans stagger up to tell me their great-grandmother was Irish, and I say great, if she turns up I'll buy her a pint.
No one wants to be Irish on Economy Day or Finding A Job Day. Not even the Irish, which is why mass emigration has been our default crisis response since boats were invented. But come Drinking Day suddenly everyone's begorring their leprechauns and generally proving they're as Irish as a really good point guard. So here's your guide to being a terrible fake-Irish person on St. Patrick's Day.
#8. Wear A "Kiss Me I'm Irish" T-Shirt. Feel free to punch anyone wearing one of these. I can guarantee they've already done something to deserve it. This T-shirt is the humor equivalent of an ankle tracking bracelet -- the wearer might not have done anything to you yet, but you probably shouldn't give them the chance. It's less a joke than an announcement of "If you initiate what's coming next it won't count as sexual assault."
#7. Call It "St. Patty's Day". Every time someone calls it "Patty's" they prove they can't get through 24 hours without thinking of hamburgers. Paddy is short for Padraig (even though the d is silent in some dialects). Pat is short for Patrick, which is an English name. You might be aware of a slight history between the two countries. It still sort of works, but it would be like calling Independence Day "Super Happy Funtime Discount Fireworking Celebration!" You get the idea, but you're still naming one nation's celebration based on the language practices of a different nation with a history of causing your compatriots to be blown up by small, badly made explosives.
#6. Wear a Flag Cape. Every year thousands of Americans pretend to be Irish about as convincingly as Greeks pretending to be a horse: it's obvious, it's stupid and anyone falling for it will be very sorry in the morning. The most hilarious method is wearing an Irish flag as a cape. I see this every year and you could only advertise your Americanity harder by being sworn in as president. This might be a shock, United States, but most countries don't use their flag as a hybrid of wallpaper and glitter. We don't feel the need to plaster it over every available surface because patriotism isn't measured by the square meter. In fact, if anyone has a less respectful way to treat a flag than sweating into it, sitting on it and vomiting over it, it's only because the Red Skull has spent 60 years hating Captain America.
#5. Try To Use a Cupla Focail. One thing Irish and American people have in common is why we don't speak our native language: a load of foreigners turned up and it turns out English speakers are just the best at killing natives. Trying to show off with a cupla focail (few words) works as well in Irish as it does in any language, in that it doesn't. People who don't know the language don't care, and people who just met you don't either. It's like the asshole who insists on loudly ordering sushi by treating Japanese with all the volume, subtlety and careful respect of a tectonic fault. While the waiter thinks "I grew up in Brooklyn, asshole, and even if I didn't maybe working in a Manhattan restaurant means I know English."
#4. Thank St. Patrick For Anything. March 17 is the first example of national Stockholm Syndrome. The Irish celebrate an Englishman taking our entire culture hostage and shooting it full of Catholicism. Patrick was kidnapped by Irish raiders -- the first and only time Ireland has ever been on the traveling side of "Go to an island and fuck things up for people" equation -- and literally holy crap did that not work out for us. Patrick escaped, returned to England and spent years training for his revenge. Because he was born before automatic weapons or bat-costumes were invented, he returned armed with the power of religion, and did far more damage. For which I would personally like to thank him. A culture conditioned by over a millennium of Catholic guilt to think of sex and masturbation as sins is a great place to go through puberty, asshole.
#3. Sing Rebel Songs and Hate the English St. Patrick's Day turns whole cities into the Mexican border -- people pretending to be a different nationality because they think it'll improve their lives, and a big part of the problem comes from arbitrary borders. The dumbest way of claiming Emerald Islishness is singing rebel songs and hating the English. Which is not only stupid, but embarrassing, because we lost every conflict we ever had with those guys. They went on to conquer half the globe, and we started right next to them with a smaller population, fewer resources and inferior technology. We weren't even a victory in their game of global domination, we were the tutorial level.
#2. Drink Far Too Much. Every year the world celebrates the stereotype of drunken Irish by staggering and throwing up over everything from midday onwards, and that's the only thing we mind -- you're making us look like lightweights. Drinking is our greatest national stereotype, sport and about seven-eighths of my work ethic (I'm a workaholic -- I work to pay for drink. Though for writers that's not really a nationality issue). You can't mince around all year then suddenly decide you're Paddy Bushmill. The U.S. defines "binge drinking" as five drinks in two hours. I've had more alcoholic breakfasts.
#1. Drink Any Green Beer. Green beer is how you color-code the real idiots in a room where everyone's too pissed to speak. We don't know who came up this abomination, but since it adds an extra step between "farming" and "beer" we're sure it wasn't us. Those are our specialist subjects. We have breweries older than the North American countries, and I assure you, if anything in beer was meant to be green we'd keep it in there all year round. Green beer is flypaper for tourists and wannabes -- horrible chemicals used to keep the pests busy. You're meant to order beer by name, or style. When you're ordering it by favorite color you've either had too much already or can't spare enough brain cells to start drinking in the first place.
