(I was really tired today and my brain never quite turned on, so I had a really hard time writing this short, scattered, incoherent post. I know that the day is nearly over, but it’s on the Internet, and it’s still Friday for sixty more minutes, so suck it. The streak is still alive! I’ll try to be more entertaining on Monday, and I’ll try to get it done faster instead of literally waiting until the eleventh hour. Enjoy the trash!)
We all know someone with some Irish heritage. Maybe they’re full-blown Irish. Maybe their father is. Maybe they had a great great grandfather from Alabama who visited Ireland once. Maybe they eat Lucky Charms. The point is, they associate themselves with Ireland in some way, shape or form.
And how do you know that this person has some kind of link, no matter how vague, to Ireland?
"Hmm... I really want the people at work to know how much I love Ireland. I just hope that this outfit isn't too subtle."
Because they won’t shut the fuck up about it. That’s why. They have an entire closet full of green, shamrock covered tshirts advertising their love of Ireland, they want to get tattoos of Celtic knots, they talk about how much they love drinking whiskey and Guinness (Bonus points if they say “Guinness” in a shitty Irish accent when they’re talking about it), they dress up as Leprechauns and listen to House of Pain. You can’t get more than a few seconds into a conversation before they have to tell you that they’re going to visit Ireland someday because they’re 1/16th Irish or that they’re Irish so they can drink Jameson like normal people drink water.
There are a multitude of reasons that I find this annoying.
First of all, as I said before, most of these people have only the loosest connection to Ireland. They have a distant Irish relative or they kissed the Blarney stone during their high school band’s trip to Europe.
Second of all, most of them know about as much about Ireland as I do. Even if their grandparents came from Ireland, they grew up in the middle of Missouri and are, for all intensive purposes, Americans.
Third of all, I have no idea why this seems to happen disproportionally with the Irish. I can understand appreciating your heritage and family history, but I’m unclear as to what makes Irish descent more important to broadcast. My last name is Czechoslovakian. A lot of people think that it’s French. Do you know why they make that mistake? Because I don’t waste time and energy making sure that everyone around me knows that my great-grandfather on my Dad’s side of the family came from Czechoslovakia. We eat Kolache when we go to see my Grandma during Christmas and when people ask me if my last name is French I tell them that it’s not. That’s when it comes up. No shirts. No tattoos. Just a goofy last name that middle school kids find incredibly funny.
Ireland is probably a nice place. I guess it’s a big tech center in Europe now, I’ve heard that it’s really pretty, and it’s world renowned for having some of the blandest, shittiest cuisine on the planet. Nothing wrong with any of that, but it doesn’t make it any more exciting than any other corner of the world, and the rest of the world isn’t wearing shirts that say things like “Kiss me, I’m Iranian” or getting tattoos that say “Luxembourg Pride” on them.
To illustrate the severity of this problem, I did a little bit of research on google. I looked for certain phrases, took the data and turned it into the following aesthetically pleasing donut chart.
Number of Results Returned By Google:
The results are alarming.
As you can see, the phrase “Irish Pride” yields about 131,000 results. The next highest number, “German Pride” had 31,800 results.
Why is this? Germans make badass cars, good beer, and some of the filthiest, most depraved pornography in existence! French people have the Eiffel Tower, really, REALLY good food and a love of Jerry Lewis, but according to google have only have a fraction of the pride that Irish people do!
Most alarming, however, are the numbers on buttholes! Every single one of these demographics has them, plus a slew of others – Abraham Lincoln, John Elway, Eddie Van Halen – name a great person in history, and chances are that they had a butthole! Despite this fact, google was able to find only two sites on the Internet that had the phrase “Butthole pride” written on them. The fact that this blog post will increase that number by 50% is cold comfort.
As is stands, I see only one solution: I need to start raising awareness about this.
Actually, there are already plenty of "Butthole Pride" shirts available. Take this one right here, for instance.
As of tomorrow, I will start doing my best to bring up in even the most casual, unrelated conversations that I have a butthole.* I’ll start running off shirts that say “Kiss me, I have a butthole” written on them* (I considered submitting this as a design to threadless.com’s typetees, but even if you ignore the fact that it would almost certainly get voted down immediately for not making any sense to anyone but the small handful of people who read this post, I’m pretty sure that it would get pulled down for inappropriate language.) I will get a tattoo of buttholes circling my arm that I can show off to let everyone know that a long, rich history of having buttholes goes all the way up my family tree.*
(P.S.: A search for “American Pride” yields over 500,000 results. Why didn’t I include that in my graph? It’s quite simple, really: because it wasn’t consistent with the point that I was trying to make, that’s why! Not only am I willing to do the research, I also know how to cherry pick to make sure the results look like I want them to! Expect only the best from mindyourowngoddamnbusiness.com!)
What was I talking about? Oh, right. Irish Pride. Maybe someone reading this is Irish, and maybe that someone is really, really proud about it. Help me understand. Why is the amount of pride so much stronger for people that are from there than what appear to me to be comparable countries? Let me know, or deal with me being an asshole about it.
And remember to hit me up for a “Butthole Pride” tshirt ASAP! You need to start letting people know, because everyone finds that kind of thing almost as interesting as where one of your grandparents came from!
Coming up next week: Finally, part three of my exploration of Internet dating (in a direction that I never expected to take), and more stories of me humiliating myself!
Enjoy your weekend.
*All lies. Shameless, shameless lies.
#1 by Bibi on July 18, 2009 - 7:27 am
I know I shouldn’t have googled butthole pride, I should’ve trusted you. But I couldn’t believe you were able to find ANY side that included that phrase.
For German pride… well, I bet you at least half of the articles including that are about how Germans aren’t/shouldn’t be proud to be German. I know, my grandma was a little kid when WWII ended, but it’s still pretty much current for us. Trust me, the sentence “I’m proud to be German” can, over here, ruin anything. Your birthday party or your political career.
#2 by myogdb on July 18, 2009 - 11:20 am
Which kind of surprises me. From what I know about the period during WWI and WWII, it was a pretty dark time for Germany, but it seems like pretty much anyone that was older than ten at the very end of WWII is probably gone at this point, and it also seems like Germany has done quite a bit of stuff to be proud of too. I’ve only been to Germany once, but I had a really positive experience when I was there. I hope the stigma goes away.
#3 by Bibi on July 18, 2009 - 2:19 pm
A proper answer to that calls for something essay-length. I’d gladly write it but I’m aware that the topic concerns me and the rest of Germany much more than others and I get easily carried away xD
So just say if you’re interested in hearing it, but I understand that serious answers probably weren’t what you’re going after with this post^^
In short: there is a German poem that describes us rather well. I can’t find it now and I’m translating it from memory so it might be only vaguely correct.
“Ask a French what he is and he’ll say ‘I’m French’,
ask a Brit what he is and he’ll say ‘I’m British’,
ask a German what he is and he’ll say ‘I’m a mailman’.”
We just don’t have national pride.
#4 by myogdb on July 18, 2009 - 2:32 pm
Give me the proper answer. I’d be interested to know what you think about all of it.
#5 by Atkins's Wife on July 18, 2009 - 7:31 pm
You have a pretty narrow view about WWII. WWII ended only about 60 years ago. (P.S. People are living much longer than 70 years now. :p) That is extremely young in the wide scheme of things.
Think back to the Clinton administration during which Clinton apologized for slavery. That was 200 years ago and obviously still a rather sensitive topic.
When it comes to WWII and the Shoah, people are just as, if not even more, sensitive.
Interestingly, people don’t dig being ritually exterminated or enslaved or oppressed. Which is probably why Germans aren’t super exuberant about proclaiming their nationality. It’s kinda like saying you have “White Pride” which basically says “I am happy for everything white people have done and I am so glad I am part of that race.” Maybe it SHOULDN’T say these things, but it certainly does.
Now, given all of this, let’s move on to Irish Pride. The Irish have long been oppressed, killed, generally undermined by the English. You can read/hear countless stories of the potato famine being engineered by the English (more or less) or the English trying to exterminate the Irish language and culture. The English aristocracy did, in fact, refer to that entire country and its people as the “Irish problem.” Sound a little like Hitler, who came up with the “final solution”? Yup.
So, given this underdog spirit, the fact that they were able to maintain their language and culture through such outright and blatant persecution, it makes sense that they would want to broadcast their love of being Irish. “Fuck yeah,” they’re saying, “my people survived and are awesome and have sexy accents.” Okay, perhaps not in those exact words.
Now, why do people with 1/160 Irish in them proclaim their Irish heritage and go batshit crazy with the color green, especially in March? Two easy reasons: 1. people like to fit in and 2. people like to drink.
“Being Irish” lets you state how awesome you are at drinking, forgives you for binging (and likely purging later) and connects you with other loosely Irish people. Think of it like jumping on the bandwagon when the Broncos are actually doing well (I know, you have to think back pretty far here) and suddenly everyone’s a Broncos fan. Once St. Patty’s comes along, everyone’s Irish. Ask these same people whether they are Irish in November and they would, for the most part, be less exuberant about it.
I don’t even really know my heritage. I think I’m roughly 1/4 Italian, some Irish and Scottish, and then the other 1/2 is Scandinavian or some such thing. So, I’m basically an American. But fuck American pride. Too many people use that as an excuse to hate other people, which just leads to more strife and war.
I’m not a great example, though, as I’m not a very big bandwagon person. I mean, I’ve been a Chargers fan since 1992 or so.
I take the hard knocks.
#6 by myogdb on July 19, 2009 - 1:27 am
@Atkins’s Wife
I see what you’re saying, and you make some really good points. Let me try to explain myself.
First of all, you’re absolutely right; WWII is extremely recent. 60 years is pretty much nothing in the grand scheme of things, and there are still people who were around during those times. That being said, I would guess that the vast majority of people living in Germany now were far too young to have played any sort of meaningful role in Nazi Germany. I’m not trying to downplay what a dipshit Hitler was or how tragic the Holocaust was, and I think that it will always be remembered as a really, really dark period in German history. I’m guessing that no one will (or should) ever be proud of it, but I feel like it’s a little bit unfair to take a one extremely fucked up 20 year chunk of history from a country that’s been around for a few hundred years and say “That’s it. Your country sucks because a group of people two generations above you were assholes.”
I also don’t know where one ranks WWII and the Holocaust with all of the bad things that humans have done to each other (Or how you would even do that). They’re both probably pretty near to the top, but there are plenty of other countries with ugly periods in their history too that still have pride in their country. As far as I know, Russians feel pretty OK about being Russian, but it seems like they’re still digging up dead bodies from when Stalin was in charge. You’re also absolutely right about American slavery – it’s still a really sensitive subject two hundred years later, but it’s never gotten in the way of most Americans being proud of being American. Actually, America has a pretty extensive list of shitty things we’ve done – slavery, Japanese internment camps during WWII, sweatshops, dicking over Native Americans at every available opportunity- those are the major ones I can think of off the top of my head, and I’m probably forgetting some other doozies. Nobody is proud of those events, but they haven’t really prevented people from being proud of the kick-ass things that America has done, at least as far as I know.
As for the Irish, I still don’t see it. You compare them to the Jews, which I can understand. The Irish have had a hard history, and I think that we can all agree that nobody in the history of anything has ever gotten fucked harder on a more consistent basis than the Jews, so the similarity is there. And yet, it still doesn’t really explain the behavior to me, because as far as I know there’s no similar phenomenon with the Jews. There’s no huge surge of bandwagon Jews during Yom Kippur, no “Ride my Hog to the Synagogue” tshirts (Once again, I should be submitting this crap to threadless typetees), no “Spread those thighs, I’m circumcised” tattoos (I’ll admit that one was a little bit more of a reach), no Jewish rap group called Fatal Dreidel (I know, I know, I’m just embarrassing myself now. It sounds better when you say it out loud, I swear) and no one at parties saying things like “I’m part Jewish because my step dad is a huge Philadelphia 76ers fan, and Moses Malone won a championship with them, and Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, so I eat gefilte fish like it’s chocolate. MAZEL TOV, MOTHERFUCKER!!!
I’m not even going to dignify your crack about the Broncos with a response, but I will say that liking a team that sucks and then watching them get good and win a championship is really awesome, and I think the Chargers are headed in that direction. If this is their year, enjoy it while it lasts – you have dreams of Lombardi trophies dancing through your head, and then one day you wake up and find out that the GM has fired your coach, the replacement has alienated your pro bowl quarterback and when you look at the schedule, you only see about three games that you think they can win.
I think I’m going to have to do a lot of heavy drinking during the 2009 season.
#7 by Atkins's Wife on July 19, 2009 - 12:35 pm
Oh, I certainly don’t think it’s fair. Germany shouldn’t have to live in the shadow of the things perpetrated by people in the past. All I’m pointing out is that it does.
I guess the real kicker is that St. Patty’s involves a lot of drinking. There are no Jewish holidays (at least none I know of) where the main point is to get shit-faced. Though if you could make a cool blue-and-white layered shot and call it something awesome (I’ll leave that part up to you, Mr. Fatal Dreidel) maybe you can get people on board. Drinking is a great uniter of people. And then a great divider as they start beating the shit out of each other.
Which leads me to football.
I remember in 1995 sitting eagerly in front of my tv hopeful that the Chargers would pull off a super bowl win only to watch them get the shit kicked out of them by the 49ers. Though I was only 15, my waning excitement and growing disappointment as the four quarters of slaughter crawled on will stay with me always.
That being said, I still have a Natrone Means jersey.
#8 by myogdb on July 19, 2009 - 12:50 pm
That’s fair.
I also see what you’re saying with St. Patrick’s day. I guess that the Jews are going to have to step up their game if they want to compete.
As for football, I got to enjoy what is still the most lopsided game in super bowl history when the 49ers systematically dismantled Denver. It’s interesting. For the most part, the Broncos have been a fairly competitive team while I’ve followed them, but they also seem to be on the receiving end of a lot of records like that.
#9 by Atkins's Wife on July 19, 2009 - 2:09 pm
Ouch, yeah, that was a tough one. In fact, I think that’s around the time I became a Chargers fan. haha
So, we should join in our hatred of the 49ers and systematically destroy them. You know, in keeping with the theme we have going here.
I’ll actually just sit here at my computer and shake a fist. But damnit, it will be a fist of RAGE!
#10 by Tommy on May 19, 2010 - 10:04 am
You should change your name too czech republic dude!
get with the times, as long as it doesnt harm anyone ive got no problem with it