Rhymes With Fuck

I do a bad job of representing myself on here. I’m a mostly positive, optimistic, nice dude who loves adverbs, but I sure write a lot about who I want to fight. Yall probably know about that Adam Carolla thing by now. I am pretty sure he’d whoop my ass despite being like 50 and stupid, but on some Fingolfin shit, he’s a super dick head I’d still do it.

Once his dumbness started setting the internet war beacons ablaze, people went wild getting at him. I feel that and think it’s great. That kinda shit shouldn’t sneak by without getting called out, often and loudly. People who I’d say have their head on straight - like Neal Brennan - thought the backlash was a bit much, but I (and this dude probably) disagree. It got to a point pretty quick though where I thought the response was circling back to being dumb again. Maybe even a little condescending.

It’s cool to attack the substance of his argument and reveal it for what it is: prejudice, ignorance, and hate. But once people started just posting/tweeting lists of women they find funny or how they know so many funny women, I was like come on kid. Quit playin. You don’t win a fight about stereotypes by pointing to a grip of individuals or anecdotal experience. He’s saying women aren’t funny and your response is “these specific women are funny?” It’s a bad look. And I don’t think funny women want or need us singling them out to say how they are ACTUALLY FUNNY! in that context, for good reason. Maybe they don’t want to be made into an exhibit or standard-bearer for the concept of funny women. Maybe they feel arguing the point in that way gives it validity. But they probably agree with me that just saying their name is a shitty argument.

What if someone said black people are thieves (I know this will never ever happen, but just go with me). Would you say “nuh uh man, I know Mike and Derek and they ain’t thieves!” or “Naw, I know so many black people who aren’t thieves.” Doesn’t that seem like a useless and weirdly offensive stance to take? You aren’t debunking the bullshit, just saying that its scope might be somewhat limited. And you’re leaving yourself open to a bunch of canned responses: Of course I didn’t mean every black person steals/woman isn’t funny, I just meant there’s a thing in their genes/upbringing/fast twitch muscle fibers that predisposes them to holding my wallet/not having jokes. Those are the exceptions. To me, none of those women are funny. (I just wanted buzz for my book release cause I want to build a new hot rod [or whatever the fuck Adam does].)

The things he said are plain wrong, and we shouldn’t resort to listing some stand up comedians or actresses to prove that because A) it doesn’t B) it’s a very shallow argument. Cool it, you ain’t gotta give anybody a shout out. Women work + are funny in every medium including Adam Carolla’s own fucking shows. They’re everywhere, from writing to producing to acting to what the fuck ever. Whatever. What ever. Everywhere. They’re everywhere!! All women everything.

I mean, if he really believes that mess he talked, it’s obviously because he hasn’t checked out the awesome web series Burning Love. That show depends on women being funny! Women like Erica Oyama, June Diane Raphael, Janet Varney, Malin Akerman, Beth Dover, Natasha Leggero, Deanna Russo, Helen Slayton-Hughes, Morgan Walsh, Kristen Bell, Noureen DeWulf…

I have a pretty funny relationship with death - I definitely don’t want to do it. People talk a lot of mess on living forever but fuck them.

It wouldn’t be lonely cause you’d eventually make new friends. People act like once everyone you know died you’d spend the rest of eternity in a room listening to Morrissey’s discography on shuffle. After the first couple hundred years you’ll be OD interesting just because you lived in a time before the world got its shit together and did something amazing, like make Jurassic Park for real. “What was it like before dinosaurs” they’ll say, and you’ll give your patented enigmatic grin and be all “what you should ask is what was it like between dinosaurs.” And those dip shits will be like “oooooo” cause it’s kind of a koan for dummies, and people from the future seem like they’ll be dim. Or maybe you’re talking to children for some reason, how should I know.

It’d be sad to see everyone you know and love die, but most of us’ve had a taste of that. So it goes. It never made me want to have died first… which kinda means it’s already my plan to outlive everyone. I don’t have kids, which might change things, but I doubt it. I’m very selfish. In any case, nonexistence doesn’t seem like the best way to avoid grief.

Think about all the cool shit that’s come out in the past, like, five years. TV shows, movies, books, technology, the black president. I don’t want to miss out on whatever new thing they think up in 2100. Maybe they’ll invent magic. And what about all the dope stuff there is out there to learn? I’m already over a quarter century old and I can’t hit a bullseye with an arrow from the back of a galloping horse. Yet.

Also, living forever doesn’t mean you’re invulnerable. Shit ever gets too bad you can just smush yourself into a goo somehow.

This is my terrible obituary for this one dude I worked with for about three years. I’d see him every day and talk to him a few times a week. We were friendly and he was a nice guy who had a smooth voice and knew the job. But I didn’t know what he was called til someone said “did you hear redacted died while you were on vacation?” (My answer was, “who?”)

In the first month I worked with him he introduced himself to me, but I forgot his name, and then it was too awkward for me to ask. That’s a problem that only gets worse with time. So it was pronouns and generic nicknames all the way to the end.

I’m still not sure how I feel about it. It obviously sucks that he died, but should I feel guilty or ashamed, too? I kinda think so. Should I regret not asking him what his name was after 30 months of working together? Probably. I guess in a way, I’m glad he didn’t get to live forever, cause he woulda eventually figured out that I had no clue what his name was. At least now I can take solace in the fact that he probably died thinking I knew.

Think about it: In a country of over 300 million people — where hundreds of thousands of people live in poverty, suffer from crippling diseases and addictions, struggle with mental illness, endure unspeakable tragedies, and lose loved ones — .001 percent take their own life every year. You have to be in a really bad place to commit suicide. Junior Seau may have missed the limelight and the adrenaline rush of football and his body may have been breaking down. But he was a rich, young, good-looking man with three kids, a charitable foundation, a clothing line, and a house on the beach who spent his days surfing. People like that do not typically commit suicide. They just don’t.

-Malcolm Gladwell, certified dick head

Yo. I just figured this thing out and I’mma write a book about it despite having close to zero rhetorical skills. It’s about how if you do something for an obscenely long time, like, way longer than any length of time you ever thought about doing one thing, you’ll eventually be fuckin good at it. I know that shit sounds crazy but trust me. Right now everyone thinks that if you just spend about a week practicing  hard, but like, real real hard and shit, you’ll become The Beatles (all four), but nobody knows how to try hard enough to make it happen. This is why everyone gives up at everything.

But naw. Think about it. Actually you can just try basic hard for a lot of days and you’ll be The Beatles, I’m tellin you. It’s like how if you want to play yourself you can just run into a wall really fast til your shit ain’t work, but you might change your mind after like one or two tries cause it’s real hard. But if you go on a hunger strike it’s nowhere near as difficult moment to moment and you get the same result, truth. It just takes way longer. This is my theory on how to be good at something but it turns out to also be pretty effective for committing suicide, something Malcolm Gladwell should consider.

Anyway, that joke’s over. Fuck Malcolm Gladwell. How are you gonna talk about suicide in socioeconomic terms, you fuckin jabroni. You started out kinda makin an ok point, but something went wrong in your brain if you even accidentally imply that suicide is a logical choice by a rational human based on how much assets they got. I will rationally act my fist across your dumb head.  This is what you think: “Rich people don’t commit suicide. Only poor people do cause come on, they’re escaping massive credit card debt or a predatory mortgage. When you think about it, suicide’s a net gain for them!”

It made sense when you showed up on Grantland cause Bill Simmons can’t write worth a damn either and will also say really asinine shit. (I think I’ve talked about him before but in case I haven’t, I don’t like him and will fight him.) We need to get an investigation going to see if Big Suicide has this dummy on their payroll to spread misinformation about killing your own self. Check out this thing he said:

In his book The Tipping Point, Gladwell blamed children for getting themselves addicted to tobacco and absolved tobacco industry advertising campaigns of guilt.

Make sure to read the rest of that page to find out what a real piece of shit Malcolm Gladwell is.

Conclusion: either he hasn’t a fuckin clue what he’s talking about or deserves to be given zero credibility on practically any topic. But especially when it comes to human beings, cause he ain’t one. An information compiler with no soul who is from Canada. Who are you trying to kid with that hair son? We know you’re some kind of android or something. Is that where the access panel is?  I’m on to you Canadian fucks, trying to take us down through our most prestigious and OD boring publications. He might have a super tough metallic endoskeleton, but I bet if I had a big enough sample size I could beat Malcolm Gladwell to death with it.

Lately I’ve got my face cleansing regimen on lock. It took a lot of experimentation, but I figured out the right soap(s), the right frequency, when to shave, correct water temperature for both washing and rinsing (it matters, oath). And cetera. My naturally radiant skin is so fresh now that if we were talking on a mountainside you’d probably see Moses and Elijah by my sides holding me down.

My cuffs may be bone dry, but alas my feet are soaked: Although you’d never tell by looking, sometimes, at night before bed, my face feels a little dry. Fuck. So now what, I’m in the market for a moisturizer? That could throw off my facial game! Who knows how my precious skin will react to new chemicals, or how long it’d take to find the right one. It’d be a whole thing, and who has time for things in this economy.

I wanted to learn about moisturizing until I happened upon a piece of half-remembered third-hand anecdotal information that changed everything. You know how your skin is just one big organ? Well, according to this definitely-not-bullshit thing I heard, this means your skin will share moisture throughout itself, kind of like how your whole circulatory system shares your blood, or how both kidneys are full of piss-treating software. It is undeniably one organ, after all. So maybe that just means, I don’t know, my hands or knees or something are too dry and they’re pulling key moisture reserves from my beautiful cheeks, like when you’re cold and your body limits blood flow to your tootsies. If I fixed that problem I wouldn’t need to upset my routine. It all makes sense.

Except that when something just “makes sense” it’s probably gonna be bullshit. Turns out that shit “makes sense” cause we don’t know anything about most things. Like oh, Marco Polo brought back pasta from China, that’s why lo mein and spaghetti are the same thing. Water drains the opposite way in Southern Hemisphere toilets like how ocean currents go opposite ways. If you drop a penny off the Empire State Building it’ll kill someone. Eat five small meals a day or your body will go into conservation mode.

But what the fuck do you know about Marco Polo really? Or fluid dynamics? How fast does a penny have to be going to cave in your brain case? I used to believe all this stuff too, cause I was told it by equally dumb adults/teachers. You hear fancy words like “Coriolis effect” and “terminal velocity” and well, I’ve never written a research paper about pasta and there IS some spaghetti-lookin shit in China. I like both versions with extra mushrooms. So… makes sense. 

I’ve heard the train analogy used a hundred times talking about meal frequency: if you don’t feed the fire (your metabolism) regularly (every few hours), it (you) shuts down (your body is very similar to a coal-fed locomotive). That makes sense cause it reduces a topic we have absolutely no expertise with to a story about a choo-choo train. Why would your body to slash and burn metabolic processes the second it doesn’t get food? How does it benefit us evolutionarily if we have OD yawn times right away so it’s harder to catch our next meal? That’s an awfully small window to do any serious hunting/gathering in before it turns into a two-nap day.

On the other hand it’s obvious that your hair and fingernails continue to grow after you die cause they still have food and energy stored up. It’s not like every cell immediately dies when your heart stops beating, that’s why they can do organ transplants. Or something close to that. Those hair cells never really gave a fuck about what I thought or I wouldn’t need to shave so often. So now that the  brain’s not around to judge them, of course they’re gonna plow ahead until they run out of juice. 

That one made sense to me up until a few weeks ago, because I’m an idiot who knows nothing about biology. I was so excited to jump on that “skin’s just one big organ maaaaan” bandwagon. It’s extra easy to buy into silly myths about our bodies.  I’ve had one my whole life so I must be an expert, I should be able to tell fact from fiction. I’m sure I still believe in tons of stuff like this. 

Anyway, back on topic, someone let me know about that moisturizer shit and if it’s for real (still hoping), or hook me up with any ancillary info I might need to make an informed decision about what kind of cream I should buy to most benefit my punam. 

“I’m an adult film actor. Yeah, a porn star I guess… though I don’t like to call it that. Makes it sound so commercial. Most of it is, you know? And most of the people get into it for that? The money, the recognition. Awards. I just say whatever to all that stuff. I’m a part of this industry because I love it. I know you don’t hear this all that often, but I got into erotic talkies because I was fan the craft.

“Ever since I was a little kid and I discovered Internet, I’ve been a student of the artform. I mean most men around my age would probably say the same. But you know, they were probably more about gratification? Like, physically. I get that, and I guess I can respect it, however puerile that is. Me, though? I hardly ever even looked at my dick for the first few years. I was just so enthralled by the artistic nature of human intercourse filmed for mass consumption. It was… beautiful.

“And I mean, I’m like way into the history, the porno context. Heh, it’s actually funny. People were such savages back then. Wild, uncontrolled body hair, cheesy music that was way too hot in the mix, horrendous editing. Some studios would even wipe between shots in the same scene! I know right! It’s charming to look at now in an anthropological way, but totally embarrassing in retrospect. None of those people could sniff a job in the industry today on their own merits, and it can’t all be blamed on the increasingly unrealistic standard for female beauty, you know. 

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Personally I’m like way into anal. That aspect of P-in-V cinema was just gaining a hold when I got on board. Those monsters I was just talking about before would never even give your butt hole a second look. Not that you’d want them to or anything haha, I just mean you know. Sorry. I’m kind of an anallingus nerd though, I think about it all the time. It’s my favorite part of any shoot. 

“People think they don’t have to pay attention to it because the orgasm parts aren’t in there. But you know what they’re wrong. I think so, anyway. It can add another layer of depth and complexity to an otherwise boring scene. There’s really a lot to think about when you get right down to it: camera and leg position, seated or standing… how much saliva? How many fingers? Do we bring any foreign objects into the equation? Ha I see that look you’re giving me but trust me, I’m a very intuitive ass eater. I know what a woman’s ready for and when she’s ready to have her boundaries explored a bit. I call it ‘tushing the limit.’ Ha I don’t really but you know.

“Yeah so look I’m shooting a scene tomorrow and I’d love for you to come -er, drop by, see how I work. Maybe see if you like what I do, ha. Oh, my name is Seymour, by the way.”

Warning: this shit ain’t that funny. It’s kinda funny cause I’m inherently funny, but it’s mainly not funny. You might want to skip it if you aren’t a big dumb comedy nerd.

I think about comedy a lot. Most of the things I think about were inspired by stuff Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut have said about humor, somewhere. The Salmon of Doubt maybe, I forget. It used to mystify me why comedy wasn’t taken seriously at all, let alone in comparison to things considered higbrow like music, drama, painting, etc. But I think I figured out some of the fundamental reasons why that I’ve never seen talked about.

To start, I think comedy’s an art form. Mainly because I’d like everyone to think of me as an artist. A lot of people would probably agree, but they’d also relegate almost every form of humor to the art minor leagues. Every now and then a piece of humor is so amazing it’s undeniable, like Catch 22, so we call it satire and let it into the Pantheon of Art, but mostly it can be written off as a cute distraction. Comedy is the curling of the artistic world. Fun to watch sometimes, maybe nice to have on in the background, and a lot of the ladies who are good at it are cute as heck, but only a tiny fraction of the world would dream of calling it great. Even a lot of the participants must put it down (you’d have to, right? it’s one of the least interesting things that can be done on ice). 

I think one of the main reasons it’s hard to see comedy as highbrow because while the most erudite humorist will make you laugh, someone farting loudly in a library by accident also makes you laugh, or an inappropriate thought at a funeral gives you the giggles. Not a lot of stuff people consider cultured or artistic can be mimicked unintentionally like humor can. Listening to a really moving piece of music evokes a physical/emotional reaction you’re not likely to get when you hear a child sing a (probably dumb) song they made up. Reading a brilliantly crafted biographical article about a Civil War soldier might lead you to insights you wouldn’t have otherwise had, but that’s not gonna happen via a series of drunk texts. Amazing art can move you to tears, but accidental/trite/unskillful art can’t. Unfortunately, it’s different for laughter.

Laughter, internal or external, isn’t always on purpose, or introspective, or even understood, so the amount of effort comedians/humor writers/comic actors put into their craft isn’t always obvious from your reaction. Everyone in the world makes others laugh sometimes. Even though comedians can manufacture these amazing tricks seemingly at will, you’ll find a lot more “oh anyone can do that,” “that was just luck that they had that idea,” “they’re not doing anything original or groundbreaking” type reactions than you would (if that exists at all) in any other artform.  

Laughing isn’t nearly the same as crying or the anxiety you might feel at a tense moment. It takes a lot of time and investment for someone to be moved in those ways. Hell, we have a whole sector of our nervous system dedicated to making sure we don’t get upset enough to cry and calming us down if we’re anxious. Laughter, though, is ephemeral and immediate, and doesn’t hang around the pit of your stomach like a terribly sad story might. Usually you only cry at the climax of a story or a particularly moving bit of music or whatever, but you’re supposed to laugh again and again throughout the entirety of a comedic work if it’s any good. It becomes commonplace. 

Something that made you laugh can be cerebral and cultured, but it rarely sticks to your skull like a work that just makes you think. When you come out of a play or symphony or some other dumb shit, you and whoever you saw it with might discuss the themes or structure or pacing; when you see a particularly evocative painting or brilliantly directed movie, you’ll talk about the use of color and angles and movement. Talking it out and getting a different perspective helps you understand it more.

But with almost any type of comedy, you’re just going to quote the funniest lines at each other. We hardly ever spend any time contemplating the things that make us laugh (unless you’re trying to make a living off doing it) because we got the whole experience, didn’t we? That’s what it feels like a lot of the time, anyway: I saw it, I read it, I heard it, I laughed. It did it’s job, done. All that traditionally highbrow stuff is there to be talked about, but almost nobody does because comedy’s so immediate and transient; more like a pickpocket than Ocean’s 11/12/13. 

You can find about 5 years worth of podcast content where people discuss practicing comedy and complaining that it’s not treated the same as drama when Oscar nominations roll out, but hardly anyone addresses the “why,” and as far as I can tell, nobody at all has ever discussed the fundamental reasons that it might be nearly impossible to. And I’m not interested in answering why or if you should consider comedy “important” or “high brow,” I just know that I do. Hopefully this’ll help you think about humor differently. 

Cord Elves are an improperly-named tiny race of gnomes. They can move at the speed of light and their hands work twice as fast in a grave insult to Einstein. Cord Elves like to sneak into your home go to work tangling up all your cords. Examples of cords they may tangle are computer, audio/visual, console, belt, telephonic, bungee. It gives them immense joy whenever they hear you futzing around with knots and say something like, “Jesus Christ these chargers have just been sitting in a drawer for months, how did this happen?!” And do you know why? It’s because they’re grade-a pills.

Just seeing that picture gives me anxiety. I get to the point sometimes where I just want to throw everything into the trash and move to the mountains alone on some Walden shit. Except that I’d definitely die cause I’ve never gone a single day without at least two of the Big Three (plumbing, electricity, internal combustion).

Look. These things have to exist. If they don’t, that means it’s somehow my fault whenever my things get tangled up. Honestly, I’m just not at a place in my life right now where I can accept that responsibility. I feel like a monkey throwing a bone at some big black rock when I try to work out just what the fuck happened. How many times have you plugged a peripheral into your laptop and set it down only to come back seconds later to a 5 minute chore? Almost never, but if you exaggerate how much time things take then probably a lot. Maybe always.

I don’t want to hear some nerd say jargon-loaded science at me about tangled states and matrices and statistical modeling. Fuck science + math. Just work on getting photographic evidence of the goddamned things so it turns out I’m not crazy retroactively. Once we identify the enemy we can get to work putting a stop to their tyranny of annoyance. Perhaps it’s possible to train them to weave rope or barbed wire? If they’re cute we can even keep them as pets, I don’t know. I’m open to suggestion.

Like most made-up things from folklore, their strength is their undoing. These cord elves are fantastic at the tangling up of things (that’s a trainwreck of a phrase), so how can that be used against them? I’m actually really awful at puzzles and mysteries like this. If I were in Resident-Evil times without infinite continues I wouldn’t have made it out of that first room after Barry finds some blood. There’s only one thing I’ve worked out that is a foolproof defense against these pieces of shit, and it was by accident. If you played video games as a kid, then you probably have too.

That’s right: pre-determined, organizational tangling. These little motherfuckers think they’re such hot shit but they can only do, they can’t undo. You wrap your shit up good and neat and shit stays that way as long as you don’t jostle it around too much. Maybe you’ll find a mass ritual suicide in your basement of these gnome ass gnomes. God, I can only hope. They can probably tangle up a noose real good.

This dude that jerk offs in Philadelphia like to call R. Diddy (seriously) went and said some really dumb shit lately (see above). It’s an asinine comment from an otherwise decent sports journalist. I have a hard time telling if a comment was said because someone actually believes it or they just want to get more hits sometimes, so maybe Ray doesn’t really believe this stupid pablum, but I know a lot of people do so I’ll just treat it that way.

Here’s a note to every genius: the sample size on superbowl winning QBs is under 30 which makes any broad statement about what’s needed to win a superbowl meaningless. Tom Brady’s a great case. There’s a bulletproof argument to be made - both statistically and by the dumb-as-shit “eye test” - that the Tom Brady who won three superbowls is a different quarterback than the Tom Brady who’s lost two. He’s become much more efficient and accurate than he was in 2004 and hasn’t won a superbowl since developing those skills. Nobody in their right mind would say “a guy who develops much better passing statistics late into his career can’t win a superbowl,” but that’s exactly what’s happened. ERGOT, there’s as much quality evidence to back up that logically appalling argument as the one Ray made.

It gets worse when you consider that QBs you wouldn’t be embarrassed to compare to Mike Vick have only been in the league for what, 15 years? 15 chances for a “type” of quarterback that you probably racistly decided to lump together ain’t really much of shit when you consider Dan Marino had 17 gos. Jim Kelly had 10. Favre only won once, and he had even longer. 31+ starting quarterbacks don’t win a superbowl in any given year, and when Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson have it’s OD silly to try and gerrymander an argument that includes those guys but excludes Michael Vick.  

The most bullshit thing about this argument is that Vick has become much more of a “pocket passer” (code for “white quarterback”) than he ever was. He’s standing in the pocket longer, doesn’t always look to run as soon as he feels pressure, and is completing >5% more passes over the last two years than he ever has in his entire career. Just because he can also still run doesn’t mean jack dick. Show me what quarterback did better with an NFL-record five defensive collapses after leading in the fourth quarter. And if you want to blame their playoff loss to the Packers last year on him, then sorry but FUCK YOURSELF!!!!

The boring, unfunny, and obvious reality that doesn’t get any sports talk website hits or linkbacks in the blogosphere (thank heavens I don’t want any of that stuff!) is that football is a team sport, and winning a championship requires a lot more luck than we’d care to admit. The Crying Harbaughs are testament to that fact after the 2011 season. They probably should have been playing this Sunday, but a couple fluke plays/non-challenges meant we got to see dopeyface beat the pants off of Tom “Only Puts It In 10s” Brady again, which sucked. Save us, Cam Newton.

And another thing:

Eli Manning isn’t “elite” just because he had one very good aberration of a season that included no less than three (3) losses you can blame solely on him. He had a very good year and won the superbowl, but that would mean Victor Cruz is elite, too. If you want to rewrite the definition of “elite” to include Eli “fuck this dude” Manning’s statistical blip this year, you’re also going to have to include Matthew Stafford, Tony Romo, Philip Rivers, and probably Matt Schaub who all had/have had comparable and better seasons.

But when you umbrella “elite” out to cover a full 25% of potential starting quarterbacks, it renders the term meaningless to anyone other than New York newspaper headline writers. That’s why we don’t consider Big Rapey Ben elite even though he’s got the same number of rings and better career stats than Eli. Even if you think Eli’s year wasn’t an accident, he still needs to keep it up for a bit to be considered elite, otherwise Matt Stafford is already inarguably better and hence “elite.” Kurt Warner has my back on this (google it).

Let’s reserve that term for the two or three guys who are obviously better than everyone else and have maintained a high level of play for years: Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees. No sane person in the world (which automatically excludes Giants fans) would argue that any of the QBs I mentioned in the previous paragraph is better than any of those three, which is the best way to judge if someone is “elite” or not.

There’s a lot of misinformation floating around about what is Irish and what’s the best of that subset of things. St. Patrick, for instance, wasn’t Irish. He didn’t even like Ireland. He preferred Wales, if you can believe it. So he didn’t make this list, although some of his exploits did. I’ve done the research and have compiled a top five about Ireland to help you decide whether or not you like Ireland or maybe want to visit there. If you do, tweet the Irish Tourism Board (make sure it’s the verified account) and tell them I got you to go so they hook me up with some of this stuff. For free.

5) Four-Leafed Clovers. Clovers aren’t unique to Ireland, but four-leafed clovers used to be, until those damned English bastards stole them and used the powers contained therein to conquer the world. They are the luckiest of charms. This is the only kind of clover you’ll ever see in Ireland. St. Patrick had to have a 3-leafed variety imported because how are you going to explain the Trinity to a bunch of savages otherwise? When he tried to cultivate his own to avoid prohibitively high VAT rates, they withered and turned to dust. So moved was he by this display of the Irish clover’s power that he penned the traditional Catholic hymn, “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leafed Clover.”

4) Jigs. Truly the happiest of dances, suitable for any occasion. Originally created as a defensive mechanism due to snakes being everywhere all the goddamned time, it was the people’s primary form of locomotion. Babies were taught to jig before they could walk for safety reasons, leading to the popular Irish phrase “You’ve got to jig before you can jaunt.” Eventually St. Patrick cast the dust-eating belly-crawlers off the island until December 21st, 2012 (unrelated) and the jig was re-purposed as a sort of dance of gratitude and remembrance. Next time you find yourself doing a jig, imagine how much happier it would make you to be stomping on snakes all the while. 

3) Alcoholic beverages produced from malted barley. You’ve got beer and scotch; what more could anyone ask for? They’ve got a drink that will suffice to get you tight on any occasion. Beer at the pub with your mates or after a long day’s work in the potato fields, scotch when you’re required to not burp at social functions but hiccuping is still ok. Sorted. Much hay has been made of the Irishman’s penchant for drink, but why don’t you shut the fuck up about it son or I’ll show you a haymaker. 

2) The word “verdant.” Ireland is well-known as a country with rolling green hills, dense green forests and shrubbery, green eyes, and green beer. But things were not always thus. Originally things could be many different colors in Ireland, but the prehistoric indigenous Irish longed for more excuses to describe things as verdant. These mysterious people began a long campaign of painting and dying, animal husbandry, orchard management, and eugenics that continues greening up the people, places, and things of Ireland to this day. They even put the color green in their flag! A traditional Irish greeting is “verdant enough for ya?”

(I know what you’re thinking, and they do love green that much, it’s just that Irish snakes were all orange or purple.)

1) Potatoes. These things are so beloved around the world that some cultures probably worship them as gods. The Irish have claimed since antiquity that the seeds for the original potato crop were harvested from the first fruit of Yggdrasil the world-tree. That’s just a dumb myth since potatoes aren’t a fruit though (obviously). Actually, according to a wild-eyed man on the History Channel who has never been described as “kempt,” potatoes were entrusted to humanity by aliens who had transcended time, space, and most amazingly the desire for french fries. They are as incomprehensible to us as we are to the bumble bee. 

Ireland is a rich island with a fascinating history and complex culture. Some may quibble with the order, but I believe that taken as a whole my list is unimpeachable and very informative about the little realm’s Gaelic inhabitants. I hope that now you have a good idea of what it means to be Irish and understand why they’re so worked up about indistinguishable denominations of Christianity.