I'm sorry, but two complete douchebags who clearly were not raised in either Ireland or Scotland arguing about those respective cultures (even jokingly) is irritating. Your claims that you are "Irish" or "Scottish", which are probably based on some anecdotal and inaccurate mumblings of older relatives such as "Your great grandfather was from Ireland, I think", are meaningless (even if you've done some genealogy work and the aforementioned mumbling is true).

If you were born and raised in this country, and spent the majority of your life here, you're American. You can certainly mention that you have Irish or Scottish ancestors (if indeed, you actually do), but to insist, however, that you're somehow "part-Irish" or "part-anything" without having been socialized in those cultures (which means living within the borders of those countries and actively participating in their cultural norms) is so utterly meaningless as to be a total non-sequitur.

Oh, and liking a few "things" that are Irish or Scottish (or what you might mistakenly believe to be so) such as their liquor (which is easily the most obvious and stupid thing to insist on liking from ANY culture - any idiot can say "I drink Jameson whiskey and like it, therefore I like Irish things") is also wholly inadequate in establishing anything that even remotely resembles a credible link between you and that culture.

So, shut up already. Both of you.

No, all 3 of your comments are wrong. Someone was bored while drinking coffee and perusing blogs, and decided to waste a couple of minutes laying into total strangers on the internet in the hope that they'd provide at least a little amusement with their replies.

Looks like I was wrong... on that count, at least.

Graham - I was talking about ME drinking coffee, perusing blogs, and deciding to lay into total strangers (You + Kiala) out of boredom. Is that not clear enough from the post? You didn't notice that you referred to me as "someone" twice in your post, which I then used to identify myself? That wasn't obvious enough? I think maybe you should re-read the whole thread.

"Looks like I was wrong... on that count, at least." - Refers to my hoping that you'd at least provide me with some amusement with your replies. Also pretty obvious.

Up until your previous post, which shows a distinct lack of understanding of context, subject/object distinction, and grammar, nothing any of you said was even remotely funny to me. Your last post, however, was pretty funny, since you seem to be pretty confused.

Anyhow, if some douchebag with ironic facial hair and cheesy-looking glasses that gets confused by someone with good grammar is the best that the Mercury blog has to offer in the way of argumentation and/or amusement, I'll take my business elsewhere.