prefaced with "no offense,

Whenever someone says that to me, I just say, very pointedly "we'll see".

And this one jackhole once said, when he was done with his offensiveness, said "were you offended" and I replied "I don't know why you're pretending that you care; if you did, you wouldn't have said it in the first place."

Yeah, it's not uncommon to get ringworm from an animal.

Yeah, I was meaning to riff on their single-ness.

D'oh. That flew totally over my head. (Obviously.)

But you are so agile!

I couldn't resist.

I am now imagining all the bitches (so to speak) in Steph's neighbourhood singing to their furry beaus "If you like it then you should have put a ring on it".

For the first time in a long time, Utah is getting national-level campaign ads. It's weird, like being on vacation and listening to other people's radio ads. Cruz is disturbing and slimy, Bernie doesn't have a prayer. Bernie's ad talks about breaking up the banks, which will make the typical Utah voter clutch their pearls in Red Scare horror. Cruz has a lot of solemn stuff about 2nd Amendment rights and patriotism that makes me turn down the radio.

Cruz might want to consider that those Second Amendment rights also apply to the gays and godless heathens that he has earmarked for second-class citizenship. Under the kind of regime he'd usher in, I'd be stocking up.

My in-laws, and to some degree my sister-in-law, come over all Texas when drunk or tired.

Paul was three when they moved away, so he just has a handful of words that he pronounces in a suspiciously Port Arthur fashion.

Pretty sure no Irish here, but, well, I think my paternal grandfather's parents were the only set of that generation who were actually born in Canada (their parents, though, were born in Scotland). Everyone else was either born in England or Scotland.

Suspect I am more likely to have trace Luso-Indian in the 200 years pre-me than Irish.

(I have reason to suspect that, though. I'm not just pulling a semi-obscure ethnic group out of my pasty white ass.)

My family are pretty solidly Irish in descent, but we're a long time from the homeland, so not full of the Irish culture. Or it's been fully incorporated into Newfoundland culture. But, St. Patrick's Day is just a ridiculous drinking fest here and to be avoided at all costs. When I was little my mom used to try to get us to go to mass, but we were having none of that.

I basically identify as Irish-Australian. There's a bunch of other stuff in there too, but Irish heritage predominates. When I was growing up, my dad used to play Irish revolutionary songs in the car. (Prior to about the 1970s, the primary faultline in white Australian society was between descendants of the English and descendants of the Irish, which split on religion, social class and political allegiance.)