kids from ireland. the red headed step child of europe.
( no offense to red heads.. im nordic, since the 9th century our love of red headed irish pussy has been well documented )
but seriously.. the "luck of the irish" has a crueler phrase has ever been coined?
the top 3 reasons the irish arent so lucky
#1 the fucking vikings...
The Vikings' modus operandi was to attack exclusively from the sea, pillage, rape and burn then sail off while trading hearty high fives and congratulatory butt slaps. In other words Ireland being an island nation, something traditionally of a great defensive advantage, ended up being a first-night-sober-after-an-alcoholic-binge sized nightmare.
Vikings were grade-A dicks. They were basically the bullies of the middle ages, and like that poor red-headed kid that spent most of middle school stuffed in his locker, the Irish were the Vikings' favorite targets and spent over 200 years being metaphorically swirlied.
#2 gingervitis
Speaking of red hair ...
In the Middle Ages, red hair was thought to mean you were a witch, werewolf or a vampire, so apparently there was a time in history other than our own where the sight of David Caruso would have been considered the ultimate horror. For other stretches in history, red hair was believed to mean one was surely a whore or had a wicked awful temper (later research has shown only around 60% of redheads are angry whores).
And even if you didn't fall victim to the superstitious associations with the world's rarest hair color, you certainly wouldn't enjoy some of the crappier consequences of having low levels of dark pigmentation. Like burning to a blistered, bubbly crisp when spending 15 minutes in the sun. Or ending a day at the beach with ungodly spots all over your face and ears and back and shoulders.
And if Al Gore knows what he's talking about at all, most of the world's redheads should be constructing a vast underground bunker for themselves as we speak, if they know what's good for them.
Of course this would only sort of suck if these creatures, most vulnerable to the rays of our otherwise life-giving sun, weren't also the most sensitive to pain. Seriously. By the way, which country has the world's highest concentration of redheads? Oh right, Ireland. We suppose it has a better ring to it than "God hates Irish people" but as far as appropriate national slogans go, "The luck of the Irish" isn't far behind "The easy and high paying jobs of the Mexicans."
#3 the god damned potato famine
Even by their standards the Irish were going through a bit of a rough patch in the mid-1800s. The people were dirt poor and almost all Irish land was owned by Englishmen (most of whom would never even set foot on Ireland lest their boots be sullied by inferior non-English soil). The English made sure the best land was used to graze cattle for British consumption, and only the leftover scraps were left to grow food for the apparently somewhat unimportant purpose of actually feeding the Irish.
But wait, not all is lost! Enter the potato, that most manly of vegetables. It can be grown nearly anywhere in large quantities, is full of energy and nutrients and is pretty freakin' tasty baked with a nice cheese sauce, bacon bits and chives. So to sum up, through a unique and twisted set of circumstances the survival of the Irish people was entirely dependent on these edible roots. What could possibly go wrong? What, haven't you been paying attention so far? This is Ireland we're talking about here!!
Not only did the potato crop completely fail, but it failed for seven straight years, from 1845 to 1851. Before the famine Ireland had a population of around 8 million. After the famine it was less than 6 million (half of the 2 million died, the other half wisely got the hell out of Ireland). To this day Ireland's population has still not come close to regaining the number of people they had back in 1847.
Oh and if there are any Irish people reading this, in the interest of full disclosure we Americans should tell you that the potato blight that killed your crops was most likely sent over the Atlantic on American ships. Sorry. And when you immigrated to the United States in droves to avoid starvation caused by the blight we sent you, you were often discriminated against or beaten. so, sorry again.