Top of the fucking morning to you too, dickhead

There are some phrases or sentences that you just know are a precursor to something horrible. For example, no male over the age of twenty can hear those four magic words, We Need To Talk, without convulsing with fear and a sudden need to get rat-arsed. For me, the first Guinness adverts around the beginning of March have a similar effect - it's that time of year again.

Bearing in mind that I live in a country called America, with a population of around 600 million, you'd be surprised how few Americans there are about the place. Everyone I meet is Irish, or Irish American, or Half Irish Asian with just a hint of Native American. On 17th March this tendency to harken back to a misplaced pride in the 'Olde Countrie' (or rather, their Great Great Grandfather's nation of origin) is given full rein. Rivers, and even beer, are dyed green (I wonder how a Dublin bar-fly would react to being served a green pint of Guinness). It's considered acceptable to be seen in public sober wearing the latest comical foam leprechaun hat. Every drunk emigre with a penny whistle is touring the bars an getting bought more drinks than Paris Hilton in a rufi-users convention. Ask these people where (or even what) Lansdowne Road is and they're stumped. My own criteria for assessing 'Oirishness' is a bit more rigorous than just wearing a horrible green t-shirt. Unless you've carry an Irish passport and have either been fiddled by a Catholic priest or thrown a petrol bomb down the bogside, you fail.

I am not unprepared though. Last year, I was so stunned when some Californian frat boy who's sole experience of International Affairs is probably a Spring-Break Gang-Bang in Tijauna shouted 'Up the IRA' that I was paralysed into inaction. This year I'm keeping a sawn-off shotgun handy. If these people are that in need of celebrating their faux-Irish heritage, then I'm more than happy to offer a genuine West-Belfast kneecapping experience.