"You sound rather frustrated/cynical. Actually, I find both Canadians and yanks, at least the many I've met, to be unfailingly nice people and never boring. Now the joke thing, that's different..."

"Not at all. To me, they have precise meanings."

There you are. Two out of the last three of my posts in this thread, from a man who "rarely uses commas at all". Anything else you want to tell us that we can all utterly rely on to be truthful and accurate?