Oh, for fuck’s sake!

Does no-one understand irony any more? I love many of you dearly, but I am slightly boggled at the response to what I posted the other day. I mean, OK, several of you only know me through this, but there are a few of you I thought had a better handle on my character than this. Still, I have to do something like this every six months or so, so I suppose I’m about due for a new dose…

For the hard of thinking: I am a hopelessly soppy old romantic. I have no desire to be anything but. I see couples kissing in the street, and I think “Awww!” Most of my favourite songs are about Love. (Not Lovesongs. I’ll get to them another time.) The memories I hide inside when I’m feeling down are almost all romantic moments, because they cheer me up. I don’t share them with other people, generally, because, well, they’re memories that belong to me and my ex and no-one else.

Yeah, I am a cynic. What I’m not is bitter. Yeah, I think this is an imperfect universe. It’s also a beautiful and marvellous place, filled with enough strangeness and wonder to last me ten lifetimes. Yeah, I think that the human race is stupid and weak and small. But I also think that my friends are some of the most marvellous people on the planet, and y’know, they’re human.

How the fuck can I be bitter when I have a life like the one I do?

For the record, then: if I make a joke out of something nice, if I suggest that something is good and pure, and badly needs to be dragged through the mud, this is IRONY. It means that my actual reaction is “Gosh, I wish there were more things like that.” The more ludicrously over the top and nasty I’m being, the more likely this is to be true.

This isn’t always the case. Sometimes I’m feeling small and mean-spirited. But especially when it’s just a throwaway line like that, you’ll read me wrong less often if you assume it’s a joke.