Irony

Roxanne Kowalski: I was being ironic.
C.D. Bales: Oh, ho, ho, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a, a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was tired of being stared at.

Well, just fuck me running.

Saw something downtown today that inspired me.

Walked past it.

Thought about it.

Turned around, walked back and took a picture of it with my cell phone.

The images were that fucking epiphanic.

I got back to the office and started telling everyone about the "delicious irony" I discovered on my walk this afternoon.

I started composing this whole blog entry in my head about IRONY. I remembered that quote from "Roxanne" that I posted above and I thought "YEAH! I'll use that! I'll post a picture of Steve Martin with that phallic nose!"

Then I remembered "The Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce. I thought "That smart, sarcastic fuck probably has a very erudite and sardonic definition of irony. I'll google it when I get home and include that in my post to make me appear well-read and sophisticated, as a 'hip suburban white guy' should be."

[DISTRACTING SIDEBAR FOR FAITH (because I know she probably busted me on this right from the start): Since I quit smoking, I have tried to still push back from the desk, exit the cube farm, and go for at least a 10 minute walk once an hour if the "needs of the business" allow. This gives me the same break from The Monotony that smoking did while adding some minor health benefits. Sometimes I go for longer walks. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes. OK, I can't distract her any longer. Time to pay the piper.]

Well I got home. I googled "devil's dictionary irony" and got squat. Apparently Ambrose Bierce wasn't as fucking clever as I thought. I got your "erudite" right here, ya ancient fucktard.

So I went to freedictionary.com and looked up irony.

To paraphrase Inigo Montoya, "that word you use...I do not think it means what you think it means!"

I was using "irony". What I should have been using was "juxtaposition".

I'm a fucking idiot! Now the whole office knows I'm an idiot because I was misusing this word all day long! Thank God it's another 11 months till appraisal time.

But I digress.

Here is what started the entire incident.

I'm having my walkies and I notice there is this new business opening up on the NW corner of 12th and Grand. Big, bold graphics offering retail and residential space, lofts, the works. MOVE YOUR BUSINESS DOWNTOWN! COME LIVE DOWNTOWN!



But on the SW corner of 12th and Grand, where I'm standing as I'm taking the picture, is this:



I'm thinking, the first order of business for this new, hip, downtowncentric realty company is to get a tenant for the blighted property RIGHT ACROSS THE FUCKING STREET!

I'm surprised they could even get a business loan without that precondition!

Imagine this.

You are sitting with a presumably gay (not there's anything wrong with that) and stylish (I'm sorry, that was probably redundant) agent at a hip, new downtown office listening to a sales pitch telling you why you should move your business, your residence, your EVERYTHING to the newly remodeled and reIMAGINED and VIBRANT downtown Kansas City, MO!! Dim the lights and let the PowerPoint begin!

You glance over heshe's shoulder and on the other side of the street you see a big, empty, dusty building with huge signs proclaiming that a business catering to handling, duplicating, reproducing and printing business documents had decided that the very heart of downtown Kansas City, Missouri's Business District was not a profitable place to be and had pulled up stakes and fled to Lenexa, KS...essentially a suburb of Denver.

So it may have been juxtaposition instead of irony, but it was still a hell of a good chuckle in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday afternoon.

Now let's just hope my co-workers don't know the difference.

They are all young college grads. Some of them with Masters.

I find that reassuring!

If they can't discern Dubai from Detroit on an atlas, they'll probably think irony has something to do with Iran and will stop trying to figure it out because it makes their hair hurt.