I read recently that the self-styled militia Proud Bois, who espouse an extreme form of individual liberty, requires a non-negotiable commitment to “fit in or fuck off” in order to join its “organization.” The Proud Bois apparently doesn’t require any corresponding commitment to irony. Also, a group calling itself Moms For Liberty has created a list of some 41 books to be banned. Nowhere does the group suggest 41 books to replace the ones they want to ban, nor whether they’ve ever read 41 books themselves. That’s how I like my irony served up, mister.

   It was on the back nine of one of my last golf outings that a soon to be former golf buddy said to me, “You know, Reid, you’re odd.” Now this former friend (he’d devolved into a Trumpanzee shortly thereafter and therefore became dead to me ) he was neither being sardonic nor ironic. (An engineer by education, he saw the world in 90 degree angles that don’t, incidentally, exist in the real world.) I rather embraced his label for me. The remark seemed to fit my own self-image. You see, I love irony. Personally speaking, it explains a lot.

   For instance, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. On the other hand, I’m aware that my “oddity” means most of the ideas that I might write about would be rejected by the vast majority of anyone reading them. So I (for the most part anyway) keep them to myself. The fact that I don’t have a vast majority of readers to begin with only underscores the irony of my writing life.

   As I’ve written before, while I enjoy traveling, I don’t care to visit anywhere in particular. It’s all and only about the going. As soon as I arrive somewhere, I’m already thinking about where to go next.

   As I’ve written before, while I enjoy traveling, I don’t care to visit anywhere in particular. It’s all and only about the going. As soon as I arrive somewhere, I’m already thinking about where to go next. And I loathe sightseeing and museums. (When I went to the Prado in Madrid, it was to see three paintings: Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son and Picasso’s Guernica. I was in and out in 20 minutes. (It’s Bosch’s depiction of Hell and Picasso’s depiction of a genocidal attack by Franco’s fascists that command my interest. The Goya simply amuses me,  thinking it would make a great wall hanging in either a child’s nursery or day care center. That’s not ironic, just sick. But I like sick and that’s ironic.)

   I’ll close these rambling thoughts by noting that of all the things on which Fran Lebowitz and I agree, we are completely sympatico on the one thing I was sure no one else, including Fran, would agree with me: that Lincoln was our worst president (Yes, even worse than Orange Julius) for keeping the Union together, instead of allowing the Confederacy to secede and become the autocratic banana republic it’s always aspired to become. The rest of us would thus be free to pursue the “more perfect union” that would truly make us great – finally and at long last, rather than “again.”

   How do you like that for irony?