“An old man turned ninety-eight

He won the lottery and died the next day

It’s a black fly in your Chardonnay

It’s a death row pardon two minutes too late

And isn’t it Ironic, don’t you think?

It’s like rain on your wedding day

It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid

It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take

Who would’ve thought

It figures”

            I am rarely surprised by just how ironic life is. No matter the sense of assurance I achieve, I feel constantly mocked by the very thing that is supposed to bring me comfort. It almost always seems to work out this way. It all just comes around again. Ironically, life is ironic. It is a not so subtle voice, usually pointing out our stupidity. Irony is often demonstrative. It puts out the lesson without all of the work. It uses the opposite to point to the original. Irony is meant, primarily, “for humorous or empathetic effect.” Irony, generally speaking, “is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what appears, on the surface, to be the case, differs radically from what is actually the case.” Such words convey “a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning.” We dwell in deep satire. Living is the ultimate irony. The truth is we aren’t living, we are dying. We have been since the day we were born. It takes pain to know pleasure and hate to know love. You have to experience sadness in order to know what happiness is. You cannot appreciate silence unless there is noise. You don’t even miss something until it’s gone. It all seems to be some subtle expression of sarcasm, buried in caustic remarks. It can get in your face sometimes, a constant reminder of just how complicated this life can be. Yes, life is ironic but most of us are not in on the joke.

“Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly

He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye

He waited his whole damn life to take that flight

And as the plane crashed down he thought

‘Well isn’t this nice?’

And isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?

It’s like rain on your wedding day

It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid

It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take

Who would’ve thought

It figures”

            It has been well over a year since the death of my last rat. After almost 20 years of rodent haven, I closed the sanctuary, at least for anything smaller than a squirrel. The last rat did not leave on a merciful note. She withered and faded but over weeks, not merely days. It was a horrible and lingering death, by any account. I just stood there waiting for her to die. I just could not put down another one. She lasted and lasted. The night before her death, I decided that if she had not passed by the morning, I would have to do the job myself. It was ironic finding her hard and cold, it only cemented my disdain towards owning another one. There was no way, rat after rat, year after year, I could keep facing such little deaths. I may be hypersensitive to such things but each affected me deeply. It’s not that I had some epiphany or enlightened moment, it was a physical pain, an emptiness that I felt over and over. It hurt. I suppose my loyalty only runs so deep.  I never would have imagined coming face to face with another rat, be it wild or not. Every morning, it stuck its head out from behind the fence and stole away seeds, and peanuts and pieces of bread. The damn thing looked exactly like Savannah, a rat I had several years before. I was not impressed. It mattered little to me if the creature was simply feeding like the rest of the critters. Instantly, I got a hard on for killing it. With the neighbourhood dogs and children, all l needed was a rabid rodent running around free and clear. I knew right away it had to die. The idea managed to have almost no effect on me. I didn’t care if it represented all those other rats. I didn’t care if it was cute and fuzzy and doing no harm.  . It is strange to hunt something that previously you might well have tried to help live. The first thing I did was purchase a rat trap. It looked like a mousetrap but on steroids. The giant thing was laden with cheese and peanut butter to lure the beast in. 14 times I loaded that sucker and 14 times the rat, or whatever, managed to take the goodies without consequence. Every time, I got more and more annoyed. Every time, I reset it thinking this will be the one. Try, try again, I suppose. In a last ditch attempt to rid my yard of this vermin, I bought rat baits and planted a few discretely among the feeding area. I have never seen the rat since then. It was an odd experience to kill something I may well have loved, under different circumstances. It was like life was mocking me, laughing at me in a sarcastic and wry manner. It took me awhile to get in on the joke.

“Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you

When you think everything’s okay

Everything’s going right

Life has a funny way of helping you out when

You think everything’s gone wrong

And everything blows up in your face”

It is a little surreal, the idea that I had to die to find life again. I’m not sure many people would comprehend what I mean without an explanation. When my first partner committed suicide in 1995, I tossed myself on his grave exactly one week later. I took 100 x 10mg Valium, stripped of my winter wear and headed out into the February cold. It was a very stark and wintery evening when I arrived at the cemetery. I entered around 9 o’clock and was found the next day around noon. I should have frozen to death, the temperature that night was subzero. I should have at least had frost burn or frostbite, but I got nothing. I woke up mad as hell. I couldn’t believe that my plan had failed, that I couldn’t even get killing myself right. I was so sure it would work. Everybody told me that it was just not my time. God, apparently, didn’t want me yet. Eventually, winter turned to spring which moved into summer and drifted into the fall. As time moved, so did the part of me meant to survive. At first, it was all I could do not to think about getting the fuck off this planet. I planned several attempts but failed to go through with them. It wasn’t that I was a gutless turd, rather I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. What happened that night in the cemetery changed me forever. With enough time and space, the act of almost dying saved me. I am not sure I would have been able to go on without some sense that I was supposed to be here. The mere idea that somehow God saved me, gave me purpose and set me on the course I have followed. I was supposed to be here. I felt a purpose. It only took dying for me to come to life. I just wish, before I tried, that someone had let me in on the joke.

“A traffic jam when you’re already late

A no smoking sign on your cigarette break

It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife

It’s meeting the man of my dreams

And then meeting his beautiful wife

And isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?

A little too ironic and, yeah, I really do think

It’s like rain on your wedding day

It’s a free ride when you've already paid

It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take

Who would’ve thought

It figures”

You have to sin to be saved. There would be no need for salvation if there wasn’t something to rescue us from. It’s ironic, without wickedness we would have no need of righteousness. They claim God created the very reality we exist within but we are to shun it and cast the ways of the world aside. We are to be in this world, not of it. God created all this and it was good, until the sinners arrived. God set out for blood. In the days of the Old Testament, the streets of Jerusalem ran red with the blood of sacrifices. The same holds true for the last 2000 years of Christianity. His blood is everywhere and it has been for centuries. The very sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross would have been unnecessary if mankind had no idea what sin was. Adam and Eve took from the tree and spoiled it for the rest of us. You have to consider why God made that tree in the first place. An omniscient being would have known the pair would consume the apple but then again, you don’t need cosmic awareness in order to have seen that one coming. I have to wonder if perhaps Original Sin was nothing but some great big joke. Dangling that fruit in front of their faces may have been unfair enough. Temptation aside, it seems strange to me that God even cares about what we do in the mortal coil. When we sin against Him, what is it exactly that we are doing to cause a separation, a schism in need of repair? I’m not claiming that there is no validity in the moral compass created by men claiming God. I am convinced that religion itself is more a control mechanism than anything else. I can find much to appreciate in scripture. Some of it really hits home. I do not understand the inconsistency within such scriptures. We are instructed not to kill but its okay for God or His agent to. We are told this world is for us to live in and exploit but doing what scripture suggests means the destruction of this planet. We are told God loves us as He punishes us forever. I often wonder if even God is playing some prank.

“Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you

Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out

Helping you out”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jne9t8sHpUc

Sometimes we come across things we thought we would never have to face again. It’s funny how life works that way. Sometimes living can be complicated and oblique but underneath it all there is this humorous mocking. Life laughs at us. Experience can be a sarcastic bitch. One can’t even die in a cemetery without some fucking sense of irony. It’s funny how life works that way. Even God Himself tends to be fuel for the fire. A fire, I have been told, that awaits me after a lifetime of being a bad boy. God’s love is overflowing, now that’s funny. It is good to express humour, to see life with laughter rather than disdain. Perhaps, God is laughing even more. Just the act of daily living can be dry and somewhat witty. You have to learn to joke with yourself. It’s okay to giggle at everyone else. Even God is a hoot. It’s funny how life works that way.

http://www.texasgopvote.com/family/irony-it-all-009442

https://www.google.ca/search?q=irony&rlz=1C1CHBD_enCA731CA731&oq=irony&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.1079j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8