The other night I came home and made myself what I like to call my Montague and Capulet dinner (two sandwiches, both alike in dignity...), plopped down in front of the TV and turned on Food Network. Sadly, Guy Fieri was on, so of course I changed the channel because I hate projectile vomiting before I eat (after? it's anybody's game), but before I did (change the channel, not projectile-vomit) I caught the end of a commercial in which a very skinny woman recounts to her friends the menu of her previous evening's dinner, which included something that apparently contained large masses of melted cheese; the friends stare at her in stunned doubt and disbelief until she reveals, "It was Lean Cuisine," at which they make faces of comprehension. Me too; ahhhh, it wasn't masses of melted cheese, it was masses of melted "cheese." I get it.

            (By that time I was eating Capulet, prosciutto on peasant French with melted asiago, and Montague, mortadella on challah with piquillo peppers and melted raclette. I do not tell you this to gloat--well, not primarily--but to be able to say: that, Lean Cuisine, is some melted-ass cheese, and please permit me to add, bee-yotch.)

            The noble quotation mark has in the last several decades come in for something of a beating. Avant-garde writers stopped using it, which, thanks so fucking much, avant-garde writers, because now I can't fucking tell when someone's talking or you're just spewing shit--actually, it's probably both most of the time. (And no, the little dash before the quote is not a substitute--just use quotation marks, asshole. I'll still think you're way avant-garde, even when I can tell it's one of the characters talking.) Businesses started using it to indicate emphasis, or, at times, just for the fucking hell of it. "Fresh" peaches for sale? So...they're not really fresh? You're being sarcastic about the produce?

            Because besides their quotidian duty of demarking things people say, quotation marks have the ironic pleasure of indicating that we don't really mean what's inside them.  There are all kinds of things that cry out for ironic quotation marks, as a crime victim cries out for justice, as thirsty guy in the desert cries out for getting the fuck out of the desert, as a Joss Whedon show cries out for ratings. (Fuck you, Fox, again, some more, for cancelling Dollhouse. I look forward to you all getting Ebola of the nuts.) (Even the women.) (No, I don't know how that would work. Do I have to think of everything?) There is, just for example and off the top of my head, television "news." Political "integrity." "Sale" at Whole Foods.

            (Please do not assume from this that you are free to make that air-quote gesture in my presence, or even in my sight. I carry a machete for just such occasions.) (Which makes it difficult to get through security at the airport, but it's totally worth it.) (And explains why so many of my friends and acquaintances are nicknamed Lefty.)

Don't even get me started on "cream," the bleach-like shit that its manufacturers call "creamer." No, sir. If you cream, you are a creamer. If you hold cream, you are a creamer. That shit is Soylent "cream;" it's made from people. (I've seen the plant.) Cream once lived inside a cow; I thus reiterate: that shit is "cream." I love cream in my coffee, and I love coffee, but I will give up both before I desecrate coffee with "cream."

(Just kidding, coffee and cream. I would never give you up. I love you, baby.)

            Or take stand-up "comedy," for another example. (Yeah, Dane Cook, talking to you, pal.) Because what makes for comedy, as opposed to "comedy," is that comedy is funny. Watching Dane Cook--which I avoid, not just like but actually even more assiduously than the Plague--is like hanging out with your unfunny friend who doesn't know he's not funny, and who keeps making jokes, in that way that indicates you're supposed to laugh now! And you do, because it would be rude not to, but you feel a little...used. I just hunted up two of Cook's YouTube videos so that I could verify my small previous experience with him, so there's ten minutes of my life that I'll never get back, donated in service to you, my loyal readers. (All twelve of you.) (I am nothing if not customer-service-oriented.) Watching Dane Cook is utterly unlike watching Carlin or Izzard or Hicks. The gestures are the same, but with Cook, no comedy actually issues from him. It's comedius interruptus. Set-up, set-up, shouted set-up! Laugh now, my bitches!  Um, okay, obligation laugh, heh heh, wow, Dane, you're a fucking "comedy" genius, dude. (Nice name-check of Google there, too, so I know you wrote--well, "wrote"--that joke sometime in the last 12 years.) Dane Cook: king of the lack of punchline. I mean, that shit might be so out there that I just don't fucking get it, whoosh! right over my head, but in truth I'm pretty sure I know comedy and that, my friends, is "comedy." And you, Mr. Cook, are one “funny” guy.

            Ironically, one of the things that often needs to be surrounded with ironic quotation marks is the word "irony." The quintessential offender here is of course…oh, quiet down, I know you know this; everyone knows this…you in the front, sit the fuck DOWN!-- Alanis Morissette. Now, I love Alanis Morissette for all kinds of things--her hilariously emo parody of "My Humps," her role on Weeds, the sheer raw anger of her music--but, dayum, did she ever screw the pooch on that one: a whole song called "Isn't It Ironic?" in which not a single situation actually is ironic. (It has been pointed out that that, all by itself, is ironic, on which I must, loudly and vehemently, call bullshit, at least on the suggestion that that irony was intended.) Now, I get that irony is a hard concept, and that much of the time it's like pornography: you just know it when you see it. Unlike porn, though, which is pretty unmistakable (erect penis inserted in vagina/mouth/rectum? check, you got you some porn there), much of the time when you think you see irony, you don't; you are seeing "irony." To take some of Alanis's examples: afraid-to-fly guy takes a flight that crashes? Bad luck. Rain on your wedding day? Also bad luck and lack of planning: have your damn wedding indoors, like, you know, most of them, not to mention watch a fucking weather report, why don't you, bride-tard? Ninety-eight-year-old dies after winning the lottery? Biology. I mean, the fucker's 98, you know? A strong wind could have taken him out. Whooosh: bye-bye, geezer.

            What Alanis was trying to get at in that song was situational irony, a reverse that snaps you back. Most people get verbal irony (sarcasm) and dramatic irony (you know something the characters don't) pretty well; it's the situational type that escapes them. It's not just that something happens that's unexpected; there has to be some measure of appropriateness, poetic justice, in the reversal. A cop on the take is not ironic; a cop on the take who goes straight then gets fired because of a trumped-up accusation of corruption is. Ronald Reagan taking a bullet is not ironic; his taking a bullet that bounced off his bulletproof car is. The next time you find yourself saying something like, "Well, ironically, I came late and it was already over..." ask yourself: is this indeed irony? Really? Or is it just rain on your wedding day, i.e., "irony?"

            (I'm quite upset, by the way, that the Food Network passed on my reality-show concept, Ironic Chef. Two chefs meet on the field of sarcasm, and only one will emerge victorious.) (Of course, that one won't give a fuck.) (Nor will the other one.)

            So, look, join me, won't you? I'm starting the Quotation-Mark Liberation Army. We will take back our language by force. Whether it's Wite-Outing the quotes on a sign for "'Fresh' Strawberries" at gunpoint or adding quotation marks to posters for Dane Cook's "comedy" tour with our MAC-10-mounted Sharpies, abusers of the once-proud quotation mark will feel our wrath. We will not rest until in every city and hamlet across the English-speaking world, the quotation mark again rests secure in its irony and, um, er...quotiness. I will be getting on that immediately. Or as soon as I finish eating Capulet. Mmmmmmelted asiagommmmm.

            Actually, you know, I could be a while. You guys start without me; I'll catch up.

Well, you know, "catch up."