Welcome to The Ironist
ISSN 2817-7363
The Ironist is dedicated to exploring irony wherever it occurs. We have a range of essays and stories which cover historical, artistic, and contemporary life and events. We welcome your comments, support and submissions.
Utopian Delusions
Peter Scotchmer writes about the enduring lure of utopia and why humanity’s attempts to build perfect societies so often end in dystopia. I will not walk with your progressive apes, Erect and sapient. Before them gapes The dark abyss to which their progress...
Forgotten Heroes #8 – Pauolos Paella the Peacemaker
In this Forgotten Heroes story, Alfred Russel Wallace, flying whales called linanders, and a peace-making dish collide in an improbable history of the world’s most famous rice pan. Recently discovered petroglyph of a linander assisting ancient boy scouts...
Prose Open Mic II (presented by The Irony Club and Mayil Coffee | 25 March 5 pm)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer in possession of a finished piece must be in want of a community. How many of us have agonized over our drafts restlessly and endlessly, wondering who to read it to and what to do with it? We, at the Irony Club,...
Miscellaneous Ramblings #9 – Part 1, Recognizing Evil
“The line separating good and evil passes through every human heart.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago I was in Budapest when I heard about the mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. One of the worst things about this horror is how quickly it...
RETVRN to Casablanca
The inconvenient Liberalism of a "traditional" classic “I’ve often wondered why you don’t return to America.” When the French police chief says this to Rick, we learn he’s an exile. We never learn why, but we get hints of communist leanings. “You ran guns to Ethiopia....
The Reading Chair: Falling in Love with The Sirens of Titan
…and the Joke That Explains Everything “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” Famous words by Malachi Constant, the man who gets rich by chance and ends up in space by chance, feels extraordinarily deeply...
The Zambian Dream
Kachingo Sondo is a corresponding freelancer originally from a village outside of Garampande, near Livingstone, Zambia. Zambian village, by Tom Chiponge, Pixaby Call me Phiri. I drive a taxi in Lusaka. That is, when I have money, I rent a taxi to try and make more...
Air: The Fourth Elemental Ironist
The final one in the Ironist series - air - the silent carrier of truth, lies, and everything in between. Today, we conclude the Ironist series on the fourth element - air. Invisible, omnipresent, and so essential. Moving through us without fanfare. We inhale it,...
The Angel of the Archive: The Synod of the Left Shoe
Jonathan Bennet talks about surefooted stances in the world of shoes and the not-so-surefooted stances of those who argue about them. Among the lesser church councils of the thirteenth century—those trivial, haphazard regional gatherings of abbots and prelates...