A regular commenter on Colin McEnroe's blog emailed me this morning and wanted to know if I was serious about a comment I had made there. I'd said that I ran a place called The Pharm Shop in Waterbury, Connecticut. It was a joke, based on the fact that a restaurant chain, The Farm Shops, had their corporate offices in Waterbury. It had come up in another comment that some regular commenters have psych and Waterbury connections. I put 2 and 2 together and came up with the joke...

Which was taken seriously.

That happened the other day with Mike Daisey, too. I said something to him in an email and he got back to me with a response that made it clear that he thought I'd been serious. I'd been joking.

My question is this: Is this an Irish thing? I've mentioned this before: My father used to say things then see the looks on peoples' faces and say, " I was only kidding! "

I'm not so sure he was.

I was in the advertiing business, which I keep bringing up like Willie Sutton probably used to brag about robbing banks. I was paid well to lie about products and services I would never, ever use myself. 99 percent of the stuff I've had published is non-fiction. Mostly essays and op-ed pieces. I've written a few short stories. Fiction. Maybe I should do more of that and less of the ironic stuff that fools people into thinking I'm being serious when I'm not.

I'm just thinking out loud here. For what it's worth, which is undoubtedly little or nothing.