unfortunate

Today's shard of memory is brought to you by Martin, who posted the liar's paradox ("A man says that he always lies. Is what he says true or false?"), which prompted the following comment from me, which I suspect was far too self-confessional, so I thought I would do the reasonable thing and convert it into a blog post because, really, isn't that where we oughta be getting all self-confessional anyway?

A long time ago I had dinner with my soon-to-be-ex- at a cheap sushi joint just as things were winding down between us -- we had filed the paperwork, all that remained was to appear before the judge.

He was making one last tearful appeal to me and I explained to him that I didn't believe him -- that he had lied for so long and so persistently and so well that he had lost all credibility.

It wasn't a bitter conversation. There wasn't a whole lot of rancor at the table. We had spent that long before. But a dull cloud of sadness hung over everything.

When it became clear that nothing more could be said he opened his fortune cookie and it read:

A liar is never believed, even when he is telling the truth.

It was one of the last laughs we shared together.

(Admittedly, it wasn't one of those belly laugh kind of laughs...)