Palm trees, and the other icons of tropical life, all tiki-ness, are incredibly cliched. Not only has the novelty worn off and they became a cliche, but their use as ironically cliched has be come cliched, and even the post-ironic, return to innocently un-cliched-ness has become cliched. They are the post-modern Ur-cliche from which all banality springs. Every time I see a palm tree, I am physically, forcefully repulsed by the degree of banality.

[I call them Banali-trees.]

Which is a problematic irony now that I see them everywhere, every day, because I am in their original habitat.

Curse you, Irony God!