A couple months ago, U2 gave a concert in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years earlier. A wall was set up to keep people without tickets from watching.
Jermaine Stewart, whose big hit was “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off,” died of AIDS-related cancer in 1997.
Wow. It’s like when it rained on my wedding day.
“That’s not ironic! That’s just mean!”
It’s like Bronzy, but with Iron.
I was going to say: It’s like this one time when I needed a knife and all I had were like 10,000 spoons!
Please explain the irony in the second example, I’m not getting it.
Stewart’s song went “we don’t have to take our clothes off to have a good time, oh no.” He obviously failed to listen to his own advice.
You can have sex without taking your clothes off. Shocking, I know.
Well, he could have contracted HIV from intravenous drug use. Maybe that’s what he was talking about in the song.
But is that really irony or is it hypocrisy (or something else)? The same as erecting a wall to keep people from viewing the concert celebrating the demolition of a wall…I am not sure that is ironic.
I may be misunderstanding the definition of irony somewhat, and I know that there is more than one form but a better example of irony IMHO is given at Literary Terms F - R
Now if Stewart really had taken his own advice and didn’t “take his clothes off” but still died of AIDS-related causes…that would be irony. Or if U2’s concert was so despised by the East German government that they re-built the wall…that would be ironic.
Phew, glad to know it wasn’t just I who was confused.
I am unfamiliar with the song, so there’s that, too.
The only ironic thing in Alanis Morrisette’s song is that there is no irony in it whatsoever. At least, I like to think that it was her intention to write a song about irony without any irony in it; I’d rather not think that she’s a complete moron who has no idea what irony means.
The man who was afraid of flight might qualify, but yes.
Apparently, that was her point, yes.
I don’t think she’s ever gone and spelled it out, but according to my friends Buzz and Rumor, the line “it’s like meeting the man of your dreams, then meeting his beautiful wife” bit refers to her stumbling into the ex- she still held a torch for (you know, the one whoO, whoO, whoO Oughta Know ?) and his new wife. The wife commented on the awkwardness of the situation, and Alanis’ hurt feelings, by saying : “well, isn’t this ironic ?”.
Of course, it really wasn’t, and it was a douchey thing to say to boot. Thus, a song was inspired.
Is there a term for when you need a knife and only have 10,000 spoons, or you’re afraid to fly but finally work up the courage and the first time you get on a plane, it crashes?
There’s plenty of terms: misfortune, mishap, bad luck… Or am I being whooshed?
Again, the song.
It’s more of a phrase, but I’d go with “exceptionally inept waiter”
Would it be ironic for a man who has just made a vow of celibacy, to get an offer of free sex from Alanis Morrisette, the very next day?
Um, no. If you need a knife and don’t have any cutlery, it’s misfortune, mishap, bad luck. But if you have 10,000 spoons, it’s sort of a cruel joke; all you need is for one of them to be a knife. That’s a different situation than misfortune.
If you fly all the time and one of those times your plane crashes, that’s misfortune. But if you’ve never flown because you’re afraid of crashing, despite all of the data about how flying is statistically the safest way to travel, and then you finally decide to do it and that one time your plane crashes, it’s something more than just misfortune.
