Right now, as I look out the window to the parking lot, I see an auto glass repair van…
…with a large crack in the windshield.
I’m in IRC chat, and no one’s chatting… It’s more scary than ironic, cause there’s about ten other people in there.
sk8rixtx, maybe you wandered into a chat room for mimes, by mistake.
You know what I think is ironic? Rain on your wedding day. Now, that’s ironic!
Dogma.
No, that’s not ironic. It just sucks.
Please don’t get me started on the Alanis Morisette song…
That OP is downright spooky. Not too long ago, a truck was towed to the garage where I work with a flat tire. Nothing unusual about that, but when I took a closer look I saw the writing on the door: Snappy wheel repair.
You want ironic?
Sit around a table with PhD’s and Engineers (you do not have a degree) that are trying to figure out how to reduce TCR (Thermal Coefficient of Resistivity) related noise in a self passivating tantalum pentoxide microwave resistor network.
Show them how to rearrange the microcircuit elements so that the company qualifies for the Hamilton Standards contract to supply parts for the Space Shuttle program.
Draft the network diagrams and perform a squares count design validation check.
Get zero credit for the design innovation.
Have the Challenger Space Shuttle blow up on your birthday.
Find out more than ten years later that the founder of the company that used your design without credit will have to serve hard time for manipulating his corporate earnings in a rather blatant attempt to inflate their stock value.
Maybe there is justice.
Zenster, that sucks. It’s not ironic though.
Sorry if I sound like a dick, but I am a bit pedantic about a few things. In case you haven’t guessed, this is one of them.
You know what’s ironic about the song “Irony” by Morisette? The fact that it contains no examples of irony.
Ok, maybe the guy who’s afraid to fly and crashes on his first flight is a little ironic.
At least Beavis and Butthead understand…
Alanis: Isn’t it ironic?
Beavis: Umm, no.
Alanis: I’t like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife.
Beavis: This chick is stupid.
What I think is ironic is that I live in Chicago, where dead guys get to vote, but I grew up in Missouri where they got to vote for a dead guy.
Also, in a freaky way, when that whack-job sprayed gunfire into the Jewish school in LA about a year ago, about 1/2 of the students weren’t there because they were on a field trip to . . . . a museum of diversity and acceptance.
When the fire house burns down…
When you break your ankle hurrying to a safety inservice…
When the heavyweight champ has a bodyguard…
Irony is hard to define.
George Carlin has a nice example to help explain what is and isn’t irony.
(ObDisclaimer - Some will no doubt find this offensive. Life is like that. You’ve been warned.)
He basically talks about a diabetic on his way to purchase some live-saving insulin.
- If, on his way to the store, he’s hit by a truck it’s tragic but not ironic.
- If he were to be hit by an insulin truck, that would be ironic.
- If he were to be hit by a sugar truck, that would just be funny.
Tor
Gatsby, I was going to post this exact statement, but instead opted for sarcasm. I think it’s hilarious how wrong that song is. I would say that maybe that’s the whole point, but I don’t think Alanis is that deep.
[little boring story]
I have a friend (Dan) who for the longest, longest time, would quote that “rain on your wedding day” line if you used the word ironic in a sentence. Finally, I blew up at him in an email discussion with a large group of friends:
Me: What’s ironic is (blah blah blah)…
Dan: As ironic as rain on your wedding day?
Me: Dan, is there ever going to be a time in our lives when you don’t quote that stupid song every time someone uses the word ironic in a sentence? (I continued ranting for a few more sentences.)
Dan: Who put a black fly in your chardonnay?
[/little boring story]
I used to irony my shirts, but now I just send them to the cleaners.
You quit your job and go to grad school in hopes of getting a higher paying job. You take out loans to pay for grad school. You finish school and accept that higher paying job. The difference in the monthly salaries of the 2 jobs is almost exactly the amount of the monthly payment that you make on the school loans. Now that’s ironic.
You’re rushing to walk the 8 blocks to catch a train at Penn Station. You’ve forgotten your watch and ask a stranger for the time. He gives you the time and then you realize that you don’t have to rush, so you take your time. You get to the platform as the train is pulling away. The stranger’s watch was about 10 minutes slow. While I agree that this is stupidity for trusting the watch of a stranger, its also ironic.
That’s where the genius of Kevin Smith really shines. In Dogma, God turns out to be a doofus, but it’s his casting decision that really delivers the punchline.
“Irony…that’s like goldy or bronzy, only iron…”
Um, sorry, no irony here. The first example would be ironic if the loan payments were infinite. Or if, say, the entire reason you quit your job was to make more money within the time period of the loan payments.
Giraffe, sorry, I missed your sarcasm. I too have considered (and dismissed) the “that’s the whole point” theory.
I don’t know what it is about irony. Some people just get it and others don’t. I know some extremely intelligent people who just can’t comprehend it. People who are capable of understanding far more abstract concepts.
The thing is, they always think they understand it. There must be a gene that selects for comprehension of irony.
Worst case of non-ironic 'irony’that I can think of offhand: Just after Bill Shatner’s wife died, I know of at least two people (A buddy and a newscaster) who claimed that the fact that Shatner (Host of Rescue 911) called 911 when he found her was ironic.
NO! That’s NOT ironic…that’s appropriate…a fairly greusome appropriateness, to be sure, but far from ironic!
I’ll tell you what is ironic, having 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife, going off to find a knife and then realising afterwards that a spoon would have been alright, like if you were trying to get the lid off a paint can or something.
rock on. I’m gonna make that my sig.