Yet another face to irony

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/03/13 03:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/03/13/8170697.aspx


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There are more and more senses to irony all of the time.

We have the actual definition of irony (the opposite of what is or might be expected).

And there is ironyAlanis based on the singer/songwriter ("it's like rain on your wedding day" -- which is more accurately described as unfortunate than ironic).

Of course there is ironyKatie from Katie Holmes in the mostly forgettable Teaching Mrs, Tingle (more metaphoric, maybe perhaps even symbolic, but no irony to speak of).

It may be tempting to consider including a ironyBritney to cover the Fact that Britney Spears markets a fragrance under her name called Control, though ironically enough that is a valid use of the term irony, albeit an epic one....

And I wouldn't be doing my job if I did not mention the ironymark, especially since it is something I have mentioned before (ref: If it's not in Unicode, don't expect it in Windows). The irony mark not being made a part of Unicode is itself ironic, and one would wonder whether it needs to be encoded in order to properly describe its not being encoded in plain text on the rejected characters page, were that burst of self-reference not so apt to send one into "who shaves the Spanish barber" style catatonia worthy of an M5 meltdown at the hands of a Captain Kirk not given an alien woman to sleep with all episode....

And now we have ironyHeather (described in Heather Hamilton's What does Irony Taste Like? as either Super-light, not too fruity, high acid and clean finish or alternately essence of expectation with overtones of disappointment, presumably depending in part on how much of the bottle one puts away. :-)

 

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# James on 13 Mar 2008 6:08 AM:

Don't forget irony(Baldrick), which is like goldy and silvery, only made out of iron. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackadder)

# John Cowan on 13 Mar 2008 1:20 PM:

What we have is a lot of dolts (not meaning you, my dear fellow) who think "irony" sounds cool but have only the vaguest understanding of its meaning.

# Michael S. Kaplan on 13 Mar 2008 1:40 PM:

Even the wine? Perhaps *it* is ironic, to some? :-)

# HeatherLeigh on 13 Mar 2008 2:39 PM:

Haha...that is awesome. The bottle is gone and I did it all by myself (OK, over the course of 2 nights)!

I agree with John Cowan.  This is a frequent topic of conversation with me: not only that people misuse the term (Allanis, other people that bug me), similarly as they do "literally", but also my disappointment that irony is not a more complicated concept. The dolts that use the word to make themselves sound smart are coincidentally (but not ironically) using it correctly sometimes. In the interest of finding a more complicated concept that people can misuse in an effort to make themselves sound smarter (because irony is getting old), I submit this for your approval: gestalt.

And I have not yet seen in the wine section at QFC.

# Michael S. Kaplan on 13 Mar 2008 3:13 PM:

Try the Gestalt 2008 from Robert Mondavi? :-)

# HeatherLeigh on 14 Mar 2008 10:46 AM:

Sounds oaky


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referenced by

2015/07/10 Three faces (and at least four tastes) to irony

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