The One With IRONY!

Back for another round. This round will start with a list of thoughts I feel the need to write down, and then the point of the post.

A couple things to note:

1. My iPod has been AWOL for about. . .6 months. It was recently (and randomly) unearthed, and I ordered a new battery for it (because, previously, if you charged it to full power, put it on the list of music, and then had the audacity to skip a song, that would completely drain the power and it would die immediately.) and D took the thing apart and installed the new battery. Viva la iPod!

2. I am currently in the middle of reading. . .approximately 6 books, one of which is NOT the book I have to have read for next Tuesday's book club. Um, I should get on that.

3. I think my boss has a thing for D.

4. I need to know how much is too much information on this blog. I have stories I'd like to tell, but I think maybe they're just not something everyone, their mother, and their mother's girlfriend needs to know. (What? I'm progressive and accepting. I don't care if your mother has a girlfriend.)

5. I'm freaking dying for a piece of the cheesecake I made last night.

6. I think Blogger needs the same thing Xanga has, where you can say what you're currently listening to/watching/reading. Because I'm all about mundane information about my life! The only problem here would be if I were reading my 6 books (see point 2), watching "Napoleon Dynamite" and listening to Cutting Crew's "I Just Died in Your Arms." (True story: That is what I am listening to.)

OK, so, irony.

Here's the dictionary definition (taken from dictionary.com):

i·ro·ny

¹    [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]

–noun, plural -nies.

1.

the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite ofits literal meaning: the irony of her

reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.

2.

Literature .

a.

a technique of indicating, as through character or plotdevelopment, an intention or

attitude opposite to thatwhich is actually or ostensibly stated.

b.

(esp. in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing awork so as to give full expression

to contradictory orcomplementary impulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as ameans of indicating

detachment from a subject, theme,or emotion.

3.

Socratic irony.

4.

dramatic irony.

5.

an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.

6.

the incongruity of this.

7.

an objectively sardonic style of speech or writing.

8.

an objectively or humorously sardonic utterance, disposition, quality, etc.

Irony is one of those things that most people just don't get the meaning of. "Wow. . .that's pretty ironic," is often said about things that are not ironic.

"Wow, you and your ex-boyfriend showed up at the same bar last night. How ironic!"

No. This is not ironic. Irony would be if a girl went out because she was trying to avoid seeing her ex-boyfriend, and they ended up at the same bar. That would be irony definition number 5. She was trying to get away from him, but he went to the same place she did. Whoa. IRONY!

(Here, I should explain that D and I had a conversation about irony the other day, talking about what's ironic and what's actually not, and now, whenever something comes up that is actually ironic, I do a weird jazz hands movement and say, "IRONY!" What would be ironic would be if D had sworn to never fall in love with anyone who used jazz hands. IRONY!)

The entirety of Alanis Morisette's song, "Ironic," is NOT IRONIC. There's nothing ironic about "meeting the man of your dreams/and then meeting his beautiful wife." There's no bit of irony in a "black fly/in your Chardonnay." And it's not ironic if you have "rain on your wedding day."

Most of these are just things that really suck.

To be fair, there is one legit irony in the song (the guy who's afraid of flying dying in a plane crash). But one out of. . .many doesn't cut it.

The irony thing is just another English Language thing that irks me, kind of like the ending -oholic being used to describe someone being addicted to something besides alcohol.