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Isn't it ironic? Well, maybe...

2007-07-29

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Anyone know about Sabrina Matthews?

She's a comedian(e?) whose oft repeated little special on Comedy Central makes me laugh every single time I catch a little of it. A few minutes into the special, she shruggingly announces that she's a lesbian - to which the laughter is loud and genuine, because - well - the announcement simply isn't necessary, and she knows it. She goes out of her way to dress in the stereotypical butch lesbian outfit, complete with the over-sized flannel shirt and rolled up sleeves, and seems to deliberately affect the posture of an extremely tired and overwrought truck driver.

And man oh man, is she ever smart and funny - and dry as toast.

The reason she came to mind this morning is that in the middle of the night last night, I was writing a note to someone, and I was going to call a certain situation "ironic."

Well, see, here's the thing: like the judge said about pornography, I decided, I may not know the exact definition of irony, but I'm pretty sure I know it when I hear it, or read it, or see it. But, I pondered, what if I'm wrong?  -Maybe I should check it out.

Why, all of a sudden, after at least thirty-five-plus years of assuming I grasped the concept, did I doubt my own understanding of the word?

Sabrina Matthews. It's HER fault.

One of the funny bits in her special is when she takes Alanis Morissette to task for the lyrics to her popular song from a decade ago, "Ironic."

Ms. Matthews contends that the litany of events Ms. Morissette describes in the song as being ironic are, for the most part, not ironic at all, but merely unfortunate.

"rain on your wedding day..."

"a traffic jam when you're already late..."

"good advice that you didn't take..."

-and quite a few more. Not ironic. Unfortunate.


What IS ironic, she says, is the fact - that the song "Ironic," became a multi-platinum hit for Alanis Morissette.

Funny stuff.

So...

I looked it up.

Irony, I decided, after checking quite a few online dictionaries and reading through the various definitions, is the older and wiser, and more witty brother of sarcasm.

Irony is me taking all that time to make sure I was using the term correctly in the letter I was writing, only to forget WHY I'd planned to use the term in the first place by the time I got back to my letter.

Oh, I remembered what I was writing about and even the next sentence I'd planned to punch out, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how the word "ironic" wold have fit within the context of what I was going to say.

But, I did come to a certain conclusion out of the exercise and it is this:

Irony is deciding you want to be a writer just as you reach the stage in life where short-term memory fades unexpectedly from time to time, and just often enough that putting together more than a few lucid thoughts at a sitting becomes impossible.

Or maybe that too is merely unfortunate.


Be good to everyone.

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Barnabus (2007-07-29)
That's ironic!!

Hardcore_Pyro (2007-07-29)
Good stuff; never realized that sarcasm and irony were kin to each other yet it seems so obvious now. Irony still escapes me but sarcasm is a good friend of mine. He's the bully that takes peoples lunch money or gives a hard learned lesson.

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