Irony, courtesy of a small cat
I’ve been asking a lot of people recently if they know the definition of irony. Mainly due to an episode of Futurama, where Bender continuously reclassifies people’s “irony” comments as coincidence, happenstance, and a few other words I’ve forgotten. I even looked it up in the dictionary, but the definition was too hard to understand. I wondered if it was an example of irony in it’s own right.
Anyway, all of this is a long precursor to an event on Wednesday afternoon, when, after nine days of feeling unwell, I was celebrating my return to health by baking a coconut cake and helping Miss M with her homework. Pilchen, who was inside, asked to be let out, so Miss M obliged, and ran back to the kitchen to tell me Pilch had climbed a tree and looked like she was going to kill a bird. Deep in cake mix, I made some flip remark like “silly old Pilchen won’t catch a bird, don’t worry”. A couple of seconds later, Miss M went to check on proceedings and came running back, crying and screaming that an ironic fate had befallen the bird. I silently cursed the cat, and ran to the front door to see if I could perform a rescue mission, but was too late.
Miss M was totally hysterical, and any explanation I tried to make about a cat being a wild animal, or designed to kill (yeah, I couldn’t believe I came up with that either) didn’t make much difference. Then she asked me if a cat could kill a human, and I thought carefully before replying with a definite “no”, since my last soothing comments had been such a lie.
So I’m hoping Pilch won’t prove me wrong by suddenly leaping the fence and taking down a passerby, because that would be hard to explain to the child. Hoping even more she doesn’t take me down during the night when she appears to be sleeping quietly in the corner …
Today I’m loving: rereading Michael Connelly’s first seven books in four days
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October 14th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
I never felt that ‘irony’ was capable of being conveyed by way of definition. Only illustrative examples have been effective but even then, it is dependent on the student’s innate ability to recognise the relationship between the two events as ‘ironic’ - so perhaps it’s intuitive. The real test of this theory was applied over a period of 5 years in the late 1990s. During this time, a few of my friends sought their female attention (almost exclusively) from models. Having failed to communicate ‘irony’ by definition, I resorted to the illustrative example methode. I was unable to detect any change in expression and still don’t know whether it was my explanation, the botox or whether they even knew I was in the room.
Hey, do you think Bike Boy would give me some advice on a new commuter/recreational bike?
October 15th, 2008 at 6:52 am
DSO, Bike Boy lives to give advice, and also discounts to those near and dear to me. Thursday until 9pm, Sunday all day would probably be the times to suit you best.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Irony is NOT what Alanis sang about - her song was just a bunch of shitty things happening to whingers!
It takes an Australian to understand and appreciate true irony, such as that mad fitness & jogging guru of the 70s and 80s, James Fixx, driving everyone crazy by nagging them about thebenefits of running on life expectancy and general health, then dying of a heart attack whilst jogging.