Sunday, July 22, 2007

Sarcasm

I think The Onion is a bit hit-or-miss, but the best is good. For example: 70 percent of all praise is sarcastic.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I couldn't completely open the link to Onion, but I'm thinking "sarcasm" might not be exactly the right word.
A common greeting in the US is "Howya doin'?"
The inquirer could care less, and in fact, has usually long past before a coherent response would be possible.
Many of the rituals for getting through a typical day consist of symbolically mimicking Bonobo chimps and their constant massaging of their neighbor's genitalia.
How did we, as humans, move so blithely to symbolism?
Bring back the "good old days" of about a million years ago.

Alex said...

"Howya doin'?" is a rewording of "how do you do". Note the lack of question mark. How many of us really mean God Be With Ye when we say Goodbye? That's a whole other kettle o' fish.

The phrases in the Onion article are sarcastic remarks, but could be labeled sardonic, or better still ironic.

The best definition of "Irony" comes from "Blackadder" "It's like bronzy or goldy, only made of iron". I get the feeling Alanis Morrisette misused the term ironic to describe the fly in her Chardonnay.

I would look it up in my big ass dictionary, but I now don't trust is as it doesn't include a definition of gurning. A word which my wife is amazed exists "I can't believe enough people do it for such a word to exist". $150 for a Mirriam Websters, almost rivaling a compact OED in physical size, and no gurning! Good job!

Anonymous said...

I heard the Irish comedian Ed Byrne talking about Ms Morrissette's song "ironic". He also felt that the songwriter had misunderstood the concept of irony:

"A traffic jam when you're already late - ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife? That isn't ironic. It's bl**dy annoying, that's what it is. The song should be called "Bl**dy Annoying"!

I'm also reminded of the Simpsons story "Homerperlooza" where Homer joins the freak show for a travelling 'Youth' music festival. Apart from including the superb line: "Bands listen up, someone order the London Symphony Orchestra... possibly while high... Cypress Hill I'm looking in your direction." it also included two youths standing listening to Homer and one said: "Yeah, groovy", his friedn asked: "Dude, were you being sarcastic?" The reply was: "I can't tell anymore."

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Alex, you could'a saved your Webster money, and just use the app from Answers.com. It's faster, and it has "gurn" in it.

Anonymous said...

The only thing I hated about people trashing that song was that people who wouldn't have noticed on their own jumped on the bandwagon, hoping that they could for five minutes sound smart.

Alex said...

"It's faster, and it has "gurn" in it."

It's faster if your PC is always on. I can pull the book from the shelf and get to the right page in about 20 seconds. That's the time it takes to pull my laptop from my backpback and hit the power button.

Then, once I've got the word I spend about 10 minutes reading other interesting words on the page.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said:

" The only thing I hated about people trashing that song was that people who wouldn't have noticed on their own jumped on the bandwagon, hoping that they could for five minutes sound smart."

Yeah, right.

Anonymous said...

"Dude, were you being sarcastic?"

sadly the world is this way.

Bring back the "good old days" of about a million years ago.
re."

technically that would be six thousand years ago but i agree.
nobody cares when they mumble those meaningless howya doing hellos. they don't give a hoot how you are really doing. common bs ya know?
by the way, i live near cincinnati but it isn't quite as evil as vegas
or lima ohio. jmhu.

Anonymous said...

you are not here said...
"technically that would be six thousand years ago"


Actually, Homo sapiens appeared 50 to 100 thousand years ago. You can trust Geology and Paleontology on that.

P.S.: if you like common unmeant B.S., you really should live in Lebanon. I could play macho with my pet peeve, and challenge Eolake that "mine is way bigger than yours". You can't take a blasted five-minute walk without... "stepping in some" of that stuff.
It stinks! "Literally". ;-)

Anonymous said...

"50 to 100 thousand years ago"?
Well said, Einstein. Groovy.

Cliff Prince said...

Interesting how the presence of religion tends to stifle all debate ...

Anonymous said...

Not being stifling here, Final Identity. Just proving Eolake's numbers right. ;-)
In a way, I'm praising him by being 70% sarcastic, exactly like he said.

But if you ask me, being left with 30% of my original praise is pure highway robbery from the State's part. Down with excessive taxes!

A sad waste of time, that. Did you notice how LONG it took me to reply to Pascal's post?

Anonymous said...

lol...well, that "ooo" could go either way. And, I think those first "short" ones,and the bit about facial experesions, fall under the "DUH!!!" category!