Expressing an Ironic Thought?

In my travels around the internets, I have seen many arguments, anger-filled rants, and salty tears of sadness over a single facet of writing, plays, movies, and other things: Irony.

What is irony? Well, according to everyone that cares enough about it to discuss it, it has several meanings I know of three of them, so I will discuss those.

Situational Irony

Situational Irony is when something happens that is the total opposite of what was expected to happen. The key is the reversal of expectations. An example: A knight wears very thick plate metal armor to protect himself from harm. He engages a wizard, who casts a lightning spell at the knight. The knight gets electrocuted, then burned. The expectation: the armor was supposed to protect him. Instead, the armor ending up causing the harm.

Dramatic Irony

Dramatic Irony is seen in plays, movies, and books. It is when the audience knows what is about to happen, but the characters being viewed do not. The classic example is Romeo and Juliet, when Juliet is considering killing herself because she thinks Romeo is dead, when Romeo is merely asleep. Of course, the audience knows well in advance that Romeo is asleep.

Verbal Irony

Verbal Irony is what causes the most debates. Verbal Irony is saying one thing, but meaning another thing entirely. According to this definition, Sarcasm qualifies as Verbal Irony. However, there are many that say that Sarcasm is not Verbal Irony. I’ll leave it up to you readers to decide.

A Quickie Poem

The Blood of War, there’s always more,

Especially when sore, to settle a score.

When you can’t take the hits,

and try to make them miss,

there’s always a little more.

Golden helmets, silver pikes,

Gleaming like polished ice,

Marching in orderly style,

To fight the oncoming pile.

Hoards of men, struggling beasts,

Crows waiting for the feast,

Until at last, a stunning stillness

sits upon the wilderness.

A lone man cries, looks around,

But no one is to be found.

He alone, survived, succeeded,

But now no longer needed.

A Wise Ramble once said…

A small look at wisdom.

An old withered wise man walked down an old path, smiling wisely. He was to meet two troubled young men who had supposedly unique problems. Meh, he’d heard them all, from allergy cures to love affairs to mystical kung-fu styles. He was a little arrogant, but still wise enough to tell himself, “There are always possibilities. NEVER assume, for assumptions are a paving stone on the path of mistakes.”
The first man wept near a stream that gurgled near the path. “What troubles you?” the wise man asked. “The love of my life seems to be a sham!” The first man sobbed. “She never just tells me what is wrong, and always forces me to find out later! She always seems to be looking for a reason to yell at me, and never seems to want happiness! I don’t understand it at all!” The old wise man just shook his head and said, “If you expect her to be blunt like a man, you will usually be disappointed. A woman likes subtlety. It is her way of assuring herself that she is smarter than the supposed ‘head of the house’. Just go with it, and stop trying to please her as much as you can. If she wants to find something to complain about, let her find too much to complain about.”

The wise man walked off without another word, leaving the first man contemplating what he had just heard.

The second man just needed to know a faster way to learn kung-fu. “All day I train, but I just don’t improve at all! Something is wrong.”

The wise man asked his usual question, “Are you trying hard enough?”

“Yes! All Day and some of the night!”

“Are you using the same techniques over and over?”

“….Yes…..”

“There is your answer. Use common sense next time.”

A Ramble from Mental Street

A small look into the human psyche.

Everyone knows about the two voices in their heads: The Conscience, which tells you not to based on moral principles, and the Temptation, which tells you it’s alright to be bad. But everyone  gives them so much of the main show that everyone forgets about the other voices in their heads. Yes, there’s more than three. Here is a small list of voices one may hear.

The Inner Child

A few people know their inner child, whether they lock them away or let them speak freely. The inner child is merely the expression of one’s childhood and the missing of one’s childhood thereof. He or she pipes up when you are more likely to have your version of fun, and eggs you on to do childish things, since, after all, the inner child is still a child. Usually big brats, those inner kids.

The Agnostic

The Agnostic always has difficulty believing anything, usually due to fears or misheard logic. The agnostic voice will usually caution you on a belief-based choice.

The Scientist

Always using cold logic, the science voice will usually be the one telling you, “Use your brain!” This voice rarely lets one believe something without proof.

The Arrogant Snob

This voice is common in upper-class folk, but anyone can have him/her. This voice will tell you things like “You’re better than everyone else, why should you have to stand in line with these so-called people?”

The Quick Insulter

This voice is always ready to supply you with a fitting insult for any Yo Momma-like occasion. A reflex voice, sure, but he/she is always lurking.

The Fanatic

The opposite of the Agnostic, and usually twice as insane. Careful if you have this voice, as he/she will encourage you to do looooopy things to appease some deity or high priest, depending.

This is a small list of common voices. There is always a medley of voices in that gray matter between your ears, and it’s largely up to you to pick which ones to listen to.

r-r-r-Ramble

A small look at mad science.

A mad scientist was in his secret lab in New York, trying to think of how to scare the pants off the human race. He thought hard of every single possibility. Zombies? Too cliche’. A large Godzilla-like monster? Too expected. Then he went another route: Cute things.

He then built a gigantic hot pink robot, with the legs of a puppy, the body of a baby shark, and the face of Hello Kitty. And of course, he placed a laser on the Hello Kitty’s head.

When he unleashed this monster, armed to the teeth with radioactive claws, a head laser, and devastating cuteness, humanity first laughed. Then it started to pay attention when it started biting the tops of buildings and people in a sickeningly cute manner. Humanity was inclined to “Squeeeee!” and run at the same time. No one wanted to fight it, since it was just too cute to attack.

There seemed to be no hope. It rampaged across New York, destroying half the city, and almost all the biker gangs, hip-hoppers, and geeks it could find. One guy even laughed at the laser reference before said laser turned him to dust in a burst of Laser Violence.

Then a gigantic little girl came from nowhere and said, in a large cute voice, ” Awwwww! What a cute little thing you are!”

The robotic monster turned around, saw the giant girl, and exploded in a burst of rainbowic cuteness.

Rambled Thought

A small look into a lazy superhero’s story.

Generic Man looked at his home town of Generic city, and sighed. “What’s the point? Every single time I save this city, it gets into danger faster than Lard Man eats corn chips. I just don’t see why people can’t save themSELVES for once.” So Generic Man slacked off and ate Doritos.

During his slacking off time, three muggings were foiled by the citizens being mugged, a bank heist was stopped by a small kid with a slingshot and some pointy rocks, two super-powered criminals were chased off with pool cues dipped in Lameonyte, and an infant scared off the Manly Beast of The Unknown Depths by wailing incessantly.

Generic Man took most of the credit, of course.

Ramblin’

A quick look at a small life.

Sully Sulsman, a skinny, pale, redheaded, purple-eyed man of 26 years, is currently wasting his life away in a cleaning products factory.  Day in, day out, he presses three buttons, at specific timing, to make sure the cleaning products reach the end of the production line. He gets yelled at by his boss, sneered at by his co-workers, and even got dumped by a girlfriend once while pressing the buttons. He then gets to return to a house held together by torn dreams and crying jags. Actually, it’s a nice house, but the drama that has gone on inside has aged it permanently without damaging it.

Sully walked to work again, low and moody, when a sudden falling cow turned both the cow and Sully into a raggedly large stain on the pavement. Why a falling cow? Who knows. Fate likes a laugh, I guess.

Sully achieved fame as the Guy Who Was Hit By a Falling Cow. He was on the news, talk shows, comedian acts, and even a book was written. A few scientists won money and fame for writing the Theory of Randomtivity, which states mathematical jargon for every square foot of land and sea having a “Random Ratio.”  The simpler explanation is that each piece of land and sea has a different possibility of random things happening. But then, it was discovered that Sully was alive.

Someone found Sully in the sewer line underneath the area of the cow-splatter a few years after it fell. Sully was in a coma and damaged, but breathing. They rushed him to the hospital, where he made a shaky recovery. Again, the news exploded. “The Guy Who Was Hit by a Cow survived being hit by a cow!” One popular news show yelled. The same scientists from before had proof of the Randomtivity theory. Then Sully confessed that the cow had been rigged to fall.

He told everyone, even the people of other countries, that he had bribed a helicopter pilot to tie a cow to the copter and to cut the rope so that it would hit Sully on his way to work, thus saving him from his horrific job.

Everyone was silent for over thirty minutes. Anger built up soon after that speech. People took away his fame status. Cops tried to arrest him on false charges. Animal rights groups went for the jugular, suing him blind and poor. Again, Sully talked to the world, asking a very good question. “Are you people seriously this upset over me surviving a cow falling on me? I mean, yikes, I know misfortune to others can be funny, but seriously, people, don’t you have lives at all?”

Shortly after that last sentence, an angry steel mill worker shot him in the head for wearing a “Godzilla is Cool” T-shirt.

Rambled

A quick look at a fake religion.

Dave belonged to the Church of Skyfather,  a church that believed that three men and one woman lived in the sky at the creation of Earth. The three men competed for the woman’s love with a mix of musical feats, athletic skills, and obnoxious poetry. Then a fourth man appeared and blasted the other three with bursts of Mad Violence. The fourth man mated with the woman, not entirely against her will, and was made the Skyfather.

The church believed that although Man was descended from the fourth man, one of the first three had survived to teach Man the finer things: Art, Music, and Really Bad Poetry.

Dave was no exception. He worshiped the second man, the one who was the best at athletic feats. Dave could run faster than an Olympic speed-runner. He trained daily. However, a man suddenly appeared and blasted Dave with a burst of Mad Violence. Apparently, Skyfather was bored.

A small Ramble

A quick look at a simple example of why there will likely be no world peace.

Times are good in the nation of Sam. The people are happy with their one man government, their 500 man population, and the good supply of cows. And of course the excellent production of dairy products. However, three men, all three powerful men, walk down the street. The first one says, “I like cow products. They are so much the best thing ever since we got control of the cows!” The second man nods and says, “I agree, although the sour cream is lousy this month. They need to fire whoever was in charge.” The third man huffs and says, “Cow products suck.”

The other two look at the third man with comical Os for mouths. “What?!” They yell at the same time. “How can you say that? The dairy industry has made us and our benevolent dictator rich! And it tastes good too!” The first man yelled. “Yeah! we could bathe in money from even the second-grade products that were sold!” The second man shouted. “What do you mean, ‘Second-grade’?” The first guy asked in a dubious tone. “There is no ‘Second-grade’!” “You have to admit, last month’s yogurt was off. And that beastly sour cream. Yech!” The second man made a faux-barfy face. “If that wasn’t second rate, then you tell me what it was.”

The third man, meanwhile, had walked off, seceded from the Nation of Sam, and founded a new nation. It was named, “The Democracy of Bob.” It banned all cow products on a vote that Dairy products where unholy, voted to focus instead on chickens, and rejected the vote for better schooling than the Nation of Sam.

The first two men also split from the Nation of Sam and founded their own nations.

The first man named his nation, “The Dairy Worshiper Alliance.” He claimed that all dairy products were made from the cow, which was God’s gift to the world. And he lynched anyone who claimed that goats also had milk.

The second man named his nation, “Critica.” They did sparse trade with other nations, and sparse only because they had to criticize  every single shipment that came within their borders, since, of course, no one had better products than their nonexistent products.

All three were sadly doomed. The Democracy of Bob had allowed science to flourish. One scientist found the bacteria we now know as Salmonella. When he showed this discovery, the entire nation was put into a vote: Ban chickens or keep them anyway. 64 voted to keep the chickens, 43 voted to ban them, and 147 didn’t care enough to vote. The Democracy split into three smaller nations who are still voting whether to fight one another or not.

The Dairy Worshiper’s Alliance was brought down by corruption. The High Priests of the Holy Creams demanded small “donations.” People slacked off and where secretly eating goat cheese and drinking soy milk. Finally, these goat and soy people escaped from the Dairy Worshiper’s Alliance and formed a new nation, named “The Milk and Cheese Collective.” Both the Dairy Worshipers and the Collective are still killing one another to this day.

Critica died from lack of trade. People eventually got sick of being treated as lesser beings and closed off all trade routes to Critica. In the following winter, all the Critics decided to fade out into the other, warmer nations, including all the ones mentioned above.

Eventually, All the nations declared war on one another for slander, theft, kidnappings, and insulting the quality of their dairy products, and battled it out in a free-for-all. When the dust settled, the Nation of Sam, now named the Nation of Samuel,  was left. Because they cheated and used a recent discovery: Massive explosions.

So we are back to square one. And three more powerful men walk down a familiar road…..