With Continual Reference to Justin Kahn.

Monday, April 17, 2006

So You Googled My Blog: An Easy to Plagarize Post on Irony, Overflowing W/ Facts & Other Stuff to Make You--Teachers and Students-- Talk Smartly

It has recently come to my attention, than some people think I am "strange" or "odd" or in some extreme cases "Not Usual."

While meditating on this, it occurred to me that I may play some small contributing role to this impression. Specifically, it may be some people are unable to identify when exactly I am being serious; When I am using Irony; and When I am having one of my 'episodes.'

So to make things easier on everyone, I dug deep into literary theory and came up with an interesting solution to the question, "How does an individual know when an author, such as Justin, or a speaker, such as Justin, is being Ironic?"

Alcanter de Braham in the 1800's wrote a book antipcating modern problems of understanding Irony (and so, Justin) in which he argued that a new punctuation symbol should be introduced to clarify when exactly an ironic statement is being made.

That new punctuation mark is illustrated in the above picture which comes to us courtesy of the best scanner in the world. It is just an upside down question mark, but I think it is much easier to visualize since I have a posted that picture, which is totally copyrighted by conceptofirony.

If enough people think this would be helpful to them, I will consider employing such a punctuation to build the bridge from my heart to yours. I'm all ears. B/C I really do care.

This Post Was Brought to You by My Scanner, Larry.

8 comments:

Erratic Scribbler said...

does that mean the spanish are being ironic when they begin a question but by the end they have lost the irony (or the irony is lost on them?)

Anonymous said...

In responce to "gordo" i suggest that Justin go deeper into his clarification of his "moods." I suggest he use the "asshole mark" for when he isn't being ironic or moody, just an asshole. Thus clarifying to the reader when they should laugh or just flat out be offended. As Justin will attest to, there is a fine line between what is humurous and what is "assholarious."

Def- "Assholarious"- Making rude comments to Justin that are funny only to the ego inside of the offenders head yet highly offensive to Justin.
- The "asshole mark" is denoted by " ((0)) "

Oberon said...

...........uh....have we been here before....or are there two ironies....that would be ironic.

Anocsanamun said...

That's how spanish people start their questions so why not.

rumour said...

I like how the hidden metaphor is irony is nothing more then throwing rocks at the moon, when your actually doing that. Im a flake god love me.

Ruby Blathergab said...

Jumpin' Jesus, I am always so entertained at this blog!!! Thanks for making me laugh, what a gift!

Jenn said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Jenn said...

Sorry, mispelling which was unacceptable.

I was just saying that it seemed to defeat the whole point if you had to flag us whenever you were being ironic.

So why bother?