Just heard this on the radio.

Isn't that just ironic?

I bet he struggled all through his life, trying to make each penny count. Then he wins enough money never to have to worry about anything anymore.

And he dies.

Life's just not fair, sometimes.

On a brighter note, at least the funeral costs should be comfortably covered.

It's even worse than rain on your wedding day.

Or writing a song about irony when you don;t understand the concept.

or a free ride, when you've already paid......

how can you have a free ride when you've already paid:?:

It's even worse than rain on your wedding day.

And rain on your wedding night.

Or writing a song about irony when you don;t understand the concept.

That's true, actually. Nothing in that song is actually ironic, in the true sense of the word. Just plain bad luck!

how can you have a free ride when you've already paid:?:

Have you not heard of the Unlimited Monthly passes the call girls down Shalesmoor are currently offering?

how can you have a free ride when you've already paid:?:

I think you need to ask Alannis Morrisette:- or her lyricist, at the very least.

have a listen to the Lyrics to the song which this is based on:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v9yUVgrmPY

10000 spoons when all you need is a knife.... my cutlery drawer always looks like that

That's true, actually. Nothing in that song is actually ironic, in the true sense of the word. Just plain bad luck!
Ed Byrne (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg) built his entire career around that.

Aw poor old lad :cry:

Its just a song;)

Its just a song;)

But isn't it ironic? She asks the question, yet she never gets an answer.

10000 spoons when all you need is a knife.... my cutlery drawer always looks like that

Her cutlery drawer must be enormous if she's got 10,000 spoons in it. It's a wonder she can get into the kitchen!!! Maybe she needs them to get the flies out of her chardonnay!

They could be very small spoons. Or, with the profits from her "Jagged Little Pill" album, she may have invested in a cutlery works. Actually, that would be ironic......

"Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
"Well isn't this nice...""

I think that's pretty ironic. I hope I feel the same if one of my flights ever crashes.

..........................

Very sad :(

how can you have a free ride when you've already paid:?:

You've bought a ticket, but then someone else gives you a lift so you don't use the ticket.

................................................

"Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly


My Play It Safe afraid to use the safest form of transport?
And probably also afraid to fly Qantas, who have not had a fatal accident since 1951.

It's even worse than rain on your wedding day.

According to some cultures rain on one's wedding day can be good luck and it also can actually be a positive thing (http://www.nzweddingplanner.co.nz/bridal_tips/wedding-day-rain.htm)

Or writing a song about irony when you don;t understand the concept.

Infact, you could say that writing a song about irony, and then never actually mentioning an ironic instance is quite, well, ironic...

Ed Byrne (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg) built his entire career around that.

Ed Byrne has a career? When did this happen?

I bet he struggled all through his life, trying to make each penny count.

How did he find the money to pay for a ticket?

how can you have a free ride when you've already paid:?:

By having both a seniors/disabled bus pass and a job. They then pay through the nose in council tax.

Infact, you could say that writing a song about irony, and then never actually mentioning an ironic instance is quite, well, ironic...

Along these lines - have a read of the below (quite long but worth reading). It's an email i got years ago that i kept as i thought it was funny....:

Alanis Morissette has taken more than her share of hits for the song "Ironic." Critics have argued that she doesn't really understand the meaning of the word, and that the examples of irony she gives are simply not ironic. To be perfectly honest, I'm more surprised that there are music critics who do know what "ironic" means than I am that there are 21 year-old pop singers who don't. But that's a whole other essay.

It's not an easy word to define. Not even language scholars agree on whether a certain situation is "ironic" or not. For instance, if Alanis and Moose (Alanis's childhood costar cum nemesis) both moved independently to LA from Ontario and later became lovers, some would argue that this situation by itself constitutes irony. On the other hand, if Alanis and Moose each moved because they individually were convinced that Ontario was devoid of potential mates, and then met each other at a bar in LA, that would be ironic. So in the interest of fairness, and erring generously in her favor, I took the time to examine the lyrics of Alanis's song, and discover for myself what was truly ironic and what wasn't. Results are tallied below:

1. "An old man turned ninety-eight/He won the lottery and died the next day."
While an amusing (if morbid) coincidence, there is nothing particulary ironic about the death. It is certainly an awe-inspiring sequence of events -- the gentleman celebrating his 98th birthday, winning the lottery, and dying all in a two day period. What kind of ****ty luck is that? The ineffective slant rhyme, btw, is a little jarring, too.

2. "It's a black fly in your Chardonnay."
The irony here is that there is nothing remotely ironic about this line. In perhaps her one sweet moment of unadulterated genius, Alanis has shown us the true meaning of irony by giving an example of it that isn't ironic at all! Get it? It's a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning: the textbook definition of irony!

3. "It's a death row pardon two minutes too late."
This one's kind of a coin toss, and really depends on the context. Imagine the following situation: Jimmy is black and has allegedly murdered fifteen people in Texas, with malice aforethought. No doubt he's going to fry, right? All the while, his pretty young Public Defender facing obstacles both legal and societal, struggles to overturn Jimmy's conviction. The actual killer, as it happens, was the son of a cattle rancher whom Jimmy'd stripped of a football to make the winning play at the cattle rancher's son's homecoming game. The pretty young Public Defender, after years of searching, finally discovers the blood-stained sand wedge the cattle rancher's son used in the murders, covered up and down with his incriminating fingerprints. The PYPD races to the aid of Jimmy, with whom she's fallen in love and doesn't care who knows, and receives a stay of execution for her wrongly-accused beloved. But irony of ironies: the pretty young Public Defender forgot to set her clock forward for daylight savings time, and Jimmy's already been dead for two minutes while she's breathing a sigh of relief in the Governor's office as the Governor, bewildered, makes the phone call only to discover to everyone's dismay that Jimmy's already toast and now he has to break the news to the pretty young Public Defender, who isn't going to take this little zigzag of kismet well, one suspects. Now, that's ironic. That was so easy, there's no way I'm giving Miss Thing credit for it.

4. "It's like rain on your wedding day."
Nope.

5. "It's a free ride when you've already paid."
Sorry, no. Alanis seems to think that "irony" means "bad timing".

6. "It's the good advice that you just didn't take."
This is very close! Ignoring good advice is ironic, but only if the listener suffers some kind of befitting karmic punishment as a result. Alanis gets half a point for the setup, but because she only sketchily implies the irony, we cannot grant her full credit.

7. "Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly/ He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye/ He waited his whole damn life to take that flight/And as the plane crashed down he thought, Well, isn't this nice?"
This quatrain is truly a feather in Alanis's cap, because it contains not one, but two legitimate instances of actual, honest to God irony. A) It is, indeed, ironic that someone who is afraid of flying would die in a plane crash during his first flight; it's an unexpected disruption in the normal course of events that gives us insight into human folly. And said someone is being, you guessed it, ironic when he says, "Well, isn't this nice?" since we must presume that he is being sarcastic.

8. "It's a traffic jam when you're already late."
See No. 5. When Alanis finds a concept she likes, she runs with it.

9. "A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break."
Oh, come on. You were doing so well with the plane guy.

10. "It's like ten thousands spoons when all you need is a knife."
If the speaker is rifling through a silverware drawer which is known to contain knives, then this is ironic. If she's in a spoon factory, it isn't.

11. "It's meeting the man of my dreams/ And then meeting his beautiful wife."
The implied irony here is that Alanis has searched high and low for her soulmate, finds him only to discover that, wouldn't you know it?, he's married. Sheesh, all the good ones are taken, aren't they? But a moment's consideration will show that the situation is actually in no way ironic, since we would expect all the good ones to be taken. What would be ironic would be to meet some ugly, stupid, fat kid that Alanis spurned while a cast member of Nickelodeon's You Can't Do That on Television, and then meet his beautiful wife.
Final Tally

Attempts at describing irony: 11

Successful attempts: 2.5

Confusion of irony with "poor sense of timing": 6

Completely missing the term: 3

Now that you have the stats, you can wow your friends with your overwhelming command of both pop culture and the English language. The painful truth of the matter is that Alanis apparently did not quite center herself over the concept of irony before she and songwriting chum Glen Ballard sat down to compose the catchy ditty.

................................................

Arrrrrrrgh! You changed it!

"Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly/ He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye/ He waited his whole damn life to take that flight/And as the plane crashed down he thought, Well, isn't this nice?"
This quatrain is truly a feather in Alanis's cap, because it contains not one, but two legitimate instances of actual, honest to God irony. A) It is, indeed, ironic that someone who is afraid of flying would die in a plane crash during his first flight;

His death is an assumption - he could have survived the crash which many people actually do.

I always thought mr play-it-safe wasa bird.could be because i was 12 when i first heard the album and had an overactive imagination. or because im stooooooopid

My Play It Safe afraid to use the safest form of transport?
And probably also afraid to fly Qantas, who have not had a fatal accident since 1951.

:wink: :wink: :wink:

you are raymond, and I claim my five pounds....

:wink: :wink: :wink:

Or writing a song about irony when you don;t understand the concept.

Maybe she was being ironic... or yeah, maybe just thick.

It's like a dead rat in your trifle.

How did he find the money to pay for a ticket?

Down the back of his settee - that's where I find most things that seem to be lost (in my house - down the back of my settee, not the old man's, who I do not know and who doesn't really exist - well, not anymore 'coz he's dead, according to Alanis [sp?]).

...Ed Byrne has a career? When did this happen?
I think it was roughly around 1996.

My. Play It Safe thinking "Well isn't this nice" is supposed to be sarcastic? I assumed it meant that he had some weird thrill out of a plane crash.

:wink: :wink: :wink:

you are raymond, and I claim my five pounds....

:wink: :wink: :wink:

I am not Raymond as I think he claims that the airline has never had a fatal accident ever.

The old man who turned 98 might have been a millionaire jet-setting playboy his whole life, so winning the lottery might not have been that big a deal to him anyway ?

Ms Marmoset needs to be more specific with her lyrics I think.

The old man who turned 98 might have been a millionaire jet-setting playboy his whole life, so winning the lottery might not have been that big a deal to him anyway ?

Ms Marmoset needs to be more specific with her lyrics I think.

And maybe the first prize in the lottery was a lavish state funeral in which case it may have been ironic after all.

Bonus for whoever gets his inheritance though, eh?

Its just a song;)


... and a film (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waking_Ned_Devine)!

And rain on your wedding night.

I should have thought that was preferable to a dry spell.

On a brighter note, at least the funeral costs should be comfortably covered.

This really shouldn't be funny but for some reason I couldn't help but laugh. :hihi::hihi: