Post Valentine's Day on Target

The RoBeastress and I went for a long romantic walk on Valentine's Day. At Target. We went there with no intentions of buying anything, and left accomplishing that goal. We laughed, we held hands, we canoodled, but we did not take out our wallets at all! It was totally awesome!!!

I've actually discovered that Target has an untapped wealth of inspiration for this blog. I would like to start go there more frequently, walk around, and just take pictures of interesting things I find. There was this cool toy:

With this note on the side:

The snake's name must be Snarky. That was the only picture I snapped on that trip, but I need to go back tonight, so I will do some more exploring.

I am stocking up on supplies for my upcoming vacation to the Dominican Republic. I know it seems like I've been vacation from this blog since 2008, so I have a lot making up to do. I promise I will come back with photos and posts in hand. Ok? USA?

No, that's not my car, but the fingerwriter was on my hand. Does that make me a bad person?

While you ponder that, I've got a couple more things I want you to think about and discuss. My first question I would like solved for selfish reasons. I am writing a song and while I tend to ignore lyrics, I do obsess over my own. I am trying to use the word "Irony" and I worry that Alanis Morissette fucked it up for the rest of us. Not simply by writing a shitty song, but by also using the word incorrectly and causing me to second guess my own use of the term that I once thought I understood.

I posed a scenario to some friends yesterday related to my lyrical dilemma. Keep in mind that I did not come right and share the lyrics as the song is not complete and have a problem with showing half-finished work. Instead I constructed a cockamamie parallel that in retrospect, may take on a more interesting life of its own. But I digress.

Here's my caffeine and math metal fueled email:

Irony & Oxymoron

My top level question is "Is oxymoron inherently ironic?" If not, then keep reading my scenario and let me know if, and when the situation becomes ironic.

Jumbo Shrimp is a common oxymoron, but let's say I have an elephant and I name him Shrimp. If he's still a baby or just relatively small for an elephant, is the name ironic just because he's elephant? What if he grows up to be ridiculously large for an elephant? Is that ironic (the name and/or the situation)? And what if this giant elephant named Shrimp doesn't actually like to eat shrimp? What if he especially doesn't like to eat jumbo shrimp? What if he dies eating jumbo shrimp? Is anything here ironic?

Kirk's stance:

The answer to all your questions below is, "Yes."

Regardless of your reason for naming the elephant "Shrimp," it is still an ironic name for an elephant. Unless that elephant only grows to be as large as an actual shrimp (which is impossible, but I'm stating it just for the sake of argument).
Now, if you named an actual shrimp "Jumbo," I would argue that the name "Jumbo" is not ironic for a shrimp. It's clever, but not ironic. Especially if it's a jumbo shrimp.

The ideal situation in which both irony and sincerity were in absolute perfect balance would be if science could somehow fuse elephant DNA with shrimp DNA, and give the resulting animal the name "Jumbo Shrimp." That name would be neither ironic nor sincere, resulting in a well-balanced sense of self in the animal. It would be very well-adjusted socially. Of course, the actual name of the type of animal we are speaking of would be "flagellaphant" because of its ability to flap its gigantic shrimp-like tail in a flagella-like manner, to speed itself across the ocean and attack our enemies with the deadly force of its armoured tusks.

The RoBeastress response:

Have you completely lost your mind?

She did go on say that she doesn't think it was ironic until we found the elephant named Shrimp doesn't like to eat shrimp. I'm not sure what I think anymore. I also don't know if my example applies to my lyrical scenario as much as I originally thought. Let me try this:

There's a guy and everyone calls him Tiny because he's got a really small penis. Not ironic at all. To make up for a lifetime of ridicule, he decides to race trucks with giant tires. In fact, he becomes the most famous monster truck racer ever, and names his vehicle Bigfoot just to drive the point home. Yay for him. But then one day, scientists finally capture the once-thought mythical creature Bigfoot and it turns out that Bigfoot actually has the smallest penis out of all the creatures in the forest. Even smaller than Tiny's microphallus. Is Tiny's life just become ironic, or was it the whole time after he named his truck Bigfoot? Did the discovery of Bigfoot's small penis then make Tiny's life unironic? Did Bigfoot actually steal the irony from Tiny, like some Iron-y Transfer? What if Tiny bought a penis pump now? Would that just fuck everything up?

Unfortunately, I don't think this story parallels my original dilemma enough to draw any conclusions from the answers, but there's no sense in deleting it now. I guess I need to think about this some more.

The other thing I've been thinking about lately is the difference between urgency and emergency. Both seem to refer a situation in need of immediate care, but is one more immediate than the other? Is one more a surprise than the other? Emergency is so much more prevelant in signage, but urgency seems just as applicable, no? Maybe it's just for the sake of consistency (I had to reword that phrase to avoid a possible apostrophe mistake), but think of all the money we'd save by just using the shorter word. Urgency Room. Urgency Exit. Urgency Response Unit. I've already saved the world 6 letters! You're welcome.

The only concrete answers I've found so far (because I'm not looking that hard and don't feel like it right now) refer specifically to the realm of Hypertension:

What is the difference between urgency and emergency?

Urgency denotes severe hypertension (HTN), typically with diastolic blood pressure (DBP) > 130 mmHg, without symptoms or evidence of end-organ damage. The term accelerated hypertension falls in this category, where retinal exudates and hemorrhages are often present.

Emergency is an acute, life-threatening elevation in BP with evidence of vascular injury + end-organ damage. The term malignant hypertension falls in this category, typified by papilledema.

According these folks, Emergency is more of an urgency than Urgency. I can accept that if someone else finds me some more evidence. That's all for now, penis pumps.