It may win the All Time Millenial Award for Maximal Irony.
posted by Corduroy on Nov 18, 2009 - 33 comments

Lash Out and Cover Up: Owen Hatherley in Radical Philosophy on "Keep Calm and Carry On," manufactured nostalgia for austerity, and modernist kitsch, in its authoritarian and ironically adapted forms. [more inside]
posted by RogerB on Sep 16, 2009 - 31 comments

The Young Conservative Anthem. Meet Stiltz & Serious C, Dartmouth rappers.
posted by CunningLinguist on May 29, 2009 - 46 comments

How to Impress a Hipster [more inside]
posted by azarbayejani on May 17, 2009 - 162 comments

Special 3-page edition of Harper’s Index: A retrospective of the Bush era.
posted by Non Prosequitur on Jan 13, 2009 - 37 comments

And the LORD said to Moses, "Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, 'This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!'"
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Oct 31, 2008 - 60 comments

Israeli court approves construction of Museum of Tolerance. With a design by starchitecht Gehry, whats not to like? Well, for one, it is being built on an ancient Muslim burial site. [more inside]
posted by yonation on Oct 31, 2008 - 56 comments

Texas executes Mexican national who was denied consul visit. [more inside]
posted by mrducts on Aug 6, 2008 - 121 comments

There are many opinions about the nature of Irony. Some think it is having too many spoons. Sometimes it is found in far off places. However, closer to home, we now have an example of Recursive Irony. (YT)
posted by Lord_Pall on Aug 3, 2008 - 34 comments

Self-described 'culture-jammers' Adbusters identify the greatest threat to our way of life - the hipster. [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave on Aug 1, 2008 - 282 comments

Javier Grillo-Marxuach's PoMo spy-fi tv show, "The Middleman" (based on his eponymous comic book series) is in trouble -- ABC Family launched the show in late June with little fanfare in the 8 p.m. timeslot. After a strong start, ABC Family grew a little anxious about the show's PG-13 content and moved the show to 10 p.m. killing their under-18 audience share, if ever there was one. [more inside]
posted by vhsiv on Jul 26, 2008 - 34 comments

The Ripster phenomenon was identified back in 2006, and apparently, the movement has started to build momentum. I, for one, welcome our new rock-hard nerd overlords.
posted by SportsFan on Mar 31, 2008 - 118 comments

New York's Governor Eliot Spitzer (Wiki) has been linked to a high-class prostitution ring.
posted by griphus on Mar 10, 2008 - 280 comments

For the past 50 years, The British have made some of the funniest Comedy TV Shows. Come inside for A Video Chronology of The History of British TV Comedy. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis on Jan 24, 2008 - 96 comments

"Venezuela and Cuba have both asked that Posada be extradited, but an immigration judge in September 2005 ruled he could not be sent to either country out of concern he might face torture there." Luis Posada is a free man today. A graduate of the notorious School of the Americas, he is wanted for various acts of terrorism in a number of Latin American countries.
posted by mullingitover on May 8, 2007 - 38 comments

'Americans don't do irony' : an essay by Simon Pegg
posted by dash_slot- on Feb 10, 2007 - 91 comments

Lines from Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic", modified to actually be ironic.
posted by w0mbat on Jan 13, 2007 - 84 comments

Best wishes for a Christmas of peace and joy and a New Year of triumph over terrorism! from the U.S. Citizens Committee to Keep and Bear Arms, a.k.a. "the Common Sense Gun Lobby".

"If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in His name, He'd never stop throwing up." -- Woody Allen (Hannah And Her Sisters, 1986)
posted by Quiplash on Dec 25, 2006 - 45 comments

Art of Bleeding: The first time Mr. Outerspace died, it was to serve the greater good of cleaning the Cacophony Society's gutters of useless hangers-on and lazybones. The second time, it seemed to serve no purpose at all. Some of us are hoping the third time will be the charm. You might not think you know his art, but you do. RIP Peter Geiberger, 1979-2006.
posted by Scram on Sep 22, 2006 - 4 comments

Ironic Newsfilter; Chocolate manufacturing giant Nestle is to buy weight loss company Jenny Craig for $600 million. (NYT Link).
posted by Effigy2000 on Jun 19, 2006 - 41 comments

Eroica. Film director Andrzej Munk’s tragic death at age thirty-nine might have formed the plot for one of his own darkly sardonic works: a Polish Jew and an active resistance worker during the war, he was returning home from shooting his film Passenger at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1961 when an oncoming truck struck his car. He left behind only four feature films, but his influence was prodigious. As one of the key figures of the postwar “Polish School” of filmmaking, along with Wajda and Kawalerowicz, he helped to shape a vision that broke with the official social realist optimism of Eastern-bloc dogma and cast a skeptical eye on official notions of heroism, nationalism, and life in the Stalinist-occupied state. Mentor to Roman Polanski and Jerzy Skolimowski, his influence can be felt even in the films of a later generation of Polish filmmakers — directors like Zanussi and Kieslowski. More inside.
posted by matteo on Dec 7, 2005 - 7 comments

Michael Brown starts Disaster Planning Firm After doing a "heck of a job", the former Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association teaches others how to avoid stepping in shit.
posted by null terminated on Nov 25, 2005 - 27 comments

Oxymoronic much?
posted by mnemosyne on Jun 6, 2005 - 38 comments

A Pro-Evil Mutual Fund? For centuries, the argument in favor of laissez-faire capitalism has been simple. If you step back and let businesses pursue profit without restraint, legitimate needs and desires will be taken care of in an efficient manner. Moral concerns, the argument goes, are better handled by consumers and investors voting with dollars than governments coercing with legislation. Now, Cato Institute scholar and Fox News columnist Steven Milloy is worried ideologically motivated investors might be putting business profits in danger. He's forming a new mutual fund to fight their leftist influence.
posted by verb on Apr 8, 2005 - 33 comments

Mexican Man Kills, Cooks and Eats His Lover
Cannibalism (Wiki) is chic. With the consensual cannibalism of Armin Meiwes and a psychosexual facet as well as arguments about the religious aspects as well as how religion stopped cannibalism along with some tips, "The natives told Father Zumbohm that the fingers and toes were the choicest morsels." And now even a Donner Party Cookbook (no, no recipes on how to serve man). Can cannibalism be considered as taboo as it once was?

Of course, there are bound to be humorous sites, movies and even a musical. And heck, why not even a Letterman Top Ten?
posted by fenriq on Dec 16, 2004 - 54 comments

Harvard Weblogs: How to Avoid Flamewars, by Dave Winer.
posted by Hackworth on Jun 29, 2004 - 49 comments

Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz known also as Witkacy, was an absurdist playwright, a painter, a philosopher, an aesthetician, a novelist, and generally a prolific artist since about the age of 8. He lived from 1885 to 1939, and often has just the right mix of sharp wit, deep insight, and self-reflective irony.
posted by mdn on May 29, 2004 - 7 comments

the city of najaf is no longer under coalition control, ahead of an important pilgrimage. the secretary of state: "people who are considering engaging in the pilgrimage ought to very carefully calculate because we're not in a position to provide protection."
posted by coyroy on Apr 7, 2004 - 31 comments

The Bushiad and The Idyossey. "Narrative epic poems of 24 chapters each, The Bushiad and The Idyossey use satire and irony to cover events during nine months from December 2002 through September 2003, and were inspired by events as they occurred. Homer would recognize the tale." But where's Hercubush?
posted by homunculus on Apr 4, 2004 - 8 comments

Er ... thanks, just what I, er, wanted. Hate the sweater you were given for Christmas? It could have been worse ... far, far ,worse.
posted by essexjan on Dec 28, 2003 - 48 comments

New Wrinkles For an Age Old Chore ... A new sport is sweeping the world. It's an outdoor activity that combines the excitement of an extreme sport with the satisfaction of a freshly ironed shirt. It's only requirements: an iron, board and some laundry ... and ropes, harnesses, helmets, boyancy aids, parachutes etc .... Invented in 1997 by Philip Shaw from from Leicester, England, chapters are popping up all over and under. (From a WSJ article quoted here.)
posted by Jos Bleau on Oct 2, 2003 - 0 comments

Safety Patrol, take note: It's back-to-school time all over the world, including the West Bank.
posted by mr_crash_davis on Sep 1, 2003 - 6 comments

Irony in a Nutshell. Not an O'Reilly publication, but you can use it to teach yourself Irony in 24 hours. For dummies. And a reference for the rest of us.
posted by weston on Jun 28, 2003 - 27 comments

German in court over 'ironic' message board comment. I think we should talk about this. Very... carefully...
posted by Pretty_Generic on Jan 7, 2003 - 61 comments

Misunderstanding the joke.
posted by zedzebedia on Apr 18, 2002 - 15 comments

Scientists will tell you that Hydrogen is the most common element in all of nature. Me, I think the scientists have it all wrong. I think the universe is really made out of irony
posted by BentPenguin on Mar 12, 2002 - 9 comments

Niki Lauda, three-time world F1 champion, took the wheel of a new Jaguar Formula 1 car after claiming that today's F1 cars could be driven "by a monkey". Unfortunately for Niki, after shooting off his mouth like that, the results were, well, predictable.
posted by mr_crash_davis on Jan 13, 2002 - 12 comments

The ever catty Michael Musto (of The Village Voice) first gives us a sad look at Windows on the World's Executive Chef Michael Lomonaco and the great loss he sufferred. But what makes this column linkable, I think, is Musto's defense of preserving irony in the face of those who declare it dead: "I'm also going borderline thanks to all the columnists, editors, and talk show hosts declaring the end of irony (excuse me, but a wry, mocking sense of perspective is the hallmark of a free society), and saying that what they do is now trivial and irrelevant and they're having trouble continuing. Funny, they did their trivial s**t all through the AIDS crisis and other globe-threatening horrors, but now they're thinking twice? Well, I've always thought my subject matter was smallish and specialized, but I approach it with utter seriousness, because it matters to me and aims to provide relief, entertainment, and sometimes even information to others. If I could cure cancer or reattach limbs, I would, but this is what I do, and in the face of threats to our liberty, it's crucial to seize back the chance to do what we do! Besides, there are enough people beating their chests, waving the flag, and screaming, 'Get the bastards!'"
posted by adrober on Sep 26, 2001 - 12 comments

Scott Adams helps to design the ultimate cubicle. Oh, the irony. According to The Register,
"So has Adams sold out, or what?
On closer inspection, this whimsical parlay could well be a physical extension of the Dilbert strip. How else to account for the 'sun indicators', or as the blurb says:-'Regardless of the weather outside, sunlight travels across your space, glowing and fading with the rhythm of the day.' Yes, to remind you of the futility of your miserable, rabbit hutch existence, of course."
posted by jetgrrl on Aug 30, 2001 - 9 comments

The state of Minnesota decides to fight distracted drivers by putting up billboards. Next up: A new state committee to check programs for irony before they're made public.
posted by mrbula on Aug 21, 2001 - 7 comments

``I want to thank Hitler,'' Mr. Brooks said, ``for being such a funny guy on stage.'' I just don't get this. I never got Hogan's Hero's. I never got Life is Beautiful. Comedy riding on the back of atrocity on any terms trivializes the atrocity. How can so many find this acceptable, to say nothing of funny?
posted by ParisParamus on Jun 4, 2001 - 104 comments

Covergent irony, perhaps, maybe intentional commentary. So the New York Times writes an article about the relationship between globalization and commercial messages, particularly the insertion of globalization itself into the commercials and advertisements. The headline: "Globalization on Film: Message in a Coca-Cola Can." Guess what was in the advertisement to the right of the story. Right: a Diet Coke advert. The ad rotates on re-load, so here's a screenshot, 36k.
posted by Mo Nickels on Mar 23, 2001 - 2 comments

The Museum of E-Failure. "May history not soon forget the hell we've all been through."
posted by fraying on Jan 30, 2001 - 24 comments

Irony is out; sincerity is in. Is it true? Is irony dead? Is sarcasm passé? Have we finally snarked out once and for all? If so, what place will our beloved ironists (and sarcastinators) have in this new Age of Earnestness?
posted by Byun-o-matic on Nov 17, 2000 - 31 comments

This juxtaposition found at the Murky News is delicious.
posted by luke on Mar 17, 2000 - 2 comments