Oxymorons by Steven Carter
Posted on May 23, 2009
Filed Under Aphorisms | 5 Comments
A truncated and dialectical form of the aphorism proper, kind of like the crushed cube a car becomes after it has been compressed in a junkyard, the oxymoron retains the paradox and provocation of the longer saying. Steven Carter (see his parables here; a posting about his aphorisms was lost in a catastrophic failure of the site a while back…) offers plenty of oxymorons to ogle in Little House of Oxymorons, which he describes as “a supplement to The New Devil’s Dictionary, a two-volume ’sequel’ to Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary of a century ago”:
Scheduled departure: Get to the airport early. Right, so that your wait won’t exceed more than three-and-a-half hours.
Online learning: Online learning is to learning what phone sex is to sex.
Scheduled arrival: See “Scheduled Departure.”
Figuratively speaking: Literally speaking! “It’s literally raining cats and dogs,” exclaims a local weatherman.
Free will: Ambrose Bierce—Free will, O mortals, is a dream / Ye all are chips upon a stream.
Conventional wisdom: True wisdom is unconventional, to say the least, ever and always.
Considered opinion: Opinion.
Reality programming: Contemporary TV offerings, as tedious and stupid as they are highly orchestrated and edited.
Parkway: George Carlin—“Why do we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?”
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Free will: What you need before you can say you haven’t got it.
There is no bad TV, only bad reception.
I recall (upon reflection) that…this oxymoron blog reminds me of what an old friend of mine (also one who spouted “amateur” aphorisms as he went along his merry way, and which I often recorded as I went mine) once said in response to one of my more witty remarks (one which could have been slightly oxymoronic in nature and that I probably made up ‘accidentally on purpose’ on the spur of the moment) which was: “If you don’t exist you have no meaning––it’s called nothing!” To which his reply was: “That’s a good one, Rodney…God does move in mysterious ways! Hard-boiled eggs and nuts! You had nothing better to do and you thought you’d come and bother me! That’s a real oxymoronic one – but I like it!” Now that’s what oxymorons are really for: to get up your nose when you’d rather expect better than that somehow…
He came, he saw, he diagnosed.
The night always wins.
Mediums fascinated the 19th century, media the 20th.
Intuition-the feeling you know something when you know nothing.
Intuition is the only bit of luck that is known about it.