Oxymorons, Paradoxes, And Contradictory Statements

An oxymoron is two or more words that contradict themselves (e.g. "poor little rich girl" or "living dead"). A paradox is a phrase that contradicts itself (e.g. "To make peace we must prepare for war"). A paradox is also used to descibe something that seems to be hypocritical.

Central theme

• (She Was A) Hotel Detective In The Future - Think about it ;)
• '85 Radio Special Thank You - This piece seems to have been an effort to create as many internally contradictory statements as possible; "We all sang a duet..." (How can more than two people sing a duet?), "...some vital link missing in the big picture..." (How can the big picture be missing anything?), and "...until they never let us out a full ten blocks later."
• Chaos By Design
• Courage The Cowardly Dog - If you've ever seen that show, you'd understand. --Jnelson09 19:21, 21 Oct 2005 (EDT) | Actually, this isn't contradictory, because even though Courage the Dog is actually cowardly, he does tend to have to save his ignorant owners from certain destruction on a regular basis. - Altik_0
• Cowtown - Cows do not live beneath the sea; if they did, they would surely drown within seconds.
• Dr. Evil
• Everything Right Is Wrong Again - "float upstream," "silent noise," "And now the song is over now" when the song isn't over yet
• The House At The Top Of The Tree - When you take into account the verse "And the reason there are no more chips / In the empty bag in your hand / Is that the crumpling sound of the empty bag / Makes the mice get mad" which obviously can't be true, the entire song actually couldn't happen at all.
• I Can't Hide From My Mind - How is it possible to separate your mind from yourself?
  • Isn't that more of a philosophical quandary than a paradox?
• Number Three - "There's only two songs in me and I just wrote the third." This song is a paradox in itself.
• Oblongs Theme - The whole song describes how terrible their life is, then ends with "in their happy glowing home." | it's not really a contradiction, if you've ever seen the TV show they're still happy even though one of them has only one good eye and some sort of mental defect, one of they is missing all their limbs, one is an alcoholic-smoker, one has some sort of growth on her head, and two of them are conjoined twins. ~Dr Doog
• Reprehensible - If he forgets everything in the morning, how can he be singing about it? Tutt 09:39, 10 Oct 2005 (EDT)MasterChivo

Briefly mentioned

• 32 Footsteps - "32 new moons shining in 32 skies" (new moons don't shine) - "32 lies my ears never saw when the floorboards gave way..." (You can't see with your ears)
• Ana Ng - "And the truth is we don't know anything"
• Birdhouse In Your Soul - "I'm your only friend/I'm not your only friend...," "but really I'm not actually your friend/But I am..."; "...filibuster diligently..."
• Cage And Aquarium - "Stealing back your best ideas" - As the your is not refering to the theif, how can you steal back something that never belonged to you?
• Cupid - If you killed yourself as somebody else, you wouldn't be killing yourself.
• D Is For Drums - "You see, I can't find my thinking cap, I think it's lost" If John couldn't find his thinking cap, how could he be able to think it's lost?
• The Day - "The day Marvin Gaye and Phil Ochs got married" - This fits, depending upon how you interpret it: either Marvin and Phil married each other, or Marvin and Phil each had a wife.
  • Shouldn't that be listed in Breaking the Law, not Oxymorons? ~ Anklepants
• Even Numbers - "You like French fries, but you don't like French fries. You've got socks on, but you don't have socks on. You're a girl, but you're a boy"
• Experimental Film - "The color of infinity inside an empty glass" - if the color of infinity (or anything, for that matter) were inside the glass, then the glass would not be empty.
• Fibber Island - The line "No one sings along" is echoed by back-up singers singing along.
• Fun Assassin - "Killing fun for kicks": killing fun for fun, in other words.
• Garden Of Eden - "We're gonna build a new old car"
• It Was A Very Good Year - "the square root of a negative number" is an imaginary number(i = square root of negative one), which a year could never be; also, "We would have sexual intercourse, while at the same time we would not have sexual intercourse".
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople) - "Old New York" -- Obviously an oxymoron. But the state song of New Hampshire was "Old New Hampshire" when I did my state report. ~Garnish
• London - "It's a secret between everyone and us"
• Mink Car - "Woke up in a beautiful dream": one doesn't wake up in a dream; additionally, "An "open" sign on an abandoned store" would be quite useless
• On The Drag - "I won't die until I'm dead" -- You can't be dead until you die.
• Sensurround - "Made the fakeness realistic"-- If it is fake, then it can't be real
• Shoehorn With Teeth - "People should get beat up for stating their beliefs" -- He's stating a belief while saying that.
• Sleeping In The Flowers - "Tell my boss that I've been fired": normally the boss would be doing the firing.
• Snowball In Hell - "Money's all broke, and food's going hungry"
• Spin The Country Dial - The guy even says he's a cultural paradox.
• Spiraling Shape - "Down, down, down you go" as the bass note inclines -- a musical oxymoron, similar to Fibber Island and Everything Right is Wrong Again
• Turtle Songs Of North America - "or it may sound to you like something that isn't a sound at all".
• Where Your Eyes Don't Go - "Its a nightmare that you'll never be discovering" How can you have a dream you'll never have?
• You're Watching... - "You're watching They Might Be Giants' Dial-A-Song" (Dial-A-Song is a purely auditory experience)

Honorable mentions

• Brainwashing Our Fighting Boys - If someone's been deprogrammed not to fight any more, then they would no longer be fighting boys.
• I Never Go To Work - When a John sings it, they're almost always at the studio or on stage, and that's doing their work.
• It's Not My Birthday - This fits, as long as it's sung on the singer's birthday.
• Particle Man - "Size of the entire universe man" - How could the universe contain something its own size? (One could, on the other hand take it literally to mean that Universe Man is the size of himself.)
• The Spine Surfs Alone (EP) - This was the companion EP to The Spine released at the same time, so The Spine wasn't alone.
• Village Gate Concert Promo - Linnell says he's not in the band They Might Be Giants.
• Weep Day - "I didn't write the words you hear me singing / I didn't sing the line before this one" - Unless one of the Johns wrote the first line and the other sang it, and the John who sang the second line, although sounds alike, was not the same John that sang the first line. ~ (actually, both Johns sing both lines)