Ironic

Today, as I was driving the company truck around - a massive Ford F-150 - Alanis Morisette’s “Ironic” came on the radio. I don’t think I’ve actually heard this song since High School, and remembered liking it then. As with many nostalgia inducing songs of my “youth,” I turned up the radio. Now it is nothing new that the main form of Irony in her song is that it is a song about Irony that fails to illustrate any true examples of Irony. This isn’t entirely true, however, as the third stanza about “Mr Play It safe” being afraid to fly and then being a passenger on a plane that crashes is, in fact quite ironic. One does need the outside knowledge that airplane travel is touted as the “safest form of travel,” but we’ll give Alanis the benefit of a doubt on that one.

The rest of the ironically non-ironic examples that she gives are all pretty much just unfortunate turns of events - not necessarily irony. But they can be, with a little help - which is why I’m here - to ironize those amazingly erudite lyrics (that’s verbal irony). The names of characters who have suffered irony have been used to erase all forms of subtlety.

Oedipus had reached the end of his life. He was celebrating his 98th birthday, and was deathly ill. To overcome the illness, he would need a very expensive surgical procedure. In his final moments, he called his daughter Antigone to his side.
“My darling,” he said, “take this 5 dollar bill and get me a powerball ticket. Then maybe I’ll be able to leave my family something useful behind, since I gambled away all of your inheritance. Just be sure to play my lucky numbers.”
Antigone, realizing that this was a useless gesture, and harboring a deep loathing of the gambling that had eaten up the family riches, kept the 5 dollars and bought him a candy bar instead. She kept the change.
The next day, the numbers were announced. His lucky numbers were the winning lottery numbers. He was so excited about finally winning the lottery that his heart gave out and he died.

Romeo was a tyrant king who was notorious for inventing absurd methods of execution. One of his favourites was death by spooning. It was similar to stoning, except, instead of stones, spoons were thrown at the person until he was slowly bludgeoned to death. When Romeo was informed that he had just finished a glass of Chardonnay that had a black fly in it, and was not made aware of it until it was too late, he ordered the cook to be spooned. The cook, having spent all his life around various types of flat ware, was able to dodge the deadly spoons. Fed up with the ineffectual nature of spooning in this case, Romeo told the cook to give him his knife. The cook, remaining loyal even upon threat of death, gave his knife to the king, who stabbed the loyal cook with it.
Years later the king met a beautiful woman, Desdemona, who tamed him and made him a much more benevolent leader. They got married, but it rained on their wedding day throwing the king into a rage, causing him to be 2 minutes too late to pardon a man he had sentenced to death earlier in his tyrannical career. Because of this, Desdemona called off the wedding. The compounding events of the innocent man’s death, and losing the love of his life caused him to sink into an irreversible depression. Unable to deal with the depression, he killed himself…with a spoon.

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I’ve got nothing for “free ride when you’ve already paid,” “traffic jam when you’re already late,” or “no-smooo ooo king sign on your cigarette break.” Not very ironic…don’t you think?

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Ok, ok, ok. I know. It’s a weak post. I haven’t posted in a while, and thought this would make for a funny post. I realize now that it isn’t funny, nor that creative. But without the stupid posts, how would you appreciate my posts that are much more brilliant. Think about that.

~ by aeqvitas on July 16, 2008.