Oh, really?

Ironic lyrics by Alanis Morissette manage irony in different levels and in all three common uses of it. Situational irony is present in some parts; when she starts the song and says that “an old man turned ninety-eight” it’s a good example of this, we all know that to be ninety-eight years old would be to already have a long life –plus, not much people gets to even reach the eighty years- so why to bother about an exaggeration of age? Unless you are going to show up with a nice thing like irony, it is not worth.

            Giving us a surprise, not for all cultures is a bad sign if it rains on your wedding day, according to an Italian saying: “Wet bride, lucky bride”. Yes, we can discard irony with this phrase –Some people sees beauty in things that others despise; but there’s more fragments of the song that seems to give us something different than irony, to get in a traffic jam when you already ran out of time to arrive to your work-place is not ironic, it’s sad and speaks for itself: You are a person with serious problems of commitment or you really need to plan your day’s schedule and be organized with your life; there is no way that you have committed when you signed your work contract ‘at-will’ and you are not professional as your contractor expected you to be –Seriously, come on.

            For many of you won’t seem to be ironic; but it is, and in some countries this is a fact. In Colombia was implemented a no-smoking sign on cigarettes boxes and a simple text that says “This is what happen to your teeth when you smoke” and a little and not nice photo of yellowed teeth in bad conditions; now, it’s surprising that Alanis was laughing about some stupid rules that will never work to stop the liver cancer or the growing percentage of population with asthma problems, it’s like government saying that marijuana is destructive and leads us to war against the entire world and the person who is saying it is smoking a pot –You probably would be with an ‘OMG’ face and  would think “Seriously?”.

            There is more to dig in and keep laughing or thinking about in some parts of the song; but the most ironic thing –and done on purpose, off course- is that Alanis keeps asking if it isn’t ironic, well: YES, IT IS IRONIC –same as writing it on capital letters, “don’t you think so?”