Ironic (Alanis Morissette)

Language: Russian

For a while, as a joke, every time someone said "ironic" in my presence, I would come back with, "Yeah. It's like rain on your wedding day." Not too many people caught that I was mocking them, the song, and whatever they were talking about, simultaneously. Or maybe they did and they were just being really subtle about hating me. Of course, I did this whether people were using the word correctly or not, which may have confused things. (Oh, come on. Like you don't have idiosyncrasies. It's better than what I said whenever somebody got naked in the middle of a busy street: "Thank you, India.")

The sad truth is, Alanis Morissette has a lot more influence on the actual usage of words (and thus, on the contents of future dictionaries) than pedants like myself. Ironic, save in academic circles, now means things like disappointing, surprising, counterintuitive, unfortunate or co-incidental. That's the bad news.

The good news is, there's now an opening for a neologism that means what ironic used to mean, though it'll take maybe twenty to forty years before ironic is completely useless, so until the new word is established we're all going to be saying things like "What do you mean, 'ironic?' Like, ironic ironic, or co-incidental ironic?" and "How is that ironic? Oh, you mean ironic like rain on your wedding day. Gotcha." a lot in casual conversation. So, you word-coiner types, be thinking about that.

Which by the way, since I'm here: Morissette has since declared that the only ironic thing about "Ironic" is that there's no irony in it, with the implication that this was the plan all along. This is similar to the way religious leaders try to salvage inconsistencies in scriptures by saying something paradoxical yet meaningless, and should be ignored.

-Jessi

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Old ninety-eight, turned by a man.
It did it ironically. (Win the lottery,
and next day it'll be a black fly in your chardonnay.)
Which pardon will be the condemned men's camera?
2 minutes later, it'll be ironic, don't you think?

As rain on your wedding day,
which'll be a free ride.
You'll already pay them; it'll be good.
They didn't exactly listen to you; one would think,
it'd do to calculate the game.

Mr. Bezopasn was frightened to fly; he'd packed his trunk,
he'd kissed his little-ones good-bye,
he awaited his entire damn life in order to accept that flight,
and the plane broke. "This was in the best way, but it's not glorious --" Did he think it,
and isn't it ironic?

As rain on your wedding day,
which'll be a free ride.
You'll already pay them; it'll be good.
They didn't exactly listen to you; one would think,
it'd do to calculate a good life.

It has a funny road that steals up on you when you think,
"All is approved, and everything goes correctly,"
and life has a funny road to help you outside when you think,
"Did it all go incorrectly, and does it all blow up in your side?"

Street traffic congestion in the when you'll already be last, and
no-dinner-jacket-breach sign on your cigarettes,
they're as 10 thousand spoons, when everything you want is at their knife.
They meet the man of my dreams, and after this, they meet his most beautiful husbands and it'll be with irony, don't you think?
I think a little too ironic, actually, yeah.

As rain on your wedding day,
which'll be a free ride.
You'll already pay them; it'll be good.
They didn't exactly listen to you; one would think,
it'd do to calculate a good life.

It has a funny road steal up on you,
and life has a funny road to help you outside.