Oh the Irony!

Being a writer (...shut up) a literary element I'm pretty much forced to work with is irony. It's really unavoidable, especially since it's so popular these days. Then again, irony has always been popular, but each hoards its irony like a dirty little secret underneath their bed in a poster box. Irony is sort of like music. Sure your parents had music, but you have your music, which is far superior, and much more music-ish.

So we walk around very smug with our irony, thinking we're so bloody brilliant, which we might in fact just be. As for me, I have an odd relationship with irony. It's a very nice concept, and I respect it very much, and try to use it every so often. But sometimes I wish irony took the form of a person so I could grab him by his lapels and drive him against the wall, and maybe give him a few slams to wipe that little grin off his face. I say "him" because I picture irony as a tall, skinny, Caucasian man who has a bit too much hair, wears too-large light brown suits with gray shirts, and has the habit of not quite looking you in the face when he's speaking.

But this would most likely result in an awkward situation the following morning at work, riding the elevator to work with him. We'd probably be silent for a while until I asked him sheepishly if he could help me with a piece I was writing that day. Then he'd say something like he'd try to get back to me after he finished working on a project with Hyperbole. Then he'd send it in late, and the person editing my draft would tell me that it was just unfortunate.

Of course, it might not be irony's fault alone, but rather in the people that use him so much. Two-bit satirists, alternate weekly editors, and amateur film makers. Smiling underneath their great tengu masks of anonymity, possessing the world's most selective memories, boxing with wax figures behind screens,  and declaring victory after shooting a few paintballs at monuments. Watching movies about the corruption of the system on their 5-Disk Sony DVD player, and throwing the word hypocrite around like it was a paper airplane. No Darth Gregg, the millionaire who exploits the labor of poor families in Indonesia is not a hypocrite, he's an (this space for rent). Maybe in all your years as an English major, you would have taken the time to look in a dictionary between matches of "Blades of Steel" on the NES.

But I'm being harsh. They're responding to the world the way they know how to. I just wish they would stop using such a fragile crutch. You've got to use irony sparingly, or, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, it will become so popular, no one will use it anymore.