You DON’T Think

April 18th, 2004 Posted in 2004

For some reason Alanis Morrisette’s ‘Ironic’ song came up recently in a conversation, concerning Alanis’s tenuous grasp of irony in her lyrics. It’s a pretty dead horse as comedic premises go, so I didn’t flog any examples. I just googled the topic so I could find one of the ten thousand essays currently raking her over the coals for it that I could forward along.

In doing so, I found an article that’s unintentionally ten times funnier than its subject matter. The author’s one of those gratingly annoying people who somehow only seem to pop up on the Internet: Brainiac, The Internet Genius. Among Brainiac’s characteristics:

A) thinks he’s the only person on the planet with the ability to construct thoughts, and sees his disdain for retarded sitcoms as irrefutable evidence of his frightening intelligence. Is convinced he is only person on planet to have “seen through” the idiocy of The Hogan Family.

Example from article: “Who would’ve thought Alanis could get away with such illogical lyrics? Given the general population’s blind desire for a catchy tune and lack of critical thinking… it figures.”

B) believes everything he writes is a flawless prism of logic, and unanimously supported by his lessers.

Example from article: “This may be true, Alanis, but why should I believe you as I have demonstrated your complete lack of credibility?”

C) because someone once wrote *lol* to a comment of his at Tarantino Fan Forum, thinks he’s really really funny.

I’d forgive the first two if the last one weren’t so painful. To give but one example of his cutting wit, when Alanis sings “and yeah I really do think,” he attacks with a devastating “Well Alanis, you are wrong and frankly I believe that you really don’t think.”

Pow-zoom. If I was Alanis I’d have to change my name to The Red Face, because I’d be so embarrassed it’d be my distinguishing feature for the rest of my life.

PS—among the publications listed on the author’s website is a research paper he wrote for a virology journal entitled “Efficient replication of bovine viral diarrhea virus subgenomic replicons”. If I was Alanis Morrisette, I think a fitting comeback to his scathing essay on her song would be: “Okay. So maybe it’s not ironic. At least I’m not trying to clone cow diarrhea, genius.”