[Mark McDonnell]

Still, I hope God isn't an old, black dude with wandering hands or a tiny Canadian woman who doesn't know the meaning of the word 'ironic' either.

[John Isbell]

Yes, those things are true, though I don't really care whether Alanis Morrisette knows her lexicon - people generally don't know it - and the main thing to me in terms of a divine image is to change the channel from time to time. Folks gravitate to narrow universes, and it's the job of creators to yank them out of those. To change the channel from time to time. Otherwise, you get the phenomenon Julie describes.

Cheers,
John

[Mark McDonnell]

I know John, I agree. I was joking, should have added a smiley face. Also, apparently Alanis Morrisette is 5ft 4, which isn't tiny at all. She looks smaller.

As for this poem, I agree largely with what James said in post #16. I don't have a problem with 'we are men. men make fire in woods', but the ending comparison just seems, I don't know, unnecessary and adds nothing.

[John Isbell]

Smiley faces are cool.

Cheers,
John

PS b/c I can't resist. I believe they originated in Germany in the anti-nuclear power movement. Those little yellow smiley faces started showing up all over Europe on badges in the late 70s. The things I tell my German classes.

[Julie Steiner]

I feel so sorry for Alanis Morrisette. She's spent the past twenty years being schooled incessantly by pedants about the true meaning of "ironic." I'd say she's got a pretty good grasp of the concept now.

Gasp, John, do you mean that totally, totally realistic Forrest Gump scene was inaccurate? Perish the thought.

(You might actually be conflating the smiley with the nuclear disarmament symbol, which features a juxtaposition of the semaphore signals for N and D, and which is widely referred to as the "peace sign.")

Wouldn't it be ironic if I didn't know what a pedant I am?

[Matt Q]

The origin of the smiley, according to Reader's Digest anyway, and Wikipedia agrees. It doesn't get truer than that.

Pedantry was so much more work before Google

[Roger Slater]

I think she knew very well from the start that she was using "ironic" incorrectly. It was part of the voice and the humor of the song, an irony unto itself. It's part of what makes the song so successful. A feature, not a bug.

[Mark McDonnell]

Ha. Julie, yes, sorry for being the latest in a long line of pedants labouring under the impression that they're being original and/or amusing by making that point. Ironically, I knew I sounded like an arse as soon as I posted. Or is that ironic? It is tricky…

Roger, I'm not buying that, though. Or, hold on, are you being ironic?

[John Isbell]

Thanks for the links, Julie and Matt! Julie, your link has this detail: "Working with New York button manufacturer NG Slater, some 50 million happy face badges were produced by 1972." Which may have been a breakthrough moment. So that's the end of that story.
Here's a link to the Atomkraft badge, released in 1975 and as the site says, "ubiquitous worldwide" soon thereafter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiling_Sun

Cheers,
John

[Julie Steiner]

Huh! I've never seen the Atomkraft Smiling Sun before. Maybe I'm too young. (As a fifty-year-old, it gives me inordinate pleasure to say that.) More likely, the fact that my family moved from the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area to the absolute boondocks of the Mojave Desert in 1976 tests the limits of the Smiling Sun's ubiquity. The badges were certainly not around anymore when I returned to the Bay Area to attend UC Berkeley for six years in the late 80s and early 90s. Thanks for sharing it, John.

And I think those of us still in the thread may have just set some sort of record here for wandering the farthest off topic, in multiple directions. High fives all around! (And Matt, we might actually be able to get Google to sponsor this thread. I know a guy....)