Alanis, This one's for you

So, if you are faithful readers of this blog (or have just familiarized yourself with the archives) you will know that I spent some time writing about 'irony' as inspired (and completely obliterated as a term of any meaning, whatsoever) by Alanis Morsette. I will not re-type all of those thoughts here. I will just summarize it briefly as:

What is irony? No, Alanis, that isn't ironic. It's just really bad luck. Is anything in my life ironic?

And uncertainty has hung over each of those questions. But today, by the end of this post, I think that I might be able to say....'maybe'. A more certain degree of uncertainty than I have allowed myself previously.

I am just going to power through this post with a series of thoughts/anecdotes. Some might appear ironic, and not be. Some might be ironic, but not appear to be. And some are not ironic--I just think they are funny.

1. Today, I saw an adult dressed as Paddington Bear. Bright blue trench coat, red hat. He/she was also wearing a yellow reflective vest, so he/she could have been Paddington Bear goes to work. (And it is even more fitting that he/she is unisex--I don't know if Paddington Bear is a boy or a girl. Also, this fits into that third category.)
2. The British take great pride in their 'gentlemen sports'. When I played cricket last year they always told us not to talk trash because it was a gentleman (or lady in my case) sport (insert profuse apologies for forgetting to include me, here). Then they would ask when the tea would be served. I don't think this is ironic, but it was certainly a paradox to be sitting in the Liverpool section when Liverpool got beat by Tottenham on Sunday. I know that creativity is part of what it means to be a gentleman (or at least a Renaissance man). And I guess singing in choirs is something that gentlemen do. So I guess there is something gentlemanly about how 'creatively' some of the words that I heard were being used, in one of the largest 'choirs' I have been around. Who knew that four letters could communicate so much? (I think this is just a paradox.)
3. Today, I got my textbook in the mail for the Spanish class that I will be taking next week. (That's right. I am going to learn the whole language in a week.) I can't find any English in the thing. I am not sure if that is because the whole thing is in Spanish (there is definitely a lot more Spanish than any book I have ever seen before) or because it is a German Spanish book. (Yeah, I'll let you think on that one for a while. And I think this might be ironic. But Alanis has muddled my brain so much that I can't be sure.)