Meaningless Numbers

There are a few things I've wanted to write blog posts about recently. But when it came down to the business of typing things - transmuting ideas into, you know, pixels or whatever - I hit a wall. It's a metaphorical wall, but no less obstructive.

So I'm hoping I can sidle around the wall, like a predatory sidler, by discussing my thought processes as they happen.

I imagine the metaphorical wall springs up as a barrier to me genuinely discussing something. If my blog posts are off-the-cuff and on-the-fly and apropos-of-little, I'm immune to criticism. It doesn't matter if my argument is faulty, or if I abandon my train of thought half way through, because it's off-the-cuff and on-the-fly and apropos-of-little.

But if I'm genuinely trying to express something, I feel I should work hard on it, structure it properly and proofread it for typos. But I don't want to do that. So in the end I forget about my feelings for Palestine and just start writing a dialogue between a vowel and and a trowel.

Vowel: Ooo!


Trowel: What?


Vowel: I... I...


Trowel: Just because you're a vowel, doesn't mean you can only speak in vowels.


Vowel: Ah.


Trowel: Good. Great. Well done.

Anyway, I don't want to write about anything serious today. I want to write about one-liners.

One-liners are short jokes. I don't know how short. A line's worth, I suppose. But how long is a line? It's exactly the same length as a piece of string of comparable dimensions.

Before doing stand-up last week, I was looking for some new one-liners to put in my act. I thought they might break things up and support my other material, which is often two to nine lines long.

The trouble is, I don't really like doing one-liners.

That may sound odd coming from someone who tweets them all the time, filling up page after page, wearing down the resistance of even the most hardy joke-lover. Even the ones I archive on this blog could fill up a phone book.

Remember phone books? Those were the days.

Remember books?

But I'm not too keen on them in stand-up. There are comedians whose act is almost totally composed of one-liners (Jimmy Carr and Tim Vine are the first that come to mind), and though I can appreciate their craftsmanship, I get a bit tired of them after a while.

The best way to use a one-liner is by weaving it into your act in such a way as it's not signposted as a joke, but just contributes to the funniness of someone's material.

And I'm not good at doing that. Whenever I drop a one-liner into my stand-up, it stands out and I think ruins the rhythm of the routine. Possibly. Or maybe I'm underselling myself. I'm sure there's a way to blend everything together (anecdotes, conversations, surreal detours, mistakes and one-liners) seamlessly. But I haven't quite worked it out yet.

The trouble with one-liners is that you don't have a safety blanket. If you're communicating an idea, or something that indicates your character, what you're saying is still of value. People might be appreciating it, or be interested in it, even if they don't laugh.

If people don't laugh at your one-liner, that bit has failed.

So I'd rather not do them. But I do keep writing them on Twitter. And it's a shame to waste material, even if it's not material you're particularly proud of.

(That's not to say I'm not proud of any of my tweets. I like some of them a lot. But only the ones that I think (wrongly) that no-one else could have thought of.)

I've archived my tweets on a big spreadsheet, and have sorted them by quality. This has taken a long time.

Also, because of the limits of the program I use, I've annoyingly missed all my tweets from 9 July to 27 Oct 2010. I'm sure there was some GENIUS written then, and it will never be seen again. Like the lost technology of Inca golden helicopter parties.

The statistics on 28 July (just before my gig) were:

Around 7600 tweets in total

3879 of these I've identified as "jokes"

847 of those are further identified as "quite funny jokes"

And 95 of those are "potential stand-up jokes"

This last category aren't necessarily the most funny, but the ones that are best communicated verbally.

I think 3879 jokes is pretty good. It's probably closer to 4000 now.

I've been thinking about what to do with them all. A lot of them are rubbish, but there are some I'm quite pleased with.

As I don't want to use them in stand-up, they might just end up sitting on my computer.

I just looked through some of my "quite funny jokes" for an example. And they are exactly that. Quite funny.

E.g.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. I mean, statistically there must be. Denmark's pretty big.

Giant Einstein? I suppose you think that's big and clever...


There's a newspaper maze near our house, but I'm trying not to read too much into it.

So it's probably not worth concerning myself with them.

In fact, this whole post has been a waste of everyone's time. I haven't even reached any conclusions. It was just giving you some numbers.

I should have gone with my instincts and stopped writing. I should have continued the trowel/vowel dialogue. I could have introduced Simon Cowell to proceedings.

I'm going to post a video now, because it will make me feel like this hasn't been a complete disaster.