Word gets around

I was fascinated to read the other day that somebody (or somebodies) has/have compiled a list of the world’s most highbrow jokes. That is to say, jokes that require a fair amount of brainpower to appreciate them – ones that wouldn’t be appreciated by people who think The Only Way is Essex is a documentary, or anyone aspiring to appear on the Jeremy Kyle show.

In fairness, most of the jokes in the shortlist went straight over my head (including the one about aviation, boom boom), but I thought a few of them bore repeating.

1. Did you hear about the man who got cooled to absolute zero? He’s 0K now.
2. When I heard that oxygen and magnesium hooked up, I was like OMg
3. A Roman walks into a bar, holds up two fingers, and the barman says:  “Five beers, then?”
4. How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A fish.
5. A photon checks into a hotel and the porter asks him if he has any luggage. The photon replies: “No, I’m travelling light.”

Now I didn’t come up with this blog simply to regurgitate a bunch of jokes I found online (really, I didn’t), but rather because it raises the interesting concept of when a joke is funny and when it isn’t. Conversationally, few things are worse than a joke that falls flat – the slight pause, the knitting together of eyebrows, and then the audience’s lips gradually forming to utter four immortal words that start with “I”, end with “it”, and collectively puncture not just the joke itself but also the wider ambience of the moment. Brave indeed is the man who risks a joke on a first date, since a defective punchline can basically knacker an entire relationship before it’s had a chance to get started.

However, it is fascinating how jokes can elicit polar reactions even among a group of supposed peers. The PFA awards earlier this year was a fine case in point, when American comic Reginald D Hunter made an expletive-laden speech with numerous racist epithets thrown in. Hunter is black, although whether that makes his repeated use of the N-word acceptable is another argument for another day. The more righteous PFA members were appalled as the air gradually turned blue, but the vast majority of the audience were in stitches. On a more personal level, I fondly recall a good friend recounting a tale of watching a comedy programme alongside two devoutly Christian friends, and slowly realising with mounting horror that he was the only person howling with laughter at a particularly offensive/clever/rude/imaginative (delete as appropriate) religious jibe. One man’s meat, and all that.

The obvious solution to such quandaries is to tell only jokes that nobody in their right minds could find offensive. You know the sort: “A horse walks into a bar. Ouch – it was an iron bar”. Unfortunately, these jokes are usually palpably unfunny, which rather defeats the whole point. If you opted instead for: “A horse walks into a bar, the barman asks ‘why the long face’, and the horse replies ‘it’s a birth defect’”, you narrow the pool of people who will respond in the desired way, but those who do will provide you with a far more satisfying reaction.

With Edinburgh fringe season starting on Friday, this is a good time of year to take stock of how we define humour. No doubt most of the comedians who perform will be quite good, a few will be brilliant, some will miss the mark by a mile, and Tim Vine will win an award for the funniest joke of the Festival once again. However, when you find yourself squatting inelegantly on a rickety tea chest, in the basement of a pub down some dodgy wynd off the Canongate, waiting for a complete stranger to brighten your day by being hilarious, remember one thing. If you don’t get the joke, it doesn’t mean it’s not funny.

I fought the law (and the law won)

Many years ago, as a budding adult, I dabbled with law as a subject and briefly considered it as a career. I was initially attracted by the Latin phraseology and case-law precedents, before being repulsed by the absurdly long hours and the underlying principle that everyone says black is black until some half-dead fop in a wig says it’s actually grey, and then everyone starts saying black is grey instead. You might as well write opposing rules on either side of a thousand playing cards, chuck them all in the air, and declare that whatever lands face-side up is now the law of the land.

I gave up on law as a career quite quickly, but the recent receipt of a legal missive has brought its labyrinthine nature back into my mind. To condense a long story into a blog post, I was asked to sign a contract document from a copywriting client, and a couple of excerpts from this document caught my eye as being at best laboriously verbose, and at worst completely baffling. And bear in mind that I’m smarter than the average bear when it comes to translating this sort of stuff – I make a lucrative living out of reducing complex topics into easily-digestible bite-sized chunks of copywriting.

If, for any reason, the Company becomes liable to pay, or shall pay, any such taxes, the Company shall be entitled to deduct from any amounts payable to the Consultant pursuant to this Agreement (including, for the avoidance of doubt any amounts prospectively payable) all amounts so paid or required to be paid by it and, to the extent that any taxes so paid or required to be paid by the Company exceeds the amount payable by the Company to the Consultant pursuant to this Agreement, the Consultant shall forthwith pay to or reimburse the Company with an amount equal to such excess.

Not bad, eh? Eight commas and 103 words, all fighting for breathing space in a single sentence. However, that paragraph is worthy of an award from the Plain English Campaign compared to this example, from the next page of the document:

Each provision of this agreement shall be construed separately and (save as otherwise expressly provided herein) none of the provisions hereof shall limit or govern the extend, application or construction of any other of them and, notwithstanding that any provision of this agreement may prove to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions of this agreement shall continue in full force and effect.

Doesn’t that simply translate as “this agreement is binding unless it isn’t”? If that is the message it’s conveying, why does it occupy a 61-word sentence, when I’ve condensed its essence into seven words? Surely the remaining 54 words aren’t required purely to prevent people finding loopholes they can exploit? Perhaps someone was being paid by the word, or maybe they were trying to confuse idiots (in which case, job done). Regardless of the reasons behind such unnecessary verbosity, documents like this underline why I probably made a good decision dropping law as an academic subject, and concentrating on English instead. It isn’t just Latin phraseology that might as well be a different language when it comes to translating the letters of the law.

Conspiracy of one

Well, dear reader (note the deliberate use of the singular), I’m sorry to report that the theory I espoused in my last blog worked about as well as a wheelchair in an electromagnet factory, and I did not record a new visitor record for last Thursday’s exploratory post. Espousing religion is clearly not the way to make this blog an internationally-read online tome, unless I really crank up the pressure and dedicate an entire blog to chanting the names of various deities.

With that in mind - Jehovah Jehovah Jehovah Allah Jehovah Jehovah Vishnu Jehovah Krishna Oankar Jehovah Waheguru Jehovah Buddha Jehovah Ram Odin Zeus Jehovah Lemmy Jehovah [repeat until you’ve got bored reading this toss and moved onto the Independent website instead]

Audience of one

We are now over halfway through 2013, and that means I have written precisely 19 blogs for this site, not including number 20, which you are currently reading but I have yet to finish at the time of writing because I’m still writing it. Interestingly, even though a reasonable number of people read each new entry, I’ve yet to receive a single comment on this page, although in truth, I consider that to be a blessing. The last thing I really want is Disgusted of Bogside ranting about the multiple use of commas (which I pre-emptively apologised for in my very first blog back in January), or some spammer posting a link to www.randyvicargerbils.com, which I’m then unable to remove from the page, thus condemning my pristine blog to display a spunk stain of spam for evermore. If you want to slag me off, Twitter will do fine @G75Media #shamelessselfpublicist #igotretweetedbythewifeofbonjoviskeyboardplayerlastnight

Honourably excepting a couple of out-and-proud followers (hi, Stuart), I wonder who the people reading this blog might be. Ex-girlfriends? Clients? Talent-spotters (doubtful)? It’s strange to think that these words might be read in six months’ time by someone I’ve never met, in a place I’ve never been, who may form a very elliptical impression of me based on my previous posts about neds and tower blocks. When I started this blog, I saw it as a natty way to unleash pent-up creative frustration, and I didn’t really care who read it. However, because my creativity is now being expended upon my increasingly busy day-job as an award-winning freelance copywriter (at your service, sir, madam), the need to vent my spleen has subsided, and anyway, this blog has hardly gone viral, has it? Fenton in Richmond Park it is not.

In fact, there’s another way of considering the readership statistics for each new blog I post. Maybe the world is so bleak and dull, and some people are so lonely and desperate, they will actually resort to reading my linguistic excreta because it’s better than the alternative. What that alternative might be, I shudder to think, but it must involve either Jeremy Kyle or the Daily Record – two of the most odious creations on this side of the Atlantic.

Even more startling was the statistic that on Christmas Day 2008, four people logged onto the G75 Media copywriting website, and only one of those people was me. What were the other three people doing that day? Were their presents so bad that they were forced to distract themselves by visiting the nascent website of a freshly-hatched copywriter in East Kilbride? Almost as tragically, I actually know that four people visited the site, because my website analytics software identifies (among other things) where people come from, what web browser they’re using and even what screen resolution their monitors are configured to.

When it comes to The Write Intentions, I’m considerably less informed about the who/what/where/when, but I do know that the most popular blog I’ve posted to date was a diatribe I penned in March about Jehovah’s witnesses and timewasting. It’s ironic that more people read my opinions on timewasting than any other blog. Or maybe it was the religious angle that got bums on pews and eyes on the prize? Perhaps I should adopt a more reverential tone in all my future blogs?

Okay. Here goes. [Clears throat] Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah. All I said was that blog was good enough for Jehovah.

Now to test the theory. If 750 people read this entry, I’ve cracked it, and a blog column in GQ or Loaded surely awaits. Alternatively, if the disappointing audience figures persist, at least I’ve managed to give those mysterious, anonymous readers another little clue about my personality – I love watching Monty Python films. And in that respect, at least, I know I’m not in an audience of one.

Yesterday went too soon

As none of you will have noticed, I am just back from an overseas holiday. A fine holiday it was, too – tucked away on the cusp of Europe and the Middle East, in a resort so posh that I hired a butler one day to bring me pina coladas and ice creams on demand. It was all jolly hockey sticks, much sunshine was absorbed, and everyone came home happy, although in my case, I came home far too soon. Isn’t that always the way with holidays?

The rapid passage of this decidedly welcome break has raised an historic bone of contention, however – the truly awful state of the nation’s airports. I posit this thesis because Glasgow Airport is proudly emblazoned in “Scotland with Style” banners, and it provides the first impression many people will have of our fait land. Yet in the brief time I was there, I was flanked by one crowd of boisterous neds after another, the urinals were all blocked up with piss, the shops were all shut, and the staff wore expressions so hangdog that I don’t think I could have shaken off their collective torpor if I’d vomited fruit pastilles over them and then spontaneously combusted. Actually, I probably shouldn’t mention combustion in the same paragraph as airports – certain people are quite twitchy about such linguistic juxtapositions. Hi to the web traffic monitoring officials at RAF Menwith Hill, who are probably logging onto this site two paragraphs in, but rest assured, lads, you haven’t missed much.

Contrast Glasgow’s fraught ambience with Antalya airport, on the southern coast of Turkey. Admittedly, I did pull a door handle off its loose hinges, and the tannoy announcer was almost indecipherable over the mumblings of sleepy passengers, but otherwise, Antalya provides an object lesson in how to transport large numbers of people quickly and effectively, without irritating them to the point of apoplexy. Efficient and friendly security staff rapidly screened everyone at the main entrance, before an enthusiastic check-in assistant processed our bags at one of the 12 desks dedicated to our flight, and then after a brief additional security check, we were free to walk around a huge, circular departure lounge with each gate conveniently placed around the edges of the circle, rather than hidden away beyond six miles of blank corridors and travelators (I’m looking at you, Heathrow). There was good food available in the 24-hour restaurants (unlike Luton Airport, which effectively closes down after 8.30pm), the buses dropped people off right outside the terminal (no anti-terrorist barriers here to cause confusion and inconvenience), and our flight took off on time because there are three runways (count ‘em! Three!) to channel planes in and out with minimal queuing.

It was, quite honestly, embarrassing to be British in such a situation. And nor is it only Turkey that shames our air transport hubs. Consider the architectural grandeur of Schiphol in Amsterdam, the metronomic efficiency of Tokyo’s Narita and Haneda airports, or the sheer magnificence of Changi in Singapore, which has been voted the world’s best airport this year after finishing as runner-up in the 2012 World Airport Awards. It really does make you wonder what the tourists flocking to Glasgow next year for the XX Commonwealth Games will make of our country, when they first arrive. If I was them, I’d turn around and go straight back to wherever I came from. When I say there’s no place like home, I don’t necessarily mean it as a compliment, especially in terms of our tired and basic airports. And don't even get me started on "Glasgow" Prestwick...

Mental blocks

Anyone who’s ever visited Glasgow will know that this (mostly) glorious city is liberally festooned with tower blocks. Rising above the rooftops of everything around them, these concrete monoliths have become sadly iconic of the city’s 20^th century malaise. They are despised by traditionalists who still resent them for supplanting old tenements, despised by snobs and people from Edinburgh as junkie-ridden hellholes, and despised by a thousand former tenants for the crimes that occurred within their slab-like walls. These former symbols of a brave new city have become anachronistic amid Glasgow’s Victorian splendour and modern aesthetics – a grey and gloomy testament to Le Corbusier’s failed status as a visionary. And so it is that Glasgow’s eponymous housing agency is tearing down tower blocks as fast as it can, replacing them with high-calibre low-rise tenements that people are clamouring to live in.

As a keen student of architecture, I shed no tears for the mass departure of these Brutalist edifices. Ibrox and Govan used to have nine tower blocks, but by the end of 2013, only one will be left standing, and Govan in particular can only be improved as a consequence. Laurieston loses its last two towers later this summer, the iconic Red Road skyscrapers will be razed by 2017, and so will blocks in a dozen other suburbs throughout Glasgow. Their replacements will be far more suited to modern life, and much prettier to boot. Only one aspect of this renaissance troubles me – the knowledge that, in principle at least, there is nothing wrong with living in a tower block.

I know this because I lived in high-rise buildings for two years, and I loved it. The views were amazing, the rooms were spacious, the lack of a garden wasn’t an issue when you have a balcony, and you soon get used to shuttling your groceries about in a lift. However, the difference between these tower blocks and many others is that my former residences were constructed by housebuilders rather than housing associations, and every property was either owned outright or let to tenants affluent enough to afford the (fittingly high) rents. People in more expensive buildings generally take more care of their surroundings, and so it proved on both occasions. Yes, there were issues and irritations caused by communal living, but by and large, both buildings remained clean and respectable, populated by people who probably weren’t model citizens but certainly didn’t shit on their own doorsteps, literally or metaphorically. Indeed, the biggest problem associated with my first high-rise residence was ongoing vandalism caused by youths from the council tower blocks across the road. I’m sorry, but it’s true. We cared about our building, but they didn’t.

And that, in a nutshell, is where Glasgow’s state-sponsored tower blocks figuratively fell down – they were populated with too many people who just didn’t care. Didn’t care if they overfilled the rubbish chutes, which then jammed, and stank. Didn’t care if their kids played with matches in the stairwells and caused everyone to be evacuated while the fire brigade rushed over. Didn’t care if they left rusting prams in lobbies, or pissed in the lifts, or dropped needles on the grass where children wanted to play, or attacked people from the next scheme just because they were from the next scheme. And as a result of this, issues like the lack of soundproofing became more of a problem, because some people didn’t give a toss whether the elderly widow next door was forced to listen to dance music at 2am. People have the most extraordinary ability to ruin things for each other, either through deliberate actions or culpable apathy, and as a direct consequence, Glasgow regularly reverberates to dull booms as hundreds of homes and millions of memories are erased from its skyline.

It frustrates me, it really does. I’ve seen low-rise housing estates with greater social problems than some of the tower blocks that are being blown down, and I could even name a few council towers that are genuinely sought after among local residents - it’s all about the mentality of the people who live there. That’s why one council estate in my former home town had a ten-year waiting list for a house, while another scheme had plenty of empty properties because few people were willing to put up with the brazen drug dealers, feral dogs and sneering vandals. On an architectural level, the continuing demolition of Glasgow’s high-rise housing stock is a blessing, but these tower blocks don’t really deserve the criticism they receive. Buildings are rarely at fault – it’s their occupants who make or break them.

Killing in the name

The other week, rather to my surprise, I was taken to a secure military building. I was going to use the word “invited” rather than taken, but being invited somewhere suggests a deference to my presence that was definitely lacking from the rigorous (though thankfully not internal) security procedures involved. I can’t tell you where I was, or when, or why, but I can describe the entry process, because it has rather coloured my judgement about something I’d previously been quite blasé about.

I was picked up at a designated location by two men in a suspiciously understated car. They drove me through the countryside to a manned security gate, where credentials were displayed, and we then progressed to a second manned security gate, where I was asked to complete an ID form and hand over my mobile phone. Actually, asked isn’t the right word, either. Compelled is the term I’m looking for. Anyway, back into the car we went, before a further drive to a third security gate, after which I was escorted into a building and asked to provide the same information I’d given at gate number two. At this point, I had to be shepherded in and out of every room in the building by someone with the appropriate security clearance, before checking out twice on the way back to our original meeting point.

Which rather begs the question – how the hell did Jack Bauer ever get anything done?

For anyone who has spent the last decade living under a rock, Jack Bauer is the indestructible anti-hero of landmark TV series 24. Along with around a billion other people worldwide, I was captivated by each 24-hour real-time “day” in Jack’s life, where he would start off chillaxing in his living room and end up 24 hours (and episodes) later as a broken, beat and scarred wreck on a cliff-side, having been shot, poisoned, tortured, kidnapped, sacked, re-instated, canonised, lambasted and probably dumped by some swivel-eyed head case of a girlfriend. Along the way, each roller-coaster series featured everything from Presidential assassinations to Lazarus-like resurrections, yet despite its bombastic nature and almost total lack of humour, 24 was hopelessly addictive, like crack for the eyeballs.

News reaches me that Jack is being resurrected once more for a brand new series of 24, but after my recent experience in that military installation, it’s going to be hard for my disbelief to remain suspended. Quite frankly, it would have been impossible for anyone to reach the building I visited without being shot or captured (or possibly both), so the concept of terrorists spontaneously seizing an army base/a weapons plant/the White House suddenly seems quite absurd, even though such things happened with terrifying regularity in every series of 24.

I therefore issue this warning to the writers of series nine – I’m onto you this time. Make the story line plausible, because if you imply that some unhinged maniac can break into a top-secret military institution and take it over armed only with a pair of pliers, a stapler and some boot polish, you will incur my wrath in this widely-read, internationally-acclaimed blog. And you don’t want that, do you? I might even have to send Jack Bauer round to deal with you. Oh, wait a minute…