Lyrics

Once again, I'm going to add my voice to that already over-represented group on the internet: people who make judgements, without having the talent or qualifications to back them up. I know people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but thankfully the internet has no physical manifestation.

I'm inspired to write about lyrics today as I've recently struggled to write my own. I have managed that task, and one day may share the results on here, but need to be sure they'll stand the test of time in my mind first (as I've discussed in previous posts, my hating them in the end is almost inevitable).

But trying to write lyrics remined me what a tricky business it can be. Writing something true and meaningful, catchy but not clichéd, is - I have come to believe - an almost impossible task. So actually getting something down requires a certain amount of pragmatism: an acknowledgement that what you write is likely to be cheesy or lack profundity. Furthermore, it's hard to predict what will resonate in the minds of the listener. What might seem brilliant and orginal to the writer might seem hopelessly derivative to those that hear it, and vice versa (if the writer's particularly lucky).

The saving grace that lyrics have, though, (that poems don't) is an accompanying tune. A strong tune or a good hook has made up for many a crass lyric. So, ultimately, what one has to hope for is a song that is either strong musically, or lyrically. To hope for both is just greedy!

I'd like to just share a couple of my favourite lyrics to end (I've rambled on lots in recent posts, and thought I should keep this one short).

"For diamonds do appear to be
Just like broken glass to me."

I can't believe it took until 2008 for this particular lyric to be penned. Written by Ryan Ross (who, at the time, was in Panic At The Disco), it surely has many songwriters kicking themselves for not having thought of it. It's so obvious, and brilliant in its simplicity.

"It's the facts of life, sunshine."

This lyric is one that causes the phenomenon in my mind that I mentioned above - it resonates with me for reasons I can't explain. It's from the Manic Street Preachers song All Is Vanity. I don't know if I just like the way it sounds, or I relate to the sentiment. But whatever the reason, I really like that particular lyric.

There are plenty of awful lyrics, but I'd rather focus on the good today. And I'm going to end with one that's an example of a category of lyrics that I enjoy: ones where the songwriting process is laid bare:

"Look, another line without a hook."

Much like Alice Cooper's "We can't even think of a word that ryhmes" from School's Out, this line from My Chemical Romance's I'm Not Okay is a knowing wink, and provides an amateur like me with hope: even the best lyricists sometimes run out of ideas. And when they do, the effect can be better than if they hadn't.

Absence Makes the Joke Grow Stronger - The Zeroeth Law of Comedynamics

I was going to write something in praise of the sit com today. Specifically, the American sit com. And in so doing, of course, talking about the unquestionable demise of the English sit com would have been inevitable. But that's a huge, flabby topic, and one I don't feel able to talk on with much knowledge or authority. So rather than lay a huge, flabby topic on the table (sorry, I enjoyed that phrase and wanted to repeat it!) I thought I'd talk on one of sit com's most pleasing devices: the unseen character.

It's always struck me that the the invention of the unseen character is a bit like the invention of the number zero (bear with me). Who'd have thought you needed a number for nothing? You don't count sheep starting with a non-existent "zeroeth" sheep. And yet, with the invention of zero, complex aritmetic - with tens and units - was made possible. Ultimately, a counting system that has zero makes computation possible. We owe the modern world to "nothing".

The unseen character is, I think, similarly counter-intuitive, if not quite so revolutionary. The idea that a character can be funnier in absentia takes a real leap of imagination - one I don't think I'd have ever been capable of. Which, I realise, isn't saying much, coming from an insignificant man with no comedy-writing pedigree. What I mean to say is that I think it's a leap of imagination beyond most people's capability.

Of course, many comedy writers have since got the hang of the technique, and used it to great effect. At its best, not only can the unseen character build up a detailed history and personality in his or her own right, but their background presence aids the character development, not to mention the comedy, of the main characters.

The choice of comedies pictured at the top is, of course, not a coincidence. In my opinion, Dads' Army and Frasier are the finest sit coms ever written, and both employ the unseen character technique. Having said this, there are notable absent characters in other great comedies. In Fawlty Towers, Sybil is often seen talking on the phone to her friend Audrey. Through the half-conversations we hear with Audrey, and the barely-contained resentment emanating from Basil in the adjacent bed, we learn more about the Fawlty marriage than if the character of Audrey didn't exist. M*A*S*H has many absent characters - the families and loved-ones of the doctors and nurses - whose correspondences are used to delve beneath the surface of the visible characters, to both comic and tragic effect.

In Dads' Army and Frasier, though, the unseen characters are used in the traditional way. And, in fact, they're very similar. Elizabeth is Captain Mainwaring's wife in Dads' Army. As is in the nature of an unseen character(!), we never see her (the closest we come is a bulge in the top bunk in the Mainwaring's Anderson Shelter). But from the details we hear, the unconvincing excuses George (Capt. Mainwaring) provides for her absence, the way he has to hold the phone away from his ear when she's on the other end of it, and even a mysterious black eye on his part, we learn much about why Mainwaring is the way he is - particularly his class issues. It becomes clear his parents-in-law did not approve of him (he is a social class below them), and that Elizabeth herself doesn't approve of him much either. With this in mind, George's need for control in his work life, and Home Guard life, isn't much of a mystery. Elizabeth's presence gives George Mainwaring depth - real sadness. And yet, the whole thing is written and acted so well that the character of Mainwaring's wife remains, above anything, hilarious.

I think it's almost certain that when the writers of Frasier came up with the character of Maris - Frasier's brother Niles' wife - they has Elizabeth Mainwaring in mind. Like Elizabeth, Maris is from a family of high social standing, and seems to be a demanding, neurotic, sort of person. Whereas Elizabeth's presence in Dads' Army was occasional, Maris is a near-constant feature of Frasier, especially early on. Even after their divorce in Series 5, she still has a disruptive influence on Niles' life and plans.

The big question, though, is whether unseen characters are actually funnier than if they did exist as appearing characters. The answer to that is partly a matter of opinion, but there are some rational reasons why their absence might make them more funny. For a start, the continued absence is a ready-made comic device: the excuses made by Captain Mainwaring and Niles become ever more convoluted and ludicrous. The near-misses can be used to good effect, too. The aforementioned bulge in the top bunk, along with the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, is the closest we get to seeing Mrs Mainwaring, whilst a bizarre gargling sound is as close as we get to meeting Maris. The anticipation that, one day, we might get to meet the hidden character is key to his/her humour (and, of course, is something not available for standard, on-screen characters).

Finally, not appearing means that the unseen character has more license to push the realms of physical possibility. The writers of Frasier used this fact well with Maris. I've heard it said that from the pieces of information we hear about her, she shares more physical traits with a lizard than a human. In the end, the character of Maris was so outlandish that no actress could have looked weird enough to play her, even if they'd wanted her to appear.

Comedies can be perfectly funny without unseen characters, of course. And the Romans showed that you can count things without a zero. But both unseen characters and zeroes can enhance their respective milieux, and increase their potential.

I hope otherwise, but you may not have learned much about comedy from this. But you've definitely learned something about me: Once I'm set on a metaphor, I'm like a dog with a bone.

It might be a sad, lonely corner of the internet. But it's all mine...

As a boy, one of my favourite Christmas presents was an acre of the moon. Costing £10 from my local Safeway supermarket, it was by no means my most valuable present that year, but it was the one that most captured my imagination. No longer was I just another insignificant twelve year-old. I was a land owner. A baron. A member of the landed gentry - nay, a member of the of the extraplanetary landed gentry, with certificates and mineral rights. Up there, in Area F4, Quadrant Charlie, was an acre land that would be forever mine.

Of course, there were detractors immediately. People ho refused to acknowledge the deal's legitimacy. Schoolfriends who refused to believe that a man called The Big Cheese had laid claim to moon selling rights. But it didn't matter to me; that land was mine.

I felt similar frissons of pride and excitement this week, upon finding out that I'd laid claim to a similarly remote piece of land. This time, though, the land was virtual. It seems that if you type "My Kingdom for an Intelligent Octopus" into Google, my blog is the top result, from over 40,000. Its logo (designed in the last post) is the top image result. I know that, actually, that isn't much of an achievement, and isn't going to cause hoards of people to suddenly start flocking to my page, but that doesn't matter. Because like my moon acre, it's uniquely mine.

And I'm not prepared to rule out the prospect that, one day, there might be a use for these real, and virtual, plots. They say the meek shall inherit the earth, but the way things are looking, that's a bit of a poisoned chalice they stand to take on. So given the need for escape seems like a possibility, the real question is: who shall inherit the moon? Surely land barons like me are at the top of the queue. When people are growing moon potatoes in soil rich in my moon minerals, I'll be laughing all the way to the moon bank.

The usefulness of my unique plot of internet could be even more imminent. I keep hearing of the prospect of cyber war - that in future the new batttleground for fights between nations will be the internet, with super viruses flying around on the super highway. There could come a time when merely accessing the BBC website would cause your computer to explode in your face. So when the war comes, my quiet corner of cyberspace could become a safe haven for refugees from twitter and facebook. You may not be able to network with friends, but at least you can read an insignificant man's musings on insignificant issues. It's so safe and remote that my anti-virus software, which has been to almost all of the internet and assessed its safety, hasn't even bothered to visit.

With this perilous future in mind, and the prospect of many migrants to my borders in future, I think it's about time I codified a constitution for my lunar and cyber kingdoms. But I can't be bothered right now, so for the time being, let me finish with a few basic rules and regulations.

No polo shirts

No use of the word "epic"

Yes to cats

No to dogs

No deliberately breaking wind for comic effect. It's only funny if it's by accident.

No claiming to be fluent in sarcasm. It isn't original, and was never clever. And if you really were fluent in sarcasm, you'd claim not to be.

Right, the power's beginning to go to my head, so I'd better stop. I want you to know that, broadly, you're welcome here. Or in my bit of Area F4, Quadrant Charlie. And remember, it's never too early to save yourself. But of course, if you're reading this, you already have.

The Beauty of Good, the Horror of Bad: The Power of Logos

This week, for once, my blog posts will have some sense of a coherent identity, rather than the mish-mash you normally have to put up with. That's because I'm following up my piece on fonts (rather neatly, I feel) with a post about my opinions on logos. What I'll need to do next, to complete the triumvirate that rules modern branding, is a piece on mission statements. I thought I'd forewarn you now, so you can mentally prepare yourself for the excitement.

Though it wouldn't appear possible from my previous post, if anything logos excite me even more than fonts. They have the same ability to imbue added meaning to the thing or concept they depict, and to convey feeling. But - self evidently - they have more to offer in the way of artistry. Every picture, after all, paints a thousand words.

This freedom, though, comes at a price. And that price is the higher potential for disaster. It doesn't take long for a logo to become deeply linked with a company's image, so if it's a bad one, the damage can be great - and hard to reverse. This leads to the huge, and well-publicised, fees that companies pay for their logos to be designed. Perhaps the most notorious of these, in recent times, was the 2012 Olympic Logo, which cost £400,000 pounds - a huge amount. I'll be talking more about it shortly.

So what makes a logo good? Having given the matter lots of thought (because that's the laugh-riot that is my mind), I think it comes down to a few things. First, it has to be eye-catching, and instantly recognisable - for obvious reasons. It has to be simple, too. And perhaps that's why they come in for such criticism. People often look at logos and say "a child could have done it". But as far as I can see, that's sort of the point. A good logo should appeal to us on a very primitive level. It shouldn't be hard to access, or to relate to. So if it looks like a child could have done it, it's probably good.

The last thing a logo should have is a clever twist, a knowing smile. On the face of it that would seem to contradict what I've just said, but there needs to be some reward for looking closer. It should be instantly accessible, of course, but if it also has a sense of "the more you look, the more you see", a bit of surprise and delight, then it won't just be a good logo, but a great one.

So how do my arbitrary "rules" apply in the real world? Which logos do well? Well, as with fonts, there are good ones and bad ones. So what follows is a quick look at the ones that succeed, and the ones that fail.

First, then, the good:

Let me be clear: this is nothing to do with my political persuasion - it's just a bloody good logo. It came into being around the time of Cameron's becoming Tory leader - part of the party's rebranding. Out with the symbolic (and, frankly, hard to relate to in the era of electricity!) torch, and in with this. Much like the 2012 Olympic logo, it was criticised over its cost, and the apprarently infantile result. But I think it does eveything they wanted it to. The casual brush-stroke nature of the tree suggests a less stuffy, less old-fashioned outlook, and yet, what is it a painting of? An English Oak Tree - as sturdy, enduring, and reliable as they come. It's all things to all men, and that's without mentioning the "green"-ness of it. The truth about the party may be (very) far from this, but that's not the logo's fault. It's doing its job, and doing it brilliantly.

Here it is: the 2012 Olympic Logo. Much has already been written about it, so there's probably not much original to add. For me, though, it's a logo that I didn't orginally warm to, but have come to hugely respect. A bit like Sir Alex Ferguson. It would be hard for me to say I dislike it, because it meets all of the criteria I've laid out up to this point. It's eye-catching and memorable, for a start. I'm not sure anyone could deny that. Many more prosaic, unimaginative logos were mooted before this one was chosen, and I doubt any would have stuck in the memory like this does. It's simple, too, and does, in many ways, look like a child's scribblings (but as I've discussed, that's no bad thing).

But where I think this logo really wins is the "surprise and delight" factor. There are many things to see. Taken as a whole, it looks like a crouching athlete (either someone about to start an 800m race, or hurl a discus). And - although I've not found this confirmed anywhere on the internet, I'm convinced that the numbers are also meant to be rough drawings of the four countries that make up the UK: England top left, Northern Ireland top right, Wales bottom left and Scotland bottom right (with an Isle of Man thrown in for good measure?). Perhaps it's just me seeing these things - but the hidden depths to apparent simplicity make this a great logo.

Now for some bad ones:

Ofcom is the body that regulates and sets the standards, and codes of conduct, for the broadcast media. Which is nice. And above is their logo - which isn't nice.

Not that it's offensive, in any way. I just don't get it. Specifically, I don't get what's going on with that weird f. It looks like it's deliberately in the same form as the c - almost as if it's meant to say cc. But why? Carbon Copy? What does it mean in that context? And if it's not a c, what's that f meant to look like? A pylon? Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but assuming I'm not, the logo just creates questions and ambiguity - which isn't good news for a standards setting organisation.

Kudos where it's due, though: I do like the bar across the bottom. It's symbolic, I assume, of the electromagnetic spectrum, over which TV and Radio (and all types of electronic communication) are broadcast. So well done for that!

And now to the logo most offensive to my eyes. Normally, as with the Conservative Party, I can put aside my personal feelings to appreciate a good logo. But when the noble art of logo creation is used to deceive and mislead, then any artistic merit is overshadowed. It so happens, in this case, that there isn't much artistry to begin with. As a logo it's just a bit boring. But it's layered in cynicism, like a sea bird caked in crude oil (that's the closest you'll get to satire from me).

BP is an oil company. From that fact there is no escape. The old logo (above), while not trumpeting this, didn't try and hide it either. But the change in logo to a pretty, wholesome flower (as well as the horrible accompanying mission statement "Beyond Petroleum") is a blatant attempt by this oil company to distance itself from its main activity. That isn't to say that I expect BP, or any oil company, to immediately stop spending money on extracting oil. That wouldn't, and couldn't happen. And given I drive when I have to, it would make me a hypocrite if I did expect that. Rather, I think it should put its money where its logo is, and spend less on finding more oil, and more on finding sustainable alternatives. Even in recent years, since the logo change, this hasn't been happening.

Notwithstanding the recent spill (which actually could have happened to any oil company I suspect, and doesn't make BP "super evil"), they haven't been living up to their attempted image change, which has led to logo disaster - a number of parodied representations of it:

And this is just a small sample. Google image search "BP Logo", and more parodies come up that genuine copies. Which, it has to be said, is poetic justice for a cynical marketing ploy, and a boring logo.

Well, all of this logo talk may have got you sleeping, but it's got me thinking. Could I produce a logo for my blog? Can I put into practice all my rules, learn from the mistakes of others and come up with something good?

Well, with MS Paint as my only tool, here's my attempt:

I wanted some way of portraying an intelligent octopus; I plumped for this, an marine take on Rodin's sculpture "The Thinker" (see below).

And as my octopus is intelligent - a thinker - it needs a thought bubble. Or is it? Herein lies my attempt at surprise and delight: it's also a characteristic octopus ink spurt.

And as for the overall feel, I wanted to reflect the blog, and its position in a sad, isolated, lonely corner of the internet.

Time to go and cry...

Fonts

As you can see, I can't think of a clever, or punning, title today. I was riffing around "Font Of All Wisdom" but couldn't come up with anything that made sense, and wasn't rubbish.

So here it is: a blog post about fonts. Not fonts as in the ornate troughs that babies are baptised over, but typefaces - the designs and styles of letters. You may think there's not much to say about them, that they're of little interest. But if you think that you're wrong. Fonts are absolutely brilliant, and I'm going to try and explain why. Buckle up: this could get thrilling.

What this won't be is an education on the technicalities of fonts. The reason for this is that, first, that really would be boring, and second, I don't know much about them. I know what a serif is (the twiddle that finishes off some letters in some fonts, including this one), but that's the limit of my knowledge. Rather, then, I'll tell you what I think makes fonts so interesting, and tell you about some of my most, and least, favourite ones.

So why are fonts so good? For me, the reason lies in how evocative they can be. They add another layer to the miracle that is the written word. With a particular font, not only do our brains link a random collection of ink marks or pixels (a word) to a far-removed concept (the meaning), they also attach a feeling.

Consider the picture below, which shows the same word in two different fonts:

Without me having to tell you, your mind knows that the top version means "chilling", as in "frightening", while the bottom one means "chilling", as in "relaxing". To me that is bloody amazing.

The other thing fonts do well is capture the essence of a time. You only need to look at the font below

and you picture an advert from a 1950s newspaper (please forgive the text in the above example: for those that don't know, it's a reference to a Harry Enfield sketch - I'm not sexist, it just seemed to fit the font!).

Or how about this?

Again, I suppose the word itself is leading your thoughts a little, but I can't believe I'm the only person who thinks that font has something of an '80s vibe.

So that, briefly, is why I love fonts. Now for two of my favourites, and one that I hate.

As you can see, this font isn't chosen for its distinctiveness or beauty. Instead I like it because it reminds me of boyhood dreams of being an FBI Agent. It is, forever, the "X Files Font". Not the font of the opening title sequence, but the font that Mulder and Scully's once futuristic, now primitive computers displayed when they were typing up their case notes. To my young eyes, Courier New was the closest-matching font available on Windows 98, and so I used it to type up my own "case notes" (homework).

I have loved it ever since, and always will.

A more contoversial choice, I know. I don't love this font. But seeing it is always a usefully chastening experience for me. Allow me to explain:

I have, as you can tell, always been a font-o-phile. And in my early secondary school years Comic Sans was all the rage. As such, I considered all users of it to be unimaginative Luddites. If you're a regular reader of my blog, then you'll know that I look back on almost everything I do with regret (see link). And so I only have to look at Comic Sans and I'm overcome by a wave of shame about the snob I used to be.

But this snobbery exists beyond my mind too (as this article attests), and so I also like Comic Sans for its success amid derision. It's the Bolton Wanderers of the font world.

And now for a font I hate. You see, to me Papyrus is for people who think they're a cut above. Stop and look for a moment, and you'll find Papyrus on many restaurant menus, shop signs or vans of self-styled artisans. It's crushingly unoriginal.

But worse than all of that, it undermines my previous argument about Comic Sans and shows me to be a complete hypocrite who doesn't learn from his mistakes, and is just as much a snob as before.

I loathe the person I've re-become...