I want to begin this by discussing my writing process a bit.
When I sit down to write an entry, I have one goal. It's to be funny. The reason for that is because as an aspiring author and fringe-hipster d-bag, I know that through being funny I can reach an audience of my peers who will read my writing, think I'm funny, and (hopefully) keep reading. The promise of consistent readers keeps me writing more material. The more I write, the more I hope to further hone the craft I hope makes me money one day. This is something I do as a writing exercise, and I want people to enjoy it.
Because I want people to enjoy it, I'm a little content-obsessed. I want my entries to be top quality, and original. A big fear of mine is that I'll be regarded as just another pissed off internet user and wannabe Vlogger.
To keep my quality top-notch, I do a lot of quality control. Typically, I come up with topics for the blog by living and surfing the internet. Sometimes, I stumble across something that truly makes me very angry. Usually when that happens I silently have a two minute rant about why I hate...whatever made me angry for the purposes of my own amusement. That rant forms the basis of any given update. For quality control purposes, when I want to blog about something I decide on it but revisit that decision throughout a 24 hour period. When I go back to the topic I ask myself is it funny the second time I recite it? How about a third? You get the idea.
It prevents thoughts that weren't that funny from becoming a bad entry. It also protects me from ideas I thought were funny when I was drunk or otherwise.
Great example; One night my friends and I were celebrating the weekend with a few drinks. We all got a bit stupid that night and came up with a very elaborate and finely detailed plan to become local drug lords who eventually rise up to take out a Nicaraguan drug cartel. The idea was hilarious when it was originally stated, and at the time I might have thought, "Hey this wackiness belongs on the blog." Thankfully, the day after when I further assessed the idea, I realized my drunk rant didn't stand the test of time. Had I not given posting said wackiness a second thought, I would've ended up with something no one would think was funny, and that would make me miserable. I filter a good chunk of ideas this way. The best way I can put it is that bad humor is like milk. It may be good when you first open it, but eventually it goes bad. Milk has a short shelf life. Dane Cook has made a career of being a milkman, so has Jeff Dunham. Good comedy is like a Twinkee. A Twinkee can last on a shelf forever with it's only reason to exist being to make you happy. Everyone enjoys the initial ingestion of a Twinkee, but what they also enjoy is the lifetime a piece of it sits in your colon to continue making you happy until you develop cancer and die. George Carlin was a Twinkee. So was Mitch Hedburg. I strive to shovel a plate of comedy Twinkies into your mouthhole at least once a week. I try to filter the milk from the Twinkies. No one needs milk comedy. Milk is nutritional and good for you. Comedy shouldn't be any of that. No, comedy is sugary Twinkee. It's the sugar your cerebrum needs to constantly remain sharp, vigilant, and ever noticing everything in life.
It doesn't end when I find a topic either. Writing an entry here is sometimes a week long process for me. I constantly start, stop, and go back and revise my work even before I finish it. Sometimes I complete an entry only to sit on it for a day and read it again to decide if I really think it's good or not. The GoGo Gaga Rangers entry is probably less than 200 words long, but it ended up taking me almost two hours to write because I was constantly reworking every sentence. The reason I do this is again to make sure it's Twinkee funny and not milk funny. This causes me to rework and rethink a lot of my material. It's another self-employed writing exercise that causes me to sharpen my writing and wit to a razor point. Ideally, I hope to methodically poke and prod your funny bone with knife-like wit and sarcasm and not mindlessly pound it into the ground with a TMZ-esque crowbar. It's essentially me trying to convince myself what I'm saying isn't funny.
The exercise also helps with how I can maintain the blog's tone and voice. One thing that personally brings my piss to a boil is people who write in 100% hyperbole. In my eyes it's the sign of a bad or young writer. It's the ultimate tool for people who don't want to think about what they write, rather they just slap a lot of exclamation points on something and call it a day. I did that when I was thirteen and writing in my first Xanga as an angsty tween. Do you know a thirteen year old that is truly funny? No, and you know why? Because unless you are thirteen, the shelf life of a hyperbole dressed rant about American Idol is limited and college students on YouTube should understand that. My quality control here is so I avoid using a bad writing technique. My obsessive compulsive behavior in this case helps me trim any hyperbole I may accidentally slip into an entry and form it into an articulate quip or something like that.
You see how egotistical it is when you boil it all down? I just explained why my artistic obsession with the quality of my creation is really to benefit all of you. Like I am the last defense between you and a comic Fat Man.
So after that long tirade that no one but me could possibly care about you may be wondering why I just brought all of that up. Well originally this entire entry was going to center around two recent commercials I saw during the NFL Wild Card weekend. One of them was a Domino's commercial that by now everyone has seen at least once. It's the one where Domino's admits that they've been feeding America shit for years. I then made up my mind that I would write about that Domino's ad.
Because of my insane quality control, I sat on what I wrote for days. In that time the amazingly funny Amelie Gillette at the amazingly funny AV Club did a podcast where she ended up saying almost everything I said in my blog word for word.
After I listened to the podcast I made the decision to scrap my Domino's hatred. It's no secret that I read the AV Club and Ms. Gillette's work and because I strive for originality I didn't want anyone to read it and think that all I was doing was mimicking a much more popular concept. I scraped it for what now looks like a semi-vanity laden post that explains that like a Transformer, I am more than meets the eye.
On that note I would also like to add that since I wrote the Bayonetta-Sarah Palin comparison I have seen almost the same point pop up on a few websites and blogs. As much as this bothers me, I'm not taking that entry down. It's already slipped through the creative cracks.
This has been disappointing. I barely brought up Domino's. If you're still curious I suggest listening to
The Hater Podcast discussing it. Amelie Gillette says what I would've almost verbatim.
Someone get me a job at the AV Club please.
