Thanks to Andrew A for completing it yesterday, apparently for the 83rd time. Assuming each post is between 800 and 1,000 words (usually that’s the case), that’s somewhere between 66,400 and 83,000 words on this website. That’s essentially about the number of words in a typical novel (using about 80,000 words as the median). I should also point out that this does not include the many tens/hundreds of thousands of words that Andrew has written Arseblog newsbut I don’t have the courage to go down that road this morning. Suffice to say, there are many more books to his name.
So then I got curious. Tim Stillman, whose column has been on the site for about 15 years, has 776 posts. Some of these also contain a bit of blog content when I have been on holiday. Using the same statistics, that equates to a word count between 620,800 and 776,000 – 8 to 9 novels. To be honest, I saw Tim writing so many books.
Maybe a series of detective stories about a football and indie music loving cop called Gabriel Henry, who is down on his luck, likes a drink etc. The TV series, when commissioned (not on Amazon), could star someone like Tom Hardy (Gary Oldman is too old), but his football loyalties are unclear. I suspect Tim would insist that an Arsenal fan be his leading man, someone who understood how that shapes a man to achieve the best possible performance, but he would also avoid the most obvious choices. It’s indie after all. I think of Jamie Bell.
Consulting producer Leandro Trossard was said to be trying to get Anne Hathaway involved as the ex-wife he still loves but can’t stay committed to because of “the job” (and the booze), but unfortunately scheduling issues and the filming of The Devil Wears Prada 4: The Re-Prada-ing keep her from committing to the project.
🎵 Theme melody: Bernard Butler and Little Simz.
So since I started this website in 2002, I have made 10597 posts. Some of these are shorter than others, the posts announcing a live blog etc, so let’s throw those out. According to our backend (oooh-errr) that’s 690. So that leaves 9907, and for the sake of consistency I’m going to apply the same word counting guide, which gives us somewhere between 7,295,600 and 9,907,00 words. That’s the equivalent of 91 to 123 novels in that period.
That’s a lot of books. Probably too many books. I think we’re heading into Terry Pratchett territory here. Or, if we expand it to a cinematic perspective, something like the Marvel Universe which seems to produce about 123 movies a year with characters you didn’t even know existed.
“Opening this Friday is Son of Ant-Man vs. Godzilla Junior vs. Turns His Eyelids Inside-Out Boy – The Musical! Starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Jessie Buckley…’
The idea of writing 123 books is vaguely absurd. I’m sure it’s been done, but I think I would have gone crazy if I had done that during the same period. It is five books per year, as Arseblog will be celebrating its 24th anniversary tomorrow. That’s a lot of episodes of a TV show and/or movies. Ultimately it would be something like Batman, where you have the original and then the origin story, then a few years later another origin story, except this time ‘darker’, then the spin-offs, the sequels, and the sequels of sequels, and then maybe a version of Christopher Nolan that takes place backwards but also forwards and sideways while always spinning around, but also in a dream in the mind of a man who may or may not exist at this point, with some epic music in the soundtrack, and with dialogue muffled and made difficult to hear by constantly low rumbling synth sounds in the background.
After giving up all creative control for a huge amount of money so I can go live somewhere warm where I can wear shorts and a t-shirt all day every day, poor Mark Strong is mercilessly flogged by the evil studio executives in the role of Arseblog. He’s the obvious choice because he’s obviously a huge Arsenal fan, but when it comes down to it, we have the same haircut.
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Anyway, as you can see, this is a quiet week, and I’m grateful for that and your indulgence today. The ‘normal’ service is likely to resume tomorrow as we look forward to the Champions League draw and Sunday’s match against Chelsea.
We’ll have an Arsecast for you later, I’m joined by the author of Gabriel Henry’s book series for a statement style podcast, so stay ready for that. In the meantime: make something beautiful of it people.
P.S – for those of you who saw the title and were looking forward to an in-depth look The latest accounts from Arsenalmy apologies.
PPP – I’m not sorry though.
#books