4714/17373
So I decided it was time for me to make a push for glory. My wife has spent too long saying that Me1 vs Me2 Snooker is "a waste of my timeâ€, “an embarrassment†and “not at all funnyâ€, and it's time to show her that she is very, very wrong and that in fact this is a sport that is loved around the world, also high art that is better than anything by Samuel Beckett and a huge income stream and not at all funny (because it's a serious gladiatorial contest). I decided to launch my million pound kickstarter campaign, which would ensure a future home for the sport when we move, a state of the art recording studio and proper renumeration for all of the Mes involved. And once that had raised a million pounds my wife would have to get down on her knees and beg forgiveness and then individually thank all of the Mes for what they have done for her and her family.
Some people questioned the kickstarter target, but those people are fools and in any case at this point I think it would be greedy to ask for MORE than a million pounds. Even though the kickstarter cut and the VAT will eat into the profits (and I don't know what the tax ramifications will be - if I don't spend all the money immediately will I be taxed on it, or if there some kind of provision for me ear marking that cash for future development of the sport? I should probably look into this). I only have to raise £33,333 a day or get around £3,333 from everyone who listens to the podcast or £333 from everyone who has ever listened to it. There are 6 billion people on the planet so if all of them gave me a pound then I would have enough money to really do some good in the sport. Some might think it is wrong for a third world family who don't have enough to feed themselves giving up a significant amount of their yearly income to help a middle-class man play himself badly at a strange table-based sport. But those people are clearly wrong. It's only a pound. But if you add all the pounds together it's 6 billion pounds. And I get all the pounds, so that is good.
Noel Edmonds says that you only have to visualise something and it will definitely come true, so I have no doubt that the million will be raised, because I have visualised me getting it and putting it all on my bed and rolling around in it. I've started spending the money already. And my confidence was rewarded early on because three or four people almost immediately donated at the £1000+ level. It would only take 1000 people to do that, which isn't even the whole listenership of the podcast. A couple of them got scared when they saw the total was already about £5000 and withdrew their bids, which I don't think should be allowed. Once you're in, you're in and I disown those cowards.
A lot of people think it's very unlikely that I will get the backing that I am asking for (and part of me is wondering if I should just have aimed for £5000 and then I could run off with the money and live in Mayfair for the rest of my life), so then surely they could enjoy this enterprise on an artistic level. It gives them the chance to pretend that they are huge moneybags and can donate the maximum possible to the cause and then pretend to be upset when it doesn't happen. It would be a satire of the value and redundancy of money and of the petty concerns of the first world as compared to the third, but mainly about how the concept of money itself is in many ways illusory and imaginary. And this non-existent and abstract system that we all accept as real can be subverted in this way and shown up to be a mirage if you look at it from the right angle.
And what would make that into true art is that there is the chance that the campaign went viral and people around the world got wind of the poor and sick young man whose dream is to play himself at snooker before he dies (all technically true) and start donating hand over fist and suddenly their “joke†contribution might be in real danger of being taken from them. But only if kickstarter manned up and insisted that every donation made had to be honoured. Where's the jeopardy if you can all put in £5000 and then take it out at the last minute? Art and sport ruined.
But there's some genuinely good rewards there (my favourite being the one about one of the Mes coming to give a motivational speech to your company - no snooker will be played) and £5000 for a corporate evening of snooker (or motivational speaking) is actually pretty good value (especially when you consider the number of Mes you would be getting). And essentially with a lot of the £1000 rewards you'd end up actually coming round my house to play or watch snooker. I am not sure that I feel very comfortable letting the kind of person who would pay £1000 to be in my snooker podcast know where I live. My fans are weird. I don't want them in my house. Just the smell aspect would be bad enough. Let alone the them tying me up and murdering me bit. So that's part of the art too, that in reality the last thing I want to happen here is for this campaign to succeed. I think overall the money and the experience would destroy my life. But I am happy to take that hit in the name of art and sport, the two most important things in the world.
And you can push the total as high as you like, to satirise whatever it is that is being satirised exactly and always back out at the last minute. What have you got to lose? Absolutely nothing. Unless you're a bit forgetful. And there's a lot of cool stuff to gain there too.
Surely it is worth it just to see the look on my wife's face? Surely.
