Tag: ideas

Some (old) Ideas

One of the cool things about calling yourself a writer is you get to do all kinds of things that everybody else calls bone-ass lazy.  Stuff like spending hours drinking coffee, taking long strolls through the Internet and staring off into space.  Wordy Wordsworth called it, “… powerful feelings: … recollected in tranquility” or something like that.  This “work” is essential for writers to hone their craft.  The serious upside is you get to discover all kinds of interesting facts, and you have time to come up with even more interesting conclusions.  Here are just a few things I’ve been pondering for a while.

There’s a town in Canada called Smithers — which means the people who live there are Smithereens.

On average, the Dutch are the tallest people in the world — even though a lot of them are standing below sea level.

Apparently, a huge bunch of people born between 1977 and 1983 are sick and tired of being lumped in with those terminally malcontent millennials.  They have decided to perform a generational Brexit (Genexit?) and want to be referred to as Xennials.  I can’t say I blame them.

In the future, people will look at their electronic devices and think “What a stupid icon for a telephone.”

Despite everybody and her friend claiming they broke the Internet – you can’t.  The truth is the Internet is no longer vulnerable to human attack: there are just too many servers scattered across the planet.  However, before you go all SkyNet/Terminator, 99.99% of all electronic devices are just dumb machines used for storage.

Humans first walked on the moon 50 years ago in 1969.  That was 2 years before women got to vote nationally in Switzerland and 8 years before France quit using the guillotine for executions.  Weird, huh?

One of the earliest and most persistent symptoms of lead poisoning is irritability, so it’s interesting that statistics show violent crime (aside from armed robbery) has been steadily decreasing since lead was banned from automobile fuel in the late 1980s.  Coincidence?  Maybe. . .

For several years, universities have been adding puppies to their “safe spaces” to combat student stress and exam anxiety.  Whatever!  The weird thing is nobody is willing to talk about what happens to the puppies when they’re no longer puppies.  Creepy!

Over 100 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute.  Wow!  And, according to the last time they kept records (several years ago) it would take you approximately 93,000 years to watch everything YouTube has to offer.  That is a lot of avoidance behaviour!

In the last 10 years, restaurant revenues, movie theatre revenues and department stores revenues have all declined — whereas the revenues of home delivery companies like Uber Eats, GrubHub, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon have all dramatically increased.  If this trend continues, eventually millennials will never have a reason to leave their apartments.  And this is a bad thing?

Andy Warhol was wrong.  In the future, everybody will have 15 minutes of privacy.

And finally:

I think it’s absolutely hilarious that a generation raised on South Park and Family Guy spend so much time being eagerly offended by everything.  Irony is not dead.

I Wish I’d Said That – 2021

As I get older, I realize a ton of people are a lot smarter than I am.  When I look at the world (even wearing my rose-coloured glasses) mostly all I see is benign chaos.  However, some people can look through all that and see where the little bits of truth are hiding.  These are the folks who instantly grasp an idea, distill it down to a single sentence, flip it onto their tongues and then effortlessly blend it into the conversation.  I know envy is one of the 7 Deadly Sins, but, for all the world, I envy these people because on the rare occasions when I do that, I spend the rest of the day walking just a little taller.  Here are some examples and each one, when read carefully, demonstrates some serious understanding of the world we live in.

Journalism largely consists of saying “Lord Jones is dead,” to people who didn’t know he was alive.
G.K. Chesterton

The perfect lover is one who turns into a pizza at 4:00 am.
Charles Pierce

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.
Ann Landers

It’s dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks for a funeral.
H.L. Mencken

The trouble with her is she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw

A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.
Kenneth Tynan

The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing — and then marry him.
Cher

An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.
Dylan Thomas

It was as stupid as taking a cauldron and a broom to a witch hunt.
Najira Olsen

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.
A.H. Miller

Do you realize that, if it weren’t for Edison, we’d be watching television by candlelight?
Al Boliska

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
Jean Rostand

Love thy neighbour as thyself, but choose your neighbourhood.
Louise Beal

The average person thinks he isn’t.
L. Lorenzoni

What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to.
Hansell Duckett

We’re all in this alone.
Lily Tomlin

Where did I find the time to not read so many books?
Karl Krause

A fair fight is the one you win.
French Foreign Legion

And that greatest philosopher of them all — Anonymous

Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.

If it wasn’t for the last minute, nobody would get anything done.

Whoever said “money can’t buy happiness,” didn’t know where to shop.

No one ever bets enough money on a winning horse.

If you talk to God, you’re praying.  If God talks to you, you’re nuts.

Originally written September, 2017

Stuff We Need — RIGHT NOW!

ideas

Despite the current mess (and everybody squawking about it) we live in the most benevolent society in history.  We have more literacy, less poverty, better health care, better education, better nutrition and easier access to information than at any time since Lucy and her girlfriends decided to take a stroll in Ethiopia, some 3 million years ago.  Unfortunately, we’re not that good at using these benefits to our best advantage – yet.  For example, we wasted tons of money and years of research on Viagra when a little marijuana and some decent porn would have done the trick.  Personally, I think our endless cycle of herbal shampoos, sugar water beverages and bum warmer automobiles has got to stop, and we need to concentrate on things that will really benefit our world.  So, in that vein, here is just some of the stuff we need – RIGHT NOW!

An electronic collar that zaps you if you’ve forgotten something at the grocery store.

A mute button for vegans.  Once a vegan has publically declared their veganness (veganosity?) eight times, they must wear a mute button for the comfort and convenience of the rest of us.

A sexier name for the Covid masks we’re all going to wear.  Might I suggest Cloak of Responsibility?

A universal restraining order against stupid celebrities.  Any celebrity who makes three (3) stupid comments in a calendar month is forbidden from coming within 100 metres of a microphone.

AutoCorrect that knows the difference between “your” and “you’re” and “there,” their” and “they’re” — so I don’t look like a moron when I’m not paying attention.

A written test before anyone is allowed to vote.  Even multiple choice (guess?) would be better than nothing.

Transparent toasters.  So we can at least see what that maniac machine is doing to our bread!

All statues turned into holograms so they can simply be switched off and changed when public perception turns against them.  Unfortunately, pigeons would be denied a place to – uh – sit, but too bad, pigeon lovers — we can’t please everybody!

Skip the Dumbass.  Like Skip the Dishes, but instead of food, this online service will deliver an intelligent person to your doorstep for an enjoyable conversation without a political or social agenda.

Laundry hampers that automatically wash clothes, dryers that fold them and a robot something that puts them away.

A Nobel Prize for Buffoonery.

A junk food that tastes super good but has negative calories so when you binge-eat a bowl of it while you’re binge-watching Netflix, you actually lose weight.

Voice-activated Smart Microwaves (with a cute female name) that remember how you like your frozen stuff nuked.
“Madison, beef and bean burrito.”
“According to your burrito history, you prefer two minutes on High.  Is that correct?”
(You just read that in a computer voice, didn’t you?)

Compulsory therapy for old men who insist on riding those extra noisy-ass motorcycles.

Something (I don’t know what) that gets the last bit of peanut butter out of the bottom of the jar.

And finally:

A secret society where the members memorize history to preserve it until those “culture cancellers” get over themselves — kinda like what the people in Fahrenheit 451 did for books and literature.