11 posts tagged “ideas”

Ideas from a horrible human being:

Hot or not. Pregnant or just fat. How about Iraq or Diabetes? Send a pic of your stump and see if the Internet can guess.

A new reality television program for the enjoyment of America: Abuse. 10 contestants are thoroughly researched and then followed by camera crews and incredibly obnoxious jerks, one jerk per contestant. The jerk spends around a week (the contestants won't know how long) trying to get the contestant to crack - yell, scream, talk back, react in any negative way. The contestants are competing for a chance - a chance, mind you - to win a large sum of money. Those who don't crack, or the last few people to crack, then get put on a giant roulette wheel. There is a tiny Double Zero portion of the wheel, but as it spins, the 00 section slowly expands.

Reading The Marvel Vault caused me to envision a world where the adventurers, scientists, and super-heroes from the fifties and sixties spent a lot of time fighting humongous creatures from outer space/other dimensions/deranged nazi scientist labs/magic dungeons. Towering beasts are fearsome opponents, but once the colossal threats of the week got their big butts beat, what happened to the corpses?

Often, the solution to the threat was also the method of disposal. Trap them in quick sand! Grind them under tectonic plates! Throw them into the volcano! Send them in pieces to the bottom of the ocean! Freeze them at the poles! Strap a rocket on a hastily-built massive coffin and shoot them out to space!

But what happens come the 21st century? Global warming hits, volcanoes blow, earthquakes open rifts, etc. Hundreds of gallons of monster blood slowly seep into the water supply. Malevolent mutant children begin popping up in the small town of Oh-Shit-We-Forgot-There's-A-Horrible-Radioactive-Abomination-Buried-Here, USA. And sometimes the giant friggin' jerks just plain heal.

How do modern heroes - Daysavers - handle the renewed threats of the mid-twentieth century? Do we try to look stuff up at the library while the city gets crushed? Do we throw ourselves at the bloody thing? Do we call Grandpa, apologize profusely for being a dick at the Hero Families Reunion, and beg for help?

I think this would make a great comic book. Or an awesome RPG. The possibilities are endless.

Latest geeky idea:

The Geek Zodiac

Signs: Robot, Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Cowboy, Viking, Dinosaur, Astronaut

I envision the Geek Zodiac as a daily horoscope website. Visitors would set up an account, and plug in some basic information (that would never be shared outside the site.) The basic information would determine what sign the user is. But if the user doesn't want that sign, all they'd have to do is refresh, and it would cycle through each sign. The horoscopes would be heavy on the nerd references. "Today's Robot horoscope is: Watch out for electro-magnets. Your parallel dimension doppelganger will have a glorious golden ass."

I also see a sweet poster of a starry sky with made up constellations.

Linktripping - verb - the act of clicking on a hyperlink, reading a page, clicking a link on that page, and repeating.

Seeqpod sifting - verb - the act of going to Seeqpod, adding a bunch of songs from the Podcrawler to your playlist, and listening through them to find good stuff.

Hornery - adjective - the manly state of equal readiness to achieve satisfaction either through copulation or violence.

Retroenvy - noun - the immersion into one or more aspects of a culture that came and went before the birth of the person experiencing it. Example: A 15 year old girl with a Beatles handbag.

Retroanger - noun - the active dislike of one or more aspects of a culture that came and went before the birth of the person experiencing it. Example: A 17 year old boy claiming the work of Jimi Hendrix is wankery.

These terms are my own original ideas and unique as far as I know. Feel free to use them in any way.

My friend Kurt is studying to be something the food/hospitality industry. In one of his classes, he had to make up a proposal for starting a restaurant. He used an idea I had that we'd discussed many moons ago about a salad bar. I'll tell you more about the idea later. The point of this paragraph is someone directly and substantially benefited from the free use of one of my ideas.

I absolutely love the the idea that people could take my original thoughts and musings and develop them into something of substance - even if it's just a solid lock on an A in a class. See, ideas tend to spring from my mind, not unlike Athena from the skull of Zeus. I'll be thinking about something, possibly only tangentially related, and suddenly I'm aware of a concept with what might be construed as potential. Unlike the ancient goddess of wisdom, my ideas never arrive fully formed. Which is cool, because I get pleasure out of tweaking my ideas, just as I assume gearheads like working on their cars. It's even more fun when someone with an interest in the topic is there to bounce stuff off of and add things in.

The idea was a simple one, really. I thought of using an automated slicer at a salad bar. It would have settings to control the size - so one person could make a caesar's salad with wider pieces of lettuce, and the next person could make cole slaw. The idea expanded further. We set out a full salad bar with a variety of different things, and we put salad recipes up around the restaurant in big, colorful, friendly signs. Then, a new bit of (what I considered) genius struck - how about we put the calorie count on those recipes?

I figure, the typical eatery doesn't want to tell you how many calories are in their dishes. So this salad bar will do the opposite - "this is exactly what we're putting in your body." I think that kind of honesty could only work with salads, and even then, suggested recipes would need to be carefully crafted. But hey, that's well within the realm of possibility. There could be an ever-changing employee's choice recipe, and a set of recipes corresponding to particular vegetables in season. They'd be big, friendly signs saying "and this one gives you this vitamin, and it's all x calories, etc" Nothing too complicated, just simple concepts and numbers.

While I was talking to Kurt about his project, I also thought up a juice bar, instead of a soda fountain. There would be this juice bartender who could mix you up a cottontail (a cottontail is a mixed drink without alcohol) with healthy juices, perrier, different teas, whatever. The point is, it would be way better for the customer's health than unlimited sugar water.

Obviously I'd need hard financial data before figuring out exactly what to serve and how to make the juice bar feasible. But I think this joint could really take off. The overarching goal is to provide lots of healthy choices to people in an honest manner, as opposed to the norm, where fast food salads are almost if not as bad as fast food burgers and chicken. I'm not trying to start an actual cult, but I can see people coming to the place quasi-religiously. And religion is widely known to be extremely lucrative.

In the end, Kurt didn't even mentioned the automated slicer. The idea officially evolved beyond its own beginning. So, while I'll probably never act on this concept I've come up with, I'm more than happy to share it with people, and I'm absolutely thrilled to think my little ideas can do some small good in the world.

Obviously, I wish everyone felt like me here. Ideas should be free. This copyright nonsense needs to be fixed. Certainly people should profit from their ideas if there's profit to be had. But to hoard your ideas, keep them away and sue anyone who thinks up something similar... that is a travesty. I'm looking at you, patent trolls. And you, people who don't think music remixes and mashups are a real art form. I've got news - for centuries if not millenniums, every idea we as a people have had has been a conceptual remix, a logical mashup, or some combination of the two of the ideas our predecessors had.

On another thought - comic geeks, do you think the Midnighter listens to Hank Ballard and the Midnighters?

I think this would be highly popular on youtube. A courtroom setting would be the backdrop for two nerds to fight out classic (and modern) nerd debates. Kind of like Celebrity Deathmatch, only with real people instead of clay and words in place of gruesome violence.

Nothing broad, like Star Wars vs. Star Trek. The details would take hours. I'd want to shoot for arguments that take 3 minutes each, including the humorous submitting of "evidence." The classic "can a lightsaber cut through adamantium" discussion comes to mind. Or how about the true definition of the "pompitus" especially in relation to love?

Solid Snake vs. MacGyver - who is more deserving of the mullet? There Can Only Be One... Mullet.

I think Nerd Court would be immensely popular, indeed.

I just want to give a shout out to all lesbians. Dudes into dudes, transexuals, hermaphrodites, and everybody else is cool, but there is a special place in my heart for lesbians.

I'm not that creepy guy who watches a bunch of lesbian porn all the time. I love lesbians because they're the only kind of women I understand.

I get it, ladies. Women drive you crazy but you love them anyway. I am completely, one hundred percent with you on that.

So what I'm thinking is, it's not fair that gay dudes get faghags and lesbians get nothing. I want to be the masculine answer to faghaggery. What would be a good name for that? Dykedick? Maybe I will start calling myself a dykedick.

Here's an idea I just had:

Imagine if you will an internet social network, like facebook or myspace, that encourages people to vote on issues. None of this online poll bullpucky where there's no way to know how many people are going to vote. For every decision put forth, every member of the network would get a chance to place one vote. Yea, nay, or abstain, those are the options. A vote could last, say, a week. If a preset quorum of voters don't vote on the issue, it would have to be extended. So while a member doesn't necessarily have to vote, voting can have a very real effect on the online experience. What if we Facebook folks could vote away those insipid zombie/vampire/werewolf/ninja apps? If the majority, as defined by a set quorum, said "nay" to a feature, it would be abolished.

Of course, this would work better in a positive sense. We would vote for or against the inclusion of features in the first place. Maybe we're pro-werewolf but anti-vampire. That's fine. That's democracy. That's social evolution!

The number of voters who voted on an issue would be recorded permanently, and once a certain percentage of that number in new members joining has been met, someone could try to put the "bill" in again.

Hmm... We can't let everybody be able to put decisions up for a vote at any time. Certain members could "campaign" to be allowed to put bills forth. That would be the way to encourage growth of the system - people would get their friends to join in order to "support" them, so they can gain online political leverage. Plus there could be a "box" where anyone could put a bill in, and once a week, one would randomly be chosen.

Eventually we'd get to the point where we've developed an interesting, organic feature set.  Oh, but there's more! Think  about how fascinating it would be to put  up real-world issues to a vote! There could be official debate discussion boards, where any member who has voted on an issue can give an explanation - limited in word number for the sake of conciseness - as to why they voted that way. The "politician" types would get to write out the detailed arguments that everyone would (should) read before voting.

Democracy Online would be really interesting - to me, at least.

There should be a list of rules that pertain to all people at all times. Rule #1: Never discount the possibility of an explosion.

A moment ago, I thought this to myself: "You risk too much for so little."

I have an idea in my head on how to transform Final Fantasy: Tactics into a pen and paper game. I call it "PP: Tactics." It would heavily involve cooperative strategy and creative use of numbers one through twelve.

I would still like to produce Serial Showcase - basically an American version of Shonen Jump, with a variety of sequential art stories told in serial format. That was, of course, a dream I'd never do that corralled a number of stories I'll never write. I realize now that since my father resigned from his position at the OBCC, I no longer have virtually unlimited access to high-volume printing equipment.

There is a sixteen year old girl living in my house. It is not known when she will leave. I believe at this point we can define her as estranged from her parents. She is a huge drain on my family's resources - time, money, and especially energy. My mother is taking the worst of it at the moment. The situation is causing an abundance of friction in my family life, but I am going to do my best to ease Mom's load when I come home on weekends.

Even though I have hours and hours of volunteer work I have to do. And a computer I need to sell.

Also, the absence of female is nearly as maddening as the presence.

I look at problems in our society and think of ways to be rid of them. But a lot of my solutions seem to go back to government intervention. For example:

How do we deal with the problem of digital piracy and the RIAA clogging up our courtrooms? What if we made music free and had a government agency do promotion?

The Department of Culture's Music branch would hire x number of bands a year as subcontractors to perform in government-sponsored venues. It would become an alternative to going out to the movies or seeing a play. Some number of bands will be playing at one particular local venue at predictable, convenient times. Censorship is virtually unnecessary - a band is simply given a rating on their performances before they're presented to the public. A PG-13 performance means only 13 and up are allowed to get tickets. The only rule is "don't break the law on stage." Easy, simple, and ethical.

Advantages of this system:
Local governments would be receiving the lion's share of profits in exchange for advertising the heck out these bands. Public buildings will be updated with performance schedules. Local radio and tv will be required to put up commercials for these performances as part of their broadcasting contracts. That takes care of the big problem bands have starting out - their name will be out there. Second, everyone will know where to go after a concert to get their free mp3s of the bands they just saw - a perfectly legal, government-maintained website.

In fact, the rating system could be supplemented by parents being able to download music before decided whether or not to let kids go see a particular band.

So -
Revenue is generated within a community and stays in that community
Musicians get steady paychecks
Bands get public exposure for when they want to get higher-paid gigs at private venues
People get free music

Of course, there's an issue with taking business and talent away from private venues. For that, there could be a tour program for the most popular bands to travel around to public and private venues. The current system in place would have to be changed considerably, of course.  The two goals of this whole idea are to increase the presence of fine arts in our society, and to solve this whole copyright mess we have on our hands. Music stays free, at it basically is anyway, and artists get paid.

I don't know if people would support this idea, since it technically gives power to the (local) government over music. The thing is, it doesn't really matter who controls it - it's whether or not the controller is adhering to ethical standards.

I had an idea for a reality tv show. "How Well Do You Know Your Life?" This idea is pretty raw so feel free to poke holes in it if you see them.

It works like this. We pick a person at random. We knock on their door and tell them we're doing a tv show. They have to leave for 3 hours while we go through all the person's stuff to figure out facts about them - hard, indisputable facts. Stuff like the manufacturer of the car that the person drives, or where a particular object is in the house. (We'd need a way to prove we didn't move it. We tell the person to call a friend to go in with us, maybe? That could work.) So afterwards, we ask them the questions, and pay out a cash prize (or cool stuff, whatever) if they get them all correct.

I can see in my mind this glorious moment where 50,00 people at home are screaming "YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THAT?" We're talking quality tv, my friends.