Monday, March 12, 2007
Half Baked
...And we're back!
Not that anyone, apparently, noticed, but I've had a busy couple of weeks with no time for blogging.
Today, to ease back into things, I wanna talk about half-baked ideas, especially half-baked business ideas.
Those of you who know me in the real world know I'm famous for such things.
I once read a biography of Stalin in which the author observed that Stalin's curse was that 30 per cent of his ideas were brilliant but 70 per cent were either stupid or insane. The problem was that he had no ability to distinguish which was which.
This is, in fact, the curse of all idea people. Personally, I would have given up on my loopy business ideas long ago, but I am haunted by the notion that one day, by sheer random thousand-monkeys-at-a-thousand-typewriters chance, I might actually come up with a good one.
I am further encouraged in my quixotic devotion by the success of a colleague of mine. He is likewise a loopy business idea guy and, in my objective opinion, his ideas are no saner than mine, but through various conspiracies of good fortune and skill, his ideas have consistently taken off. He has, for example, made a thriving home business out of fine-art fridge magnets. His latest venture is selling carbon credits to environmentalist types (in spite of the fact that my colleague's own beliefs, I'm sad to say, lean towards the global-warming-denier end of the spectrum. Capitalism in action!)
So, I live in hope....
Here's a selection of some of my hare-brained greatest hits:
Action Jesus - even though I'm not Christian, I figure there's a huge market selling toys to Flandersian America. My toys would bring the Bible to life with the excitement of superhero-style toys :
- Pharisee, with stone-throwing arm
- Lucifer, with Get-Behind-Me backward leaping action
- Quick Change Saul/Paul, with bonus Road to Damascus action stand
- St. Matthew Piggy Bank, with automatic tithing function.
Reviving the Rhino Party - this will mean little to you foreigners. There used to be a parody political party in Canada that ran on joke platforms but actually got listed on the ballot. The Electoral Office eventually went on a vendetta to drive them out of business on the grounds that they were making a mockery of the electoral process. I say that such mockery is exactly what free speech is all about and important dose of perspective in the midst of over-wrought election ads. At first, I figured political finance laws could be used to the advantage of such an initiative, but ultimately concluded the hassles would, sadly, outweigh the fun.
I have a current scheme on the go involving developing resort property, but this time around I seem to be getting a lot of people nodding their heads when I talk about it. So, on the off chance that this is the idea that's going to work, I think I'll keep it close to my chest.
Now, how about you, dear readers? Do you have any pet ideas that you've been afraid to say out loud? Do you know of anyone who, successfully or unsuccessfully, risked it all on a half-baked notion?
posted by Mentok @ 9:48 p.m.,
17 Comments:
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At 2:02 a.m.,
Bathroom Hippo said...
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Don't shower for 2 weeks and tell people you're gonna come to their work and bug them unless they pay you. -
At 9:47 a.m.,
Grumps said...
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The ideal invention for me: software that transcribes audio files in text. Then instead of having to re-listen to an boring intreview while typing it up, all I would need to do is load the file into my computer and then have the program translate.
Oh, it has to be for MAC and PC. -
At 2:14 p.m.,
mjrc said...
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hey, i missed you!
i think you might be on to something with your bible hero toys, especially the quick/change saul/paul. brilliant!
and what, aren't there any flandersian canadians? ;-) -
At 2:26 p.m.,
Mentok said...
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Hippo - we actually had a supplier, owner of a mass fax service, who was exactly like that. We would warn the receptionist when he was coming. We were willing to pay a premium for him to NOT come in person. Sadly, he died recently and it turned out in his obit that he was a genius scholar with a Ph.D. and a previous life as a government consultant.
Grumps - You know, I think they might have products like that already, although of course they wouldn't be perfect. Me, I avoid this by never taping in the first place. I just type out interviews on the fly. That way I have more freedom to make up things if I need to ;-) (kidding)
Marcy - thanks for saying you missed me..I was starting to wonder.
"aren't there any flandersian canadians" .. Sure there are, but they seem more manageable here. Here, almost everyone, no matter what political party they are in, is more or less liberal by US standards and the religious types are an easy-to-ignore minority. Down there, correct me if I'm wrong, the country is split nearly 50/50. -
At 3:30 p.m.,
Grumps said...
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Mentok - I believe there is something out there but the process involves training the software by reading to it for weeks on end. When it's done, it only recognizes your voice and mannerisms. You'd have to train it for every person you interviewed...are you still awake?
Hmmmmm, interesting interview method. I'll be sure to share that with GrumpsBoss. -
At 3:47 p.m.,
Mentok said...
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Grumps - obviously, I'm only kidding about making things up, but I'm serious about never using a tape recorder. I transcribe interviews live as I'm interviewing. Mind you, I use my own keyboard shorthand that only I can read. Nonetheless, interview subjects almost always interject "wow, I can't believe how fast you can type".
But it obviously cuts down on the time needed to compose a story, since you can scan notes much more quickly than you can listen to / retype a tape recording. Plus I find I have to concentrate harder and absorb better what the interview subject is saying with this method. -
At 10:20 p.m.,
mkecurler said...
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Off topic: Guess who scored an 8 ender! Me me me!!!!!! Tell all your curling friends in CA! Photo is on the blog!
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At 10:38 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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An 8 ender! Holy crap!
(for those unfamiliar, that's like a perfect score in a "round" of curling).
Congratulations, sabatkes. -
At 12:42 p.m.,
Elizabeth said...
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Clothes by the pound. A clothing store where you buy clothes by weight and not individually. Perhaps this would work better as a second-hand clothing store.
I tried my hand at selling other things by the pound, but only ended up in prison doing 10-15. -
At 1:15 p.m.,
Mentok said...
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This reminds of a kooky, low-production values locally-made commercial I once saw. A car dealership did an ad where they pretended to be a bait shop. "Reel in the deals!" ... and so forth. They rattled off a bunch of car prices by the pound, which of course made them sound surprisingly affordable. A Cadillac sedan for only $10/lb? Sounds pretty good.
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At 8:42 p.m.,
mkecurler said...
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Thanks sweetie! I'm milking this one for a LONG time..well until the end of April :)
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At 10:30 a.m.,
mjrc said...
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i think perhaps as a whole, the u.s. is fairly christian, but the zealot portion is far less than they seem to be. they make a lot of noise and have a lot of political clout ("had" more, i hope), but they don't represent all christians by a long shot.
in fact, there are a lot of us liberal christian types who hate the fact that we're lumped in with them. i think there may be more of us than them, but they're extremely organized and seem to fall into line better than we do, which only makes sense, since they tend to think in black-and-white. gray areas don't seem to exist for them (she says with sweeping generalizations). -
At 12:19 p.m.,
Rachel said...
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I don't know call me crazy but I think all of these ideas are great! I mean if you could figure out how to pull that cellphone translation thing off! Man! You and Mrs. Mentok would be sitting pretty.
My dad tried many things before he finally excepted the fact that he was an exceptional contractor and opened up his own construction company...And did very well. But man I, like my dad and like you Mentok, we yearn to make something ourselves, invent and apply, work for ourselves and not answer to anyone and take credit for ALL of it...Now if I can just come up with some ingenious idea it would all be in motion.
Keep brainstorming! Cheers to following your dreams! -
At 3:07 p.m.,
FiL said...
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Looks like someone beat you to the Christian action figures punch...
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At 3:07 p.m.,
FiL said...
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I quite fancy Job myself...
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At 3:28 p.m.,
Mentok said...
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Yes, but you see the huge difference between my ideas and these action figures is that the latter are designed by actual evangelist conservative Christians and are therefore, in true Ned Flanders fashion, drained of any spark of life or imagination. I mean, what do these figures do? They just stand there and look biblical.
Personally, I favour Goliath. He has a certain menacing, robot-like quality to him.
I simply must add that I get the chills just thinking about Proverbs 22:6, on which this company is founded: "Train up a child in a way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it."
My mom, the evangelist Christian used to quote this line to me ad nauseum. Still does sometimes, despite that I have proven it wrong. -
At 4:59 p.m.,
mjrc said...
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one last story and then i promise i'm done.
my kids had to take a gift to a chinese gift exchange for their youth group at church. i found a "dashboard jesus" figure that i thought was funny and oddly appropriate. to my surprise, my son got very upset with me and told me it was blasphemous, that he didn't want to take it. my daughter, on the other hand, decided it was worth taking, and it turned out to be the hit of the gift-giving, with all the kids fighting over it.
not sure what the moral of the story is, other than dashboard jesus figures are pretty cool! (and mother does know best, 90% of the time). ;-)
