Steal My Ideas, Please

Fiction tends to fall into two camps (or so I think): serious lit and fantasy/action/adventure, which includes mysteries. Romance is probably a third. But why is it you don’t see much popular fiction that’s just fun, like TV? Kind of like Two and a Half Men in print? Or Rocky and Bullwinkle? Or a Saturday Night Live Sketch? You know, stuff with escapist fun and some homespun sentimentality, too?  

I wonder if a fiction magazine with a Readers’ Digest-like sensibility for the amusing anecdote-like story could make a go.

Kind of like Tales Your Grandpa Might Have Told. 

I’m crippled by love
Can’t talk, can’t get up off this couch
Somebody give me a shove
Cause I’m crippled by love

Did she do me wrong?
Maybe she did me so right
I can’t get her out
of my mental sight

Can’t eat, can’t smoke
can’t tell a joke
My body’s crushed by love,
like, held down from above

My mind’s all tied in knots
I’m too whacked to loosen
Don’t know how, don’t know when
Don’t know yoga, don’t know Zen.

I’ll probably lie here forever
Watching a blank TV
Can’t move, can’t love,
can’t drink, can’t think,
can’t shout, just pout,
Yes, I’m crippled, crippled, crippled by love

ps: This is isn’t about me now, but it sure was once.

Here’s a weird idea. (Yes, I’m back, at least for now, after spending a bunch of months journaling and trying to straighten out my head. More on that later. Perhaps.) Too many of us just sit at work, exercising nothing but our eyes and fingers typing at computers. Earlier, I had the idea for a giant keyboard you type on with your feet: The Big Toe-Tappable Computer Keyboard. Well, I recently read about the idea that it’s better for you to sit on a huge inflated therapy ball than in a chair. You have to move and strengthen your core muscles just to keep your balance. I liked it. Now I watch TV that way. Definitely helps me feel less like a slug. Aha, I thought the other day, what if this therapy ball also worked like a giant trackball?  You’d move your cursor by sliding yourself on the ball. Maybe you click with your foot.

Gee, why not that? It’s pretty tough (and probably tiring) to dance on a giant keyboard. But what if you had a stepper for a couple of keys? Left foot: Space bar. Right foot: Mouse click. Even sitting in a chair, you might get a lot of movement in, because I’ll bet we hit those keys/buttons hundreds of times a day.

I hope to illustrate this when I get time.

Uh, I kind of forget to finish a puzzler I posed a while back: What’s the most a contestant could find during a normal game of Jeopardy!?

Here are the parameters: During each of the first two rounds there are six categories. In the first round, each category has these amounts up for grabs: $200, $400, $600, $800 and $1,000, and one hidden “Daily Double” allows a player to double all the money he or she has won so far in the round. During the second round, Double Jeopardy, the awards are worth twice as much: $400, $800, $1,000, $1,600 and $2,000, and there are two Daily Doubles. In the final round, Final Jeopardy, players can bet all of their accumulated cash and double their earnings, if they questions the answer correctly. 

Got it? So what’s the maximum someone could win? It’s a lot more than the record $75,000 that the legendary Ken Jennings won in July 2004, according to Wikipedia’s Jeopardy! entry.  

Scroll down a few items to see the answer, or click this link: “Answer to ‘Jeopardy!’ Puzzle”

Speaking of “selfyness,” that might be stealmyideasplease’s main flaw. Even when I blogged almost daily, can’t see the site really caught on. Should have … visited other sites and linked to them, for better e-karma … figured out how to involve others more.

What if, instead, anyone could post an idea? Or post links to other good ideas? Some sites like that do exist — halfbakery.com and whynot.net. So what else could be tried?
I’m curious about ning.com. It lets people set up social networks, the way anyone can set up a blog. Seems to have more features in terms of people having profiles and identities and being able to form groups.

Perhaps it could cultivate the seed I planted with my Collaborations Lab.  Add a place where ideas can be requested, fixed and upgraded. Maybe do joint ventures, like novels that are jointly authored and edited. Need help … and time.

Ben & Jerry’s Pistachio Pistachio … what a redundant name. I know it’s like double pistachio — both nuts and ice cream — but wouldn’t Pistachio Mustachio sound more fun? Conjures up a green version of the milk mustache. OK, kind of gross … but fun.

Some people aren’t so much selfish as they are, well, selfy. To coin a word. Or at least a meaning. (Apparently a self-portrait can be a “selfy.”) Selfish people worry about getting what’s theirs, whether it’s success, adulation, money, preferential treatment. Selfy people, on the other hand, can be nice and considerate, but they’re just into themselves. Maybe they like themselves a lot. Or they’re smug. Kind of like happy babies. But I guess they could also be self-absorbed in a miserable way. Selfishness implies taking and keeping, someone else getting shorted. Selfyness implies ignoring, not taking.

If you missed the question, and want to try to solve it, go to: “Puzzle: On ‘Jeopardy!’ What’s the Max Anyone Could Win?

To win the max, a player would have to question every answer correctly, and always bet the maximum on the Daily Doubles and in Final Jeopardy. The wrinkle is that each of the Daily Doubles would have to lie behind the minimum dollar-value spaces and be selected last in Single and Double Jeopardy.

Here’s how this jackpot would build:
1. $17,800 for being correct on first 17 posers in Single Jeopardy — that is, all but one $200 space. ($200 + $400 + $600 + $800 + $1,000 = $3,000 x 6 categories = $18,000 - $200 = $17,800.)
2. The Daily Double comes up under the last $200 space, allowing the player to double the $17,800 to $35,600.
3. In Double Jeopardy, which has two Daily Doubles, the first 16 correct questions would net a maximum additional $35,200. ($400 + $800 + $1,200 + $1,600 + $2,000 = $6,000 x 6 = $36,000 - $800 = $35,200.) That brings the total to $70,800.
4. Turn over the first remaining $400 space, wager it all, double the prize to $141,600.
5. Turn over the last $400 space, wager everything, and the total soars to $283,200.
6. Bet it all in Final Jeopardy, and the sum doubles on more glorious time, to $566,400.

Before Uncle Sam’s cut, of course. If my math is right.

Idea for an online amusement: A place where you can put anyone’s face on a famous painting. A whole gallery of paintings … all with faces that pop out. Upload your picture, position, and print. Voila! You’re in Manet’s The Picnic. Or grab a celebrity face from another gallery, and, zut alors, George Bush is the Mona Lisa. Nothing enigmatic about that smile.

Not surprised: This has been thought of before. If electric cars have a limited range, why not be able to pick up recharged batteries as you drive? Swap ‘em like tanks for gas grills. Freshcreation.com has a post, including a neat video of how electric car battery exchanges could work.

“Be here now” is familiar spiritual advice. To live in the timeless present is to be one with the One, to know God … or at least have a simpler, happier life. Ah, there’s always the rub of intention. Can’t try, can’t think, can’t conceptualize your way to true nowness. Indeed, if you overthink “here” it sounds small, not there, and if you overthink “now” you might repress your past and thoughts about the future. So what if they aimlessly drift by? If when meditating or uncogitating, you’re having trouble with “be here now,” go opposite: Be everywhere eternally. Let it all hang out, man. Let your mind soar through vast space, back to the Big Bang, ahead to the Big Fade-Out Whimper Thing. Sounds closer to the One anyway, doesn’t it?

PS. Sorry I haven’t posted for quite a while. Been off on mental journeys. I did take notes. So I hope to be dropping off more reports. And some invention ideas, too.

The first inspiration: If a catbox could be made to shake, would it automatically cover the crap? Common sense says, heavy stuff falls right? So the litter, as it’s thrown side to side, would fly on top, and, presto, Sea of Tranquility.

Makes for a funny image (which I’d draw if I had time) of a covered box on springs with a bewildered feline sticking her face out. Or maybe it could be motorized.
Problem is (I think) that actually common sense is wrong: Larger pieces rise, because small stuff falls into the smaller gaps and winds up on the bottom. Happens all the time to breakfast cereal. So, what if the pieces of litter were like really big flakes? Probably would freak the cat from using it and still wouldn’t work. What’s the answer? An agitator like a washing machine? (Yeah, that’s real low tech.) Springs that cause twisting? A sensor that, after it detects a cat departing, kind of clamshells up with box then reopens? What’s your idea?

Here’s another cat-related post: Cat Food Topping. And it features one of my daughter’s cartoons.

But Circular Reasoning 2 wasn’t quite right, I thought, because hands aren’t part of the inner loops. So how to convey a tortured soul whose mind was spinning in circles. Like this loopy intuitive result. Hope I’m not spoiling it by talking about it.

Feel free to use these cartoons, by the way … as long as you give credit.

But the thought balloon version of “Circular Reasoning 1” doesn’t quite express how much we torture our thoughts and ourselves to get our ideas of ourselves to fit. Here’s a second attempt.

A lot of logic is circular. Say I’m mean to people who I think are mean to me. That makes them upset, which lets me think, “See, they’re mean! I’m justified in being mean!” 

Applies to good thoughts, too. Love can be a good kind of circular reasoning.  

I wanted to illustrate the illusion of self-concept. Are we who we imagine ourselves to be? Especially if we’re imagining ourselves imagining ourselves? And what if it doesn’t stop there?