Idea Province

Impractical Jokes

From Michael Bluejay:

So you’ve heard of “practical jokes”.  I’ve never really understood what was so “practical” about them.  But I started thinking of completely useless pranks, so I figure I might as well call them IMpractical jokes.  For example, you make a whole bunch of signs that say WET PAINT and post them throughout the subway.  Everyone sees them and thinks there really is wet paint.  But it’s actually just the signs, there’s no wet paint at all, so THE JOKE’S ON THEM!  Ha ha ha ha!  Or not.

Eventually, people will get so desensitized to wet paint signs, they’ll assume they’re a joke and become careless around them. Then the joke will doubly be on them.

Too Late For This Bumper Sticker

I had this bumper sticker idea a while ago, but never got around to posting it. Now it’s totally out of date. Such is the peril of ideas conceived in election cycles:

“McCain: Bush’s 3rd Term (And If He’s Really Good, Bush’s 4th Term Too)”

Improving the Q&A Format

Instead of answering every question in the order of hands raised, filmmakers or other illustrious types on a stage for a Q&A should have three or four people ask their questions, and then pick the best and answer that one. Or go on an extemporaneous riff that touches on all of them. Then they’d call on three or four more people, and pick the best of that batch as well. And so on, until their half-hour is up.

This would allow filmmakers to skip the boring questions like “How much was the budget?” “How long was the shoot?” and “Did you let the actors improvize?” in favor of the more intriguing questions that might have been overlooked in the swamp of raised hands. It would also accomodate people who have comments rather than questions (“Is there a question in there?” the audience members with actual questions grouse), since the comment wouldn’t need to be responded to at all.

The downside is filmmakers might use it as an excuse to skip over inconvenient questions that they don’t want to answer. But how often are those asked anyway?

Unprogrammed Worship Freestlying

A hip hop video that takes place at a Quaker session of silent “unprogrammed worship.” At these meetings, Quakers sit in silence for an hour, unless someone is led by the spirit to stand and share a message. The video would start with everything normal at one of these meetings:

We see shots of devout, conservatively dressed Quakers, silently pondering. Then we cut to a famous hip hop artist, who is also conservatively dressed and silently pondering with the others. We hold on his face for a few moments of his meditation, until he has a sudden revelation; he’s been moved by the spirit. He stands to share. Everyone looks at him politely.

Then he busts into a badass hip hop single. All the usual West Coast hip-hop video standbys - flashing lights, cops, gangstas, women in bikins bouncing a beach ball - descend upon the Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, dancing and grinding and jumping off the walls, though the Quakers hardly bat an eye.

When he finishes the song, his associates disappear, and the room returns to normal, as if it was never disturbed. He nods slightly and sits. The profound silence continues where it left off.

Pithy Comic About Early Demise

Beyond His Years

Short movie about a six-year-old child who gets in big trouble and/or is wildly praised for doing the things that average adults do on a regular basis.

The movie opens with him taking his mom’s car keys and driving off with the family car, only to be pulled over by the police once he turns onto the highway. His parents are furious, but he makes the local news and is invited to a latenight talk show, where his matter-of-fact recounting of the incident is a huge hit.

The parents forgive him, but not long after, he sneaks into the liquor cabinet, gets drunk, and mouths off in front of a family-gathering, using language no kid is supposed to know. His parents are horrified and ground him, but most of the family members secretly find it to be hilarious.

The kid also somehow knows things that any typical adult would know, which earns him a spot in a gifted class, but gets him in hot water when he reveals more knowledge about sex and death than any kid should have.

He breaks so many age-based laws that eventually he is put on trial… as an adult. He represents himself (quite articulately, for a child) and is found innocent. When he’s released, he’s regarded as a rebel and an unsurpassed genius and goes on a lecture tour.

But as weird and outrageous and controversial and brilliant as everyone thinks this kid is, if he were an adult, none of his behavior would even raise an eyebrow.

Did I hear someone say “holding a mirror up to society”?

Against Obama Before It Was Cool

Here’s a funny bumper sticker idea from Nicole Berland:

i saw a bumper sticker that said “i was against bush before being against bush was cool.” the bumper sticker irritated me because it was dumb. being against bush was always already cool. [editor’s note: I can confirm this, having witnessed/attended a large anti-Bush protest in Austin on his 2001 inauguration day]

so i thought it would be funny to have a bumper sticker that said, “i was against obama before being against obama was cool.”  is this funny?  i think it’s funny bc like nobody is against obama, and being against him is definitely not cool, which means that it would be more believable than that stupid bumper sticker that i saw today about bush.

I love this sticker, because it sounds like it was either written in a possible future where Obama hate is hip, or it is just making a wildly incorrect assumption that it’s long been trendy to hate Obama (which obviously hasn’t).

Religion Sans Non-Believers

I’m trying to come up with a new religion that deals with the problem of non-believers without damning them or going to war against them. Since all religions — though they may have some good insights or advice — are, at their core, irrational, religion only seems plausible when you surround yourself with other people who believe the way you believe. Since your immortality rests on your set of irrational beliefs being true, being around people who have a completely different set of irrational beliefs is discomfiting… at best.

This is why conversion is a vital aspect of most religions. The more people who believe the way you do, the more true it seems to be. And since few like to contemplate the possibility that they are inevitably destined for oblivion (Just Earth? Eww.), people whose different impossible beliefs hold a funhouse mirror to our own impossible beliefs need to be destroyed in some way. Religion is blamed for a good amount of wars in human history, but it’s not the substance of the particular religions that causes conflict, but something inherent to religion as a whole: only one religion (at most) can be right; anyone who doesn’t buy into your fantasy is messing it up for you and all of your fellow believers. They have to be dismissed in some way or another (hell, nothingness, a lower level of heaven, STDs), and sometimes that involves murdering them.

But there has to be a way to create an immortality fantasy for yourself without leaving non-believers to decay.

Judaism kind of does this. It doesn’t actively convert anyone, and it doesn’t automatically damn anyone who isn’t Jewish to a miserable afterlife. Instead, it has The Seven Laws of Noah, rules for non-Jews to follow. The problem is that if you don’t believe in Judaism, why are you going to care about the rules Judaism says you’re supposed to follow as a non-Jew?

If the rules were so lax that any reasonable person could obey them without really trying, that might work, but the ban against idoltry rules out cross-worshipping Christians and anyone who watches E! Entertainment Television. Homosexuality forfeits your immortality claim here, as does eating an animal while it’s still alive (probably not a big deal most of the time, unles you like to eat raw oysters). Using the Lord’s name in vain is against the rules and rule seven, which says that you must have a judicial system that enforces Rules 1 - 6, arguably banishes all of us to non-existence.

So I think there’s still room for a religion that deals with non-believers in a completely neutral way. The only thing I’ve thought of so far is that a religion could be so confident in itself and the rightness of its beliefs, that it dismisses the possibility of a non-believer. There could be people who are unaware of the religion, but to have even heard of the religion is to know it’s true. And no matter what anyone says, or what religion they claim to believe in, they all secretly believe it.

To take this even further, one thing the religion encourages is to loudly repudiate the beliefs of the religion. This is beause it’s so obviouly true, to constantly ridicule and mock the religion can’t put a dent in it. This also further takes care of the problem of non-believers. Since even believers are constantly making fun of their own religion, there is no way to tell a believer and a non-believer apart.

Thus, everyone believes, we all think we’re immortal, and we don’t have to kill each other about it.

One Review That Covers Them All

Confused Rookie Massacre

Television skit: Two young guys walking in the Financial District in Manhattan. They see a cop holding a large semi-automatic gun. One of the guys says, “Watch this.” Walks to the cop and throws his arms in the air. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” The cop, a rookie, is confused. He looks around, but there is no one to tell him what to do. After a beat, he shoots the kid dead. The guy’s friend runs away, so he shoots the friend in the back, and then in the head, killing him too.

Seeing the panic and confusion he’s caused, he realizes he needs to settle everything down, so he goes on a well-intentioned rampage, not based on anger, but on confusion and lack of supervision.

He walks around on the street and into shops, and when he observes weird, uncomfortable, awkward situations, he executes all the people in them. He does the same for anyone who is acting strange at all, or standing out in any way (wearing colorful clothes, listening to a boombox, etc). At first he shushes the screaming witnesses, but if they continue to scream, he shoots them too.

Yet as bloody and horrifying as his rampage seems on the surface, with his confusion and good intentions, there is something innocent about it.

Later, when he is called before the police commissioner and asked to explain his massacre, he says, “They were acting funny.”

T-Shirt Appropriate For Most Occasions

Sleeping Shirt

Rock 'n Roll Writer

Idea Provincian Slip

Whenever someone makes a Freudian slip, instead of invoking Freud’s name, it would be a little less cliche if you attach “ian” to the name of the person who slipped. Like, “Whoa, was that a Rhysian slip?” Or “Ha! Ianian slip!”

Another nice thing about this is that it removes the “subconscious motives seeping though unintentionally” aspect of “Freudian slip,” simplifying it to be: “you use words incorrectly.”

Edible Bones Variety Pack