Idea Province

Cross-Religion Costumes

This Halloween, go as a Catholic priest with a yarmulke and payot, a nun with a veil, a Muslim wearing a cross, or a crucified Vishnu (with extra cross boards for the extra arms).

Phase III

A heist movie in which the wise-cracking group of robbers is wise enough to include getting arrested as part of their high-level burglary scheme (Phase III of it, in fact). They figure that if they are optimistic and don’t plan for their arrest, they will probably be arrested anyway and be unprepared for it.

And so, after casing out the the joint they will rob, they case out the prison they will go for their crime. Until they figure out a way to break out of this prison, they decide, they will not do the robbery. After all, it’s easier to plot and scheme as free men than as inmates.

So two of them take low-level administration jobs at the prison within the jurisdiction of their upcoming crime. One acts paranoid about about prisoners escaping and pesters his co-workers about “worst case scenarios” where they could possibly run away and never be caught. The other more quietly observes the routines and structure of the place, making friends with the prisoners by being unusually nice to them, so they can be allies when they are behind bars later.

Eventually, they figure out what seems to be a good enough escape plan, and the rest of their crew goes ahead with the robbery (the two with prison jobs stay at the prison rather than get involved with the robbery, as part of the break-out plan).

The robbery goes smoothly, but too smoothly: they’re not arrested. They had just assumed they would be arrested, so they didn’t plan out how that would happen. So instead they skip to Phase IV, when they transfer the money to a bank in Switzerland, and then go to Switzerland to live the easy life.

They call their prison guard associates, who then walk off the job to meet them. They leave at slightly different times to not be too obvious, but as soon as the first one meets with the crew, they are all arrested… in another jurisdiction than the one they planned for. Thus, they are sent to a prison they didn’t case and where they don’t know any of the prison employees or prisoners.

The only one not arrested is the prison employee who left later and didn’t meet up with the crew on time. He doesn’t know that the money is already in Switzerland, so fleeing there isn’t really an option. He applies for a job at this new prison where his friends now are, but when this prison calls his previous employer and finds out that he walked off the job without any notice, the new prison refuses to hire him.

With nothing else to do, he goes back to the first prison and comes up with a lame excuse for why he left work that day, and gets his job back, now with the prison warden more watchful over him.

Believing that there is no chance his friends will escape the other prison, and that the money is gone, he assumes he will be a prison employee for the rest of his life. He comes to accept this and gets really into  his job, ala the Stanford Prison Experiment, and ceases being nice to the prisoners, since he doesn’t need to be allies with them anymore.

This newfound vicious streak gets the attention of the prison administration, and soon he’s working his way up to the top of the prison employee hierarchy.

But then his friends are transferred to his prison, thanks to some brilliant maneuvers by one of their lawyers. Phase III, they assume, can now leap into action.

Problem is, the guy who stayed a prison employee is now so into his job, he doesn’t want to give it up to resume his old criminal ways. He gives his old colleagues the cold shoulder, ignoring their attempts to have secretive talks. Knowing their ambitions to escape, he approaches his superiors about all the weaknesses in the prison that his criminal buddies had originally intended to exploit to get out of there. This helps tighten security, and also earns him a promotion.

His arrested friends realize they’re on their own, and begin developing another plan. The prisoner that was once a prison worker is especially horrified by their old associate’s behavior, and he becomes the leader of the group, using his connections with prisoners he was nice to before to formulate a new plan. To make revenge even sweeter, they decide to break out not just themselves, but most of the prison.

Somehow, after a lot of mishaps and tomfoolery and interference from the prison guard who used to be on their side, they pull off the biggest prison break-out in history, liberating pretty much the entire prison.

They make it to Geneva, where they relax on the shores of Lake Geneva and watch the giant water jet while eating Swiss chocolates.

Their old friend the prison guard, however, remains in the now almost totally evacuated prison, disgraced yet guarding the one or two prisoners who are left. As he patrols in front of the prison cells, we wonder: is being in a prison for a full time job much different than being a prisoner?

Rude Awakening

Just when things finally start to look up for someone who has had it horrible all of his life, he wakes up and finds out life was just a dream.

Esperanto of Religion

Take all the best parts of each religion and build a new religion from it.

So take: Reincarnation from Hinduism, the worship of the sun from ancient Egypt, the Four Sights in Buddhism, the hijabs from Islam, the celebrity cred of Scientology, the born-into-it and thus you don’t need to believe in God aspect of Judaism, Christmas from Christianity, and blend them together.

What would this religion be called? Beliefo?

Solution For Fake Environmentalists

A blue glass with lines crisscrossing over it to give the illusion of a solar panel. Put them near your building to create the perception that you’re concerned with the environment.

Anger Management Through a Disbelief in Reality and/or a Belief in Fate

When I was younger, I got upset easily. Then, toward the end of high school, I started to believe that life was an illusion. I also started to suspect that the manner in which all these illusions transpired were already decided in advance. Since nothing was real, and since nothing could be done to change how these illusions played out, I saw no reason to be angry anymore.

Eventually, I started to think the world might not be purely an illusion, and that there may be freewill. But I kept the benefits of my cooled-off temper.

Alternative to Traditional Birth

Instead of growing inside of a womb to be flushed out after nine months, the fetus could develop inside a magic Chinese box that has a complicated, secret way of being opened. The fetus will try to get that thing open as soon as it has hands, but when its brain develops enough to figure out how to open the box, that’s when it’s ready to be born.

Movie Criticism Show With the Filmmaker Defending Himself Via Sattellite

Instead of debating another film critic, the critic will debate either the movie’s writer or director. (This only works if the critic doesn’t like the movie.)

High School Revenge

An older writer is going out with a high school senior who made valedictorian. She’s not much of a speech writer, so she has him write her speech. At first he’s reluctant, because he hated high school and all the rituals involved with it, but then he realizes that this is the perfect opportunity for him.

On graduation day, he gleefully observes the audience of aghast parents and educators as his girlfriend delivers an articulate-beyond-her-years scathing indictment of everything having to do with high school, compulsory education, and artifical societal rituals.

Since this is a Hollywood movie, there is a long silence after her speech. Then everyone bursts into wild cheers and applause.

Contempt of Court

A reality show that takes place in a courtroom. Participants in the show would be people who already have upcoming trials for crimes they may or may not have committed. But one thing will be commited for sure: contempt.

For the sake of the show, they will represent themselves in their trials, being as arrogant and outrageous as they can be in the court, calling irrelevant witnesses, mocking the judge and the jury, and generally making fun of the very idea of courtroom justice. Simply put, they will commit every form of contempt imaginable.

All of them will, of course, lose and go to jail. But being on TV presumably makes it worth it.

Do Jesus’ Points Hold Up When Isolated?

Go through the New Testament, dig through all those parables and distill exactly what Jesus said people should do and not do. Make a list out of this, and see if there’s even a single profound insight in there. If not, people will have to stop worshipping him, because then he’s just a guy who died, and there are plenty of those.

Charades Game Called “Do As I Say, Not As I Do”

A mixture of Taboo and Charades, except what you do with your hands and body has nothing to do with the word your teammates are trying to guess. So they have to pay attention to your words and ignore your actions.

A Life-Changing Headache

A man who has a really awful headache for three days straight is forced to make major life changes to deal with it.

An Environmentalist Watching a Horror Film

An environmentalist watching a horror film yells at the TV screen/protagonist, not about the killer being right behind her, but that she left a bunch of lights on in rooms that nobody is in.

Self-Satisfying Prophesy

A prophesy that the end of the world is near. How near is it? The second the prophet dies, the world ends.

I met someone who believed this. Though to be fair, she thought the world would end at some point not too long after she died, not necesarily the second after.