Idea Province

Mixture of The Crane Game and Operation

Instead of grabbing for giant stuffed toys with the joystick controlled crane, you have to try to take body parts out from the poor man on the operating table in Operation. If it buzzes, you lose.

Vegan Compromise Shirt For Icelanders

T-shirt for Icelandic aspiring vegans: “VEGAN (except for whale)”

Maintaining More Things Outside Their Habitat

I like how people have devised ways to capture and maintain creatures outside of their habitats. Plants, for instance: we take them out of the earth and away from the rain, but we’re able to keep them alive by surrounding them with just enough dirt to convince them they’re still in the ground, and we pour water on them to make them think it’s raining.

And fish, they couldn’t live if we just put them on the counter, but put them in a bowl with just a little bit of their native element, and they are fooled enough to go on as if everything were normal.

But do we do this with enough things? Why not keep a mosquito in a jar half-filled with blood?

Sleeping Pill Protest

A good form of protest could be to take sleeping pills in the middle of the day and fall asleep at inappropriate places (such as a fancy dinner with a lot of important speakers.)

Presidential Debates

Instead of just presidential candidate debates, have bi-yearly presidential debates, in which the president would have to debate one of his most articulate opponents (whether political or journalistic).

Grizzled Old Man Who Is Probably Indifferent To You

An old man who only bothers to meet new people if their career has something to do with reversing aging or curing death. He dismisses everyone else (movie directors, businessmen, educators, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, you name it), since their careers are obviously futile and a waste of time.

Assassin Who Just Doesn’t Get It

An assassin who wants to go out while making a name for himself brings a gun to the speech of a high-profile world leader. But he gets there too late to get into the main lecture hall, and is sent to the overflow room, where there is a video screen of the speech. After the event coordinator introduces the world leader, and the leader walks to the stage and appears on the video screen, the assassin shoots the screen and then shoots himself.

A Clutz With Matrix-Esque Reflexes

Character who is constantly dropping things and knocking things over, but is able to catch them in mid-air, so there’s never any damage. Rather than evolve out of his clutzy ways, he has adapted to them.

Muscle man with a weakness

A good cheap joke for a cartoon: a muscle-bound man in a gym lifting hundreds of pounds like it was mere feathers, but then he’s unable to pull out the peg to adjust the seat on one of the weight machines.

Exercise guru who doesn’t understand the science of muscles

A weight lifting guru who mistakenly believes that working out creates entirely new kinds of muscles rather than builds up existing ones. He talks about various lifting exercises and exclaims things like, “And this will create a bunch of new muscles near where your quads used to be!” etc.

But You Should See The Other Car

A bumper sticker for cars with huge dents and scratches on them, possibly from an accident: “But You Should See The Other Car.”

He Gains His Freedom By Eating Ours

Main character is a politician who is miserable, weak, has no privacy, and feels unfree. But then he finds that the more he restricts the freedom, power and privacy of his constituents, the more he gains for himself.

Shadow Knows Best

From Emily “The Shadow” DePrang:

For best results, wear the apron over the T-shirt while driving a car with the bumper sticker. Expect to get a lot of honks and “Whoo-hooo! Pearlaaaaaand!”s.

Idea Nation — Greg Newburn Lives There. Do You?

From Greg Newburn:

Bar in DC called “the Soapbox,” where patrons can stand and give short rants to the applause or disapproval of the other patrons.

Other idea: A voice tracker that monitors how many words you’ve spoken in a day.

Diabetes Laffs

From Miles Southan:

“Why do diabetes treatments usually do great in clinical trials?
Because they always outperform the sugar pill!”