opensource traffic control

I get ideas that I would put under the theme of "opensource everything." A friend of mine calls this "collective fascism." I'm not sure which makes more sense. Meanwhile, the actual idea:

Everybody gets a remote control when they get their license. Maybe everybody can get a remote control. Then, when you're driving along and you see someone who isn't fit to drive and is swerving around and being reckless, you point your remote control at them and click the "unfit to drive" button. This is logged in that person's car. If three people do this in, say, a month, you get a warning. If three people do this in say, half an hour, your car informs you that you have ten minutes to pull over, at which point it will shut off. Maybe it just informs you that you are an asshole.

My partner says, "There are so many things wrong with this idea it's unbelievable." I still like this idea. I figure if you use the remote any time you would flip someone off, you're already using one hand that could be on the wheel. And how many times have you really flipped someone off while driving?

the same story seven ways

Not that it has to be seven, but the idea is that seven friends write the story of a specific event and then compile the stories intact.

I've wanted to do this for a little while but can't pick a specific enough event involving seven people whom I know would write the story. I was thinking that a singular event might be interesting, but that probably an event that altered the course of the day or week would be preferable.

I used to have dreams where I was multiple people at the same time, doing some relatively mundane thing. Talking on a swingset. Going to the grocery store. Playing a game. There was this one time that I was like six x-men fighting eachother, which was awesome, but mostly it was mundane stuff. I've wanted to write a story that would recreate this sense of being multiple people, but I don't reasonably know how to do it. I think this same story seven ways is probably the closest approximation. It would be interesting if they could be spliced into eachother without the wording being significantly altered. Maybe seven is too many.

As I'm writing this I realize that this kind of plot device is used commonly to spice up a plot or interconnect characters with no natural feeling in all manner of Hollywood film. I want to clarify that I mean, boring story, not like, raining frogs. As in, I'm suggesting seven friends write a relatively ordinary day. The kind of ordinary day with some event that isn't entirely significant that isn't going to have much entertainment value at all for anyone who wasn't there. This idea involves characters with natural feeling for eachother in order for it to work. Don't imagine reading the story of seven people. Imagine writing a story and reading the intersecting stories of six of your friends. And then imagine rereading it in like, eight years.

If I was teaching a writing course, I would just take the class out to coffee and then have them write the story of going out to coffee. In an ideal version of this, the class could read their stories aloud in turns, finding the place in the story where the last writer had just left off, and picking up there in their own words.

I think it would be interesting for a writing class because if told plainly enough, it would be very plot oriented, and would provide perspective on the other characters in class. And it might discourage new writers who compulsively tell huge big stories about death and apocalyptic despair (usually poorly) to write a simple story in a straight-forward way (well).

somebody else's idea

I'm not entirely sure if this was the idea of a human or a sunflower, but I noticed this last growing season that a sunflower was making its way up the "no parking" sign on the adjacent block. I noticed that it was growing closely enough to the sign that the regular lawn-mowing missed it.

This season I'm starting a batch of extra sunflower starts to tie next to "no parking" signs. We'll see how it goes.

A couple years ago a friend and I did some late-night gardening in otherwise institutional gardens, automatically maintained by sprinklers for the most part. Plants that don't require much special attention just blended right in with the mums and kept kicking. We were pseudo-clandestine about this activity at first (partly because we were drinking as well), and then were "caught" multiple times and discovered that most people are just amused by late-night gardening. Some passers-by asked if they could have some of our "clandestine kale" starts for an apartment garden, which we obliged.

At any rate, this idea is not new. I've been trying to find someone to plant plants with me, but thus far have only found a few folks who will wear black and sneak around at night to plant plants. I was rather thinking I would do this in the daytime, wearing jeans. I think it is more likely to catch on if people see me doing it. I will update this blog as to whether or not this goes well, but I am entirely optimistic. Further, if anyone would like to plant plants with me in the daytime, preferably before noon, probably involving coffee, let me know.

"our library"

The idea is this: there is a website where you go and make a virtual library card. On your virtual library card you have a "rating" determined by others and you have "items available for lending" like books you are willing to lend. Perhaps some of your books are really awesome and rare, so you are only willing to lend them to another library member who has at least a 90 percent rating. Maybe you have stipulations on certain items like, "do not dog ear my pages." Maybe you have stipulations like, "I really don't care about this book. You can add it to your library next with the same note on it."

Maybe some of the things in your "items available for lending" are a lawnmower, and a hammer, and gardening tools. The stipulations on these items might be, "clean before returning" or "use at your own risk and return with a full tank."

The things that I think are most important about this idea are this: it is a FREE virtual library of things we don't each need to individually own, but can borrow from folks in our neighborhood who are willing to lend them. What I think is possibly most important about the idea is that its implementation should be very straight-forward, without a lot of hullabaloo about community and whatnot, because focusing on the goods and each individual library member's ability to care for and return them will cause people with integrity from remarkably different communities with differing views to share a common bond: like a book, or a hammer.

The ultimate goal of this is for a person with a really excellent rating, like 99%, to show up at your door to borrow your prized possession, and you think this person looks about as different from you as humanly possible, and you can barely imagine talking to this person, and you give them your prized possession. And then this person brings the possession back. And you go online and you say, yes you can trust this person. Even if that's all you know about them.

city block garden

If I had a bazillion dollars I'd buy a city block (I hear it's cheaper in Detroit) and tear out all the fences in the backyards. I was looking at some maps and realized that if there were no back fences, the block I live on would be houses around a tract of common land, which would make a really awesome garden. And then if you wanted to live in one of the houses, you'd have to be up for the adventure of a shared backyard. And we could all take turns caring for the garden. And we could have a greenhouse with a hot tub in it.

May first flowers

What if you and me and everyone we know goes out and paints a flower in a visible location on May first?

reverse stealing

I made a bunch of greeting cards and wrote "now and always free" as the price. I put them into the greeting card section of the local supermarket.

This can be done with anything you don't want, but I think it's more interesting if the thing is in really good condition, or is super awesome. I also think it's better if it's an item there are a lot of, such as greeting cards, shirts, or books. I call it reverse stealing because this kind of activity is not necessarily appreciated by store managers. I was followed for a while at the local supermarket after I took up this hobby.

My greeting cards were pretty weird.

screenprinting "wallpaper"

I got this idea to decorate a large wall by screenprinting a large floral print over and over in a damask pattern. A friend and I talked a bit about how to do this in an efficient way. Another friend of mine once screenprinted directly onto walls with pretty good luck.

We didn't actually do this, but someday I'm going to! We figured that we could snap a grid onto the wall with a chalk line, and take a screen that fit inside the squares or potentially had two points inside it that would line up precisely onto the square pts. We figure that a totally symmetrical design would be more difficult to work with than something with more organic lines, in case there was any variation from print to print. Maybe it would be good to rotate the image by 90 degrees or 45 every other print. I figure it would be best if the screenprinting ink is water based or water soluble (I've used plain old acrylic paint before) so the first print could be wiped off if it's an iffy print.

filling a room with balloons.

I've done this. It's fun. We discovered that we could fall onto the balloons and our weight would be distributed evenly enough that they wouldn't pop (or maybe one would!). Also if we played music we could feel it in the balloons. If you try this and hurt yourself, don't blame me. It's still fundamentally a dumb thing to do.

this is a totally hipster idea involving mustaches

so for party favors, you cut out a whole bunch of different shaped mustaches, and you put them on straws. This way people can keep track of their drinks, which is kind of an annoying party issue; and also every time they take a sip they'll have a fake mustache.

Admit it, it's kind of cute.

ongoing zine

I've been wanting to do this for a couple years. It's kind of similar to "exquisite corpse." The idea is to start a zine that is mostly blank, writing a page or so of a story, and then make ten copies. The next ten people have to continue the story, writing a page more, and then they each make ten copies and distribute those. Ideally the story will become many different stories, and the earlier authors will be able to encounter the zine in its later incarnations and read a different story each time, which they themselves started or significantly contributed to.

Perhaps at the end there would be a webpage or something where the finished stories were all displayed.

leaf baubles

I was going to do this in Autumn and collected a bunch of leaves, but just got too busy, of course, and my leaves all dried up. The idea is this: you blow up a balloon and then take beautiful autumn leaves and paper mache them onto the balloon so they are just overlapping each other, but are mostly forming a sphere of empty space. Wait for it to dry and pop the balloon, then hang the resulting bauble(s) from whatever.

I'm hoping to try this again this Autumn.

string of lights

The idea is this: you know those cheapo psuedo fiberoptic lights like you get at ikea that are just a long filament of plastic with a light at one end? What if you had a rope of that kind of light, and cut little nics into it, as if carving a flute? I imagine the effect would be like a string of lights. The cuts might need to rotate around the circumference of the filament, as opposed to all being in one line. If anyone tries this or has tried this, let me know how it goes.