Try This At Home

I had a great idea for a blog the other day. This didn’t surprise me. I have lots of great ideas.

I hear snorts of derision in the back, there. Well, prepare to be blown away with a sample idea. Are you ready? Are you sitting down?

Popcorn on the cob.

That's right. Have a seat. 

The problem I find is that I’m very rarely given the respect that I deserve. Also, sometimes I’m twenty years too late. Take my idea for revolutionizing reading on airplanes.

Go to any airport, and you’ll invariably find dozens of stores selling books and magazines. These stores capitalize on the fact that you’re trapped at the airport. And even if you only have a two hour flight, you’ll gladly buy an entire book because you have to do SOMETHING to drown out the roaring engines and crying babies, and you’re not going to watch the in-flight movie because you forgot to bring your headphones, of course, and you’re certainly not going to buy headphones on the plane for five dollars because c’mon, the principle of the thing, and you already went through the entire Skymall magazine the last time you were on a plane and you still don’t want that hot-dog toaster, and someone already filled in the Air Travel Magazine’s Sudoku puzzle in pen and it you don’t even like Sudoku puzzles but at least it would be something to take your mind off the fact that you’re in a big, flying aluminum tube traveling at hundreds of miles an hour through the sky, and so you may as well buy a damn book.

My idea changed all of that. Instead of buying books at the airport, rent ‘em. Two bucks a pop. You can return them when you land at your destination, or mail them in later.

Aside from the obvious logistical issues, there are two big problems with getting this off the ground. (No pun intended, except retroactively, yes there was.) One was that I don’t have the millions and millions of dollars necessary to set up a national book rental system like this. The other is that the Kindle killed it anyway. Why rent books when you can carry a thousand with you on the plane?

But the idea is sound. Rent books at the airport instead of buying ‘em. A great idea, decades ago.

But this new blog idea is different, because it can be done. And I actually want to do it, but I have too much work right now to handle. (i.e., once every week or so, I update this blog.) But I want to see this happen. I want SOMEONE to do it. I want to claim credit for it when someone else finally does.

The blog would be called “Your Blog Sucks.” Every day you’d click the “Next Blog” link on the top of every blogger site (like this one) and review whatever random blog it gives you based on your own personal preferences.

For example, I just pressed the button and it brought me to Captured Photon, which is some guy’s photo blog. The pictures on the site are amazing, and the guy is obviously a very talented photographer. But he’d automatically get points off for not incorporating video game reviews, which, as every knows, is the #1 reason to have a blog in the first place. So he’d get a B- at best.

So, yeah. Your Blog Sucks. Go do it.