The Fan's Blog

I am approached by friends and family with new blog ideas, everyday. Some of them are really good so I wait a respectful amount of time (2-3 days, tops) before pretending it was my own idea. This works some of the time because, although most of my friends have a fair amount of untrained mental capacity, my family just isn't all that sharp.

Most of the ideas, however aren't all that good. Now, don't get me wrong. I LOVE hearing ideas. I am ENTERTAINED by your ideas. Even the bad ones. A lot of times, an un-viable idea will contain an elemental truth or detail that will start me down the right path. All I need is a bunny trail and liberal amounts of vodka or rum for an idea to start looking good.

Sometimes I follow myself around with a stack of 3x5 note cards and a feather quill pen and an ink jar, a sheath of scrap paper and one of those half-circle weight thingies to roll over the back of the scrap paper. Then, if I make a note, I set the scrap paper upon the freshly written note card and roll the weight across the paper. This helps absorb the excess, slow drying ink from the quill pen and lets the remaining ink dry faster. (I hate smudged note cards.) Anyway, I follow myself around -- ready to take notes as soon as I utter something brilliant. Usually the slow drying ink will evaporate from the sealed bottle before that happens.

So I do rely, to some small degree, on outside ideas. Here are a few of the recent ones (My contribution to the idea is in italics):

• Halloween candy - it has been out in the stores for a month already. They try to extend the season in order to give fat people a dignified way to buy that much candy.
  
• Racy sports terms - like love and tight-end.
  
• Water volleyball. I call this sport T-Rex ball. Have you ever noticed how everyone holds their hands above the water, elbows tucked in, hands slightly cupped and facing downward. It gives the the appearance of having short, useless arms. Like T-Rexes.
• Lost pets. We had a lost dog at the dance on Saturday. It was a large tan dog of dubious parentage. Knowing it was not a pure bred, I dubbed it Rin-Tin-Aluminum.
• Bears in the resort. I could have gone for the irony - there being so many bares here already. Or, we have several joke BARE CROSSING signs around here, and I could have dealt with the tragedy of the declining literacy levels among bears (especially black bears).
  

Some weaker ideas ought to be mentioned, as well:

• It sure is raining a lot lately.
• Boy, is that sun hot!
• I wonder what the lunch special is today?
• Do you have a light?
• What are you writing? And what's with the big feather and the ink bottle? What's this weight thingy for?

But the best idea of the week came from a beautiful lady named Bev. She thinks we could end our terrorist concerns for air travel if people were naked on airplanes.

I think this is an excellent idea. It is the same principle behind the low crime rate at nudist resorts. (Pick-pocketing at a nude resort is mostly a victimless crime.) For this idea to work, however, we would have to expand the Zone of Nudity outside of the plane. If we got naked after we're on the plane, we are still taking a lot of potentially dangerous junk with us. But -- if we were totally naked when we got to the airport, the security lines would be non-existent. No shoes in the plastic tray. No buttons or jewelery to set off the buzzer. Hell -- no buzzer!

And what's the big deal, every third person is practically strip searched already. Nobody will be embarrassed if everyone is naked. Of course, the pilots will need to remain clothed. They need those big uniform pockets to carry enough of those little bottles of booze to get them through the flight. (Believe it or not -- the dashboards on a 747 are quite small.)

You would have to redesign some other things on the plane, too. Like, I wouldn't want to have an aisle seat when some burley naked guy was rummaging in the overhead above it, looking for a pillow or blanket. We would definitely have to establish boy-girl-boy-girl seating. And the movies would all have to be PG. And snack and beverage time would be sooo cool, too. There's nothing like watching a nude stewardess bending over for a hot one. (Coffee, I meant coffee.)

To ensure total safety at the airport we would really have to arrive naked. This means we would have to travel by car or taxi or bus naked, as well. (This idea just keeps getting better.)

The tradition of handshaking was started to prove that the two parties were not armed. This is really just an extension of that same idea. Nudity could actually make air travel pleasant again.

The first thing I'm going to do today is write a detailed e-mail to Homeland Security outlining all of the benefits of Bev's idea. Then I am going to the pool to practice my airport etiquette. I have to fly to Florida in October. I can't wait to get one of those giant pretzels. I know just where I'm going to hang it.