Royalty Free Idea: The Real Dreams Centre

In essence, a centre where children are informed (perhaps in an informal manner) which of their dreams constitute viable future prospects, and which of them are impractical and/or unachievable.

What?! In fairness, I'm not entirely in favour of this idea...


An alternative would maybe be a database where you input what you want to achieve (say a qualification or occupation), along with what skills you have and what measures you've taken to achieve your goal so far (work experience, not murdering people etc), along with other relevent miscellania (age, agility, whatever). Said database would subsequently calculate the viability of your future plans.

Of course, you shouldn't let a terrifying career website bully you into believing what you can and can't do with your life, and you can only quantify skill through qualifications so far. Another drawback would be how succeptible the system would be to glory-scroungers (i.e. the kind of folk who think hooting about their current tally of Facebook friends constitutes vital stuff, or that a comparatively low cost talk-plan is a war worth winning) who permeate pretty much all walks of life. But I suppose everyone's entitled to their dreams, and if being able to do more sit ups underwater than me is your dream...

International Relative Exchange Vol.15

Please note that, under current E.U. guidelines, it is no longer possible to exchange yourself through our system. This helps cut down on the number of so called 'revenge swaps', where disgruntled family members secretly exchange themselves out of their family units, replacing themselves with clearly incompatible (and sometimes downright unpleasent) swaps. Exchange requests are required to be conducted by a third party, while exchange subjects must be at least moderately suprised at the prospect of a like-for- like transfer in which they compromise 50%.

Royalty Free Idea: National Apology Day

While I do feel I ought to apologise for not having updated this blog for almost a month (having been on holiday, working on a few drawings and excelling in the most manly laziness), I'm also aware that I haven't even told anyone it exists yet, so apologising to no-one in particular would be delusional, and the boring, garden-variety delusional at that (as opposed to the special "if we plug him into a machine he's bound to start making money at some point" variety of delusional).

But, the idea; days dedicated to the celebration of something obscure, like Good Grammer or Flavours of Bread are nothing new - the 11th of July is World Population Day (hitting all the bases, there), while my birthday falls smack in the middle of National Breastfeeding week, rendering it instantly immemorable (National Breastfeeding week, I mean). These festivals generally go unnoticed on the whole, and even if your attention is somehow drawn to their existence, they usually invoke the simple response of "No, it isn't."

This is probably largely to do with not only the scale of the celebrations (I'm not really sure what I can do about the global population problem in the timescale of a day other than fret a little) but also their relevance - often, the purpose of a day or week's theme is simply to raise awareness, and once you've been raised aware...
So here comes National Apology Day, raising awareness about the benefits of apologising for whatever, to whoever you need to apologise to, either immediately after aggravating them, or later on, when the danger has subsided. It'll also be the perfect time to apologise, in the spirit of the day, for anything you feel like you apologising for. Society will knit back together, and other good things will happen as a result.

Now, I'm a realist - I understand that the day will probably kick off, at least initially, with a lot of 'ironic' apologies (the mailman apologising as he gives you your mail, for hilarious example), while others see the day as an excuse to just go about kicking things in or knocking things over, knocking on people's doors and running away, just because they can mockingly apologise for it afterwards. There could be further apology problems outwith National Apology Day, as those who are due to apologise to others will be able to retort "What do you think this is? National Apology Day?", albeit unfairly.

I think that these trubs would only constitute teething problems, though. Irony can only hold out for so long, and the relentless presence of National Apology Day will surely engender at least a degree of subconscious soul searching in even the hardest of hearts. Plus, it's a fantastic opportunity to sell greetings cards and other useless consumables, so it's a fair bet that the Occasions conglomerates will get on board. Laugh if you want, but when we're all happily apologising to one another just because we feel that we should in a few years time, I'll be expecting an apology from every single one of you. Despite no-one being aware of this blog.

International Relative Exchange Vol.14

Your exchange comes shrink wrapped within 9 working days of your order. Alternatively, let us know if it's for a special occasion, and we'll gift wrap your exchange to your specification! A variety of shipping options are available, including overseas, cushion trebuchet and Best Approximate. While we cannot refund any exchanges once your initial 'payment' has been 'redeployed', we can offer an alternative selection, pending additional psychological profiling and warrenty invalidation checks.

Normal Post: Authentic People

I'm always wary of the regular magazine features (usually found in glossy weekend supplements) that purport to represent real overheard converstaions between real overheard people. I'm not sure so much unassuming zany irony/ironic unassuming zaniness/etc. can actually physically exist in the material realm. This kind of feature, although far rarer than their more popular sibling, the stoicly-authoured "here's a slice of my family life, as if you'd want it" middle-class guffaw fest, are debatably much more irritating. While the latter tends to involve the authour highlighting the same shortcomings of the same family members, relentlessly, on a weekly basis, for a mild chuckle and some silver, the Overheard Conversations genre takes it to whole new level, by randomly targeting unassuming members of the public and pointing and laughing at their muddled up, inane ramblings - the same kind of ramblings that make up the majority of converstaions everyone has with everyone else most of the time anyway. It's nice to believe in a place where all conversations are perfectly formed, incisive, witty, relevent to all parties and aren't relient on forced smiles and good-luck-with-thats. It wouldn't last long - someone, inevitably, would end up just wanting a tyre flume and a McFlurry, and that would be that.

But, lets face it, Overheard Conversations don't exist. No they don't. No they don't. The fact that one of these seemingly chance encounters happens with the alarming regularity of at least once a week is unusual enough. The fact that the 'witness' is able to overhear the key details and mine the 'funny' from those details in what are usually busy public environments is, also, unusual. And despite these works of chance/fate being the seminal stuff that they are, they're not exactly top-ticket material, and presumably don't generate the income required for the authour to be able to swan around on public transport (or wherever it is that that the inherently irony-gaffe prone find themselves by virtue of their own stupidity) overhearing conversations and writing them down and shit, without crushing money-worry in tow. If you stuck to the once a week deadlines and the implied responsibilities of the other, actual primary occupation, the Overheard Conversations genre becomes almost impossible.

Unless you just really, really enjoy sneaking around in coffee shops and charity shops, hiding between the racks, tittering at the awful things the awful people say. Let's be honest, who doesn't?