My Next Brilliant Idea©®™ - The Soup Bell

I'm starting a new segment here at Semi-Automatic Mojo, a segment devoted to my sheer innovative genius. That, coupled with my overpowering sense of modesty and my sublime unspoken wisdom (ask me, I can talk for hours about my unspoken wisdom), is a huge part of the equation that makes me what I am today (an idiot).

So let's get right into the thick of things. Let's get right to

My Next Brilliant Idea©®™ (5/24/2007 edition)

The Soup Bell!

Not to be confused with "the Soup Belle," who is an attractive Southern Gal who enjoys soup. Possibly the subject of a future SAM* segment. She has quite the Belle Curves. Bang a gong! Get it on! OK, I'll get back on point before you cut my Power Supply**.

*S.A.M = Semi-Automatic Mojo

** I'm aware that song wasn't originally done by Power Supply; it was done by T. Rex. The ghost of Marc Bolan sends along its thanks to you, the music watchdog.

I was watching this show on Bell Making, or rather it was a segment on some show on the Discovery channel, and they were making a bell.

And suddenly I had "My Next Brilliant Idea©®™."

I give these out for free, so grab your notepad. A golden opportunity, or a brass one, or maybe copper.

A soup bell. A soup pot that doubles as a bell. With a spoon that doubles as a bell banging instrument.

So you put the soup in the soup bell and heat it up, and when it's done, you announce this fact by striking the bell with your banger. then when people coming running to the melodic ringing, you flip the banger around and serve out delicious soup.

Gone are the days when you needed a soup pot, a spoon, AND a bell system. Now you can have all of this and more***, with the Soup Bell

***Not much more. Actually nothing more. We apologize for the slight over-hyping - Management

Sure there are technical issues that need to be ironed out. Can a bell sound good when its upside down and filled with soup? Is it light enough to pick up? Etc Etc. That's something for your team of engineers to figure out.

Also, we need the users to know not to flip the soup bell right side up to ring it, otherwise much to their surprise, scalding hot soup will be dumped in their lap. Painful! That's something for your marketing/product safety team to concentrate on.

All I ask is a modest 15% cut of your business. So whoever decides to take this idea and run with it, let me know. I'm ready to make money off of your work.

7 dollars a gallon: called to the carpet

The day gas hit 7 dollars a gallon, there was magic in the air. Specifically, in carpet form. All my friends and I made the change over gladly, except for my foolish pal who tried his hand at a bio-diesel vehicle. They found him face down in a sour mash, more dead than alive. His family cried. A lone piper played a Scottish dirge. The world moved on, the incident was buried in the sands of time. Or was it kitty litter?

My carpet and me, we had a good time. I'd sail over the city at midnight, dropping rotten eggs from great heights onto the scant few SUVs parked in dilapidated driveways. "Take that you dinosaur-fueled sources of evil." It hadn't taken a comet to wipe them out, merely a magical 7 dollar benchmark that broke the stressed out feather across the camel-back of humanity.

Long after humans left earth, some new race would touch down their spacecrafts here and dig up SUV bones and wonder what it all meant. "Such ugly transporter carcasses, and all with over-sized cup holders and needlessly powerful speaker systems. They must have been a thirsty deaf race."

I had the most fun on weekends surfing through the clouds. Light, white, and fluffy. You wanted to avoid the dark clouds. Unlike Dark Chocolate, the dark clouds left a bad taste in your mouth, in fact it was sulfur and brimstone, especially when you suffered a direct lightening hit. Gray clouds made excellent carpet washers.

At work we all rolled up our carpets and tucked them snugly and conveniently under our desks. There was no need for parking garages so all they turned into skateboard parks.

There were no need for parking meters either, or garages, or driveways. People just carried their carpets wherever they went. Some guy made a mint inventing the "carpet-a-pak," a backpack like container that not only helped you carry your carpet around but also made you look damned good doing it. And the "carpet-a-chute" did well too. Don't fly without one, you'd hate to be an idiot and fall to your death. The carpeto-ankleo-lineo was also key. Sure the names sucked, but the products were quite robust.

At 6 bucks a gallon people had still just put up with how things were. When it hit $6.66 a few satanists and televangelists complained or rejoiced (I forget who complained and who rejoiced, it's hard to tell those people apart), but American Idol was still enough of a distraction to make people bend over and say "do me, gas daddy, shove your rock hard nozzle where the sun don't shine, thank you sir can I have another gallon of your tough love?"

By the time it hit 7, something had to give, but would people finally wake up to the magic around them and embrace it?. When Apple announced their iTunes plug in adapter/speaker system for the Magic Carpet that very morning (the iCarpet), it pushed America over the Edge.

Accessories had once again paved the way for the acceptance of innovation.