You know those dreams you get every once in a while where you know when you wake up you had a multi-million dollar idea but you can’t remember it for shit? Yeah, me too. Well, the next time I have one and I can remember it, I’m going to write it down. Right here. Before I forget.

And I suppose you will take it straight down to the Idea Office and cash in on it and then buy one of those big houses up the hill from my house where you look down on me and you don’t even know how many bedrooms you have.

1. Shifting the focus of conversations

So here’s something. Do you think it would help us all out if we paid more attention to what we focus on in our conversations. I was thinking the other day that we often focus our discussions (at the grocery checkout, on the front porch, waiting in line for the Hammer ride) on issues we probably can’t resolve. The most famous, of course, is the weather. We use it as a filler when we don’t know what else to say. But all the conversations in the world won’t keep the rain from coming down, so I wonder why we do it.

And politics. In general, we seem to not be able to avoid it even though most of us know we’re only supporting ourselves and our positions, and sometimes we might even alienate others. But still we do it. I wonder if anyone has ever thought about the impact of diverting the focus of conversations to more benign topics, like don’t I look good in that blue sweater, or I hope you have a great day at work today, you know, stuff like that. Maybe I’ll think of a name for this and market it.

2. We need more words.

I know sometimes it seems like we have too many and I’m not opposed to getting rid of a few leftover words from the past that don’t carry much meaning anymore, but think of all the times we struggle to explain ourselves, or even struggle to think about stuff, because there’s no word. In some other language there’s a word for the liquid ring left on the table from your beer glass, and I’m not even kidding, but not in English. Think of all the times you’ve tried to bridge the misunderstanding gap but fall short because there’s no word. What’s the word for thinking about concepts that aren’t represented in words?

3. I say let’s make a vegetable stand on a rural highway near here.

It’s a ways to the nearest big town from where I live, along a pretty narrow up-and-down and all-around highway. Every year, more than once, a big truck full of beautiful produce from the flatlands east of here hits a corner a bit too fast and dumps countless tons of corn or cucumbers or something in the ditch. What if we set up a stand right next to the spills and sell the product for pennies, right there on the highway? The produce companies would thank us for cleaning up a mess they would otherwise be accountable for and highway drivers would love the idea of discounted corn, 100 for $5 or whatever.

Also, I think we should give it away to anybody who is homeless. These folks need some help and we didn’t pay a thing for this mountain of green profit anyway. But wait a minute. The homeless probably can’t afford to drive along this highway, without the means to go on vacation or to just head out for a leisurely drive. So maybe we can just offer it to the homeless so we can say we’re helping, so we look good, and that would be enough. Isn’t that the way the world works?