Once upon a terrible time there were no helicopters. Then along came a lot of clever-clogs inventors, and now there are. Helicopters. Very useful, and a little romantic, too.
For a long time now I’ve wanted to start a website named pleaseinvent.com. I got a few things I’d like someone to invent.
The way the website would work: I’d describe the whatever, and then clever inventors would be able to take and run with the idea for free, on the condition that they send me, free, a solid, unglitchy, working example of whatever they invented.
The Happyhouse Constant Dustsucker, for instance. I think all houses should have a sort of deliberately-created and maintained permanent vortex, a constantly-running fan somewhere that is always gently sucking dust towards itself and into a catcher, filter, whatever, just so it isn’t in the house any more. It would be like a central vac, but different. I know about cleanrooms, so, maybe what we need is for someone to invent a kit that you could use to convert your home into a cleanroom. Come on, how hard could it be?
The Handy Dandy Home Dry Shower. I’d buy one of these in an instant, and pay heavy money for it. I hate to get wet. Shut up. I just do. Showering, especially hair washing and drying, I just hate it. Boring waste of time, day after day after week after year. So this is what I envision: a shower stall, same size as a regular one. The dirty person steps inside, turns it on. Some sort of mysterious, waterless, scientific thing happens for a maximum of, oh, 60 seconds, and voila, the person and their hair step out clean and dry. This is not an entirely frivolous idea, since hospital patients and people living in drought-stricken areas would also find it useful. Imagine a hospital with magic boxes here and there, the way they have hand-sanitizer stations now. You stick you hands in rubber-gasketted holes, there is a VOOOM sound for a few seconds, and you withdraw your perfectly clean hands.
The possibilities are endless. We live in a world where there were once no heated car seats, and now there are! Where once there were no post-it notes: post-it notes are just bits of paper with a little magic glue on them, yes?
What would you like to see invented? A triple-gastank car, because stopping to gas up is such a pain in the ass? I had a double-gastank car once, it was great. Glass for car windows that is really, really frost proof? Excellent, no more winter mornings standing in a bitter wind trying to scrape off a quarter-inch of solid ice before you can get going.
