1001 Ways To Tune Up The World, Number Seventy-Eight

78. A "Stay-On" Button On Your TV that you have to press every 20 minutes to keep the TV on.

We have a "sleep" function on our TV that lets us set our TV to automatically turn off anywhere from 15 minutes to 120 minutes from when we turn it on, thereby guaranteeing that I will never have to say "Well, I'm pretty sleepy now, better turn off the TV and go to bed" and then have to risk whole minutes in which my brain is not given something to hear/see/think about.

(Actually, for me, that's a good thing. Being left alone with my thoughts results in me coming up with stuff like this.)

The other night, I was watching TV, unable to sleep, and I realized that Sweetie had set the timer because suddenly the "60 second countdown" feature came on: the screen at the bottom showed 60... 59... 58 and let me know that if I didn't do something in less than a minute, I'd be TV-less.

The remote control was right next to the TV, which, when you think about it, is a useless place to have a remote control. But I laid there in bed for a few seconds, watching the timer, and pondering whether I wanted to get up and go re-set the TV or if I should just let it turn off and try to get to sleep without it.

If you've read this blog for even 3.2 seconds you know what I decided: I got up and turned off the sleep timer and then for good measure got my smart phone, because screw you, private thoughts, and watched Mission: Impossible 3 and didn't get to sleep until about 4 a.m.

But somewhere in the jumble of Jonathan Rhys Meyer's quips, I had the idea that if TVs were equipped with a switch that would automatically turn off the TV every 20 minutes, and the switch was on the TV, then every 20 minutes or so, we'd have to re-evaluate whether we really wanted to watch that TV show or movie, and maybe we'd end up staying up and watching as Tom Cruise shows Fake Katie Holmes how to shoot a gun, but maybe we'd end up doing something else once in a while, too.

Also: Because he sent me a haiku on Twitter, here's some Jonathan Rhys Meyer's clips. He can really sing, as you'll see:









Prior entries:

77. Directional lanes in grocery stores.

76. Accept tennis shoes.

75. Whenever news sources cite "people's opinions," they should also tell what percentage of respondents that opinion represents.

74. Stand-up comic radio over the airwaves.

73. Reliability checkers for Internet sites.

72. Staggered work start times for different streets in cities.

71. Personal Upright Transport Devices

70. Don't Vote.

69. Launch garbage into space.

68. Stop bleeping out words.

67. Just say thanks.

66. Change the side of the road people drive on about every 10 years.

65. Get rid of those mid-forearm buttons on men's shirts.

64. Make spray bottles work when tilted.

63. Pay teachers a lot more.

62. Longer school years.

61. Longer school days.

60. Paparazzi-fy The News.

59. Make refrigerators wider and shallower.

58. Let everyone use "forever pricing" on everything.

57. Start all buildings on the first floor.

56. Process EVERYTHING.

55. Make children's toys solar- or kinetic-powered.

54. Abandon the north.

53. Give in and have computers start remembering things for us.

52. Make cups and glasses wider on the bottom. (All cups and glasses.)

51. Sometimes easier is harder (and dumber.)

50. Don't lather, rinse, repeat (I'm going somewhere with this...)

49. Ban cigarettes.

48. Use metered lanes to close a lane when doing traffic repairs, thereby avoiding long backups when jerks opt to ignore the lane closing signs.

47. Switch to a parliamentary form of government with proportional representation. (If you already do that, then stick with it.)

46. Quit Cell Phone Charger Thinking.

45. Create an Internet Superhighway, giving high-speed Internet access to everyone, everywhere.

44. Stop teaching any math past algebra and geometry to almost everybody, and instead just provide a general theory of math to high schoolers.

43. Launch people to Mars. Or even further.

42. Think nice things, and then say them.

41. Get the cheapest toothpaste possible, then use the money you save to do some good in the world.

40. Allow gay marriage.

39. Stop describing things as "hell" or "hard work" when they're not at all.

38. Accept the idea that eventually we're going to have to pay for stuff on the Internet.

37. Spell your kids' names the right way.

36. Look up more often.

35. Put people before pets.

34. Share the profits with employees, directly and frequently.

33. Dress up, at least a little, in public.

32. Apply the "Line Pass" philosophy to everything (including some government services).

30/31. Impose a luxury tax that increases exponentially the more people spend/Never watch another Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie movie again.

29. What's so great about mom-and-pop stores and farms?

28. No more long answering machine or voice mail greetings.

27. Stop federal support of student loans.

26. Require everything we build, from here on out, to get at least some of its power from the sun or the wind.

25. Do an "Oklahoma Land Rush" in the cities.

24. Personalized Candy Bar Making Machines.

23. Learn new languages just for fun.

22. Opposite yourself.

21. Just like dandelions.

20. Why not have Radio-DVRs?

19. Start treating health care like what it is: a universal, inherent right of all people.

18. Baseball should have a shorter season and shorter games.

17. Open the borders. Everywhere.

16. Just start DVDs without all the preliminaries, please.

15. Just allow colleges to pay athletes, already.

14. Don't get married before you're 30.

13. Ban driving any kind of automobile, motorcycle or other personal vehicle within 1-2 miles of downtown in any city with a population of more than 100,000.

12. Abolish gym class; instead, teach kids to play musical instruments.

11. Change copyright laws to allow anyone to use anyone else's creative work provided that the copier pay 60% of the profit to the originator and that the copier not cast the original work in a negative light.

10. Have more sidewalk cafes and outdoor seating.

9. When you have to give someone a gift, ask them what they want, and then get that thing for them.

8. Never interrupt or finish someone's jokes.

7. Periodically, give up something you like for at least a month.

6. Switch to "E-money."

5. Have each person assigned one phone number, and then add an extension for the various phones and faxes that person might be reached at.

4. Abolish Mondays and Tuesdays.

3. Don't listen to interviews with athletes or comedians.

2. Have "personal cashiers" at the grocery store.

1. Don't earn more than $200,000 per year.





Is this working? You bet --

1001 Ways also helped change the world here!

And

1001 Ways also helped change the world here!

and

1001 Ways helped change the world here, too!

World's Youngest Daredevil Leaps Over Kid! (Life With Unicorns)

It was like my own personal Bridge To Terabithia (I Get Paid For Doing This)

About every two months or so, I have to drive out to Richland County. The drive itself is boring: the road is almost completely straight for about 60 miles with little to nothing by way of scenery.

But what I liked about it was that halfway through, there was an old metal bridge that was, for a while, rusted and painted a kind of blue. The bridge crossed the Wisconsin River (I think it's the Wisconsin River) and driving across it for some reason always made me smile, the quick-flicks of shadows flitting over my windshield and my face, the old-timey-ness of the bridge making me think, for some reason, of childhood -- the bridge seemed to filter the sunlight in such a way that everything, for just a second, was both brighter and somehow faded.

Then they built the new bridge, and now when I cross the Wisconsin River, this is as close as I get to the Old Bridge:



Sometimes progress isn't.