#1 Bad Idea

Ah yikes. As I do from time to time, I lost the mission on this weblog. A bomb dropped on it and left a hole two weeks wide between this post and the last one. The bomb took the shape of an attempted entry to commemorate the one year anniversary of my back surgery. I was trying to celebrate my pain-free year but instead I drove over an IED of disappointment, depression and petty gripes that tore up my peace of mind for a while. I wrote down all the anger and confusion, but you know who wants to read that? Not you, my friends, even though you may be thinking Hell yeah, let's see this guy get mad a bit. Let's watch this dude throw himself around a bit. Nah, you don't really want that. You don’t want to see me stir the stuff at the bottom and find what bobs to the top. Or as Gerard Manley Hopkins once said, selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. Although he may have been talking about god.

Anyway, I’m thinking that the way out of despond is not self-reflection but flinging the mind outward, into the silly ends of the imagination, which is where I encounter the greatest amusement and the occasional hint that the world may have more to offer than the lunch special at the Sears cafeteria. Today I’m initiating The Year of Ridiculous Ideas. Every day will be devoted to some horrible idea for a television show, film, gum wrapper or moustaches-for-babies marketing scheme. Some of them will be terrible. Some of them will be terrible, terrible genius. But damn it, I’m going to do it. If I can’t come up with a bad idea I will provide one thought about the Terminator franchise, so you’d better hope my brain comes through.

Those what are in the know will tell me that spinning out undeveloped ideas is a terrible idea, and that sooner or later some flicksharp will steal my best eggs from my nest and raise them into idea-chickens of fame and profit. This is unlikely.

First idea: Superman vs. the Mounties. Blue spandex versus red serge! Fists meet outstanding law enforcement procedures! Who will triumph? Well, Superman will triumph. He could wade through a field of these guys and toss them into the stratosphere by their jodhpurs. But think of the PR issues. How could Superman handle the flak that he would get from depleting Canada of its national police force? Is he going to protect Canada in their place? I doubt it. He’s busy enough with Metropolis. And who’s going to take care of the horses? Come on.

The way I see it, Superman gets upset with the Mounties and their incessant parading while he tries to get some rest in the Fortress of Solitude. So he steps out his door and yells at the Mounties to move a little bit further to the south. The Mounties are like, no dice sir, so Superman dropkicks the whole hatted lot of them onto the moon. That’s when his public relations and horse grooming nightmare begins.

Okay, so we’ve got Superman taking care of the RCMP horses and the Mounties on the moon, stuck without a way back or a breathable atmosphere. Evil overtakes Canada and Metropolis. Villains unite them and form the breakaway republic of Fossetralia, where they gather at the stables and make nasty jokes at Superman’s expense.

So what’s the third act? The Mounties come back from the moon, having learned to live without air because of evolution. The source of evolution is on the moon, see, so now they’re flying vacuum-breathing creatures with five heads and one shoulder. They clean up the evil, eat the horses and roost on the high parapets, joking with each other and defecating on passersby. The end. Come back tomorrow for another terrible idea.