Today’s guest post comes from big idea man and dealmaker Spin Williams.

I love Leap Day because it breaks the mold and gives us a peek at the future!

And the future I see is one where we are freed from the tyranny of the calendar! At The Meeting That Never Ends, we’re recommending that our clients invest heavily in anything that tracks, catalogs and manipulates time.

The next big growth area is not energy or financial services or Greek yogurt. It’s Time! Giving people control over their time is what freedom is all about! And we believe the world is moving inexorably towards a future where time is totally de-regulated and completely governed by the market!

For example, back in the day you had to be present in front of your TV set to catch a particular program at a specific time. If you didn’t obey the clock, you were out of luck. Today, it doesn’t matter when you want to watch – your favorite televised experience waits for you and provides itself at the touch of a button whenever you are ready!

I believe someday it will be the same with our calendar. No more February, March, April proceeding in their uninspired sequence of orderly days, one after another. That tired old system is entirely predictable and far too constraining.

The calendar of the future will be self designed and totally changeable. Everyone will still get 365 and 1/4 days each year, and in that year there will be 52 Mondays, 52 Tuesdays, etc. But if you want to live all your Mondays in a row and get them out of the way, that’s up to you! If you want to sell all your Fridays to a rich person in exchange for a large amount of cash and an equal number of their Wednesdays, you can do that! Conversely, if you want to burn through all your 104 Saturdays and Sundays starting on April 4th and finishing on July 6th, be my guest!

If you do this, of course you will suffer terrible consequences, but self-inflicted misery is also the hallmark of freedom!

Bottom line – people are hungry for liberty and time is the last great dictator – a heartless oppressor who is destined to fall. Mark my words – this will happen! The smart investor stays ahead of mega-trends, so place your bets and get ready for the Temporal Spring!

It sounds farfetched but I recall when Spin told me punctuation was unfairly rationed and a free American should get to have as many exclamation points as he wants. That came true for him, through sheer force of will!!!!! Could he be right about the rest of it?

How would you arrange your deregulated calendar?

Yesterday afternoon we were feeling apprehensive about the impending snowstorm, so naturally we headed out to get a little fresh air and do some recreational shopping.
And there’s no place like the local Mutt Mart to smell and be smelled.

Some dogs prefer a straight ahead walk in the park or the pure recreational exhilaration of an off-leash area, but for us it has always been a retail experience that gets the tail wagging.

The Mutt Mart is bursting with exotic smells and a mind-blowing variety of high-end food. We are all about high-end. The great thing about the Mutt Mart is that not every dog goes there. I’m not saying we’re snobs, but we’ve investigated a lot of ends and just so happens we like the high ones best.

But yesterday we noticed that something has changed at our favorite store.
The gourmet snack aisle was remarkably un-busy.

Unlike human society, the canine world is obsessed with rank, so trotting up to the register with a bag of fully organic, corn-free, gluten-free, hypoallergenic, free-range chicken flavored Scrumptious Morsels is much sweeter when there are other shoppers standing by to watch and admire.

Where were they? Word from Bloomberg Businessweek is that many of the other Mutt Mart shoppers are rooting around for snacks in the backyard compost and drinking out of mud puddles. Our economy has tanked so badly, even the dog pamperers are cutting back, letting their precious pooches play with common toys, eat ordinary food, and wear shapeless, uninspired fashions. We saw a poodle wearing baggy sweat pants!

So it has come to this.

One could argue that this sort of extravagance should have been the first thing to go, though frankly it is much easier to cut back on someone else’s frivolous expenses than to slash your own. So let’s start there.

What should other people stop spending money on?

Today’s guest post is by 9th District Congressman Loomis Beechly.

Greetings, Constituents!

Two days ago, I posted some thoughts here regarding proposed Constitutional Amendments and my personal feelings about Vampires. Little did I know some people would actually read what I had to say and respond!

From your comments, you seem to think that Vampires should, perhaps, be allowed to vote. This is remarkable to me, and while I can’t agree with your sentiments, I am obliged as a public servant to show some respect for your right to be totally out of your mind on this particular question. Still, I find it intimidating to consider what political candidates might do to cater to the Vampire voting bloc. It would not be beyond some of them to throw open the doors of the blood banks to win a few votes. Seriously. Mitt Romney would do it, I’m sure.

And now comes fresh news from the Pew Charitable Trusts that many states keep sloppy records and over one million dead people are still registered to vote.

These are the ordinary dead, not Vampires, but I assume if you are in favor of voting rights for soulless bloodsuckers you would also extend that privilege to the dearly departed. At least I would hope so. I know a few of them very, very well and I believe they deserve it.

Critics will say that actual dead people never show up at the polls. True, but in this they are no different from most Americans. I think the dead should stay on the rolls so that parties and candidates will alter their tactics and policies in an attempt to win the dead vote!

Why? Because it would change our politics for the better.

* The dead are immune to fashion and frenzy and they have long memories. Candidates would have to focus on lasting solutions to long term problems.

* There would be less fear mongering. The dead, by virtue of being deceased, are difficult to frighten. They don’t run from terrorists and they aren’t bothered by homosexuals or immigrants. In fact, everyone is finally equal in the land of the dead. Wouldn’t personal experience in that culture be a great addition to our voting populace?

* Conservatives should be for this one – dead people can be easily identified with or without photo ID and once set in stone, their addresses never change. Finally, a stable, predictable population to participate in our elections!

* Also, dead people have a wonderfully mature perspective on the big issues of the day, particularly health care. Many of them were receiving copious amounts of it just before they died. If they were allowed to weigh in on the matter, they might insist we spend less on prescription drugs and more on faster ambulances.

* Finally, more votes from the dead could help us re-focus our priorities on the things that matter most. I think all dead folks are environmentalists. Or to be more exact, dead folks are the environment. They’re underneath our feet. They’re mixed in with the oceans and particles of them are even floating around in the air we breathe. I think being dead would help them serve as responsible, informed voters on all the “green” issues, especially those that have to do with maintaining clean groundwater.

In fact, when you think about all the ways being dead and voting responsibly align, it’s hard to understand why we waste our time trying to get support from alive people.

Accordingly, I will introduce legislation to protect the voting rights of these expired Americans. I hope you will decide that my efforts are worthy of your support.

Sincerely,

Congressman Loomis Beechly

Help Congressman Beechly – think of a campaign slogan he can use to win dead votes.

Today’s guest post comes from 9th District Congressman Loomis Beechly

Greetings Constituents.

I’m a lawyer and it’s my job to write laws for a living. I know you don’t have much respect for that kind of work, but I’m a Congressman. I’m used to not getting much respect. It comes with the job.

But recently I’ve noticed a movement on the state level to add things to the State Constitution as a way of setting new law and preventing interference from the courts. I’m intrigued by this and I have to admit I rather like it because it gets around the tiresome talk-talk-talking about issues with people who aren’t smart enough to agree with me already.

Getting something into the Constitution is a great way to pre-emptively deal with things we imagine could become a problem sometime down the road if “those people” get their way. And you know who I mean. Everybody has some of “those people” who haunt their dreams.

Critics say this wave of amendments is like a child piling his toys against the closet door to keep the monsters from coming out. I get the connection, but I don’t much care for the tone – belittling such efforts as childish. Closet monsters are real. In fact, the U.S. Senate has cloak rooms where members are supposed to talk about issues and come to some kind of agreement. For a lot of people in Washington and St. Paul, coming to agreement is a very scary thing indeed, and they avoid it the same way you would steer clear of Frankenstein. Imagine a big, green, flat-headed lurcher named “Amity”, and you’ll get the idea. Very disturbing.

Personally, I have a thing about Vampires.

Vampires have been gaining ground in recent years. When I was a kid they only appeared in movies and always in their proper role – as scary bloodsucking beasts who could only be killed by a stake through the heart. But lately, they’ve been depicted as sexy, misunderstood lover boys who might be decent marriage material. Even though, as Vampires, they don’t have photo ID! They can’t even appear in pictures! Or is that werewolves? I’m not sure. But I do know that Vampires have lots of rich moviemakers on their side, and there are probably quite a few judges who are strong sympathizers as well. Think about it – they all wear black robes.

So my point is this – Vampires should be kept in their place as a threat and should not be allowed to become part of the mainstream in any way, yet there is a real chance that doors will be opened to them that would be very, very difficult to close in the future. Little girls already want to marry vampires as long as they are named Edward. And just think about vampires voting. What will candidates of the future have to do to appeal to the vampire base? Bite the head off a chipmunk? There are people running for office today who would do that with very little prompting.

That’s why I would welcome a constitutional amendment that states “Vampires are evil and are not entitled to any of the rights afforded human beings in the State of Minnesota, including marriage and voting.”

Since I am not a member of the Minnesota legislature, I can’t introduce this bill myself, but I hope someone will pick it up and run with it. People want protection from Vampires, and even though they enjoy Vampire-based art and seem to love Vampire-inspired style, I think they will see the sense in it. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to be scared. Let’s nail shut the lid on the next Dracula’s coffin before he even has a chance to climb out of it!

What else is a Constitution for?

Sincerely,
Loomis Beechly

How would you vote on the anti-Vampire amendment?

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I admire people with drive and ingenuity. When I saw that someone invented a gizmo to screw on to the top of a mason jar that will turn it into a travel mug, I thought, “That’s really clever.” So I ordered one online. When I showed it to my husband, he snorted and said “you can’t drink hot things out of a mason jar, it’ll burn your hand.”

He’s right, of course. But the people who came up with this idea are brilliant, anyway. So I insist on using the gizmo to drink extremely hot things out of mason jars, even though we have a cupboard full of unused travel mugs that we got as public radio membership premiums. I do it to honor the spirit of invention and also to stick a heat-blistered finger in my husband’s eye for pooh-poohing such a cool product.
Oh, the things I endure to preserve my dignity.

That got me thinking that I could market something called “The Travail Mug”. Cool, huh?

“The Travail Mug” would be this line of designer insulated mugs, each one bearing witness to a burden you have to bear in silence. You know, like one would read “Mean People Say I’m Stupid” and another would say “Nobody Gets My Brilliant Ideas” or “My Spirit Gets Crushed Every Day.”

I just made those up as random samples of the sort of travail anybody could relate to.

When I mentioned this to my husband, he said the idea was “idiotic”. “First of all, everybody’s got too many travel mugs,” he said. And then he added this – “The whole concept is a thin joke built around a play on words. Where do you think you live? What century? Most Americans don’t know what ‘travail’ means, and they don’t care. Wordplay is a game for people who think they’re smart, and Americans don’t like smartypants. So what if ‘travail’ sounds like ‘travel’? It also sounds French. This idea is guaranteed to fail. Give up now.”

Dr. Babooner, I know he’s right. But why does it bother me so much? Is the idea of selling “Travail Mugs” really so disastrous? And do you think having to live with a grouchy spouse is enough of a travail to print on the new cups? It is definitely the heaviest burden I bear.

Sincerely,
Lovable Mug

I told Lovable Mug that her husband is a bully, but he’s actually doing her a favor by raining so constantly on her parade. If her brainstorm can’t stand up to harsh criticism, it will never succeed in the marketplace of ideas because the history of innovation has been written by people who were told over and over again that their inspired concept was ridiculous. Some of them never lost faith and proved their critics wrong! And a whole bunch of others spent the rest of their lives fruitlessly pushing impractical notions that really were not very well thought out. But that’s not the point! If you don’t love your ideas, who will?

But that’s just one opinion. What do you, think, Dr. Babooner?