The Internet Is Killing The Economy

I think a lot. I have been thinking about a lot of things. I have probably been thinking about too many things, because there are a lot of things going on in my life right now.

One major thing that I have been thinking about, that I think we have all been thinking about is the economy.



The country seems to be slowly climbing back out of this "downturn" in the economy, but sales are slow across the board. People just aren't buying. But, wouldn't you know it, have an explanation beyond the obvious, and more importantly, a solution.

It's not just consumer confidence that is down, but more importantly, consumer desire. We as a society are not clamoring for the same endless amounts of crap to fill the holes in our souls in the same way that generations of Americans before us were.

Why?

A majority of Americans have gotten pretty deep into the internet. I know I have. Now we are filling the holes in our souls with online role playing games, social networking, porn, blogging, and a laundry list of other widgets, gadgets, and applications that are all serving to distract us from buying real stuff. For many people this "Second Life" had already quickly become a first life taking up all the time that they might have spent shopping before. All it took was this economic crisis to cement the transition from the material world where most people are losers to the virtual online universe where anyone can be a king, a queen, an elf, or even an ogre king deep in the woods.

Why blow all your money on a new car when you are getting chicks by posting pictures of Chuck Norris riding a unicorn? Why buy a new stereo system when your earbuds plug straight into your laptop and sound great? Why worry about stylish new shoes when you already have a pair that you hardly ever use?

Maybe you are saying to yourself, "Hey, I don't play no faggy nerd role playing games. I ain't all sucked into the internet." Guess what. You are. Even people like you who want to pretend like they don't play role playing games are playing things like Maffia Wars on Facebook or engaging in something similar on the NASCAR community website.


Plus, if you are reading my blog, you are probably pretty deep into the internet already.

So what is the solution?

I know that companies have been pouring hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars into the internet, jockeying for search engine rankings, developing newer, slicker websites, and paying top dollar to have these very same games created to keep people coming back to spend more time on their site and in turn see more advertising. Damn that was a long sentence, and I didn't even mention porn. If you ask me, without porn, there would be no streaming videos etc. on the internet. Long story short, a lot of money has been put into building the internet up and getting people to get on it, and you know this man. But, if companies want to see people buying real stuff again, they are going to have to rally against the internet.

I recommend PSA's, pop up windows reminding people how long they have been online, big clocks on websites, celebrity endorsements against the internet, and if you want to get shady, paying off cable and phone companies for strategic network failures, slowdowns, and or viruses... if no one could get online the day after Thanksgiving... they might just go shopping.

We have to get people off the internet and get them to the mall! Unless, that is... they are checking out IdeasByChuck.com.

P.S. Subscribing to Ideas By Chuck is still patriotic. Click Here.

P.P.S. I am now on Tumblr, so you can easily reblog me all over the place. Just be sure to go buy a new purse or watch afterwards.

P.P.P.S. Molly and I are still working on getting our own reality show. You aren't too late to the party. Go to BoyMeetsBlogger.com to find out more.

Boy Meets Blogger

I am sure that all of you, my millions of fans, will remember that a while back I had an idea for a reality show staring me. Well, yeah, I know I have tons of ideas, so if you don't remember, you can click here.

Unfortunately for the viewing public, and all those would be reality show moguls nothing has come of this idea...yet.

But, since I let that idea float out into the world, like a Scooby Doo shaped mylar balloon spiraling to the heavens, I have been in contact with a bloggirl (that's pronounced blog-girl not blo-girl) named Molly McAleer or Molls. If you have been paying attention, you know she interviewed me for her web show, The Molls Show.

Now, I never met Kurt Vonnegut, but I can't imagine him not accusing me of having a brain to big for my own good. Thoughts started to swirl through my brain, thought of some sort of show about me and Molly hitting the mean streets of Hollywood like Laverne and Shirley, trying to make it our way, but in Hollywood, not Milwaukee. Well, these thoughts just kept swirling around in my brain until I finally told Molly about them...

YOU GUYS GOT LUCKY! She liked the idea, and together we came up with this:

Title: Boy Meets Blogger
Genre: Reality
Logline: The Hills meets Real World: Season 1 meets the Internet.

Back Story:

Molly McAleer and I were brought together by a plot line ripped from the pages of a terrible romantic comedy script.

Molly saw a flier for my website IdeasByChuck.com, took a picture of it, and made fun of me for it on her blog MollsSheWrote. She said that I was clearly just some guy trying to get a book deal by using budget fliers with quaint hand-drawn illustrations. My friend Mack saw her post and sent it to me along with this message, "This girl saw your ad. She is famous on the internet."


I found Molly on Twitter, and asked her if she had even looked at my website. She hadn't, so I bugged her until she checked it out.

When she finally really read my site and discovered that I am pretty famous on the internet too, she asked to interview me for her web show. I said yes, and made her a $5000 tshirt to show that there were no hard feelings.

We finally met in real life, hit it off, and discovered that we had a lot in common... way too much in common...


Synopsis:

Boy Meets Blogger would be about internet personalities, Chuck McCarthy and Molly McAleer teaming up to create new, high concept blogs (think stuffwhitepeoplelike.com) and other internet projects in an attempt to land a book deal or something even bigger...

Research for these new blogs would take them from the mean streets of LA to Hollywood clubs, dive bars, and car parks and everywhere in between, while revealing the day to day drama of their lives that will whip audiences into a frenzy of speculation over their relationship... Is there something more than friendship there?


Yeah? Yeah? Yeah, I know, pure gold right? This show has the two things that people are looking for these days, web ties and awesomeness.

Take this idea and run with it! Make it happen! If you need something to pass around to get people excited about this, you can send them BoyMeetsBlogger.com.

P.S. Subscribe to ideas by chuck before there are too many people on the internet and we stop letting people in.

P.P.S. Go Go Lucky Pants! You know what I am talking about.

P.P.P.S. Have you checked out decepticondoms.com?

P.P.P.P.S. I am on twitter now. @ideasbychuck. I promise that even my inane chatter is still fairly amusing.

The HoverDuster

If there is one thing in this world that I hate unabashedly with great passion, it is dust. I hate dust! I hate it more than anything in my day to day life. I hate dust more than the thought of another Transformers movie.

A couple of months ago I decided to try to figure out a way to defeat dust, and thoughts of dust have been consuming my mind for the last couple of months. Dust. Dust. Dust.

Many dusty thoughts have gone through my mind in the last couple of months. I have thought of everything from a spray on shield that you could peel off your possessions like a snake shedding it's skin to simply killing everyone in the world, since %90 of dust is actually human skin... but most of my ideas seemed a bit... impractical, not to mention immoral.

Then I started thinking about the Roomba. You have all seen the commercials for the Roomba or known some single guy with too much money from winning Merv Griffin's Crosswords, who bought one to feel like he was in Star Wars.





Though I have to admit that the Roomba is much more effective and durable than it might seem, it is still only really effective for already anal people who live alone in single level apartments with hardwood floors. It's not going to deal well at all with big cereal spills, lots of dirt, shag carpet, or little kids.

But, imagine a robotic blimp duster with Roomba-like programing floating through the air, constantly dusting your furniture (if you have been working on this concept for 3 years and have written your post doc dissertation on indoor wind currents effects on autonomous robotic sensor arrays, I am sorry)! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the HoverDuster.

Maybe you don't think that a blimp can move with enough agility to do the job. Maybe you should watch this video of a flying saucer blimp narrated by a guy with a lisp.


Wasn't that cool? If this guy can make a flying saucer that can reign down business cards like manna from heaven, I am sure you can get the HoverDuster up and running... though it might take the brains of a couple of Roombas and kidnapping a couple of kids from MIT or Caltech.

If you can get the HoverDuster into stores and on sale for under $100.00 by this Christmas, you will sell millions of them. I will even buy one if you aren't classy enough to send me one along with a couple of million bucks. The Go-Duster is your strongest competition. Come on.

P.S. Subscribe to Ideas By Chuck today and you will be subscribing before tomorrow. Click Here.

P.P.S. Cameron Balloons and DragonFly are two companies to approach about teaming up to make the HoverDuster a reality.





P.P.P.S. The fact that the paparazzi aren't using this thing to get pictures of Tom Cruise making out with dudes is substantial proof that the whole clash between the paparazzi and celebrities is manufactured.

P.P.P.P.S. If you work at iRobot makers of the Roomba, you should really bring this idea up in your next meeting. If you don't, then I don't think you are smart enough to be working at a robot company.

P.P.P.P.P.S. I am taking over Twitter. Follow me.