Lifestyle-of-the-month Club

Like a beer of the month club, or a fruit of the month club, but for lifestyles.

"This month, be a raver! We have included a CD in the package of the kind of music you like. We've also included glow sticks. Do up your hair and makeup as in the enclosed photographs, get a pair of incredibly baggy pants, and dance to the music while waving your lightsticks around. For self-evident legal reasons, ecstasy tablets are not included."

As a side note, the rave nostalgia era approaches. In a mere decade, raves will be worshipped by people who weren't even alive in the nineties.

Britney Spears hair metal covers album

Britney Spears has stolen a lot from Madonna, but so far has failed to understand the need for a total reinvention every couple of years. It's time that Britney execute a radical makeover.

My choice would be for her to become a hair metal goddess. It would emphasize her physical charms, and distract from the fact that the jailbait routine is a bit out-of-date. It would musically appeal to the aging slacker audience, with a combined nostalgia/irony vibe. To that end, here are a few choice songs she might want to cover:

Language School sitcom

It would be easy to set a sitcom in a school for foreign languages. You would have a cast of regulars — the instructors; recurring characters — students taking multiple languages, advanced courses, or multi-session classes; and one-off appearances by guest stars and extras — walk-ins off the street inquiring about taking classes, students who drop out, and so on.

With a bunch of languages taught by native speakers from different countries, there would be ample opportunities for fish-out-of-water stories, where the teachers have difficulty with American culture; for culture-clash / odd-couple situations between instructors; for students' experiences in foreign countries or with strange new concepts; and so on.

The structure has the advantage that it could be rather soap-opera-like: teachers could constantly be leaving to return to their home countries, or leaving for other jobs in the United States; students might be taking long or short language courses; and so on. Lots of flexibility both for one-off stories and for longer story arcs.

I'm not really saying that I'd watch it, but I think it could be done as compellingly as any other tv drama/comedy series, in the style either of an American or British sitcom.

OSHA-approved Employee Torture

Sometimes you just want to torture your employees.

Unfortunately, that's illegal.

Or is it? Do employees have legal recourse if you, as the boss, decide to play a Kylie Minogue track fifty times in a row where it can be heard by everyone?

Perhaps there should be a Web site of techniques that can be used to legally annoy and/or torture employees. I don't need it, but maybe someone else does.

The Bingo Channel

A Native American tribe should start a cable network, The Bingo Channel.

Call a toll-free number and be assigned a Bingo card over the telephone. (Online would be nice too, but it's hardly their target market.) If you've called before, they'll have your credit-card information. Play along with the television for big-money prizes. If you play regularly, they'll send you special Bingo Channel blank cards; really big players can get marker chips and so on for free, too.

Of course, the network is collecting demographic information on you. And if you stop playing, maybe you'll get a call asking why.

"Hello, Mrs. Jones? It's Bob Caring, from The Bingo Channel. I was looking at our records, and I noticed you hadn't played in a while. Is everything all right? How's your grandson, Billy? That's wonderful! Good for you! Well, I guess I'll let you go now; hope to see you playing again soon, too!"

Real human contact with elderly shut-ins to drive revenue.