Afternoon musings

To me, crazy ideas are great ideas. It doesn't matter if they come to fruition or not, just that they're born. Sometimes they are best left unuttered. Sometimes the world desperately needs them. Sometimes they are stupid, and that's just life.

One time at work, in the Golden Age of Spahr, I was talking with Chin and Mark, my two employees at the time, and we were discussing the hot dog stand in downtown L-town. Apparently, there was a go-getter with an awesome idea to sell hot dogs on the street like he was in New York or something. Unfortunately, for him, he wasn't there every day. So I told Chin that he should get a stand and put that guy out of business. That'll show him for not being around all of the time.

Well, like a good employee, Chin was all ears, with a little bit of the exciting loud talking. He waxed enthusiastic about how he could make it swell. One of the magical Chin-isms was the secret Kung-fu sauce. Also, he needed to open the stand at night, after the bars close and drunk people are super hungry for something, anything, even hot dogs at 2:00 a.m. Chin is enthusiastic and friendly, so I couldn't imagine it going awry. I told him that he might need a bodyguard waiting in the shadows, just in case. Chin came up with a name so awesome that I can't repeat it here. It might break your fragile little mind, and I don't want to be responsible for that.

We were all ready for writing up a business plan, detailing the capital to start it up, and spit-balling a list of possible investors. The excitement was building, so I asked, what happens when you put that other dude out of business? Do you keep a stand open during the day? You don't want to get stagnant. You need competition to maintain your stronghold on the downtown hot dog trade. So, I gleefully volunteered to run my own stand. I would directly oppose Chin's tactics. I would offer different exotic sauces, have a snappier catch phrase, and put up my own alliterative stand name. All the while, however, I would be under Chin's employ.

We would get the business from people who want to support the underdog, not the greedy corporate giant that is Chin's hot dog stand. Soon, he would have one on every corner, just like Starbucks. But I would be there, too, to happily serve those who opposed his brutal rock-bottom wages and lack of health insurance. I would be the Target to his Wal-Mart. But the genius would be that we would both be thumbing through the Benjamin's together at Spahr.

Ultimately, we decided to scrap our plans because they were becoming too evil, even though they would most certainly have worked. That hot dog guy, on which ever days he is downtown still, should give thanks for the triumph of good over evil that day. Otherwise his kids would be eating old packets of mustard with their saltines, with college but a distant fantasy and their only consolation being the quiet dignity of their father's silence at the dinner table.

Thus ended our quest for hot dog stand monopoly. I'm sure we went directly to another topic as Mark and I played an important work game of paper football. When I said Golden Age, I meant every damn word.

Delicious!