Tag: bad inventions

Bad Inventions: Scratching Post Pants and Cat Tree Suit

Posted on by Liz

In the fine tradition of terrible cat-related inventions, I present: the Cat Tree Suit! Cover some knee-high leather boots with sisal rope, or just staple the rope all over a pair of jeans. Scratching Post Pants!

Optional hip belt with built-in ledge for the cat to rest at the halfway mark as it climbs.

The jacket can be either sisal-covered or carpet based, with a huge upturned collar excellent for keeping a cat in place around your neck. It should have a lot of useful tassels hanging from collar, cuffs, and anywhere else.

Onward and upward to the fabulously oversized top hat with a little hole in the front for the cat to peek out of! The hat should also have a dangling wire with a fluffy cat toy to motivate your hat-sitting cat for optimal display.

I thought surely someone would have made one of these, but searching hasn’t turned up anything. It’s up to you, dear reader, to construct Scratching Post Pants (or the entire suit) and send me photos. Or just send the entire suit to Moshow.

Bad Inventions: The laptop girdle and the standing desk bra!

Posted on by Liz

I have two new Bad Inventions for my collection of ideas that I will never implement and everyone is free to steal!

First, let me introduce the Laptop Girdle (or laptop belt)!

I often am working on my computer while lying on my back with knees and feet up on pillows to relieve strain in my low back and keep my painful ankles elevated. I’m sure many other people use their laptops in bed or on a couch lying down. One problem with this is the laptop needs to be specially propped up so it doesn’t slide upwards on your torso. Another problem is that your stomach or your belt can accidentally mess with the laptop track pad so that you suddenly click with your belly. I don’t even have that much belly and it happens all the time since my MacBook Air has very little space between the bottom edge of the laptop and the trackpad. Same with my belt. So, the Laptop Girdle will be a belt with a special groove meant to hold a laptop in place, immune from belly or belt-buckle clicks!

Also good for playing games on your ipad in bed!

The laptop belt is also useful for people who are sitting up with laptop ON THEIR ACTUAL LAP.

I think that boob clicks are also possible in this scenario so the laptop girdle must protect against boob clicks for those of us who are generously endowed.

Which thought leads us to . . . the Standing Desk Bra! Standing desks are amazingly popular with hipster programmers who aren’t me! There is one in my hotel room right now! Now, I am also not a person who needs a marvelously sturdy variety of bra which has the structural engineering of a suspension bridge. But for those of us who do wear amazingly constructed bras imagine if its support framework also had something that popped or folded out or attached on the underneath of the front of the bra, that would be a convenient shelf for your laptop, reading a book, or use as a handy drafting table! YES. The world needs Standing Desk Bras!

Please send me your drawings of these inventions as soon as possible so that we can make it happen. OR just make something like this and you are welcome to your ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

Bad inventions: The purring electric blanket

Posted on by Liz

This terrible invention fits well into my usual purview, cat-related ridiculousness — like dead mouse cat treats, sugar cereal themed cat litter, and of course the ever-popular Catula.

Instead of horrible genetically engineered “bed dogs” that are like animal exploitationy meat-based waterbeds (Thanks but no thanks, Larry Niven), we should invent purring blankets. Take a regular electric blanket. Cover it in fur. Add strips of gently vibrating or thrumming devices, and sensors. When the blanket senses your proximity, it heats up. If you stroke it, it purrs.

Here is the perfect opportunity to use fremitus.com, if you happen to own that pointless domain name. (WHICH… right now… no one does. No one loves fasciated tiger herons, or what?)

This will make me ONE MILLION DOLLARS someday along with all the other millions of dollars my other bad inventions will magically bring.

Bad Inventions: Dumpling Compass!

Posted on by Liz

This is hardly a bad invention. It is sheer genius, because dumplings are fucking delicious. And because I don’t have time to create it, I give it to you. The Dumpling Compass!

Dumpling Compass is a phone app that points you towards the nearest dumpling source.

Consider the miracle of the dumpling. The basic idea is some sort of grain delicately prepared and cooked, often surrounding a tasty filling. There are so many nuances to this amazing food. Behold the Wikipedia entry for the Dumpling, and swoon in awe!

Dumplings!

Using Dumpling Compass, you can filter by the doughy substrate (corn, rice, wheat), the method of cooking (boiled, steamed, fried, served in soup), the type of filling, and the national or ethnic background of the dumpling you most desire to find at any particular moment. Your compass will point you to it.

Someone go ahead and build this. You will make ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

Think how useful. Not like the Sockerchief or the Catula.

p.s. Tamales count!

Bad inventions: Dead mouse cat treats

Posted on by Liz

I have two more bad inventions to add to the world, both cat-related!

Think how awesome it would be if we had cat treats that had the varied textures of dead mice! Pampered indoor cats could have the fun of chewing on the leathery outer skin made of meat jerky, crunching the fake bones, savoring the squooshy fake guts, and dragging the horrible fake mouse around by its meat jerky tail to leave it on your pillow as a gift. Dead mouse cat treats would be totally amazing and also the worst invention ever.

Except for … 80s sugar cereal cat litter! I thought of this yesterday while cleaning the litter box. We accidentally have an extra-rancid smelling brand of cat litter right now. Imagine a half assed attempt to make cat litter smell pleasant! It could smell just like Lucky Charms, or Frankenberries or whatever, and look like it too… the little blue odor-crystals would be the marshmallow bits.

Lucky Charms Cereal by laffy4k

The cat litter containing boxes could look excitingly like breakfast cereal boxes perhaps even with fun prizes inside for that ultra-hipster retro enjoyment of life… but the prizes would be FOR YOUR CAT.

As an extra bonus, you can combine both these inventions so that your box of Lucky Charms Cat Litter contains a Dead Mouse Treat prize.

Past cat-related inventions include Cat Eggs and the Catula. Other inventions from today: Feminist Bitcoins, the Social Justice Slot Machine, and the charitable causes first person shooter (“Give a hoot, shoot & loot!).

You’re welcome.

Bad inventions: Dog skates and conductive paint toilet seats!

Posted on by Liz

From my notebook pages of ridiculous inventions and bad ideas, for your amusement. As I fiddled with a pot of conductive paint and thought about murals on the wall with blinky LEDs, I had the horrible idea of painting a toilet seat with conductive paint in such a way so that when you sit on it, your bare butt completes a circuit and lights up something on the wall. That should be enshrined in the bad inventions hall of fame!

Dog skates would take the idea of dog skateboards and wheelchairs a bit further. Basically you would take an old fashioned metal rollerskate and modify it to strap around the body of a small dog. Then, add a spring-powered suspension system between the body and the wheels, so the dog can easily bounce up and down between a walking and a rolling position. The skate could also be locked with a screw device in a wheels-up or wheels-down position to make the dog walk, or to pull it along on a leash like a little (live) pull toy. I don’t have a dog and don’t even like dogs, but thought of this while staring at other people dragging their reluctant chihuahas around San Francisco, and it made me laugh because it’s such a bad idea.

My latest terrible invention: The Chia Butt, and Underpockets

Posted on by Liz

Instead of explaining about all the posts I mean to write and haven’t, about WisCon and my ankles and all the books I’ve been reading, I bring you my latest terrible invention, to go with the Catula, Elboff, the Beer Hat Neti Pot, Cat Eggs, and the Sockerchief.

You know how there are Chia Pets of many varieties? Wouldn’t it be brilliant to have… the Chia Butt?

It would be a ceramic butt, with little holes all over for the seeds to sprout, creating a fascinating conversation piece you can tend and love… a green, hairy, butt.

CHIA ABE

This made my son laugh very hard and then I further sent him into the throes of laugh-trigger asthma by explaining why underwear should have pockets. I have invented… UNDERPOCKET!

Right, so back to the semi-serious blogging about something of substance that isn’t my painful bilateral achilles tendonitis with bursitis thrown in as a bonus and sciatica and bad knees. And peripheral neuralgia that no one can explain. For the last 6 months. I miss walking, driving, bike riding and my dramatic supercrip Journey Out of the Wheelchair. Now I’m very familiar with the beeping lift things that scoop you onto buses. Though I will say that I love my electric scooter and imagining the Thunderbirds Are Go launch theme as I come out of the automatically opening garage door, scooting. OMG… yes. Scooter power!

Excellent books read recently:

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein.

Women, friendship, social class, airplanes, Gestapo, epistolary, AWESOME. Read this immediately.

Meeks by Julia Holmes.

Dystopia! gender! social class! Kickass writing that didn’t make me want to hurl (as most “literary fiction” does) Beauty and despair.

WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi

Fabulous kids’ book about a kid in an underground survival pod with a robot named MUTHR. It has great illustrations and is very fast paced in the beginning so I suggest it as especially good for kids under 10 who get bored at exposition.

Promise of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst

15,000 years ago, a fierce brave wolf cub watches her brother and sisters die, outcast from the Pack! OMG! Wolf Ayla! The Greatwolves are up to something and the 2 leggers or whatever they were called are sort of the companion animal they long to soul bond with (but it is FORBIDDEN.) I got this for Danny’s daughter as it looked like a better and more sophisticated Warriors style book about fierce animals, with mythology and hunting, then I started reading it and couldn’t stop till I was done.

Into the Wise Dark by Neesha Meminger

Surly psychic teenage girls! No vampires! Indian-American family complexities, mums who Mean Well, and creepy therapists who totally don’t! Female friendship and working together with MAGIC… time travel… Goddess stuff… a hot boyfriend back in time, tending the goats of the village… Very enjoyable. There was a scene it it where she was in these bubble things in space in isolated space prison cells and I could SWEAR I have read something else that was like that a long time ago. What was it? Anyway, this was great and I loved how it sneaked some space and future into what is usually focused around “paranormal” and history. Keep sticking those silver jumpsuits in there Neesha!! Yeah!

Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente.

Sex, desire, creativity, aesthetics, ummm fantasy? way out there! To get into this amazing ultimate Virconium city or Amber or Utopian weirdness world you have to have sex with someone who also has a piece of the map tattooed on them. This book has a lot of scenes of people having uncomfortably casual sex and freaking out about it. I am only halfway through and at first wasn’t sure what the hell was going on and if I was like, too far into Cat Valente’s Id Vortex to feel comfy and then I got really into it and felt the lid was off and let’s just go with the flow.

Habitation of the Blessed duology also by Cat Valente

Extremely good! Bears thinking about! Easy to read and lovely and packed with history and beauty and I especially love the bits that are the butterfly’s and the blemmye’s stories. I can’t remember their names and lent the books out already. If you bounced off the massively deep layers of nested stories (or the purpley prose) of Orphan’s Tales give this a try – its structure is more accessible. I really get blown away by how good and great and geniusy Valente’s books are. Bite on that Gene Wolfe. Stuff it Orhan Pamuk. These are the massive storytelling epics I’ve been waiting for and without the cognitive dissonanance of having to work around all the fucking heinous unnecessary sexism that I have to cope with while reading Wolfe and Pamuk.

Report to the Men’s Club – Carol Emschwiller.

Short stories which left me with the impression of first contact hermity mountain women of the 19th century; if you liked Souls by Joanna Russ you’ll like this… the little known first contact nun genre!

Redemption in Indigo – Karen Lord.
A great speculative novel set in west africa. Magic and gods and chaos – I want a Chaos Stick! I loved this book and will look for her next one. This story made me think a bunch about scoping out the parameters of woman centered hero tales.

Bad invention: The Sockerchief!

Posted on by Liz

Imagine you have to blow your nose. You don’t have any pockets and no tissues are handy. But wait! You’re wearing your Sockerchiefs!

Sockerchiefs, the latest in my line of horrible and pointless inventions, would be a handkerchief attached to your sock with velcro.

Reach down, rip off the top half of your socks, and blow your nose. Then simply re-attach the hankie to the Sockerchief.

This is possibly even more disgusting than the Beer Hat Neti Pot! It’s extra cringe-worthy since no one would want velcro on their handkerchief. And since it’s easy enough to tuck your handkerchief into the top of your sock if you don’t have pockets (along with your money and ID) it’s also quite pointless. But I’m recording all my bad inventions because I’m still bitter about predicting the cat-ear hat trend back in 1993 or so and then failing to make millons of dollars when people started wearing animal ear hats for real. 20 years from now when the Sockerchief or Cat Egg industrial empire rules the world I can at least point here and say “I told you so”.

Bad invention: The Catula!

Posted on by Liz

The Catula, or Cat Spatula, is a ridiculous invention meant to help kind-hearted cat owners to move their cats from one place to another. It would gently pick up and move a cat from a shady place on the floor to a new, sunny patch. If your cats are asleep in a cute position on a chair or the couch, and you want to sit down, just use your Catula!

cats in chair

I came up with this in 2003, picturing it as a thin sheet of plastic with handles attached. Then recently I saw this video for a motorized conveyor belt picker-upper-thingie that can move a smear of ketchup and mustard without disarranging its smeariness. The video is oddly hypnotic, as the disembodied human hands swirl the ketchup with a spoon into increasingly more messed up ways, then pick it up and put it back.

This would obviously be perfect for sleeping cats – if only it were completely silent. Not a hair out of place!

It’s really the perfect bad invention. It would never work, and having a special gadget just to avoid waking up your cat, well…

Beer Hat Neti Pot

Posted on by Liz

I have endless frivolous bad inventions! World, I bring you . . . the Beer Hat Neti Pot. Beer hats are those contraptions that rig up two cans of beer on your head, one on either side of a hat, with plastic tubing so that the beer siphons into your mouth.

Beer Hat

You can be too drunk to lift up your own beer and still keep drinking. Grrrreat.

Neti pots are those little teapot looking things that you stick up your nose to irrigate your sinuses with salt water. They’re very effective at helping a stuffed up nose!

So obviously, there is a socially useful medical application for the Beer Hat!

Yes, the Beer Hat Neti Pot will bring joy and healthy nasal passages ! Even if your sinus infection is so bad you can’t bear to bend over the sink to rinse your sinuses in salt solution, you can wear the BHNP in bed or around the house. The tubes come down from bottles of salt water attached to the hat, and go right up your nostrils. An elastic band will help keep the nose tubes securely attached.

Perhaps some intrepid voyagers in the world of terrible inventions would want to irrigate their sinuses with beer!

Using a nose mask or perhaps a snorkel, the backwash from your snotty nose could then be channelled into another tube that goes into a Camelbak backpack.

Or if you live on a boat like I do, you could go on deck and let your nose water flow freely into the harbor.

I have allergies and get a lot of sinus infections so I’ve had a lifetime to think about this important issue!

I will make ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

Someday I’ll blog seriously about books and politics and poetry again, I promise.
Beer hat photo by Dave Nicoll