Ridiculous Opinions #240
Happy Saturday to you! Randall P. Girdner here to wish you a fine weekend ahead! What's in store for today? you ask?
Quick Update
Well, last week, I was in a mood. But I'm not in the same mood this week. Full disclosure: I have recently developed tinnitus in my right ear. It happened fairly suddenly in January, so I now have a consistent ringing in my right ear, and after a few tests, it appears that I've lost 20% of my high register hearing in that ear. This corresponds to not being able to hear certain sounds (shh and th sounds, in particular) in a loud space. It's a wonderful type of hearing loss for being a teacher, because my room is consistently loud. (That's sarcasm, by the way). But there are suspicions that my hearing loss might be partly attributed to the echoey, concrete rooms that we have moved into at the new school.
Anyway, the doctor gave me some medicine to help increase blood flow to that part of my ear. But the medicine, which is called a "histamine" (as opposed to an anti-histamine, which is what we take to clear our sinuses). Turns out that that medicine makes me a little bit weird. Specifically, it gave me blistering headaches and a hair-trigger temper. Hence, last week's newsletter. I have since stopped taking the medication and I appear to be normal now (as normal as I will ever be).
These are the problems with getting old, people. Things start to break. I suppose I'm just going to have to start getting used to a constant ringing in my ears. It doesn't really bother me, but I am now hyper-aware of how loud things are, which is a good thing to pay attention to.
Randall's Perpetual Desire to Stop Working, Vol. 978
My ultimate goal is to stop working and do nothing but creative things for the rest of my life. I would never actually stop working. I'm always working. I'm drawing comics; I'm writing movies; I'm coming up with ideas. But my day job gets in the way of my fun. And creating things is fun. I hear these rumors of people who enjoy going to their job; it's a bit strange to run into people who say, I love my job, because I don't really understand this concept.
No offense to my students, but I don't love my job. I do my job, but I don't love my job. I like being around students in class. I like coming up with things for them to do. I don't like dealing with the administrative nonsense of being a teacher. I don't like chasing down students for late work. I don't like dealing with kids who are intentionally obnoxious. I don't like dealing with (most) other teachers and I especially don't like dealing with administrative stuff. So my goal is to always be looking for some kind of side-hustle that is going to get me out of it.
Last week, I told you that I spent part of my journal time writing about business ideas, so I want to tell you about one business idea that I have had.
Are you ready for it?
I want to open a book store/comic shop.
Good idea, right? That's never been done, right?
Look, people, I'm not stupid. Book stores are dead, because no one reads. Comics shops are even more dead, because the people that frequent them are aging themselves out of existence. But really, I'm not creating a normal book store. I'm creating:
Mr. G's Exploranaut, Adventurer, and Psycho-Engineer Gift Shop
It's a fictional book store.
Are you with me?
The shop will look like a Victorian library, full of old wood and densely-packed shelves.
There will be marble busts and paintings of people. There will be notes on tables left by the previous tenants. There will be old telephones and old typewriters and out of date globes. There will be large, comfy chairs in which to sit. All of these things will fill my bookstore and the shelves will be lined with actual books for purchase!
But this is not a normal bookstore. This is Mr. G's Exploranaut, Adventurer, and Psycho-Engineer Gift Shop!
For you see, everyone who works in my bookstore will be actors.
Not only will you be able to buy books and comic books at the store, you'll also be participating in an interactive performance that could happen at any time. Because in Mr. G's Exploranaut, Adventurer, and Psycho-Engineer Gift Shop, there is always a story happening.
At any given moment, your cashier could stop serving you entirely because they are engaged in a heated argument about whether or not they saw a ghost at the Peterhead Mansion at the last meeting of the Society of Exploranauts, Adventurers, and Psycho-Engineers. At any given moment, Stu, our stock boy, might run into the room because he's being pursued by a group of art thieves, to whom he has recently sold a counterfeit piece of art. At any given moment, Loretta, the opera singer who can't make a full-time living as an opera singer and has to work in a book store to pay her rent, might burst into song, because she has to practice for the show she's doing that night.
At any given moment in Mr. G's Exploranaut, Adventurer, and Psycho-Engineer Gift Shop, something could happen!
On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, there will be events in the Drawing Room, which will look like a dining room, with a large table in the center around which both actors and customers can sit, with additional seating all around. It will be a tiny theater space.
Thursday nights will be the weekly meeting of The Society of Exploranauts, Adventurers, and Psycho-Engineers, where they will go through the order of business for the week and, inevitably, get into some sort of crazy argument about all kinds of nonsense.
Friday nights will be THE SEANCE, where Herbert Terwilliger, Prestidigitator Extraordinaire, will speak with the UNDEAD from beyond the grave, and you can join him!
Saturday nights will be Mr. G's Sending Off party, where everyone will gather to send Mr. G off on another one of his adventures around the globe to explore the unknown.
We would have a bar where people could purchase drinks at these events. During the day? Coffee and snacks.
On Saturday and Sundays, during the day, we would have KIDS' EVENTS! On Saturday afternoons, there will be a SUPER-HERO ADVENTURE in the main room, where THE CAT CRUSADER (who has the powers of a cat, mind you) will burst into the middle of a read-aloud session to battle against his arch-nemesis, THE DIMWIT!
On Sundays, Mr. G, himself, will pop in to read stories to the kids, and you'll never know what kind of strange and unusual things will happen at that time!
And, of course, we would sell books and comic books.
Each room of the shop would have a theme. And we would sell strange and unusual things there as well. You know a few weeks ago where I listed all of the TOYS that I wanted to make. Well, we would manufacture these toys for sale ONLY at Mr. G's Exploranaut, Adventurer, and Psycho-Engineer Gift Shop.
I'd also incorporate special effects into the place. You'd never know when a bust on the wall would start to talk to you. Sometimes the ghosts in the Gift Shop might levitate a table with you standing nearby. You may hear voices from the air conditioning grates of people planning adventures or nefarious plots. The entire shop would be packed to the gills with so much stuff that you would not be able to see everything in one visit.
And, of course, we would sell books and comic books.
Visitng Mr. G's Exploranaut, Adventurer, and Psycho-Engineer Gift Shop would be an event. People would plan their afternoons around it. You could go there for a coffee and end up being part of an adventure in the store.
And I would charge $2.00 just to enter the place.
If I had the money to build this thing, I would do it in a heartbeat. I'd get a place in Toronto and create a storefront that would be impossible to walk past. People would have to explore Mr. G's Exploranaut, Adventurer, and Psycho-Engineer Gift Shop.
Alas, I can't do it.
I don't have the cash to invest. I don't have the business sense to make it happen. I can only dream about these things. I'm an idea-guy. I come up with ideas. If I had a partner who had some kind of business savvy to get the money and run the financials, I could turn this into the most popular place in Toronto (or Vancouver or Seattle or any other big city with a large tourist population). It could be franchised across the country. It would eventually be purchased by Disney or some other place like that and we would all make millions.
And I would write and perform everything inside. And I would love my job.
For now, we will all have to simply imagine what Mr. G's Exploranaut, Adventurer, and Psycho-Engineer Gift Shop would be like. But maybe...someday...it will happen. You'll be walking down the street in Tulsa, Oklahoma and look up to see an intriguing shop with an esoteric name, loud-noises emanating from inside, and a smile on the face of everyone walking out.
And you will pay your $2 entry fee and go inside...and you will experience something you've never experienced before...
