One Percent Inspiration, Zero Percent Perspiration

Because I work in advertising (surprise!), I often write radio or TV spots where I have to know precisely how long sentences take to say.

To make something fit in the 10, 15, 30, whatever number of seconds it has to be is a constant struggle with a stopwatch. Even a quarter of a second can actually make a huge difference. And easy as it is to use a stopwatch, hitting that start/stop button gets aggravating, and less precise than you'd hope.

This would make my life easier. Here's how it would work: set it to the "voice" function, and hold it up like a microphone. It detects when you start speaking and automatically begins keeping time. Then it detects when you've stopped speaking - stopping the count after, say, one second of silence (so it won't just stop at any pause in the middle of a sentence), and then counting back to last sound it detected.

Let's call it the Copywriter's Stopwatch, maybe. Anyway, I know it would be useless for many people, but definitely not for me.

Ever get those sticker sheets of return-address labels from some non-profit organization? You're like, "oh, cool, I could use these," and then you're like, "oh darn, I'm gonna feel guilty every time I do, unless I donate to said non-profit."

Anyway, I was affixing my labels (yes, I donated) to some bills this weekend. And as I was putting on the stamps, I thought: "hey, these both use the same highly-advanced sticker technology. Why bother with two separate stickers, that require two separate actions?"

Why bother indeed?

US Postal Service, the ball is in your court. Non-profits, time to create a new freebie.

I'm sure you get tons of cards over the holidays. We do in my apartment.

And despite the unending, deeply doomed fight against clutter in our closet-lacking home, we always leave out the cards that have special meaning for us.

But somehow, no matter how we arrange them, one card always manages to topple over, knocking over the cards around it and turning our sentimental little display into an ugly heap.

Well, here's the solution.

Some notes:

1. The sketch is just the basic idea; it could be any size and proportion.

2. Your grandmother would so love this.