<a class="postlink" href="http://kotaku.com/5900547/a-kids-cardboard-arcade-is-the-most-beautiful-thing-youll-see-today" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://kotaku.com/5900547/a-kids-cardbo ... -see-today</a> This video teared me up a little bit. This kid has quite an imagination and I think it is great when the internet and all of its capabilities open up opportunities for things like this to happen. FOCUS: What were some of your greatest inventions when you were a kid? What were some of the things you allowed your imagination to run wild with? Were you told by others that your ideas were silly and that you should think more realistically or were you allowed to run wild with things?
I never actually made many of my own inventions. One of my earliest memories of imagining something that would make a good invention was basically what those google glasses will be. Sort of a heads up display, the purpose was very singular, to help find shit you've lost. In second grade I lost a tooth, a tooth that took forever to loosen up and fall out. After what was probably a week of wiggling I finely got it out at school and took it home to show off to my parents. I was so proud, but I decided to wash it off in the sink without closing the drain. I dropped it and it was gone forever. I dreamt up my glasses that would help you find lost or stolen items. Putting them on would darken everything else and light up what ever object you were looking for with a red glow. It would be visible no matter how far away the object was from you. Kind of like Cerebro from Xmen. Shit with gps, RFID, advancing image recognition technology, and google maps , the google glasses could easily be used to find all sorts of items. Anyway my creative imagination fell off pretty quick. In fifth grade we were asked to come up with inventions for a project, really good ones would be submitted to our teacher's husband who worked in the patent office. All I could come up with was a stress relief ball made out of the "gak" we made in science class the week before using glue and borax. My teacher pulled me aside and asked if I meant if I was saying you'd sniff the glue to relieve stress..... On the other hand my older brother built his first functional weed eater out of parts laying around my grandpas TV repair shop when he was 9. He went on to study engineering.
Easily my greatest invention as a kid was magnetic paint. What's that you say? "But Misanthropic, they've had magnetic paint for years now. Did you invent it like Al Gore invented the internet?" To which I would gracefully reply "Suck it, bitches. I came up with magnetic paint back in 19 seventy-fucking five" (1975, for those of you who don't speak Obscenity). When I was 9 years old. I used magnets to collect iron filings from sand along the side of the road (try it, its chock full of iron particles), then we would mix the iron dust or filings with paint we had made from water, flour, and poster paint. We tested it out on cardboard boxes, and sure enough, magnets would stick to it. We then proceeded to sell the paint, in empty orange juice concentrate cans, in school. That lasted all of two days before The Man slapped us down, forbidding the sale of the paint on school grounds. I was way ahead of my time.