Some genius built a snowman at the dog park . . .

 

To me, it seemed like a bad idea from the moment I saw it.  But someone was swept up in the merriness of that Christmas snowstorm we had and failed to consider the February ramifications of their actions.  And of course it's still there.

A snow hydrant, perhaps.  Something more conceptual.  Then each time a dog lifted his leg to defile it we would at least be enjoying performance art.

But a snowman? For dogs?  Its whole bottom half  is just so . . . yellow.

In fact, it is now a gigantic pee-pee cube wearing a scarf.

Cooper regards it as sacred, of course, a rich and detailed tapestry of the many who have gone before him.  He pays his respects enthusiastically as well, but not until he's read the complete guest register since his last visit. 

Bill Watterson said:  "If you have the personalities down, you understand them and identify with them; you can stick them in any situation and have a pretty good idea of how they're going to respond. Then it's just a matter of sanding and polishing."

I would have thought that everyone at the dog park understood dogs.
And the dog park is in Minnesota, so we should certainly identify with the snowman psyche.

So maybe our definition of "bad idea" is just different. 

How does one know whether the idea one is kicking around is a GOOD idea

 

or a BAD one?

1) Well, it seems obvious, for starters, that 

if it sits on your brain-shelf it's not likely 

to generate a lot of success.

Nor is the cake mix in your pantry going to bake itself, frost itself, and serve itself to you on a TV tray.

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will each have one apple.  But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." George Bernard Shaw

And the more ideas the better, since it takes a lot of them to come up with a few good ones, right?

2) So a SHARED idea is probably better than one jealously kept. 

"Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea.  It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference."  Nolan Bushnell

An idea may look pretty, but you've got to stick a few pins in it before you can really see how it's going to hold up.

3) So DOING SOMETHING probably has an effect on the quality of an idea as well.  It's hard to refine something if you never get the raw materials out of the package.

I'm going to rearrange my position
on the dog park snowman a little.
I'm glad somebody decided to make SOMETHING
with all this never-melting snow.
And the dogs definitely thought it was a great idea.

But I would have liked it better if it were a hydrant. 

The snowman "sanded and polished" for its audience, so to speak.

But then again, I didn't do anything about it, did I? 

And sometimes a bad idea is just a bad idea. 

Is there anyone within the sound of my keyboard 
who thinks this hostess outfit has possibilities?

Cooper?