1. HOT New Business Ideas For 2012!

    January 5, 2012 by Will O'Neill

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    The Globe and Mail published an article yesterday about the top 5 fields to start new businesses in for 2012. The article didn’t support my ambition to start a video game company and make a gajillion dollars, but it did get me thinking about how I could innovate my paradigms, and capitalize on the trajectory of our modern economy. Here are my specific business ideas for the Top 3:

    SUPER HOT AREA #1: ELDER CARE

    From the Globe: “With the aid of groundbreaking medical treatments and technology, North Americans are living longer, and many seniors are living independently well into their golden years but with a little less mobility. The need for varying amounts of help with daily tasks such as cooking, cleaning, taking medication and basic personal care is leading to exponential growth in the elder care industry. Businesses and franchises are popping up.”

    REALITY: Baby Boomers have all the money, but they do love their kids.

    OPPORTUNITY: Broker that love, facilitating a direct trade of love and future care for money.

    THE PITCH: By taking out a contract with Legacy Assurance Inc., Baby Boomers can rest easy in knowing that their offspring will never put them in a home, fail to make them feel loved, or ignore them completely because of the shame and anger inherent in desperately searching for stable employment.

    For a pre-arranged percentage of the Baby Boomer’s estate, specially-trained experts from Legacy Assurance will continuously monitor and counsel your adult child, making it clear that any deviation from your life plan for them can and will result in the immediate termination of any inheritance or ongoing financial support.

    As a valued client, you can also stipulate and have your child mortally incentivized to participate in a variety of scheduled tasks, including chores, physical affection, and marriage.

    BUSINESS WILL SUCCEED BECAUSE: Trust fund lifers don’t want to lose their loft apartments and stupid haircuts.

    UPSELL: Vacation packages.

    SUPER HOT AREA #2: HEALTH AND WELLNESS

    From the Globe: “The trend toward a healthy lifestyle is producing ample opportunity for businesses from frozen yogurt franchises to create-your-own-salad eateries to fitness centers to benefits consultants.”

    REALITY: Once you become overweight it is overwhelmingly likely that you will never be able to return permanently to a normal weight.

    OPPORTUNITY: All overweight people will continue to believe that they can maintain consistent weight loss no matter how much statistical and scientific evidence is presented to the contrary, because being fat is one of the saddest, shittiest things you can possibly be. Betting against weight loss across a broad spectrum is essentially a can’t-lose proposition.

    THE PITCH: “Hi, I’m Dr. Yurrrrmrrnrnm, and I want to motivate you to lose weight like never before. Not only am I going to pay you $20 per pound of every weight you lose, but once you reach your target weight, I’m going to charge you $100 for every pound you put back on, up to and including an additional twenty pounds above your starting weight. At the Crossroads Weight Loss Centre, we believe in making you accountable for your choices, because you are a completely psychological and non-neurochemical individual that is possessed of an entirely free will. It says so in the bible! God Bless America.”

    BUSINESS WILL SUCCEED BECAUSE: If you can short the housing market…

    UPSELL: Bullshit yoga tapes.

    SUPER HOT AREA #3: WAREHOUSING

    From the Globe: “Providing warehousing services and space, particularly for small businesses, shows plenty of opportunity for industry expansion.”

    REALITY: On TV, they never let anybody live in the box.

    OPPORTUNITY: Let people live in the box.

    The Pitch: At the Personal Discretion Storage & Safety Co., we may not be permitted by law to let you live in one of our incredibly affordable storage units, but we can give all of your personal possessions the ‘at-home’ treatment.

    With fully insulated walls, thermal carpeting, and a working hose conveniently dangling from the ceiling, you might just say to yourself – “Wow! In exceedingly dark economic times, I could actually live here!” – of course, you cannot live here. That would be illegal. The purpose of such a well-fortified unit is to allow your cherished futon and Coleman stove to be given the respect and environment that they deserve.

    BUSINESS WILL SUCCEED BECAUSE: [Redacted]

    UPSELL: Water for the hose.

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  2. Subway Hero Pt. II

    January 2, 2012 by Will O'Neill

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    I won’t talk! It’s time for a break!

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  3. Koodonation in The Star

    January 1, 2012 by Will O'Neill

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    The Star has an article in today’s online edition about Koodonation, the online microvolunteering community that I’ve been involved in for the past little while. Check it out!

    If you have any interest in doing creative volunteer work, this is the place to do it. As you can see, the lovely Barbara Turnbull interviewed me briefly for the piece, and I think it came out really nice.

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  4. Welcome Back

    December 31, 2011 by Will O'Neill

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    I’ve decided that 2012 is the year to start blogging again. It is, in fact, the perfect year to reach for all of my hopes and dreams.

    To be honest, I have no idea why I don’t have everything I’ve ever wanted yet, and the time for that to change is tomorrow.

    Here are a few of my resolutions:

    Start my own videogame business and make a gazillion dollars. The way I see it, I am pretty good at writing depressing dialogue, so I should write an epic adventure game that speaks to the impending dystopia in which we presently find ourselves. This game probably wouldn’t be  much fun, and it wouldn’t appeal to most people. It also wouldn’t be intriguing to snobby game critics unless it was extremely well written, and I can’t say with absolute certainty that I’m talented enough to do that. My guess is that it would be above average. Mind you, ‘Average’ in a video game is the rough equivalent of ‘Garbage’ in almost any other storytelling medium, but guess who doesn’t know that?

    Anyways, for whatever reason, it would be a runaway success. Then some other stuff happens and I end up in my own cool loft office and people send me sales reports like I’m a man in an iPad commercial. I don’t care why any of this is happening. I also get offers from people I’ve never heard of who want to give me money as a reward for having lots of money already. They want me to consider things and say ‘Hmm’ a lot, and talk about being an entrepreneur. I’m wearing a lot of golf shirts in this scenario. One day, somebody tells me I’m rich enough to get really good looking corduroy blazers that will fit me perfectly because I can go get fitted for them. There is some secret rich fat guy store that most people don’t know about. It’s like one of those Turkish bathhouses you see except everyone is wearing at least some clothes. I would get a bigger condo and somebody would start dating me because I have a lot of money, but I wouldn’t care: I just don’t want to be alone, and not everyone can start a video game company and make a gazillion dollars.

    Go more to the gym more. I’ve gone through periods in my life where I exercised every day. I lost some weight, but never really enough that it had a transformational effect on my life. I still didn’t look like an actual man or anything. Disclaimer: About 100% of the women I want to date go out with men who really do look like men. Square heads and thick arms. Regular men.

    Still, though, I have to go more to the gym more. Now that I’m 30, I’ve noticed that doctors don’t tell me outright that there is no way I am dying. It’s not impossible that I could die from not working out. I also read a thing that said we’re all dying because even if do we work out, it doesn’t counteract the fact that we sit at desks all day. The thing said that every 20 minutes you should stand up and walk around for a minute or so – this sounds like one of the hardest good habits to develop that I’ve ever heard of. It’s like the definition of something you could keep up for about two days before quitting. It’s even harder than going to the gym. Why do you have to do everything over and over again until you die just to maintain the slightest edge? Because we evolved to run through the jungle and fight, I guess. Someday everyone will have robot parts and they’ll laugh at this middle age of ours – this time where we were still constrained by our evolution but not even getting to live in accordance with its few advantages.

    Someday everyone will easily be gorgeous, and then people will finally be able to connect with each other based on their genuine merits and compatibilities. Too bad they’ll be robots.

    Anyways, yeah – a gym.

    Cook any food, ever. The only thing I do more than not cook is lie about cooking. Sometimes people pressure me to seem normal and I’ll tell a pathetic story about how I make chicken breasts or eggs. It’s believable, but I don’t actually do it. I’m going to make a deal with myself, though – I’m going to let myself spend thousands of dollars on something completely stupid just one more time, and in exchange I will not waste any more money on restaurant food.

    I’ve been on pretty restrictive diets before, and it’s really not that hard once you get into the swing of it. It’s actually pretty zen in the sense that you feel like a monk who doesn’t eat much. I know that cooking doesn’t necessarily mean eating less, but I think it’s ambitious enough of me to even start cooking at all. I have no desire to get all extensive with it. Living alone is basically like jail, and cooking fancy food for nobody but yourself is like being some 1950s gangster in solitary, trying to tell yourself that you’re still at home in the old country while your stir up illegal meatballs like Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas. I think it just makes you feel worse to think of mother Italia, and then you order Pizza Pizza.

    Become a good writer. I read The New Yorker and The Atlantic and things like that all the time, and it makes me wish I could be as good a writer as the best writers in the entire world. You probably think I’m a good writer, but you never read The New Yorker, so what do you know?

    Sure, I’m good enough at writing to be gainfully employed doing so, and also good enough to be better at it than other people who never read or write or care about reading or writing at all, but neither of these things feel particularly impressive when you’ve just finished reading something that is truly amazing. I don’t think I’ll ever be happy unless I can produce some piece of art that I know will make having had to live life worthwhile. I think any artist who believes they aren’t hedging against oblivion is kidding themselves.

    I realize that everyone feels this way – they want to do something that they think is special – and then they get sidetracked into real life: Marriage, family, promotions, life coaches, credit card debt, unemployment, desperation, bankruptcy, Walmart, diabetes, cheap opiates, merciful death.

    But in spite of this, one of the only really amazing things I have in my life is that none of those things are sucking me towards them. Unlike nearly everyone I know, I have no excuse to not attempt something really special. I promise to try.

    Not that it is going well. I mean, here I am: Doing this instead.

    But it is the only reason I don’t have a cat yet.

    On a final note, for those of you who are just starting out being the way that I used to be, here are some tips:

    - Buy a banana from Starbucks for breakfast. They cost as much as a banana in a grocery store so long as you don’t ever go to a grocery store to verify what I’ve just said.

    - Make sure you acquire every videogame that comes out so you don’t start drinking on weekdays.

    - Keep the Swiss Chalet experience fresh by regularly alternating appetizers and side dishes.

    - Maintain a strong reserve of hooded sweatshirts. You also need between 1 – 2 pairs of pants.

    - Try to be charitable and just, even if it is totally ridiculous and you know that you are a bottomless monster.

    And remember: These aren’t just handy hints – this is seriously the way I lived every single day of my life for the entire year of 2011.

    Happy New Year!

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