Friday link! Idea for a company that delivers hot tubs edition

By Dan Brooks in inevitability of death 0 Comment

hot-tub-deck-small

Idea: A company that delivers, to your door, a hot tub filled with water and ready to go. Other companies deliver hot tubs. But we are the only company that fills our tubs with water before we hit the road. This unique service appeals to under-served niches in the luxury, super-luxury, and Caligu-luxury markets. Fact: No existing company delivers party-ready hot tubs filled with water, much less water at a consistent temperature of between 90 and 250 degrees.

Delivery time: 30 minutes to 19 hours, depending on traffic

Potential names for company: Tubtruckers, Hot Tub On-Time Machine, Johnny on the Spa,The Piping Hot Tub, One Hundred Fifty Men and a Truck, Old Squealie’s Truck and Tub, Party Spillers

Initially appealing names for company that turn out to be bad: Soaked Lightning (implies buyer will be struck by lightning), Hot Tub Toot Sweet (implies buyer will fart), I Can’t Believe It Came So Hot (copyrighted)

Our story: The Rolling Boil hot tub delivery company started with just one driver and a single flatbed truck, on New Year’s Day of 1983. Joey and that truck were still frozen to the four-way stop immediately outside our office when the company purchased its second truck and hired its second driver, Carl. Through trial and error, over three decades and many marriages, Carl has discovered the secret to delivering filled, hot hot tubs to all but the most low-lying customers.

Target market: princes, lottery winners, daredevils, impulsive perverts, cocaine dealers who are housesitting, Bay Area

Market state: robust

Barriers to entry: stairs

Need a hot tub delivered in Missoula? Oasis Hot Spring Spa and Sauna will deliver one to your home or business, presumably unfilled. They have not endorsed or, at press time, become aware of this stupid post. I just wanted to put a link in it.

Traditions that turned tragic in ways none of us could have predicted

By Dan Brooks in inevitability of death 0 Comment

thermite-pumpkins

The fire department’s Fourth of July team-building retreat in the woods far from town

Our Christmas game of startle-the-mule

At weddings, anyone who used to date the bride drinks free.

The annual sack race and simultaneous, unrelated roundup in which snakes are caught and placed in bags

Take Your Daughter to Someone Else’s Work Day

The final round of the Million-Dollar Target Shooting Challenge for Promising Orphans Who Lose Their Tempers Under Pressure

Ape-Con, the convention for apes

Grape-Con, the convention for dealers of delicious and therefore extremely valuable grapes, inadvertently scheduled for the same weekend

The Teasing of the Bears

The Compressing of the Bats

The Trusting of the Octopus

The annual surprise Civil War re-enactment without uniforms, which occurs on a different day each year

The children’s triathlon

Breathe Nothing Day

The blind tasting event at the Local Wine and Drain Cleaner Expo

Border streaking

Bloomberg soda ban struck down

By Dan Brooks in inevitability of death 8 Comments

coke-makes-you-fat

Judge Milton A. Tingling, if that is his real name, has invalidated New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban on large, sugary beverages, calling the law “arbitrary and capricious.” Capricious, yes: milkshakes were exempted; 20-ounce coffees maybe became illegal once you put sugar in them; 7-11 didn’t count because it’s a grocery store, while bodegas did. But arbitrary? Approximately one million studies have linked soft drink consumption to obesity, diabetes and a raft of other health problems afflicting Americans in increasing numbers. Sugary drinks are bad for you. We just can’t go making laws about them.

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An interesting thing that happened by my house

By Dan Brooks in inevitability of death 2 Comments
Arguably the grimmest photo of Missoula ever taken, courtesy of Kurt Wilson at the Missoulian

Arguably the grimmest photo of Missoula ever taken, courtesy of Kurt Wilson at the Missoulian

Along with many other upstanding citizens of Missoula, I live behind the Taco Bell. It’s a residential block tucked into the corner made by Rattlesnake Creek and Broadway, which, like all Broadways, is a river of filth. Mostly it’s gas stations and fast food, plus some motels. Last night, as I was coming home, I heard a tire pop. I had stopped to get the mail, and I briefly considered what it would be like to hear that sound and then feel a searing pain in one’s neck. I am of that turn of mind, and I lived in a neighborhood where gunshots were often heard. Not anymore, though, I thought as I went inside. Then I watched a series of squad cars scream down on McDonald’s, and the rest was news.

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Great year for dead billionaires, trouble for us

By Dan Brooks in inevitability of death 2 Comments

Nelson Rockefeller addresses himself to student demonstrators in 1970.

Hey, remember the estate tax? That bogeyman of the Bush years—the injustice enshrined in the federal tax code that robs hard-working Americans of their right to establish multi-generational dynasties as the Founders intended? The death tax? It’s possible you’ve forgotten it because it only applies to estates valued above $3.5 million dollars, and like most Americans you only stand to inherit, like, $3.2 mil. Then again, maybe you forgot it because it doesn’t apply this year.

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