Saturday, January 20, 2007

Business Idea

There are so many crazy parts of my conversation that I just had with my parents, including my mother's rationale for why a dickie is better than a scarf when your neck is cold in the house ("You can't cook with a scarf or you might catch yourself on fire"), my mother's play-by-play of The Real World: Denver ("Stepdad was flipping and left it on this channel. This girl on here is a hussy. And why does she paint her eyebrows on? And - ooh! - she just said 'F-you' to that boy! I saw that! Now they're both crying! Are you watching this?"), my mother's confusion about people who wear too much foundation ("Remember that girl you lived with in college? Did she ever take her makeup off or did she just layer it on more and more every day? Do people really think that looks good? It's like those painted on eyebrows. Who tells them that this looks normal?") and I can't even remember what else.

But the pièce de résistance was this "business idea" proposed by my stepfather. I had just finished telling him that I had worked out a pet sitter for an upcoming trip. He then launched into the following (and I'm trying to reproduce his accent here, so do your best to imagine this with a fairly thick Middle-Eastern accent):

Crazy's Stepdad (CS): You know, there should be a business where you can send your animals to your parents if you go out of town.
Dr. Crazy: What?
CS: You know. There a lot of people like you, and they have animals, and they live far away from their families. Some people go to Europe for like two weeks, and they don't want to give somebody a key to their house or trust them to take care of their dog, their cat. So the business would be you could ship your animal to your parent, your sister... It's better than having somebody you don't know take care of your animal.
Dr. Crazy: But - What? (laughing)
CS: Why you laughing? This is good idea! It could be a division of UPS!
Dr. Crazy: But how long would it take to ship them?
CS: Overnight! A cat wouldn't die if it was overnight - it would be fine!
Dr. Crazy: How much would it cost?
CS: By weight! Just like when you mail any package!
Dr. Crazy: That's insane! Have you given this a lot of thought? (laughing like a hyena)
CS: Always thinking of ways to make a dollar.... But it's a good idea! There are a lot of people like you who live in states not near their family, and they want their animals to stay with family not to have strangers take care of them! You ask your friends! They'll tell you!
Dr. Crazy: (laughing so hard she can't speak)
CS: It's a good idea! I'm going to spend $250 to register it!

(I have no idea whether that is how much a patent or copyright or trademark or whatever costs, but yes, this is how the conversation ended.)

I love my parents.

7 comments:

AAYOR said...

I would TOTALLY use this service (provided, of course, that my pets were pampered along the way).

LMAO.

But I WOULD!

Anonymous said...

What about a network of pet-loving parents? Like, say my parents live in your city, and you're too far away from your own to get the Man-Kitty there for a weekend. I call up my parents, and they do substitute grand-parent-kitty duty.

I guess we'd just all have to trust that all of our parents are equally pet-worthy.

Dr. Crazy said...

See, that's the thing, though... I think that the idea begins and ends with sticking your cat in a box. I don't think that the whole "pampering the pets along the way" thing is part of the "business plan." Other than that, though, the idea does have its merits :)

Anonymous said...

Your parents are hysterical! And I agree with clancy, I think that there should be a new MST3K, but instead of a young hipster-geek and two robots it should be three or four women, ages 55-70, chain smoking and discussing how "in my day if you did that sort of thing you were a HOOOOOO-oorrr!"

Anonymous said...

I have a patent on a cryogenic pet freezing process ("Freezidermy"). Just so CS knows.

Inside the Philosophy Factory said...

That is a good idea -- I'd ship my cats to my mom to cat-sit for a couple of weeks --- espcially if I didn't have a good friend to cat-sit. The only problem is that UPS doesn't climate control their shipping... so, they'd need to change that.

Anonymous said...

your parents are awesome! i especially love your mom's running commentary.