Original Ideas

Original ideas are very hard to come by.  Ideas, not so much.  Ideas percolate or ferment, or rot, or make friends, or sing out loud, all the time, non-stop, it seems, no matter their intrinsic banality, or a lack of caffeine, or that pit bull that won't shut up because its owner trained him to think that airplanes or backfiring cars or neighbors were enemies (well!  well! aren't they, he might shout, in a steroid binge of sorts).

And anyway, how do you know if you've got one or not?  It takes serious work on its own right.  I mean, what's the set of all ideas out there, where is it?  And how do you compare your idea with the ideas of that set!  And then, what's your method for ascertaining whether similar ideas were close or identical to yours?  And anyway, what's the use of the idea?  Does it help improve something?

Which is to say that we are all depositories of a lot of ideas, that we consume endlessly, but that producing ideas--even moderately questionably novel ideas at that--takes a bunch more work.  If you don't think that's the case you are either a) much smarter than me or b) fooling yourself.