ThinkStank: Josh Millard's Bad Ideas
April 2, 2010 8:06 AM   Subscribe

ThinkStank: Josh Millard's Bad Ideas
I have a lot of ideas. Most of them are pretty questionable, underdeveloped, or poorly-thought-out. ThinkStank is a blog where my ideas go to hang out. I even put some of them in action, like the WTF LOL OMFG flier and Always Be (Snow-)Cloning.

I'd been thinking about something like this off and on for a couple years now, and finally decided to actually do it a couple weeks ago. I've been enjoying having it around ever since, to have a place to actually put down the random stuff that goes through my head instead of letting it all just slip off into the ether.

The entries are a mix of things I might actually do, things no one should ever do, and things that are just awful puns I felt like running with.
posted by cortex (22 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite

"ThinkStank" is hilarious. The blingee makes my dookie twinkle! DaveChappelle tag?
posted by cashman at 8:29 AM on April 2, 2010


this is awesome. one question: what are reactions and how do I react to things? I keep seeing "2 comments and 0 reactions" at the bottom of the posts.
posted by shmegegge at 9:48 AM on April 2, 2010


Reactions is a Tumblr-specific thing, I guess? So you can, if you have a tumblr account, click on a little heart "LIKE" icon up in the top right of any given permalink page, or (if you have a tumblog) you can reblog it automatically or something. I'm really pretty new to tumblr as a platform so I don't have a great handle on it so far.

The comments on there are a third-party hack via disqus, since tumblr doesn't provide traditional comments at all as a design decision, I guess.

DaveChappelle tag?

Ha! Hadn't seen that, no. Just started from the Donnie Darko reference and went from there.
posted by cortex at 9:55 AM on April 2, 2010


I greatly enjoy the idea of the Useless Flier.
posted by jefeweiss at 9:59 AM on April 2, 2010 [1 favorite]


They're better ideas than what I come up with, for sure. Great site.
posted by flatluigi at 10:23 AM on April 2, 2010


Hilarious.

But I cannot in good conscience vote for this project, knowing that Mulder's Big Adventure has been fallow for a full year. Good day, sir.
posted by Plutor at 10:41 AM on April 2, 2010


Some of them are actually good ideas...
posted by ocherdraco at 11:37 AM on April 2, 2010


The Cargo-Cult Ads seem like something one could turn into a full-fledged meme if one isn't careful.
posted by The Whelk at 12:26 PM on April 2, 2010


Yeah, the fliers might get their own little blog soon. I've got a few more ideas for that one already.

The wife and I mourn Mulder's Big Adventure and still hope to return to it one day. But it was a lot of work to do every single writeup.
posted by cortex at 12:46 PM on April 2, 2010


Reactions is a Tumblr-specific thing, I guess? So you can, if you have a tumblr account, click on a little heart "LIKE" icon up in the top right of any given permalink page, or (if you have a tumblog) you can reblog it automatically or something. I'm really pretty new to tumblr as a platform so I don't have a great handle on it so far.

I don't work there so I don't know for sure, but since Tumblr is kind of designed to be a happy vacuum I think the reason they make it so you have to go out of your way to put comments in is that they don't want users to have to deal with negative comments.

The reactions that Tumblr does allow basically inform people of the two cool things that you want to know about your stuff: who liked it and those who had something interesting enough to say about it that they posted it to their own blog. It also displays this information in such a way that it's easy to skim through to find the usernames of people you actually give a damn about.

Also, when you don't have discus on you make is such that the discussion of your post doesn't leave the Tumblisphere :p.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 1:13 PM on April 2, 2010


I love this blog. The logo, however, makes me feel sad. Soul-crushing despair indeed.
posted by FishBike at 10:27 AM on April 3, 2010


Yeah, I really need to either come up with a different logo idea (I have had several, generally very bad, which may show up as future posts, and far too many of which involve poo) or get someone with an artistic bent to do a cleaner job on that guy. Or at least struggle out a proper drawing myself instead of using OO.o's Draw module.
posted by cortex at 10:30 AM on April 3, 2010


Heh, to be clear, it's not the artistic quality of the logo that makes me sad. It's the whole imagined back-story of a happy little lightbulb who's spent his whole childhood looking forward to the awesome ideas he's going to get to appear over, and he's so excited about his first real job... and now here he is attached to these, and oh my god, his hopes and dreams have been utterly crushed, and there is nothing to look forward to any more, and... uh... well... so I guess that's probably just me, right?

I also am upset by the little sad-faced DAT tapes in the HP tape drive manual used to illustrate, in a non-language specific way, all of the things you are not supposed to do with the tapes. I may have to start some kind of a support group for people with this condition.
posted by FishBike at 10:41 AM on April 3, 2010 [2 favorites]


Always Be Cortex
posted by Damn That Television at 11:58 AM on April 3, 2010 [2 favorites]


I'm usually up for quickee logo design but I gotta say I got no gas in the engine on this one. Bad ideas? Stanking? A broken light-blub..maybe I don't know.
posted by The Whelk at 12:55 PM on April 3, 2010


I'm usually up for quickee logo design but I gotta say I got no gas in the engine on this one. Bad ideas? Stanking? A broken light-blub..maybe I don't know.

How about something like this Kings of Leon album cover?
posted by The Devil Tesla at 1:19 PM on April 3, 2010


oh god. the wtf lol flier. thou art legend, good sir.
posted by Xere at 1:40 AM on April 4, 2010


Also we just posted a long, long overdue Mulder's Big Adventure.
posted by cortex at 10:42 AM on April 4, 2010 [1 favorite]


*yay!*
posted by The Whelk at 10:47 AM on April 4, 2010


Dude! That's you behind the WTF? Posters??? That's amazing! My coworkers and I were laughing about that a couple days ago after seeing one. That's fucking awesome. I should have known.
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:37 AM on April 4, 2010


It should be noted that I only put up the one poster, and it was down within a day (curses!). But reddit picked up the image so it may have gotten around a bit. If you see posters, definitely grab a picture if you can and let me know, I love that it might be getting around like that.
posted by cortex at 12:26 PM on April 4, 2010


needs more bake mcbride.
posted by sleepy pete at 9:48 PM on April 5, 2010


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