" . . .blowing off purp, reflecting off they lives"

The writing process, at least the component related to "coming up with stuff" as opposed to shaping that "stuff" into words, is a very transcendent experience. For me it works something like this: throughout the course of the day (or during my dreams or during a stimulating conversation or occasionally while I'm having a smoke and sitting amongst my disorganization and claustrophobia) an image comes to me. A tiny sliver of something interesting. It may simply be an assemblage of personalities in a particular environment. It may be a philosophical exercise in "terminalism" (this is a word I've invented for my tendency to take things to their very end, i.e. "riding" the slippery slope until you've arrived at something novel) with regards to political/religious/social systems. It may be the way that light casts over her face. It may be a primal emotion that flares up unpredictably.

So here are two ideas that came up in the last few days (with props to _________) and I'm currently trying to work them into something cohesive and comfortable to tell a story inside of. Science Fiction seems to be very good at accomplishing this sort of thing.

1)Poll-based democracy: Rather than voting, under this system a set of issues would be daily or weekly polled in the community. When a majority leans one way on an issue, the legislator must begin working on bills related to the issue. Voting for candidates would also work under this mechansim, but obviously be quite a bit different. Why this is interesting: Would this be better or worse? What would the outcome be? I don't know whether it would be better, but I do know that even greater amounts of money would be spent in the interest of swaying public opinion. Essentially marketing would become the driving force behind our government. Also, this brings to mind a bitching computer.

2)A truly enormous business: What would be the result if a company, and for the purpose of conversation I'm intentionally ignoring legal ramifications, operated as such: The company is headed by a board of directors. Each member of the board sits on two divisional companies (say a Legal Firm and an electronics company) that are neither completely independent (they share some liability with the corporation as a whole) nor completely dependent (divisional companies would be free to work outside of the corporation). So you'd have an entire litany of companies all working for the "common" good of the larger corporation. Television studio, temp. employee agency, manufacturing, legal, marketing consultants, shipping {think Amazon}). There are things sort of like this in Japan, and to a limited degree here in the states. But how interesting, daunting, crazy would it be if they were all housed in the same HUGE building. What would it look like when this company began to slide?

Anyway, maybe no one cares. But I'm not in a writing phase right now so much as a thinking phase.