There are some good reasons for that. One is being married to somebody who works a late shift and who likes to be asleep whilst I may be tending to my daily health and hygiene endeavours just through the wall. Another is that the acoustics in our shower box do not imbue the necessary sense of vocal greatness that a good shower should. Another is that I struggle to remember lyrics.
That last reason is the reason why I invented the Shower-e-oke™. This device is a world-beating piece of kit built with the aspiring Frank Sinatra, Bryan Adams, Billy Joel or Michael Bolton in mind. A waterproof MP3 player that can be stuck to a shower wall that not only plays the song, but which also displays the lyrics. How good is that?
Even better is the sound track of fully lyricised shower favourites that can be downloaded to go into it.
Well, it could be good if one had ever been made and the associate royalty payments were streaming into my Cayman Islands bank account while I slept. As it stands it’s Yet Another Great Unborn Idea. If I ever see one for sale, I’ll not only buy one, but I will hunt down its inventor to find out which café or pub he was drinking in when he heard me outlining the merits of this fantastic device.
Patent protection is a great idea, if one is prepared to commit the resources necessary to ensure compliance and enforcement, and if those activities actually make economic sense.
Many years ago my Dad was a member of the Mangatoki Number 1 Discussion Group. This was a group of dairy farmers who met regularly to discuss ideas and compare their respective farming performances, under the watchful gaze of a Dairy Board Consulting Officer who hoovered up all of the gold and recycled it elsewhere. The art of agricultural extension at its finest! This group of about a dozen farmers also became great mates, although they may have had some very different ideas about how pasture species could be best turned into milk solids.
One member of this discussion group “invented” the circular yard with mobile backing gate, now ubiquitous and found on nearly every dairy shed around the country. Another invented the rotary platform milking shed and patented this piece of technology. From memory his patent required cows to reverse off the platform once they had given their all or completed one lap.
Enforcing his patents cost him a lot of money, as the popularity of rotary milking sheds increased with increasing herd sizes in New Zealand and also around the world. I think he did slightly better for a while than break even, but he also didn’t catch every installation either. In spite of that, he was a legend in the Mangatoki district.
I also don’t know whether his creativity was enhanced by him singing in the shower. One can only speculate on that matter.
To help my unborn inspiration achieve greatness, I need a list of shower favourites to include with it. Let’s start a list. I’m happy to share my royalty income!