Don't You HATE it When . . .

Nah. I just come up with a way to do it better.

Funny thing is, I have thought of hundreds of things. The radio. Television. Elevator. Escalator. Putting a man on the moon. Teflon. The Particle Collider.

Beer! Pet rocks. Disco. (OK, I admit some weren't that good and I apologize for the other.)

But someone always beat me to it. I'm not sure how they traveled back in time in some instances, but there you go.

Mankind. That was my idea.

Remember when the Beatles sang about similar angst some thirty years ago?

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It's easy.

Nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It's easy.

(Skip Chorus)

Nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.

Even they realized they weren't creating anything new but merely borrowing from others who had come before them in an effort to fashion their own voice striving to be heard above the din of everyone else.

There's an old Dilbert strip that goes something like this:

Dilbert: "I've just come up with a ninvention that will change the way the world barbecues! No more struggling with charcoal. See, this schematic shows how an electrically-induced coil-like medium can heat food without charcoal or lighter fluid. I call it the Max-10 Energy Transfer System."
Dogbert: "Did the name "Electric Stove" occur to you at any point?"

I think most of my great ideas have been something along those lines.

Mankind. That was my idea.

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Good, now I know who to blame.

GLAZE_by_KyrstinMc said:

You come up with a fantastic idea . . . it's brilliant really.

But then you come to realize someone's already thought of it. And is now making money off it.

Tell me about it.

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Straws. I'm so disgruntled about that one.

No lie, back in 1998 I came up with an idea along with a buddy of mine. There should be a website where you can rate professors at local colleges, and other people can then log in and based on the ratings determine if they want to take that professors class or not.

Knowing nothing about the internet and not really having a hell of a lot of faith in our idea, we never pursued it.

Ugh...

The wheel. Dammit, someone is making a bundle off of that one and I had it first.

Richard

i started grunge.

of course, some other guy got all the credit.

Yeah, mine was MS-DOS and Windows. But, that Bill guy gets all the credit and the money.

I thought of satellite radio, I swear.

Still want my money from it!

I'll tell you one thing no one has stolen yet. My idea for battery operated warming Depends. Old people are always complaining they are cold, so you give them these battery-power warming Depends, which also double as, well, Depends.

I haven't worked out all the kinks yet. Insulation is a problem. I've electrocuted about a dozen old people with my pre-production models.

My mother hates Department 56. She was designing miniature Christmas villages about 15 years or more before them.