"The cost is prohibitive," the treasurer explained to the irate oldsters gathered around his office, waving signs saying, "Don't take our lucky pennies!" and brandishing the coins in question. "Perhaps you could try lucky nickels, or lucky quarters."

The oldest of the lot scowled. "Humph. Everybody knows only wooden nickels are lucky, and you stopped making those ages ago." He leaned his face in close. "Luck's the only thing that's kept us going this long! What do you think will happen when there are no more pennies?"

The treasurer patted the air with his hands, attempting to calm people down. "Now, now, it won't be instantaneous. There will still be pennies lying around--"


Inspiration: Canada stopping the minting of pennies. http://boingboing.net/2012/03/30/canada-to-stop-issuing-pennies.html
Story Potential: High?
Notes: This has the potential to be a really good story, if-and-only-if I figure out how to execute well the importance of the penny and tie it in to some universal human truth or other.

After she picked her stunned self up from the floor, wiped the blood off her face, and looked around her upside down control room, she started swearing. The control room still functioned just fine, even if it was upside down--and the communicator screen was showing a very concerned Tylorian captain gibbering so fast that her second-rate translator was unable to keep up with him. "Very sorry--asteroid belt blocked view--insurance!" She groaned. The difficulty of getting anything useful out of Tylorian insurance--companies was not quite the right word--artists was legendary.


Inspiration: Wrote up a post about the car crash we were just in.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Could be funny. I wonder what Tylorian insurance *is* like?

It wasn't as wonderful having a millionaire girlfriend as all the tabloids would have you believe, he thought sourly as he stared at yet another tabloid picture of the two of them cuddled together at a table while the flashbulbs popped and the recorders hovered. It had been in the beginning; suddenly he was somebody. Star glamor shone on him, if only by proxy. He had expected to keep loving it all: fine dining, sudden entrance into all the places where he could only have gone in the service entry before, being recognized when he was at the supermarket, and having people call him "Mr. Godson" with respect in their voices. It hadn't taken long before he was able to see through the respect, though, to the contempt--

Inspiration: "Millionaire Girlfriend" - Jonathan Coulton
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Meh. Boring. Maybe a sci-fi spin could make it moderately interesting, but it would be a lot of work.