A bathtub designed along the lines of a chaise longue.
IOW, one you can stretch out in at full length without (1) bending your knees or (2) risking drowning if you fall asleep.
Full sized remote control human beings that you could have fight other remote control human beings with chainsaws and battle axes and what not.
I was just reading the dotcom bubble thread in GQ. I miss Kozmo.com. It was a horrible business model, and of course they lost money hand over foot.
But at nearly any time, from 8am well into the wee small hours of the morning, I could go online and click a few links and within an hour a nice guy from kozmo would bring me ice cream. Or wine. Or books. Or videos (that didn’t really have a return date). or more ice cream. It was wonderful.
I want that again.
Chicago-made pizza (mom-and-pop or Giordano’s-type Chicago chain). It’s like living in hell down here, with only the national chains.
Someone to transfer everything from my current computer to my new one, and make sure it all works seamlessly. I’m a major technophobe, and soon will be tranfering boxes. I hate, hate, HATE error and restart messages, to the point that they literally give me panic attacks. I want my new box to have all the same software as my current one, and nothing I have to re-tool in order to get it to work. Pleeeeeease!
I also double the ‘back-scratching’ thing. I’d hire myself out to do it if I had better nails, and reciprocity in the work. 
You know strigils- the Roman body squeegee? I would love to have a a strigil. Also a smaller sized one for my face- I think it would make taking off stage makeup easier. (Smear cold cream or olive oil or baby oil over the makeup, strigil off instead of wiping off) Also, it would be way more hard-core to strigil the “shiny” off my nose, instead of powdering or blotting.
I want a computer program that does what the computer on Star Trek does- bring me lists that are definitely correct, that can be immediately cross-referenced with any other list or set of data.
Teleporter/transporter(/I watch too much Star Trek). That’s a good and/or service, right?
THIS!!! I want this!!
I bought a pair of pants recently that are very comfortable but I rarely wear them as they are a cat hair magnet. I have to grab the lint brush on the way out the door and I still can’t get it all off.
A second vote for ‘pods’ in airports where I can lie down and rest/sleep for a couple of hours, safe for self and luggage, presumably far cheaper than a hotel.
Expanding on the same theme, I am waiting for some brillliant entrepreneur to open a chain of super cheap hotels in major cities where all you get for your money is a small room with a good lock on the door, a bed, shower and bathroom. No frills, no extras, no bloke on the door with string glued to his shoulders, no marble-clad atrium, no meals, no ‘business services’, no writing desk with antique lamp, no mini-bar, no need for the bathroom to be festooned with products from whichever brand agreed to supply at the biggest discount… in fact none of the tiresome crap that I don’t want, don’t need and didn’t ask for but that is nonetheless adding to the highly inflated price of staying there. The only place I’ve ever come close to this was a hotel at the Ayer’s Rock resort, which was perfectly adquate for my needs and relatively inexpensive.
At the moment, if you go to a travel agent and book two seats on a flight, it’s possible to get on the flight and discover that the seats have been allocated differently so that you are not sitting together as planned. Everyone (of course) washes their hands of responsibility, the travel agent blaming the airlines and vice-versa. I’d like the travel industry and airlines to either (a) get their act together so that this cannot happen (if it’s a logistical problem) or (b) stop messing people around like this (if it’s just a case of indifference to consumer preferences).
There are two major airports in London: Gatwick and Heathrow. They are far apart. It’s perfectly possible to book a trip where you fly out from one of them but have to fly back in to the other (especially if you deal with Virgin Atlantic and their byzantine, rubik-cube like mystery parlour of a ticketing system). This of course causes problems if the need arises to drive oneself to the airport. There are many who would love a service where you park your car at one airport, and someone else collects it and drives it to the other airport, ready for when you get back. In this day and age, why is this so impossible to arrange on a professional basis?
When I arrive in a new town or city, I’d love some form of genuinely impartial advice about what’s worth seeing and doing, good restaurants and shows etcetera. There’s usually no shortage of this kind of information, but it’s almost always just based on commercial deals, sponsorship tie-ins, reciprocal marketing, commission and so on, rather than honest and impartial opinion.
I’d like exact-replica SNES and N64 controllers compatible with the Wii Virtual Console. (There was a limited edition SNES controller but it was only released in Japan.)
If the cost was not astronomical, and the instructor was even half decent, I would LOVE for there to be a Kuk Sool Won school close enough to me to make it worth my while. I miss it, dang it.
Also, no strings attached legal sex for money.
(put me down for a holodeck as well, but since that would revolutionize society to a level unheard of, I’m not gonna hold my breath)
Afrikaaner’s boerewors. Attempting its making with American pork just doesn’t give the same flavour.
OK, there is no Chicago style pizza down here, sorry. But there ARE some good, local pizza shops that beat the chains all to hell.
Try Toto’s or Hideaway on Campus Corner.
And with something nice and soft to lay your head on built right in. Those bath pillows keep slipping, and they’re cold.
I’d pay for a litter box service, or for disposable/biodegradable litter boxes – no scooping, just toss the whole thing. (I’m going to try some of that flushable World’s Best Litter mentioned in the kitty litter thread.)
I’d also pay somebody to put up and take down Christmas lights. I love them but we’re too old to deal with ladders.
A miniature pet elephant. One that grows to the size of a medium-to-large dog.
Lets go, genetic engineers!
It used to be possible to buy powdered milk that was not totally defatted. It was, as I recall, about 1% fat. It didn’t have as long a shelf-life as the nonfat kind, but, when reconstituted, it was actually drinkable, unlike the icky, chalky powdered skim milk that seems to be the norm today.
Eyeglasses and windshields coated with diamond.
A combination mini-car/van; i.e., a little two seater for commuting that could be quickly and easily attached to a van or pickup-truck back end. I beed a little car 90% of the time, but occasionally I need something bigger. Why have two cars?
Ianzin, in that case, I’d like you to meet www.wikitravel.org , the travel-guide version of Wikipedia.
The Yotel at Gatwick airport kind of fits the bill. Minimum stay 4 hours in a capsule type of thing. Looks like there’s one at Heathrow now too.
France does this pretty well, with the Formule 1 chain and a couple of others. They don’t tend to be in city centre locations, though, more out on ring roads and industrial parks.
This is not my idea, but I will submit it anyways because I love it so much.
It’s called “Ninja Air”. You phone up Ninja Air, tell them what day you have to leave and where you’re going and they break into your house in the middle of the night before you leave. They drug you unconscious, put you on a plane with your luggage, take you to your hotel at the other end and wake you up. You’re at your destination with your luggage and all you did was go to sleep!