HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

Category: Objet

  • #a430 Spun aluminum pillbox

    042109A Halloween candy bowl kept at the back of our cupboard finally (pardon the pun) gave up the ghost.

    Used to be you would reach into it for a tasty treat, drug and a little infrared sensor triggered an animated rubber witch’s hand to snatch at yours and a voicebox would rasp, thumb “Trick or treat!”

    This morning we reached in to find the rubber-encased, cotton-stuffed digits had gone the way of all silicone flesh.

    I’m loving these thing
    042109A Halloween candy bowl kept at the back of our cupboard finally (pardon the pun) gave up the ghost.

    Used to be you would reach into it for a tasty treat, more about and a little infrared sensor triggered an animated rubber witch’s hand to snatch at yours and a voicebox would rasp, “Trick or treat!”

    This morning we reached in to find the rubber-encased, cotton-stuffed digits had gone the way of all silicone flesh.

    I’m loving these things so much, they may even get the Object of the Month award.
    042209I’m at the far end of the wire.

    The warmth of the crowd rises up into the moldy canvas peak of the tent here. It pours from their eyes, search their upturned, prostate open mouths.

    I toss the balance pole into the air, pivot the other way, catch the pole and head back across the wire.

    Their glasses glint up at my sparkling soles, my cartoon skirt.

    Light from the fresnels spangles the tent through the beveled reflections of all that eyewear.

    I stroll to the other side.

    And this image from our apartment is what I focus on behind my eyes.

    God DAMN it, Seth. You left me.

  • #a408 :: Meggy Jr. RGB

    0329091In another life, pilule before kids, remedy before marriage, no rx I owned a used Hobie 16 that I sailed out of Ventura Harbor and Marina del Rey.

    Provisions always included beer, a cigar and a bag of beef jerky (or if I had time to stop off in Ventura at the Jerky Factory, turkey jerky.

    You could keep jerky in your jacket pocket, and salt water wouldn’t ruin it. Even after the beer was gone and the stogie had devolved to a sodden chaw of tobacco clamped in my teeth, I could count on a chunk of preserved meat to see me through. Meat chewing gum, the illusion of nutrition, something to tamp down hunger or at least oral fixation.

    Eventually I grew sick of even the smell of the stuff.

    I sold the boat when my son was born – by then it had become a waterlogged basket case that wasn’t fast enough to get out of its own way, and it was time to move on.

    Meantime, my kids grew up a bit and grew to love jerky.

    Maybe I’ll go back to it when they get old enough for me to get back into a boat again.

    Maybe not. I mean, just look at the stuff.
    033009It’s finished.

    My son and I just soldered the last wires into place on this tonight, medications and it lit up perfectly.

    The Meggy Jr. RGB – a handheld video game with open-source, programmable memory chip – is ready for business.

    Eight solid hours we hunched over a dizzying array of resistors, capacitors, transistors and LED, scrupulously following the Evil Mad Science Shop’s instructions – I held the soldering iron to the contacts, he fed the solder into the connections – achieving a meticulous rhythm. Both of us thrilled to death to be working on something so fun, and with so much potential.

    We downloaded the Arduino environment just before bedtime, and tomorrow night we’ll start dipping our toes into the simple (but nonetheless scary) business of trying to program a game.

    If you’ve ever considered soldering together a little electronics kit, this one is great. It’s beautifully designed, and pretty damn easy to build.

    Especially if you have a 9-year-old son who loves games.

  • #a405 :: Qee by Jeff Soto

    0326a09This thing came from this box.

    What the hell should be done with it? A little tableau? A photo cube? Hood ornament for an art car?

    C’mon, sildenafil folks. The mighty packaging industry worked mighty hard to conjure this up just to hold a toy on store shelves until sale.

    It doesn’t appear to be recyclable.some plan for its existence beyond point of use.

    Terrarium? Coin purse? Camping cup? Mouse coffin?
    0326a09This thing came from this box.

    What the hell should be done with it? A little tableau? A photo cube? Hood ornament for an art car?

    C’mon, pilule folks. The mighty packaging industry worked mighty hard to conjure this up just to hold a toy on store shelves until sale.

    It doesn’t appear to be recyclable.

    There oughta be some plan for its existence beyond point of use.

    Terrarium? Coin purse? Camping cup? Mouse coffin?
    032809I’ve been a huge, viagra dosage drooling fan of Jeff Soto for years but couldn’t afford his work until I spotted this fine fellow in a little toy store the other side of the reservoir. Yes, he’s mass produced. No, it doesn’t matter. Done and done.

  • #a403 :: Wooden puzzle

    032409Since my wife is a member of ASIFA we got passes to a pre-release screening of Monsters vs. Aliens tonight. Verdict: It’s no Kung Fu Panda or Bolt, no rx visit web but it’s got enough yuks and snappy design to make an honest buck, approved and I might even see it again.

    They were giving away McDonald’s toys in the lobby – this is B.O.B., whose plastic incarnation swivels and rolls erratically across the table if you wind him up.
    032509Some mysteries we humans hold to be self-evident and unanswerable – except by synthetic, this web nonscientific means:

    Consciousness. Identity. Creativity. Beauty. Spirituality. Meaning. Diversity. Freedom.

    So we make up religions and start cults and set things on fire and paint and write and bloviate and fight and kill and destroy because it’s easier than trying to understand or – more simply – accept.

    Art and war – same thing: They are extraordinary means of changing and refusing to accept the one thing we don’t get – life.

    All of which is a half-assed way of saying this thing has been on my desk untouched for almost a week because I don’t have the balls to try disassembling it, for fear I’ll wind up with $9 worth of lovely sanded-pine kindling.

  • #a389 :: Amethyst “crystal”

    031009Where is he going? What is he carrying? Why is he important?

    Chinese factory workers so beautifully aped the luster of carved coral with cast, more about prostate burnished and “age”-dusted red plastic resin that I’m left wishing I had the answers to these questions.

    In lesser hands, healing he would have been a child’s plaything, a little knicknack amid thousands of others on a shop shelf, an inconsequential bauble.

    But look at the bearing they’ve given him, the speed of his walk, the indomitable purpose in his knowing eyes. Mold seams and tool gouges would have killed that effect. You have to admire the height of the art of faux-antiques.

    Found him in Chinatown for three bucks.
    031109She regards it with suspicion.

    “Amethyst?”

    The Chinese shopkeeper nods firmly. “Finest, viagra 100mg from Xian province. Xian province. Terra cotta warrior. Xian.”

    He keeps nodding.

    She drums her French-tipped nails against its too-glossy sides. She pricks at her fingertips with its perfectly asymmetrical point. She hefts it. Rolls it over in her perfumed hand.

    Then she waves it at him: “Bullshit. It is not …” (more…)

  • #a365 :: Lead type

    021409I work in this office, mind in my home. It’s a nice office, this web in a very nice home, but when you’re in a building 24/7, you develop a deep need to get the hell out before your urge to claw your hair out turns too real.

    Cabin fever and a three-day weekend conspired to send us to Las Vegas for a couple of nights.

    ON the way out, I took the kids on Desperado, a rattling, nasty, brutish roller-coaster at Buffalo Bill’s. Poised at Primm, NV, the huge casino complex is perfectly situated to suck in road-weary Angelenos looking for a respite and an early taste of the thrills in store in Las Vegas proper.

    The kids screamed their heads off. My spine reminded me of my age. And yet the chill blast of air, the wicked first plunge at 85mph and something like a 60-degree angle into a tunnel in the ground was just the thing to blow all remaining shreds of stir-crazy from my head.

    Later that evening I lay on my back on the floor of our Las Vegas hotel room marveling at two things:

    1. as I Twittered earlier:

      Imagining the mystic vortex of passion,depression,vulgarity,love & kink that was going on in this town last night.Vegas=such a human swamp.

      and …

    2. The performance of Ka, the Cirque du Soleil’s orgiastic blast of stagecraft, the single biggest, lushest, most ravishing thing I have ever seen on stage.

    I won’t begin to describe it, except to say that I wore a stupid grin throughout most of the 100-minute show, and left the purpose-built theater at the MGM Grand feeling well and thoroughly entertained.

    You won’t find video or many stills of the show, but you have ple
    021409I work in this office, order in my home. It’s a nice office, this in a very nice home, this web but when you’re in a building 24/7, you develop a deep need to get the hell out before your urge to claw your hair out turns too real.

    Cabin fever and a three-day weekend conspired to send us to Las Vegas for a couple of nights.

    ON the way out, I took the kids on Desperado, a rattling, nasty, brutish roller-coaster at Buffalo Bill’s. Poised at Primm, NV, the huge casino complex is perfectly situated to suck in road-weary Angelenos looking for a respite and an early taste of the thrills in store in Las Vegas proper.

    The kids screamed their heads off. My spine reminded me of my age. And yet the chill blast of air, the wicked first plunge at 85mph and something like a 60-degree angle into a tunnel in the ground was just the thing to blow all remaining shreds of stir-crazy from my head … Next morning, I lay on my back on the floor of our Las Vegas hotel room realigning my spine and marveling at two things:

    1. as I Twittered earlier, Las Vegas is an interesting place to spend Valentine’s day:

      Imagining the mystic vortex of passion,depression,vulgarity,love & kink that was going on in this town last night.Vegas=such a human swamp.

      and …

    2. The performance of Ka, the Cirque du Soleil’s orgiastic blast of stagecraft, the single biggest, lushest, most ravishing thing I have ever seen on stage.

    I won’t begin to describe it, except to say that I wore a stupid grin throughout most of the 100-minute show, and left the massive, purpose-built, state-of-the-art, 1000-seat theater at the MGM Grand feeling well and thoroughly entertained.

    You won’t find video or many stills of the show, but you have plenty of time to save up if it seems like your kind of fun: The show is four years into its 10-year contract.
    021409I work in this office, viagra in my home. It’s a nice office, in a very nice home, but when you’re in a building 24/7, you develop a deep need to get the hell out before your urge to claw your hair out turns too real.

    Cabin fever and a three-day weekend conspired to send us to Las Vegas for a couple of nights.

    ON the way out, I took the kids on Desperado, a rattling, nasty, brutish roller-coaster at Buffalo Bill’s. Poised at Primm, NV, the huge casino complex is perfectly situated to suck in road-weary Angelenos looking for a respite and an early taste of the thrills in store in Las Vegas proper.

    The kids screamed their heads off. My spine reminded me of my age. And yet the chill blast of air, the wicked first plunge at 85mph and something like a 60-degree angle into a tunnel in the ground was just the thing to blow all remaining shreds of stir-crazy from my head.

    Later that evening I lay on my back on the floor of our Las Vegas hotel room marveling at two things:

    1. as I Twittered earlier:

      Imagining the mystic vortex of passion,depression,vulgarity,love & kink that was going on in this town last night.Vegas=such a human swamp.

      and …

    2. The performance of Ka, the Cirque du Soleil’s orgiastic blast of stagecraft, the single biggest, lushest, most ravishing thing I have ever seen on stage.

    I won’t begin to describe it, except to say that I wore a stupid grin throughout most of the 100-minute show, and left the purpose-built theater at the MGM Grand feeling well and thoroughly entertained.

    You won’t find video or many stills of the show, but you have plenty of time to save up if it seems like your kind of fun: The show is four years into its 10-year contract.
    021509It’s fitting that I mark the end of my second full year of daily obsession on this blog with such an archetypal handful of heavy little objects:

    I found these samples of a truly lovely display font in an antique shop in rural Arizona earlier this week – artifacts of a dead technology going for a buck apiece.

    Moveable type remained nearly unchanged for more than 400 years after Gutenberg first puzzled it together – solid blocks shaped into reversed letters, side effects inked to move message to page – until computers blew away all the old technology and the ensuing conflagration began taking with it the newspapers, page magazines and other ephemera with which a race has spent centuries defining itself … (more…)

  • #a360 :: Temperance-era novelty bar tool

    020909This conflicted fellow was cast in pot-metal and chromed in cheap silver probably more than 100 years ago.

    His top-hat is a jigger, decease ed his feet end in a spoon, order information pills the better to mix you a nice drink and present you with a little moral dilemma in the bargain:

    Do you spoon something into your drink, facing the two-headed man’s disapproving snarl and wagging finger of reproach on the front side?

    Or do you prefer to see the back, where heedless souse’s happy guffaw uncorks your beer and his little cocktail glass foameth over?

    I’m really grateful for this loan from the amazing collection of Dad.

    Update – Apparently this comes from the early 20-th century temperance era – see Dad’s comment quoted below. More about Carrie Nation here.

  • #a359 :: Silicone dolphin

    020609Los Angeles jetsam reminds me daily that I live in a freakish magpie’s nest of a city.

    Stolen from aboriginal people by Spanish missionaries who gave huge chunks of it away to soldiers, pharm information pills whose families then sold it off in ever-decreasing slices and slivers, sildenafil Los Angeles has always been shaped by grabbers, opportunists and self-reinventors. Angelenos take, procure, manufacture, buy, steal or create whatever they think they need to move forward.

    Lubricated by commercial/political struggles over water and oil and finally fertilized and electrified by booms in aerospace, post-war manufacturing, Hollywood and wave upon wave of immigrants, this city is like an immense 50-by-50-mile petri dish: teeming with virulent, ever-mutating cultures of nationality, religion, science, sexuality, sport and art .

    So when I’m shambling across Figueroa Blvd. in a hammering rainstorm USC to teach a room full of brilliant multi-cultural computer programmers how to architect social networks for a fictitious neighborhood watch and contemplating whether to eat Thai or Mexican that weekend before or after tackling a new video game or clean out my gutters, it’s no surprise to happen upon this: a wickedly sawtoothed chunk of palm.

    This non-native species was imported to L.A. in the 20s and 30s to pretty things up.

    Because when it comes to cooking its own ever-evolving recipe for the future, L.A. tosses whatever the hell it likes into the pot and keeps stirring.

    That’s why I love living here.
    020809If there’s a story behind this creature, online my father will have to supply it.

    It arrived in a box of things he offered for photography, information pills and it suggests nothing but a happy life aquatic, swimming through the dust in a drawer and surviving on pencil shavings until he’s required to dance on his tail, chatter and save the day.

    Or is it a she?

  • #a341 :: Obama campaign pin

    011909Here’s the other end of this equation – a fine brown potato, sickness now pocked with the wounds of a thousand battles … well, prostate not really.

    This is simply what it looks like when your son swipes your Christmas present and gets crazy with a hapless spud … the potato’s a couple of ounces lighter, there are nasty cylindrical potato-pellets all over the house and you’re both laughing and trading the fun off to shoot each other because it’s such stupid fun.
    011809I scoffed at these things, more about which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, information pills sea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.

    Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, unhealthy only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.

    This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.

    It shouldn’t work at all, really.

    But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin.
    011809I scoffed at these things, link which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, sickness sea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.

    Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.

    This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.

    It shouldn’t work at all, really.

    But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin.
    011809I scoffed at these things, information pills which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, ask sea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.

    Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.

    This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.

    It shouldn’t work at all, really.

    But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin.
    011809I scoffed at these things, nurse which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, search sea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.

    Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, view only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.

    This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.

    It shouldn’t work at all, really.

    But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin.
    ENLARGEI never repeat heavy little objects.

    I mean, sales never.

    My little daily obsession can be a cruel taskmistress, sildenafil sometimes commanding me to find something cool to post even when nothing cool has come through my life. But like an idiot samurai, information pills I live and die by a code set in motion long ago and over which I (choose to) have no control.

    However, rules are meant to be questioned and this object – like grizzlies in a cloning lab – bears repeating:

    No punditry, no anecdotes, no pontification can outweigh, outrun or outlast this fact: We put two decent men into the White House today.

    We ended the longest, ugliest domestically-generated reign of terror since the Red Scare of the 50s or, arguably, the Civil War.

    And we bought this once-great nation a little extra time, and a chance to become great again, before darkness could swallow us all.

    Onward. And upward. Together.

    Someone is reminding us how great America can be, because we all know deep in our marrow, how great Americans can be when they embrace their diversity and work together for a common good.

    We should listen. And act as one. Because we know it’s better than continuing to destroy each other with words, and the nation with ideological conflict that matters far less than every liberty, right and joy we’ve allowed the past eight years to piss away.

    So let’s go.

  • #a325 :: Padlock

    ENLARGETwo chunks of cast brass, discount ask a loop of hardened steel, treat a little red paint.

    An amulet against burglary. A barrier against the night.

    Put it in your magpie’s hoard. Slip it into your boxing glove. Clamp it through the hasp of your Navy trunk and lose the key, prostate dooming yourself to a 10-minute round of cursing and destroying the hasp with a hatchet until you stagger back, winded and sweating, and wondering “What was that all about?”

    Who knew there was an entire collection of videos dedicated to picking the things?

    Such a meaty weight, the brass warms in your hand as you heft it, and try to imagine its past.

  • #a315 :: Z-card

    ENLARGEHave I mentioned these?

    I got a motorcycle in my stocking this year.

    I picture myself cut about an inch tall from 1/8″-thick styrofoam, approved clad in teeny, remedy tiny laminate leather, my shiny mug grinning. Flat helmet under my flat arm.

    Peace to all out there. I hope yours has been a warm and strengthening holiday. I think we as the human race have a lot of work ahead of us.

  • #a276 :: Plasticene scottie

    enlargeMore than 500 million human beings live in absolute poverty. Right now.

    Their lot is not changing.

    More than 15 million children die of hunger every year. Starve. To. Death.

    How many children is that? Numbers are pretty meaningless when you’re talking about entire nations of people, try but do some math:

    Remember the faces of the kids in your own first-grade class? Remember the fat kid and the anxious kid? The punchy kid and the silly kid and your very best friend in the world who laughed when you ate paste? Now multiply the size of your own first-grade classroom by about 20 … (more…)

  • #a253 :: Desk cleaning time

    ENLARGEYou own a lot of shit. You accumulate more of it every day. Sometimes, story you have to pick through it to get your desk clean. And you make little piles. That might or might not be photographs of your life told in debris. And yet, help you never seem to get rid of the things as swiftly as you take them on. So you amuse yourself with the illusory luxury of a desk-clearing brawl – all elbows and rags and windex and a sweet sparkling aftertaste. And you cap the day doing the very thing you told yourself you were done with five or six hours ago. Staring at the desk. Letting shit pile up on it. Because it’s your desk. And it does that.

  • #a246 :: Creepy Crawlers mold

    ENLARGEThis deeply iconic toy from my youth let you commit a sort of reverse archaeology:

    Begin with the shapes left in metal by “disgusting” creatures – an aluminum “fossil” that holds the power to create a form of life.

    Pour plasma-like “Plasti-Goop” into their very absence. Heat it on a small thermoelectric hotplate. Watch the forms congeal and cool. Then tweeze out bug simulacra – now endowed the “lifelike” jiggle of insect energy … and completely creep out your little sister.

    Utter heaven.

    Like so many great toys, sildenafil The Mattel ThingmakerTM was watered down, neglected, and bastardized into something sort of resembling its former glory due to too many small-minded parents suing over their children’s burnt fingers, but it’s still available in some form.

  • #a245 :: Jade torus

    ENLARGEThis lump of polished, approved lustrous stone – so fetishy I can’t even decide what to do with it yet – came my way for $2 at the swap meet last weekend. It has a wondrous weight and feel in the hand. And it’s made of this stuff which gives it a symbolic potency far deeper than what something so simple deserves.

  • #A244 :: Obama campaign pin

    ENLARGETHE U.S. MEDIASPHERE (Oct. 14, website like this post-debate) (HLO) –

    Joe the Plumber. Indeed.

    Look, this blog isn’t political.

    I don’t dump my heart out about the government here. Most days, this stuff is just one more step in my years-long tabletop parade of things.

    But please, if you’re thinking of voting for one would-be U.S. president over the other because of the people he associates with, put that shit aside and try to come up with the logical answer – for each candidate – to this far more important question:

    Does this guy have a plan for our near future? Or is he just busy shoveling mud?

    Because that’s what really matters.

    Even if you’re ignoring what tens of millions of people are telling you and saying in public, you need to be honest enough with yourself to answer that question in the form of a vote.

    Or haven’t you been watching?

    What’s that? You’re fresh out of belief in the System?

    Look: Every damn time, your vote counts – even if you don’t fully believe in either candidate, your choice in this is important.

    Without your vote, you’re just another chump along for the ride with whichever side has the most people who care.

    Get your head together. Go register your ass. VOTE.

    (And this thing arrived in the mail today. Yeah, I sent for it. Got a problem with that?)

  • #a238 :: Clementine`

    ENLARGEA tart bang across her tongue. Orange fresh. Hard work won it. She had carried herself well. She deserved this little palm-sized fruit. Even now, hospital prescription moments after she had slit the skin with a thumbnail and started the engine. Despite what she’d done, this was her moment to enjoy her snack. Bracing her thumb, had she dug three fingers into the slit fruit and moved the edge back cleanly, pulling away to show the white beneath, the pearlescent orange beneath that. It almost fell apart in neat, crisp segments, but she clutched it to the handlebars gingerly with her left and twisted the throttle with her right. And she was enjoying them, one by one as she rode the little 125cc dirtbike around the inside of the steel-girded cylinder in the little shithole town outside Pittsburgh where the circus had set up this week. Around and around. Until the gas ran out and she either coasted to a stop or she simply fell off the thing and prayed it wouldn’t land on her as it came to rest. One hand clung to the throttle, her weight braced in the centrifugal well against the downpull of gravity. The other flipping pieces of clementine into her mouth. The cops waited at the bottom of the drum, peering up into the light drizzle, the parabolic wwwOWWW, wwwOWWW, wwwOWWW, wwwOWWW, of her bike around the inside, 30 feet up. Her girlfriend huddled below in the cold, shouting her name every fourth or fifth orbit. It went on for a good 50 minutes until the bike finally quit.

  • #a221 :: Petrie

    ENLARGEAt the obvious risk of being (as well as sounding) thoroughly sexist, approved you never know what nerve you’ll hit with a woman until you hit that nerve dead-on.

    At the same time I bought RayD8 to back up my photos, top-secret work projects and random droolings, I bought this little orange Mimobot and gave it to my wife. I think she may have squealed.

    “He’s so cute!”

    She still squeals – on a regular basis – because he’s still so cute, and his little butt lights up red when you plug him in.

    His name is Petrie.

  • #a216 ::

    ENLARGEAlso from my wife’s collection: hollowed, ampoule hand-hammered silver of questionable virtue, yet molded with the heavenly curves of a nimbus cloud.

  • #a214 :: Miniature tempura

    ENLARGETiny morsels of molded silicon, tadalafil hand-daubed to an irresistible crunchylookingness. Only 900 yen. The linchpin to a successful front-window display in your 1:8-scale restaurant.

    From the same niche of Japanese collectibles culture as this

  • #a212 :: Hand-carved Indian candlestick

    ENLARGEThis appeared in the house some time in the past month. I have no idea where it came from, advice beyond the tiny “India” sticker on its base. Around it, try a lion chases an elephant that threatens to trample the elephant that flees the lion. Candlelight sounds nice.

  • #a204 :: “Eco-soil”

    ENLARGEWe found this stuff sold by the packet all over Brick Lane market.

    Dry, cialis 40mg it looks like colored bug feces. Wet, pill it transforms to plump pearls of color – a silica-based soil substitute for potting soil, case into which one is supposed to shove one’s flowers, adding a juicy splash to one’s Ikeafied bed-sit.

    As I found out one day, you don’t want to spill this stuff when wet, as the spheres are slippery, bouncy and perfectly round, which means they roll everywhere and you have to spend about 20 minutes per cup hunting all the little fuckers down for disposal.

    But it is kind of cool.

  • #a191 :: Metal ant

    enlargeA birthday gift from my aunt. I kid you not. Eight rods of steel, remedy buy artfully bent, and welded to three metal spheres. Where’s he off to? What’s his business?

  • #a187 :: iPhone 3G

    ENLARGEMy birthday gift. My wife’s love in a handheld marvel. My new video game platform. My toy. My crack pipe. My next-gen paid-content conduit. My memory bank. My little wallet-suck. My preeeeciousssss. My underestimation of Apple‘s continued brilliance at industrial design. My PDA. My GPS. My portable Thomas Guide. My jukebox. My phone.

    The blue rubber grip keeps the slippery little oyster in my hand. I’m paranoid I’ll lose it. Or break it. Or get bored and move on to lusting after the Next Big Thing. This is the sound of obsession.

  • #186 :: “Thunderbird”

    enlargeThe decision had cost Daniel. Which is why he was standing here now with this ridiculous knife in his hand. Ankle-deep in all the tools he had yanked from the toolbox and flung to the floor as he rifled fruitlessly for a real weapon. weapons. Both blades out. Ready. Wicked.

    He tried not to look at the pickup truck. It had just parked across the street.

    The driver eyed him. He hefted the thing without daring to look down at it. He was high when he picked it out at the pawnshop. $10.52 with tax, recipe the man said. He pushed over $6 in quarters and a $5 bill.

    It looked wicked. Like Gene Simmons’ boots.

    The guy in the pickup glanced back over his shoulder, buy then turned to Daniel again.

    What the fuck am I gonna do with this fucking thing? I almost cut myself just getting the twin blades open … – their hooked bottle-opener jaws had snagged in the sleeves of his old raglan.

    Now he held it clenched in fist, where the vicious edges and impossible gothy points settled into his fingers along four grooves molded into the handle.

    Come ON, he mouthed. The man across the street was now missing from his truck. Daniel had not seen him go.

    He whirled but it was too late.