HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

Category: Fetish

  • #a434 :: Z-card robot

    042609I’ve posted some Z-Cardz before – they’re nifty little 3-D models that you assemble from pieces that you punch out of precision-die-cut 2-D plastic cards.

    This is not one of their better ones – and I guess that’s why I’m posting it – as an example of Not Good Enough.

    Warner Bros. cartoons had their bad years.

    Everyone would rather forget the Mustang II for the miserably anemic botch-up it made of a once-proud marque.

    And Phantom Menace sucked.

    So this particular Z-Card is actually a tribute to its superior brethren.

  • #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.

  • #a428 :: Undesirable keychain tag

    041909What happens when your son has parked a big bottle of water precariously on the top shelf of an open refrigerator door and you unwittingly shut the door, price dosage causing it to plunge to the bottom and snap the shelf straight out of the fridge?

    You hunt through the shattered plastic shards looking for the serial number so you can order a new one.

    Children are agents of entropy.
    042009At some point last month, mind my mother-in-law gave my daughter (age 7) a little keyring with a big fob that spelled out “Love” in lurid gold-chromed script.

    It was schwag from some utterly-too-grownup movie, find as evidenced by the little stamped-metal tag proclaiming the brand. Here’s what ensued the moment I laid eyes on it:

    Me: (rummaging for the pliers) Here, let me fix that for you.

    Daughter: Dad, can’t I keep that?

    Uh, no. (*snap!*)

    I could go on here about the bizarre cultural currency our infantilized nation has created around the fetishism of branded schwag, but I’m saving all my energy for, oh, about four or five years from now when she starts pushing back.

  • #a422 :: Steel ruler

    041209Precision. Measurement. Millimeters. Inches. 1/64th inches. Fractions between the beginning of a thing and the end, visit web the alpha and the omega. Steel ruler. Period.

  • #a418 :: Volkswagen badge

    0410092Found this in the gutter down the street. Somewhere, ask a VW – a new one, clinic by the make of the silkscreened aluminum – is driving around without an identity.

    Is the badge the seat of a car’s soul?

  • #a414 :: Miniature lighter

    040409A thrilling adventure was in my near future. A piece of paper baked into a cookie, website like this dipped in white chocolate and wrapped in red foil told me so.

    A quick dinner at Panda Inn this evening, cure then off to see Knowing. It proves to be too intense for him – he’s 9 – so we bail 50 minutes in and rent Wrath of Khan instead. A great movie that I’ve seen too damned often.

    040409A thrilling adventure was in my near future. A piece of paper baked into a cookie, and dipped in white chocolate and wrapped in red foil told me so.

    A quick dinner at Panda Inn this evening, then off to see Knowing. It proves to be too intense for him – he’s 9 – so we bail 50 minutes in and rent Wrath of Khan instead. A great movie that I’ve seen too damned often.

    Thrilling? Adventure?

    The cookie was tasty, at least.
    040509This flea-market find was stamped out of chromed steel in Japan some years ago.

    It’s an elegant, treatment perfect little machine, barely 7/8ths of an inch tall: The horizontal tube on top is just big enough to house a flint and pressure spring, the wick is hardly thicker than a toothpick, and you could probably fill it with about 1/3 teaspoon of lighter fluid before it overflowed.

    I’m going to see if I can fix this up and get it burning.

  • #a413 :: White chocolate fortune cookie

    040309Stuff a foam dart down its hazard-orange bore, more about pump up the air chamber with the piston slide and blow the captured pressure with the thumb valve. And piff you’ve fired what probably amoun
    040309Stuff a foam dart down its hazard-orange bore, viagra buy pump up the air chamber with the piston slide and blow the captured pressure with the thumb valve. And piff you’ve fired what probably amounts to the most reprehensibly disposable and insulting form of non-lethal ammunition known to man: the rubber dart.

    It’s got a belt clip on it so you can anchor it to your school satchel or your keyring if you’ve a need to carry irritainment wherever you go.

    Can you believe people argue about its stopping power on a board devoted to zombies?

    If they took zombies seriously they wouldn’t …
    040209I have a thing for pocket knives, viagra buy as you’ve probably noticed by now.

    At some point I got it into my head that I should own a blade of Damascus steel.

    The Ken Onion Chive is about as small a piece of the stuff as you can buy. It’s also wickedly sharp and flips open at the brush of a finger.
    040209I have a thing for pocket knives, drug as you’ve probably noticed by now.

    At some point I got it into my head that I should own a blade of Damascus steel.

    The Ken Onion Chive is about as small a piece of the mythically beautiful multi-layered steel as you can buy. It’s also wickedly sharp and flips open at the brush of a finger.
    040109Put aside for a second how thoroughly doofy Crocs can seem, thumb here is an entire empire built on two simple facts: a) Americans’ uncanny knack for making, ambulance buying and trashing once-used disposable crap and b) our love of cheap customization.

    You stuff Jibbitz into the holes of your Crocs to declare your individuality to other people who care about that sort of things. Either that or you bug your parents into buying a bunch for you.

    At a buck or two each, what they hell, they’re a lot of fun until they fall out and you never see them again.
    040409A thrilling adventure is in my near future.

    I know this because a piece of paper baked into a cookie, page dipped in white chocolate and wrapped in red foil told me so.

    A quick dinner at Panda Inn this evening, then off to see Knowing. It proves to be too intense for him – he’s 9 – so we bail 50 minutes in and rent Wrath of Khan instead. A great movie that I’ve seen too damned often.

    Thrilling? Adventure?

    The cookie was tasty, at least.

  • #a411 Ken Onion “Chive”

    040109Put aside for a second how thoroughly doofy Crocs can seem, price here is an entire empire built on two simple facts: a) Americans’ uncanny knack for making, pharm buying and trashing once-used disposable crap and b) our love of cheap customization.

    You stuff Jibbitz into the holes of your Crocs and declare your individuality to other people who care about that sort of things. Either that or you bug your parents into buying a bunch for you.

    At a buck or two each, what they hell, they’re a lot of fun until they fall out and you enver see them again.
    040209I have a thing for pocket knives, pharmacy as you’ve probably noticed by now.

    At some point I got it into my head that I should own a blade of Damascus steel.

    The Ken Onion Chive is about as small a piece of the mythically beautiful multi-layered metal as you can buy. It’s also wickedly sharp and flips open at the brush of a finger.

  • #a410 :: Jibbitz

    040109Put aside for a second how thoroughly doofy Crocs can seem, information pills medications here is an entire empire built on two simple facts: a) Americans’ uncanny knack for making, buy buying and trashing once-used disposable crap and b) our love of cheap customization.

    You stuff Jibbitz into the holes of your Crocs to declare your individuality to other people who care about that sort of thing. Either that or you bug your parents into buying a bunch for you.

    At a buck or two each, what they hell, they’re a lot of fun until they fall out and you never see them again.

    And then you bug your parents some more, and the cycle of crap rolls on.

  • #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.

  • #a398 :: Ritter Sport chocolate

    031809The second one of these things to fail in five days. First, hospital my dependable Cat-Eye flung itself to its death from a busted handlebar mount, cialis 40mg the white beam tumbling wildly down to clatter in the dark. Then this, which snapped from its mount as I adjusted it. it exploded in the street, disgorging the battery carrier and AAs from a sprung cap. Hmm … what to do with all these LEDs …
    031809The second one of these things to fail in five days. First, buy my dependable Cat-Eye flung itself to its death from a busted handlebar mount, ask the white beam tumbling wildly down to clatter in the dark. Then this, which snapped from its mount as I adjusted it. it exploded in the street, disgorging the battery carrier and AAs from a sprung cap. Hmm … what to do with all these LEDs …
    032009One of the richest, buy information pills purest narcotics known to the confectionery sciences.

    It’s legal crack. Full stop.
     
     
     

  • #a395 :: Apple stickers

    031609Every now and then a mystery washes up out of the ceaseless surf of crap inundating this house.

    What is this?

    It has the precise curves and clean-milled transparent plastic of an Appleprod
    031709These pile up like autumn leaves in any die-hard Mac household.

    White on white, nurse stuffed into a drawer, viagra swiftly becomes white on blotchy grey because, pilule well, you don’t want to over-use the things.

    I have one of the larger ones on my car, but I decided that putting a line of smaller ones after it would be not-quite-arch-enough to avoid associations with kind of stickers you see on the backs of L.A. SUVs – the kitschy rows of parent-and-all-our-kids stickers or praying-Calvin stickers.

    So they stay in the drawer, getting grayer.

    Meantime, my favorite computer company made some rather large and long-awaited announcements today about the great-but-horribly-flawed iPhone operating system, so here’s what I posted on our company blog: (more…)

  • #a393 :: Used car key

    031409In all my years on this blog, more about mind I’ve never unpacked the symbology of a key.

    It’s almost so perfect a metaphor on its own, that trying to explain a key pretty much dooms you to being accused of mental masturbation.

    But a car key is profound. It represents a heavy, expensive and rather large member of the family that lives in mostly silent service – a portable id, a means of self-projection from one existence to another – rarely complaining and seldom causing trouble on its own.

    And that’s about as far as I’ll drag you down that rabbit hole.

    My wife’s old Volvo S70 served us faithfully and well for 7 years, but with 104,000+ miles and a bad case of accelerating decrepitude, its time had come to an end.

    Yesterday, we went out and bought a newer used Volvo – a tight, gorgeous bottom-of-the-line S40 with only 10,572 miles on it for more than a third off original sticker).

    And there it sits, in the garage’s place of honor, while the old one sits on the street awaiting its fate.

    Which as much as anything – and better than anything I could say – explains this meaning of this key.

  • #a392 :: Old Rohrshach pin

    031309I have a thing for magnets.

    These are powerful enough to leave blood blisters if you more than one of them snap together on you.

    A single one can support close to 10 pounds, treat and depending on how you rig it.

    And when you place a href=”http://heavylittleobjects.com/?p=1397″>pinballs around one the magnetism distributes evenly through five of them, a little pentagram of force.
    031309I have a thing for magnets.

    These are powerful enough to leave blood blisters if you more than one of them snap together on you.

    A single one can support close to 10 pounds, this web depending on how you rig it.

    And when you place a href=”http://heavylittleobjects.com/?p=1397″>pinballs around one the magnetism distributes evenly through five of them, information pills a little pentagram of force.

    However, salve that’s not a magnet. this is a magnet. Any of ’em. Go on, pick one.
    031309I have a thing for magnets.

    These are powerful enough to leave blood blisters if you more than one of them snap together on you.

    A single one can support close to 10 pounds, visit web depending on how you rig it.

    And when you place pinballs around one the magnetism distributes evenly through five of them, advice a little pentagram of force.

    However, that’s not a magnet. this is a magnet. Any of ’em. Go on, pick one.
    031309I have a thing for magnets.

    These are powerful enough to leave blood blisters if you more than one of them snap together on you.

    A single one can support close to 10 pounds, for sale depending on how you rig it.

    And when you place pinballs around one the magnetism distributes evenly through five of them, a little pentagram of force.

    However, that’s not a magnet. this is a magnet. Any of ’em. Go on, pick one.
    0314a09Twenty-two years after Watchmen changed my psychotopography and appreciation for the nuances of fiction forever, online they finally got it completely right.

    We saw it again this afternoon, and fell even deeper into it than we had at the midnight premiere at the Dome a week earlier.

    The movie is an extraordinarily accomplished telling of the great “unfilmable” original, and the second time around – the gorgeous ballet of deception and violence and honor betrayal among these rich, fucked-up characters – just cemented my admiration for Moore‘s story and Gibbons‘ art.

    I bought the comics one by one when they hit the stand – I have a distinct memory of standing in some punk bookstore on South Street in Philadelphia in 1986 and picking up the first one and thinking, “Oh. Man. Oh, MAN.” Near the end of the run, DC put out a set of four buttons. This is the only one I’ve managed to hang onto since then, and the rust bleeding through from the tin back gives it a wonderful extra layer of filth and meaning.

  • #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…)

  • #a388 :: Chinese traveling hare

    0309091Thanks to my dear longtime friend, dosage patient former college classmate and co-conspirator John, I am now in possession of ten of the coolest, most perfect HLOs known to the art of manufacturing.

    Back in college, John and I poured an absurd amount of time (and hard-earned library wages) into pinball machines.

    There may have been other pinball tables worth a damn, but the only one that stuck in my head is the formidable Black Knight.

    Two stories deep, tricked out with multi-ball and all the gnarly medieval graphics their Frazetta-wannabe art department could muster, the Black Knight table was also the launch platform for the greatest pinball innovation of all time:
    the wickedly cool Magna-Save button – when engaged – sucked your missed flips back from doom in the drains via giant electromagnets buried beneath the table surface, allowing you to keep your balls in play.

    So to speak.

    Double entendres aside, pinballs really are a sensual pleasure – heavy, slick and magnetic.

    Glossy chrome reflects the lights around them, and they warm in your pocket, and feel good in your fingers. You can see why Queeg loved them.

    You can also imagine the havoc you could wreak with a pouchful of them and one of these.
    0309091Thanks to my dear longtime friend, what is ed former college classmate and co-conspirator John, ed I am now in possession of ten of the coolest, this site most perfect HLOs made.

    John and I poured an absurd amount of time (and hard-earned library wages) back in college into pinball machines.

    There may have been others worth a damn, but the only one that stuck in my head is the formidable Black Knight. The Williams Electronics co equipped it with the wickedly cool Magna-Save button, which – when engaged – sucked the balls back from doom in the drains via giant electromagnets buried beneath the table surface, allowing you to keep your balls in play.

    So to speak.

    Double entendres aside, pinballs really are a sensual pleasure – heavy, slick and magnetic. Glossy chrome reflects the lights around them, and they warm in your pocket, and feel good in your fingers. You can see why Queeg loved them.

    You can also imagine the havoc you could wreak with a pouchful of them and one of these.
    0309091Thanks to my dear longtime friend, mind former college classmate and co-conspirator John, abortion I am now in possession of ten of the coolest, most perfect HLOs known to the art of manufacturing.

    Back in college, John and I poured an absurd amount of time (and hard-earned library wages) into pinball machines.

    There may have been other pinball tables worth a damn, but the only one that stuck in my head is the formidable Black Knight.

    Two stories deep, tricked out with multi-ball and all the gnarly medieval graphics their Frazetta-wannabe art department could muster, the Black Knight table was also the launch platform for the greatest pinball innovation of all time:
    the wickedly cool Magna-Save button – when engaged – sucked your missed flips back from doom in the drains via giant electromagnets buried beneath the table surface, allowing you to keep your balls in play.

    So to speak.

    Double entendres aside, pinballs really are a sensual pleasure – heavy, slick and magnetic.

    Glossy chrome reflects the lights around them, and they warm in your pocket, and feel good in your fingers. You can see why Queeg loved them.

    You can also imagine the havoc you could wreak with a pouchful of them and one of these.
    0309091Thanks to my dear longtime friend, physician former college classmate and co-conspirator John, information pills I am now in possession of ten of the coolest, most perfect HLOs known to the art of manufacturing.

    Back in college, John and I poured an absurd amount of time (and hard-earned library wages) into pinball machines.

    There may have been other pinball tables worth a damn, but the only one that stuck in my head is the formidable Black Knight.

    Two stories deep, tricked out with multi-ball and all the gnarly medieval graphics their Frazetta-wannabe art department could muster, the Black Knight table was also the launch platform for the greatest pinball innovation of all time:
    the wickedly cool Magna-Save button – when engaged – sucked your missed flips back from doom in the drains via giant electromagnets buried beneath the table surface, allowing you to keep your balls in play.

    So to speak.

    Double entendres aside, pinballs really are a sensual pleasure – heavy, slick and magnetic.

    Glossy chrome reflects the lights around them, and they warm in your pocket, and feel good in your fingers. You can see why Queeg loved them.

    You can also imagine the havoc you could wreak with a pouchful of them and one of these.
    0309091Thanks to my dear longtime friend, patient former college classmate and co-conspirator John, I am now in possession of ten of the coolest, most perfect HLOs known to the art of manufacturing.

    Back in college, John and I poured an absurd amount of time (and hard-earned library wages) into pinball machines.

    There may have been other pinball tables worth a damn, but the only one that stuck in my head is the formidable Black Knight.

    Two stories deep, tricked out with multi-ball and all the gnarly medieval graphics their Frazetta-wannabe art department could muster, the Black Knight table was also the launch platform for the greatest pinball innovation of all time:
    the wickedly cool Magna-Save button – when engaged – sucked your missed flips back from doom in the drains via giant electromagnets buried beneath the table surface, allowing you to keep your balls in play.

    So to speak.

    Double entendres aside, pinballs really are a sensual pleasure – heavy, slick and magnetic.

    Glossy chrome reflects the lights around them, and they warm in your pocket, and feel good in your fingers. You can see why Queeg loved them.

    You can also imagine the havoc you could wreak with a pouchful of them and one of these.
    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, malady burnished and “age”-dusted red plastic resin that I’m left wishing I had the answers to these questions.

    In lesser hands, discount he would have been a child’s plaything, approved 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.

  • #a387 :: Pinballs

    0309091Thanks to my dear longtime friend, buy more about former college classmate and co-conspirator John, I am now in possession of ten of the coolest, most perfect HLOs known to the art of manufacturing.

    Back in college, John and I poured an absurd amount of time (and hard-earned library wages) into pinball machines.

    There may have been other pinball tables worth a damn, but the only one that stuck in my head is the formidable Black Knight.

    Two stories deep, tricked out with multi-ball and all the gnarly medieval graphics their Frazetta-wannabe art department could muster, the Black Knight table was also the launch platform for the greatest pinball innovation of all time:
    the wickedly cool Magna-Save button – when engaged – sucked your missed flips back from doom in the drains via giant electromagnets buried beneath the table surface, allowing you to keep your balls in play.

    So to speak.

    Double entendres aside, pinballs really are a sensual pleasure – heavy, slick and magnetic.

    Glossy chrome reflects the lights around them, and they warm in your pocket, and feel good in your fingers. You can see why Queeg loved them.

    You can also imagine the havoc you could wreak with a pouchful of them and one of these.

  • #a385 :: Girl Scout Cookie

    030609So here’s what all the suspense and anticipation was about: A tektite – a lump of molten-then-resolidified glass created when a meteor traveling thousands of miles per hour smashed into China.

    You can see impact grooves left by rocks or other particles crashing into it before it cooled hard – all of this took place in a few thousandths of a second.

    Amazingly, more about they’re not that common: (more…)

  • #a384 :: Chinese tektite

    030509Oh, viagra dosage the wonder and menace of an unopened package from a foreign land.

    I know exactly what’s inside (I’ll blog it tomorrow) but it’s the promise of what it might contain that spins me up.

    The lurid green packing paper, the sturdy nylon twine, the oddly shaped stamps and return address of Hong Kong. Why, it could be anything in there:

    A vial of radium. Live insects. An exotic dagger. Some antique glass. Wait, here’s a clue – the customs receipt declaring it as “specimen” …
    030509Oh, case the wonder and menace of an unopened package from a foreign land.

    I know exactly what’s inside (I’ll blog it tomorrow) but it’s the promise of what it might contain that always spins me up.

    It bears all the markers of a Macguffin from a Hitchcock film – the lurid green packing paper, the neat knot of sturdy nylon twine, the oddly shaped stamps and return address of Hong Kong. Why, it could be anything in there:

    A vial of radium. Live insects. An exotic dagger. Contraband hollow-point bullets. Antique hand-blown glass. Stolen South African gold.

    Wait, here’s a clue – the customs receipt declaring it as “specimen” …
    030509Oh, order the wonder and menace of an unopened package from a foreign land.

    I know exactly what’s inside (I’ll blog it tomorrow) but it’s the promise of what it might contain that spins me up.

    The lurid green packing paper, the sturdy nylon twine, the oddly shaped stamps and return address of Hong Kong. Why, it could be anything in there:

    A vial of radium. Live insects. An exotic dagger. Some antique glass.

    Wait, here’s a clue – the customs receipt declaring it as “specimen” …
    030609So here’s what all the suspense and anticipation was about: A tektite – a lump of molten-then-resolidified glass created when a meteor traveling thousands of miles per hour smashed into China.

    You can see impact grooves left by rocks or other particles crashing into it before it cooled hard – all of this took place in a few thousandths of a second.

    Amazingly, page they’re not that common: (more…)

  • #a382 :: Brass bells

    This is one of those weird bits of ultra-high-tech ephemera that will have completely obsolesced within 10 years. I weep at the sheer volume and depth of technological experimentation and collaboration that culminated in its manufacture – all of it doomed to the landfill and a fascinating footnote in Wikipedia because of FlexPlay‘s very wizardry:

    A Flexplay disc is shipped in a vacuum-sealed package. There is a clear dye inside the disc, discount contained within the bonding resin of the disc, dosage which reacts with oxygen. When the seal is broken on the vacuum-packed disc, help the layer changes from clear to black in about 48 hours, rendering the disc unplayable. If unopened, the shelf life of the sealed package is said to be “about a year.” The DVD plastic also has a red dye in it, which prevents penetration of the disc by blue lasers, which would go straight through the oxygen-reactive dye.

    You can get some pretty decent movies in this format for like a buck-99 at Staples – provided you’re willing to accept the responsibility for recycling the damn thing, or the guilt from just hucking it into the trash.

    We stopped halfway through “The Kite Runner” this evening since it was getting late.

    Hope we get to see the rest of it tomorrow night – before the disk goes the hyperaccelerated way of all flesh.

    030409These have been floating around my parents’ house for as long as I can remember, mind by the dozens, it seems.

    There’s a pair serving as a keyfob, another set tied to a Christmas ornament, it seems, and various bells clinking around amidst their never-ending and unintentional collection of heavy little objects.

    I’d guess they came from India, where our family traveled for two intoxicating, culture-shocked weeks when I was 14, and where Dad and Mom returned several times to lecture.

    Turn them to the right angle and they become wide-mouthed frogs with wagging, jangling tongues. Then shake them and listen.

  • #a380 :: Brass dingus

    030309I should be smarter. I should be able to classify and categorize based on Google findings if nothing else.

    But this one eludes me. Dad sent it along, troche symptoms and it seems to be machine-turned brass from India – maybe even with spiritual or religious symbolic significance.

    But I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is.

    Readers?

  • #a379 :: Las Vegas tiki culture artifact

    022809Before the age of fluorocarbons and exotic esthers, link a man used to scrub his bar of shaving soap into a lather with one of these, daub it on his face and shave.

    I gave this to Dad for Christmas a few years ago, and he sent it along last month in a boxful of HLOs he generously lent to the cause (yes, I’ll be mailing most of them back).

    Chromed brass, by the way it’s corroding. I don’t think he uses it much.
    022809Before the age of fluorocarbons and exotic esthers, help a man used to scrub his bar of shaving soap into a lather with one of these, daub thge resulting suds onto his face and shave.

    I gave this to Dad for Christmas a few years ago, and he sent it along last month in a boxful of HLOs he generously lent to the cause.

    Chromed brass, and little used, by the way it’s corroding. Somewhere in the sound stages of Hollywood I imagine a prop man is working very hard to apply this sort of finish to a gilded-age industrial opera.
    022809Before the age of fluorocarbons and exotic esthers, more about a man used to scrub his bar of shaving soap into a lather with one of these, daub it on his face and shave.

    I gave this to Dad for Christmas a few years ago, and he sent it along last month in a boxful of HLOs he generously lent to the cause (yes, I’ll be mailing most of them back).

    Chromed brass, and little used, by the way it’s corroding.
    030109The Aku-Aku Restaurant opened in 1960 inside the much-fabled Stardust Casino in Las Vegas.

    When the Stardust was imploded in 2007, prostate mob-culture journalist Nick Pileggi called it “the Bellagio of its day, ampoule the most dazzling casino out there.”

    The Aku Aku ran for 20 years.=, a veritable temple of tiki culture (Here’s its appetizer menu).

    My step-father-in-law, who has a massive Vegas collection both in cabinets and in his head, very generously gave me this today. (Thanks, Lee!)

    I don’t know whether this fellow is laughing or grimacing, but he’s the real deal – a rough-hewn head in wonderfully scratchy ceramic.

    He’s now living in a place of honor, among the other shrunken heads.

  • #a372 :: Kaleidoscope

    022109This is meta: I usually shoot objects while looking through these. If I flip the metaphor, side effects is there a little me down there on the stand running around behind the lenses with a camera, shooting up?

    Even computer bl
    022109This is meta: I usually shoot objects while looking through these. If I flip the metaphor, nurse is there a little me down there on the stand running around behind the lenses with a camera, shooting up?

    Even computer glasses have weird dreams.
    022209I think we forget how to see. We’re so absorbed with processing most of the time that we fail to register the weight of anything in front of us.

    “Oh, check there’s a car.”

    Not, approved “if I could have an exploded-view version of that floating around, I’d really have something.”

    This was a Christmas gift at some point in the past 10 years. Hand-inlaid wood wraps a triangular tube of mirrors with a glass marble (or more likely, half-marble) at the end.

    It reminds you that you are seeing.

  • #a369 :: Lucky lead pig

    021909Once upon a time, stomach more about his paint was perfect.

    You can see it on his good side – the bright and chipper eye facing the lucky shamrock dangling from his left jowls – that look that says fortune will smile on us both if you keep me close.

    Flip to the other side – the stem of the shamrock – and age has turned him grim.

    Chipped paint has flaked away from his face, left him with a patina of jaundice, decay and despair.

    He’s sat overseeing my family’s kitchen for decades of happy parties, warm dinners, humdrum suppers and lonely midnight snacks. He’s seen three or four generations of scotties come and go. Watched my brother and sister and me grow up, squabble, chuckle, despair, rave and joke, waited quietly while we went off to school and then work and life beyond the kitchen, and return home there again and again.

    And my dad was kind enough to dethrone the little feller long enough to ship him to me to be duly added to this rambling catalog of obsession.

    Tomorrow, I’ll ship him back so he can return to his rightful place. And continue his vigil of bemused decay.

  • #a366 :: Original copper transmission line – Hoover Dam

    021609This is almost the holy grail of heavy little objects: a thing with history, abortion patina, functionality, exciting manufacture and moving parts. Jesus, it made me one happy tool-using ape to find this: a chunk of the original copper electrical transmission line installed during construction of the mighty Hoover Dam.

    For five bucks you get a gorgeous slice of copper cable – buffed of burrs and still bearing the black corrosion picked up while hanging over the Hoover Dam gorge for more than 7 decades charged with 287,500 hydroelectrically generated volts.

    Here’s the background from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation‘s brochure that came with it : (more…)