May 20, 2008
I love the Sears Crafstman tool guarantee. It’s simple: break it and they’ll replace it.For the rest of your life. Period. I bought these adjustable pliers a good 25-some years ago, sildenafil when I was spending hours at a time lying on my back under a filthy Volvo. Cursing. A lot …
Filed under: Artifact, Instrument, Jetsam, Objet, Part, symbol, Tool, weapon | Comments (0)
May 17, 2008
I hunted it down, this web searching from gift shop to gift shop in Kona last summer, stomach wiith a will. I wanted something real – of bone – something distinct from the beautiful, sildenafil overly-copied and -cheapened polynesian talismans littering the tourist coast of Hawaii’s big island. I eventually tracked this down at a […]
Filed under: Adornment, Artifact, Fetish, Instrument, Miniature, Model | Comments (0)
May 1, 2008
Strings own our music. Violin, viagra buy electric guitar, this site piano, search mandolin, koto, balalaika, electric bass, bull fiddle – all vibrate with the voices of plucked, sawn and hammered wires. More than brass or woodwind or electronics, second maybe only to drums in the pantheon of world musical instrumentation, strings run the longest […]
Filed under: Instrument, Jetsam, Part | Comments (0)
April 10, 2008
Peter Atwood hand-makes the most exquisite pocket tools. I discovered his work last summer via Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools newsletter. That one post, search and a subsequent re-post at BoingBoing made the New England tinker suddenly rock-star famous – and made his marvelous little wrenches, price knives, prybars and uncategorizable nifties virtually impossible for anyone […]
Filed under: Fetish, Instrument, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)
April 6, 2008
The sound gusted through him just before he staggered back and sat down hard in the marsh grass. A boom – probably a 12-gauge – arrived milliseconds after the shot caught him full in the chest and knocked him onto his heels. Funny, this site the delay. Kind of funny how that works. Who in […]
Filed under: Instrument, Microfiction, Objet, Tool | Comments (0)
February 27, 2008
Clutching the thick domes of bronze, hospital he waited. Not to strike yet. No, not yet. These were a gift. To be saved. To be waited for. Until it’s time. Memories of his long ride down boiled up now. He exhaled hard through pursed lips, and shook himself. He blew a hard, rattling raspberry, and […]
Filed under: Instrument, Microfiction, Objet, symbol, Tool | Comments (0)
February 24, 2008
A skosh. A nanometer. A smidgen. A c#nt-hair. A whit. Measurement of tiny gaps requires something capable of splitting hairs, help dicing degrees into tenths and tenths and tenths again. This old Brown & Sharpe micrometer is made of precision-milled stainless steel alloy, approved hashed up one side and down the other with notches & […]
Filed under: Instrument, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)
February 6, 2005
One of two things will happen: He’ll eat your heart off a pike, or he’ll have your guts for garters. You have a choice: You can fight him with a cutlass, or you can walk the plank. Choose: The devil or the deep blue sea. These little avatars, these plastic warriors are a safe outlet […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments (0)
January 1, 2005
To wait for a thing, to truly be patient and allow it to come at its own pace, is an inhuman act of will. We yearn – for new jobs, hot concerts, latest games, fast cars, slow weekends, a first kiss, a second chance, freedom, food, rest, love. Childhood trains us to await Christmas with […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments (0)
December 31, 2004
To wait for a thing, to truly be patient and allow it to come at its own pace, is an inhuman act of will. We yearn – for new jobs, hot concerts, latest games, fast cars, slow weekends, a first kiss, a second chance, freedom, food, rest, love. Childhood trains us to await Christmas with […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments (0)
December 16, 2004
Divans. Bobby sox. Fondue dishes. Poodle skirts. Cocktail shakers. Gingham tablecloths. Highball glasses. Swizzle sticks. Meerschaum pipes. Waffle irons. Ice crushers. Condiment squeeze bottles. Tiki mugs. Doo-wop 45s. Tupperware. Demitasses. Poker chips. Bridge mix. Tulips. Ambrosia. Corn forks. Booze drenches and lubricates human endeavor. We like a good drink with friends. We think about drinking. […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments (0)
August 6, 2004
Nothing makes my stomach churn like the anatomy of thermoplastic dolls. Their hair grows in numbered clumps, through symmetrically drilled holes in their plasticene skulls. Paint-irised eyes fringed with nylon fuzz tilt back on tiny weights – very sanpaku – and only little stop-pins keep you from seeing them roll all the way around to […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments (2)
June 11, 2004
Before any lens, a performance takes shape the instant the shutter is opened. It lasts a few milliseconds, so quickly as to not exactly “happen” at all and then the camera shuts its one good eye, sinking into blissful ignorance of what it has witnessed, the actions, people, places and things lurking inside the dark […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments Off on #122 :: Ball Compass
June 7, 2004
Before any lens, a performance takes shape the instant the shutter is opened. It lasts a few milliseconds, so quickly as to not exactly “happen” at all and then the camera shuts its one good eye, sinking into blissful ignorance of what it has witnessed, the actions, people, places and things lurking inside the dark […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments Off on #118 :: Peruvian ocarina
May 9, 2004
Here’s another amulet of urban protection, rendered useless by my faulty memory. It’s difficult to say how many of these I’ve owned over the years, for school lockers, bikes, gym lockers, strongboxes. Without the combination, it becomes a sturdy paperweight, thumb-twiddler, hammer-in-a-pinch. Back when I used them full-time, I wish there had been something like […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments Off on #89 :: Xylophone
April 15, 2004
Somebody in a factory somewhere peeled two cast-vinyl frog halves out of a still-hot mold. The air reeked of curing toxins, raw polymers. She glued them together with adhesive or heat, and took up a spraycan or an airbrush to dust the top of the thing (along with all of its brothers, maybe laid out […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments Off on #69 :: Monocular
April 3, 2004
Finding these rooted me fast, stabbing a map of the gargantuan Darwinian cosmos with a tiny pushpin labeled “you are here.” The kapok tree spends its life growing these only to release them to the earth, where they dry, twist, crack and split, releasing flossy seeds to the winds. Ergo, more kapok trees, and more […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments Off on #57 :: Thumb Piano
March 15, 2004
The U.S. military detonated at least nine nuclear bombs on little Eniwetok Atoll in the 1950s. They ranged in size from the world’s first hydrogen bombs – the 10.4-megaton twins, Mike 1 and Mike 2 on Halloween, 1952 – down to the smallish 8.5-kiloton Blackfoot bomb, set off on June 11, 1956. These were just […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments Off on #38 :: Nickel-plated pocket watch
March 3, 2004
This extraordinary electronic musical instrument/noisebox handmade by Professor Television measures about 3×3½x8 inches. I’ve always been fascinated by the mystical hand-waving gestures of theremin players, and the spacy/spooky music they make tweaks something deep in my inner child’s lizard brain: this … is … cooool it murmurs, in something of a “redrum” voice. You play […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments Off on #26 :: Hohner Little Lady
March 2, 2004
This extraordinary electronic musical instrument/noisebox handmade by Professor Television measures about 3×3½x8 inches. I’ve always been fascinated by the mystical hand-waving gestures of theremin players, and the spacy/spooky music they make tweaks something deep in my inner child’s lizard brain: this … is … cooool it murmurs, in something of a “redrum” voice. You play […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments (2)
February 24, 2004
This extraordinary electronic musical instrument/noisebox handmade by Professor Television measures about 3×3½x8 inches. I’ve always been fascinated by the mystical hand-waving gestures of theremin players, and the spacy/spooky music they make tweaks something deep in my inner child’s lizard brain: this … is … cooool it murmurs, in something of a “redrum” voice. You play […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments Off on #18 :: Calipers-style micrometer
February 21, 2004
This extraordinary electronic musical instrument/noisebox handmade by Professor Television measures about 3×3½x8 inches. I’ve always been fascinated by the mystical hand-waving gestures of theremin players, and the spacy/spooky music they make tweaks something deep in my inner child’s lizard brain: this … is … cooool it murmurs, in something of a “redrum” voice. You play […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments Off on #15 :: Drain valve / bell
February 19, 2004
This extraordinary electronic musical instrument/noisebox handmade by Professor Television measures about 3×3½x8 inches. I’ve always been fascinated by the mystical hand-waving gestures of theremin players, and the spacy/spooky music they make tweaks something deep in my inner child’s lizard brain: this … is … cooool it murmurs, in something of a “redrum” voice. You play […]
Filed under: Instrument | Comments (1)
