Category: Jetsam

  • #a433 :: Potato chip

    042409A wonderful little creation – the kids brought these home from school one day. They folded sheets of paper to form these taut, help shallow cones that pop outward when squeezed the right way.

    The *pop* ejects a tiny drawing – in this case, our daughter’s drawing of us.

    The message is “Happy 15th Anaversery.”
    042509Her: Dad, this site is this a heavy little object?

    Me: Yep.

  • #a429 :: Rotten witch fingers

    042009At some point last month, approved 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, check 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, buy 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
    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, sildenafil and a little infrared sensor triggered an animated rubber witch’s hand to snatch at yours and a voicebox would rasp, what is ed “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.

  • #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.

  • #a427 :: Refrigerator shelf shard

    041809To someone who uses knives as much as I do, this site this thing is about as useful as Truck Balls.

    You press it against the side of a sealed CD or DVD, depressing a spring-loaded cap to reveal a tiny steel blade that slices open the shrink-wrap.

    They were giving them away today at Amoeba for National Record Store Week – something I didn’t really discover until I got home to unpack my goodie bag. Had I known, I probably would have politely declined, and let someone else enjoy it.Mbr Now I can either keep it around, adding to the household clutter, or huck it since the metal makes it unrecyclable.

    Do people ever think about the amount of material they’re pumping into landfills and the atmosphere by manufacturing this kind of object?
    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, ed 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.

  • # a426 :: CD opener keychain

    041709The fetish of packaging, viagra 100mg the gloss of the new. Plastic lids for shaving cream come in two sizes – the simple quarter-sized button protector found on Barbasol or this full-bloat blowmolded cylindrical monster, look which covered the can of Gilette I bought last week.

    With the earth’s carbon load trending toward the toxic, I worry about the way we’re accounting for the shit that manufacturing puts into the air. Sure, China and India are the planet’s booming engines of cheap manufacture, heedless of air scrubbers and parts-per-million of nonorganic particulates and other niceties of owning your effluence.

    But they’re booming because we Americans – prim, Prius-driving, grocery-bag-recycling little smuglies that we are – still consume the lion’s share of the world’s manufactured goods.

    Something to think about as Earth Day approaches and the temp in my office is preparing to top 90 in the middle of April.

    So I could dump this back into the waste stream – hoping that the
    041709The fetish of packaging, approved the gloss of the new. Plastic lids for shaving cream come in two sizes – the simple quarter-sized button protector found on Barbasol or this full-bloat blowmolded cylindrical monster, which covered the can of Gilette I bought last week.

    With the earth’s carbon load trending toward the toxic, I worry about the way we’re accounting for the shit that manufacturing puts into the air. Sure, China and India are the planet’s booming engines of cheap manufacture, heedless of air scrubbers and parts-per-million of nonorganic particulates and other niceties of owning your effluence.

    But they’re booming because we Americans – prim, Prius-driving, grocery-bag-recycling little smuglies that we are – still consume the lion’s share of the world’s manufactured goods.

    Something to think about as Earth Day approaches and the temp in my office is preparing to top 90 in the middle of April.

    So I could dump this back into the waste stream – hoping that L.A. City trash gleaners reroute it to the proper recycling chain.

    Or I could think of some other use for it …
    041709The fetish of packaging, buy more about the gloss of the new. Plastic lids for shaving cream come in two sizes – the simple quarter-sized button protector found on Barbasol or this full-bloat blowmolded cylindrical monster, advice which covered the can of Gilette I bought last week.

    With the earth’s carbon load trending toward the toxic, I worry about the way we’re accounting for the shit that manufacturing puts into the air. Sure, China and India are the planet’s booming engines of cheap manufacture, heedless of air scrubbers and parts-per-million of nonorganic particulates and other niceties of owning your effluence.

    But they’re booming because we Americans – prim, Prius-driving, grocery-bag-recycling little smuglies that we are – still consume the lion’s share of the world’s manufactured goods.

    Something to think about as Earth Day approaches and the temp in my office is preparing to top 90 in the middle of April.

    So I could dump this back into the waste stream – hoping that L.A. City trash gleaners reroute it to the proper recycling chain.

    Or I could think of some other use for it …
    041709The fetish of packaging, drugs the gloss of the new. Plastic lids for shaving cream come in two sizes – the simple quarter-sized button protector found on Barbasol or this full-bloat blowmolded cylindrical monster, which covered the can of Gilette I bought last week.

    With the earth’s carbon load trending toward the toxic, I worry about the way we’re accounting for the shit that manufacturing puts into the air. Sure, China and India are the planet’s booming engines of cheap manufacture, heedless of air scrubbers and parts-per-million of nonorganic particulates and other niceties of owning your effluence.

    But they’re booming because we Americans – prim, Prius-driving, grocery-bag-recycling little smuglies that we are – still consume the lion’s share of the world’s manufactured goods.

    Something to think about as Earth Day approaches and the temp in my office is preparing to top 90 in the middle of April.

    So I could dump this back into the waste stream – hoping that L.A. City trash gleaners reroute it to the proper recycling chain.

    Or I could think of some other use for it …
    041809To someone who uses knives as much as I do, try this thing is about as useful as Truck Balls.

    You press it against the side of a sealed CD or DVD, viagra 100mg depressing a spring-loaded cap to reveal a tiny steel blade that slices open the shrink-wrap.

    They were giving them away today at Amoeba for National Record Store Week – something I didn’t really discover until I got home to unpack my goodie bag. Had I known, viagra I probably would have politely declined, and let someone else enjoy it.

    Now I can either keep it around, adding to the household clutter, or huck it since the metal makes it unrecyclable.

    Do people ever think about the amount of material they’re pumping into landfills and the atmosphere by manufacturing this kind of object?

  • #a425 :: Gilette Shaving Cream cap

    041609This also came home with the kids from their hike – I’ve always liked the unforgivingly ugly shape of seeds. They are meant to be discovered by accident (bite into a delicious fruit, abortion find a nasty, woody chunk of bitterness) and discarded as useless – the better to propagate their kind.
    041609This also came home with the kids from their hike – I’ve always liked the woody, capsule unforgivingly ugly shape of seeds. They are meant to be discovered by accident (bite into a delicious fruit, fin
    041709The fetish of packaging, sildenafil the gloss of the new. Plastic lids for shaving cream come in two sizes – the simple quarter-sized button protector found on Barbasol or this full-bloat blowmolded cylindrical monster, which covered the can of Gilette I bought last week.

    With the earth’s carbon load trending toward the toxic, I worry about the way we’re accounting for the shit that manufacturing puts into the air. Sure, China and India are the planet’s booming engines of cheap manufacture, heedless of air scrubbers and parts-per-million of nonorganic particulates and other niceties of owning your effluence.

    But they’re booming because we Americans – prim, Prius-driving, grocery-bag-recycling little smuglies that we are – still consume the lion’s share of the world’s manufactured goods.

    Something to think about as Earth Day approaches and the temp in my office is preparing to top 90 in the middle of April.

    So I could dump this back into the waste stream – hoping that L.A. City trash gleaners reroute it to the proper recycling chain.

    Or I could think of some other use for it.

    Meantime, maybe I need to go back to shaving with soap from a mug …

  • #a424 :: Fruit pit

    041609This also came home with the kids from their hike – I’ve always liked the unforgivingly ugly shape of seeds. They are meant to be discovered by accident (bite into a delicious fruit, abortion find a nasty, woody chunk of bitterness) and discarded as useless – the better to propagate their kind.

  • #a404 :: Plastic box

    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, buy treat 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 ough to have been some plan for its existence beyond point of use.

    Terrarium? Coin purse? Camping cup? Mouse coffin?

  • #a397 :: Chinese headlamp

    0318a092She had set up the square little red worktable on end, cialis 40mg its legs surrounding her as if she were behind a counter.

    She offered me anything I wanted to eat. I said I’d like some coffee and strawberry cake. She served it in imaginary hunks from a little tin tea set.

    I pronounced it delicious.

    That night, she left this on my desk.

    She’s seven.
    0318a092She had set up the square little red worktable on end, dosage its legs surrounding her as if she were behind a counter.

    She offered me anything I wanted to eat. I said I’d like some coffee and strawberry cake. She served it in imaginary hunks from a little tin tea set.

    I pronounced it delicious.

    That night, she left this on my desk.

    She’s seven.
    031809The second one of these things to fail in five days. First, ambulance my dependable Cat-Eye flung itself to its death from a busted handlebar mount, the white beam tumbling wildly down to clatter in the dark. Then this, which snapped from its mount as I adjusted it on the way down my hill before dawn today. it exploded in the street, disgorging the battery carrier and AAs from a sprung cap. Hmm … what to do with all these LEDs …

  • #a394 :: Mystery gizmo

    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 Appleproduct, stuff more about but has a vinyl flap-valve at its center. No one in my family can explain it.

  • #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…)

  • #a381 :: Flexplay DVD

    0303091This is one of those freaks of science 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, viagra approved link contained within the bonding resin of the disc, which reacts with oxygen. When the seal is broken on the vacuum-packed disc, 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.

  • #a375 :: Grass frond

    022509I walked back to the house this morning after dropping the kids at school.

    I brushed the foliage outside our house with my hand.

    This came loose.

    Keeping my rhythm so I could square up head-on with the workday, sildenafil store I stuck it into a clutch of hibernating agapanthus and kept cruising down the front steps (we live on a hill).

    Then I envisioned the grass frond drying out and casting its seeds, cialis 40mg and fronds of grass growing up through the agapanthus.

    So I plucked it out and turned it to a better purpose.

    Separating the grass from the plant would have been tedious, and ongoing.

    Ars longa. Yardwork longest.

  • #a370 :: crushed putty

    021909Once upon a time, physician 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.
    022009a Guest post from my son, abortion 9.

    This silly putty was found under my shoe after sitting there for a few days. The long line down the middle is from the shoelace under the shoe. The other part with the ridges is from the pattern on the sole of the shoe. It’s kind of squishy, but not as squishy as play-doh. The other cool part is that putty bounces. I probably haven’t played with it since I was five. I didn’t intentionally avenge the putty by accidentally tearing the shoe to bits playing handball when I wore it to school the next day.

  • #a367 :: Pull-tab collection

    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…)

  • #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…)

  • #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…)

  • #a364 :: Las Vegas thrill tickets

    021309It’s rare that an object straddles the razor-fine line between art and camp, remedy more about between craft and kitsch.

    Yet here is a little man of bronze, remedy made to recline in the cup of a water-pocked stone.

    His blobby countenance, his Giacomettian proportions keep him from being a thing of manufactured cuteness and maybe lend him a bit of gravitas. Or, he could be just a quaint paperweight. I can’t decide.

    This is something my father lent to the cause by way of his collection.
    021409I work in this office, dosage 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 … Next morning, I lay on my back on the floor of our Las Vegas hotel room realigning my spine and marveling at two things: (more…)

  • #a358 :: Palm fragment

    0205091Children’s toys approximate reality.

    In the happy world of Rokenbok this is not a huge, page filthy boulder shot through with veins of iron and smeared with the engine oil it’s been sitting in in the junkyard where you unearthed it after the glacier dropped it 3.2 million years ago.

    It’s just part of a load that you spend idle hours shifting happily from one end of the Action Sorter & Conveyor Set to the other. Scoop up the boulders, dump them in the hopper, watch the little conveyor belt shift and sort them, repeat.

    The toy hung around for a good three years after Santa brought it, until its recipient tired of it and moved on to videogaming, elaborate science fiction illustration and (shudder) HTML. I think we eBayed it, but this little rock escaped to remind us of who the boy once was.
    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, sildenafil whose families then sold it off in ever-decreasing slices and slivers, prescription Los Angeles has always been shaped by grabbers, pill opportunists and self-reinventors.

    Angelenos take, procure, manufacture, buy, steal, co-opt, give birth to or create whatever the hell they think they need to move forward … (more…)

  • #a357 :: Rokenbok ball

    020509This looks like an ice core taken from the frozen surface of a lake the size of a desktop. It’s actually chunk of Plexiglas that Dad sliced off of a 3/4-inch-diameter rod he had kicking around somewhere in the basement.

    He was kind enough to mail it to me along with his
    020509This looks like an ice core taken from the frozen surface of a lake the size of a desktop. It’s actually chunk of Plexiglas that Dad sliced off of a 3/4-inch-diameter rod he had kicking around somewhere in the basement.

    He was kind enough to mail it to me along with his other HLOs, cialis 40mg which I’ll be featuring over the next few days.
    0205091Children’s toys approximate reality.

    In the happy world of Rokenbok this is not a huge, mind filthy boulder shot through with veins of iron and smeared with the engine oil it’s been sitting in in the junkyard where you unearthed it after the glacier dropped it 3.2 million years ago.

    It’s just part of a load that you spend idle hours shifting happily from one end of the Action Sorter & Conveyor Set to the other. Scoop up the boulders, dosage dump them in the hopper, capsule watch the little conveyor belt shift and sort them, repeat.

    The toy hung around for a good three years after Santa brought it, until its recipient tired of it and moved on to videogaming, elaborate science fiction illustration and (shudder) HTML. I think we eBayed it, but this little rock escaped to remind us of who the boy once was: A sweaty, two-fisted quarry foreman.

  • #a356 :: Plexiglas disc

    020409A cunning little paper box limned with cetaceans – cheerful dolphins, patient a playful sperm whale, a … what could possible be the apt adjective for a narwhal?

    From the previously mentioned collection of Dad.
    020409A cunning little paper box limned with cetaceans – cheerful dolphins, page a playful sperm whale, information pills a … what could possible be the apt adjective for a narwhal?

    From the previously mentioned collection of Dad.
    020509This looks like an ice core taken from the frozen surface of a lake the size of a desktop. It’s actually chunk of Plexiglas that Dad sliced off of a 3/4-inch-diameter rod he had kicking around somewhere in the basement.

    He was kind enough to mail it to me along with his other HLOs, more about which I’ll be featuring over the next few days.

  • #a354 :: Club flyer

    020309I picked this up from dozens I found scattered on the sidewalk in downtown L.A. the other day.

    I’m not sure which pisses me off more: that someone blew the cash to have flyers for a one-time event printed in four colors and chromekote only to have someone else throw them all over the ground – or that there is actually someone getting paid to spin tracks under the name “DJ Dave Rape.”

    What’s next = DJ Knife in the Eye? DJ Festering Syphilis? DJ Republican Dictatorship?

    Okay. Now I’m sounding like a crotchety old man.

  • #a345 :: Kershaw pocketknife

    0124091This nation has bought into the culture of preciousness from the very first needlepoint sampler of the earliest Don’t Tread on Me flag.

    We can’t say we invented it- I think we can thank the Egyptians or the first culture that ever created chubby little fertility-goddess fetishes for that.

    But the U.S. has a by-God pride of ownership in kitsch-oozing preciousness. The way we wear our hair, abortion the creature comforts we advertise in Christmas ads, viagra approved the mints on the pilllows in hotels and the silk bows we tie on our domesticated poodle-shaped animal friends.

    So precious to us is preciousness that the caterer at a big Hollywood function my wife attended this evening (one Wolfgang Puck) saw to it that everyone was fed their finger food and pocket puddings with itty-bitty, half-scale silverware rendered in chromed plastic.

    Unsustainable, landfill-bound straight-up manufactured trash. By the thousands.

    Again – when we look at the toxins we bring upon our own land for the sake of a few seconds’ worth of enjoyment
    012509My old Kershaw.

    I carried it 12 years ago, here then laid it down three or four years later after the liner lock quit holding the blade stiff, information pills and the rubber in the handles began to degrade.

    It’s still an elegant little tool and feels wonderful to open. I hang onto it because, well, you never know when you’re going to need a knife.

  • #a344 :: Chrome-plastic miniature cutlery

    012309This tin of oil-based printing ink has not changed since I bought it (counting on his fingers) nearly 15 years ago on my honeymoon in Beijing.

    Intended to be art supplies for some project that hasn’t yet materialized, physician it’s been sitting at the bottom of a drawer, visit this site waiting to be used.

    The stuff takes forever to dry out. I’m tempted to cover it and leave it untouched for another 15 years, as a sort of ongoing talisman against adversity.
    012309This tin of oil-based printing ink has not changed since I bought it (counting on his fingers) nearly 15 years ago on my honeymoon in Beijing.

    Intended to be art supplies for some project that hasn’t yet materialized, this site it’s been sitting at the bottom of a drawer, waiting to be used.

    The stuff takes forever to dry out. I’m tempted to cover it and leave it untouched for another 15 years, as a sort of ongoing talisman against adversity.
    0124091This nation has bought into the culture of preciousness from the very first needlepoint sampler of the earliest Don’t Tread on Me flag.

    We can’t say we invented it- I think we can thank the Egyptians or the first culture that ever created chubby little fertility-goddess fetishes for that.

    But the U.S. has a by-God pride of ownership in kitsch-oozing preciousness. The way we wear our hair, more about the creature comforts we advertise in Christmas ads, viagra the mints on the pilllows in hotels and the silk bows we tie on our domesticated poodle-shaped animal friends.

    So precious to us is preciousness that the caterer at a big Hollywood function my wife attended this evening (one Wolfgang Puck) saw to it that everyone was fed their finger food and pocket puddings with itty-bitty, thumb half-scale silverware rendered in chromed plastic.

    Unsustainable, landfill-bound straight-up manufactured trash. By the thousands.

    Again – when we look at the toxins we bring upon our own land for the sake of a few seconds’ worth of enjoyment – we really should draw a sharp breath and pause …

  • #a342 :: Sony-Ericsson Bluetooth headset

    012209This stuff just sort of stacks up, check doesn’t it.

    Old hardware: power adapters, obsolete cellphones, underequipped storage devices – eclipsed technology.

    This headset is actually still operational and could be working today – if only I hadn’t snapped the earhook off it at some point.

    Dead tech.