March 15, 2008
Disc-slabs of galvanized steel, medical 15/16ths of an inch in diameter. Electricians punch them out of junction boxes: Punch the slug. Plug the collar. Hook up the conduit – juice. Just rewired our basement. Contemplating a purpose for them.
Filed under: Jetsam, Tool | Comments (0)
February 29, 2008
This sort of junk just piles up around my office. It’s totally useless, store but just slightly too cool-looking and fun to fiddle with to just huck in the trash. This cursed little Hitachi ate all my homework one night, search like, cheapest five years ago. So I had it yanked out my Powerbook and […]
Filed under: Jetsam, Objet, Part | Comments (0)
February 10, 2005
A brain tremor emerges from childhood, a submerged snag in the deep, slow-flowing river of memory: I was probably three or four when I put my forefinger and thumb together, tight, pinching nothing and imagining a whale in there, its full tonnage trapped between my fingerprints. It was a huge concept for a kid – […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments (0)
November 30, 2004
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments Off on #295 :: Sweetgum Seed Pod
November 22, 2004
Iconic, kinetic, and about as simple-minded as a yo-yo, the Wheel-O was your own hand-held Sputnik. The red wheel spins on axle-tips of magnetized metal that cling to the wire frame. Tip the frame back and forth, and it spins faster as it rolls around the frame. Get good enough at it, you can get […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments Off on #287 :: Turtle Shell
November 16, 2004
Iconic, kinetic, and about as simple-minded as a yo-yo, the Wheel-O was your own hand-held Sputnik. The red wheel spins on axle-tips of magnetized metal that cling to the wire frame. Tip the frame back and forth, and it spins faster as it rolls around the frame. Get good enough at it, you can get […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments Off on #281 :: Nut
November 10, 2004
Iconic, kinetic, and about as simple-minded as a yo-yo, the Wheel-O was your own hand-held Sputnik. The red wheel spins on axle-tips of magnetized metal that cling to the wire frame. Tip the frame back and forth, and it spins faster as it rolls around the frame. Get good enough at it, you can get […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments Off on #275 :: Volcanic ash
November 3, 2004
Iconic, kinetic, and about as simple-minded as a yo-yo, the Wheel-O was your own hand-held Sputnik. The red wheel spins on axle-tips of magnetized metal that cling to the wire frame. Tip the frame back and forth, and it spins faster as it rolls around the frame. Get good enough at it, you can get […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments (6)
October 16, 2004
Iconic, kinetic, and about as simple-minded as a yo-yo, the Wheel-O was your own hand-held Sputnik. The red wheel spins on axle-tips of magnetized metal that cling to the wire frame. Tip the frame back and forth, and it spins faster as it rolls around the frame. Get good enough at it, you can get […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments Off on #251 :: Calculator keys
October 1, 2004
Iconic, kinetic, and about as simple-minded as a yo-yo, the Wheel-O was your own hand-held Sputnik. The red wheel spins on axle-tips of magnetized metal that cling to the wire frame. Tip the frame back and forth, and it spins faster as it rolls around the frame. Get good enough at it, you can get […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments (4)
September 20, 2004
Ramune soda itself is nothing remarkable – a pleasant, ineffectual carbonated citrus drink, as clear and forgettable as Sierra Mist, 7-Up and their ilk. But the bottle – a patented marvel of modernized glass-blowing – is a wonderful toy, souvenir and conversation piece. The glass marble waits seated in a rubber collar in the bottle’s […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments Off on #224 :: Magnolia Pod
September 3, 2004
this – an elaborate ice castle lit from within. It glows with a liquid intensity, the frosted bulb cavity diffusing all 25 watts of its little bulb through about two pounds of solid glass. It would make a dandy blunt instrument – coldcock your prey, then fling it to a concrete floor to shatter into […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments (1)
August 31, 2004
this – an elaborate ice castle lit from within. It glows with a liquid intensity, the frosted bulb cavity diffusing all 25 watts of its little bulb through about two pounds of solid glass. It would make a dandy blunt instrument – coldcock your prey, then fling it to a concrete floor to shatter into […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments Off on #204 :: Discarded flasher lenses
July 27, 2004
The invention of the white LED has sparked a renaissance in personal illumination. The carbon-battery-powered torch in 1899 began pushing back the darkness around us at night that was only somewhat held at bay by oil and kerosene lamps. Beef that up into brick-sized 9-volt-powered floods, tweak it into the shape of a cop’s metal […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments Off on #168 :: Deformed Paper Cup
July 16, 2004
A good pen is a transformative tool. If it is heavy and strange enough in your hand, it opens pathways in your writing circuitry where none existed, allowing creative flow from channels hitherto untapped. There is nothing so heavy and strange, nor pleasureable and – for the money – full of cheap thrills – as […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments Off on #157 :: Cholla skeleton
July 4, 2004
There’s something timeless and iconic about this chubby, vulcanized chunk of cheer. Ernie sang about him. You can buy his childlike optimism in bulk. He’s a quiz, an electronics warning, an obsession, an animated irritainment, and a target for black humor. And – oh, phenomenon most rare – he’s an unstoppable blight upon the waters […]
Filed under: Jetsam | Comments Off on #145 :: Yosemite Debris
June 9, 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: Jetsam | Comments Off on #120 :: Projectile
May 18, 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: Jetsam | Comments Off on #98 :: Carapace
May 7, 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: Jetsam | Comments (3)
April 12, 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: Jetsam | Comments Off on #66 :: Balloon Anchor
April 11, 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: Jetsam | Comments Off on #65 :: Sea glass
April 4, 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: Jetsam | Comments Off on #58 :: Tree Pod
April 1, 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: Jetsam | Comments Off on #55 :: Boot charm
March 31, 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: Jetsam | Comments Off on #54 :: Road hazard
