HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

Category: Tool

# a426 :: CD opener keychain

The 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
The 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 …
The 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 …
The 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 …
To 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?

4/18/2009
#a422 :: Steel ruler

Precision. 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.

4/14/2009
#a420 :: 1-inch hex nut

I stumbled across this at Pasadena City College Swap Meet last Sunday. The college seems to be in a constant state of construction, sildenafil and someone ha dropped it in the grass – a missing part for a mystery structure.

It put me in mind of this Todd Rundgren song, the lyrics of which go something like this …
Ive been wrong I had plans so big But the devils in the details I left out one thing No one to love me No one to love me No one to love For the want of a nail, the world was lost For the want of a nail, the world was lost For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost For the want of a shoe, the horse was lost For the want of a horse, the rider was lost For the want of a rider, the message was lost For the want of a rider, the message was lost For the want of a message, the battle was lost For the want of a battle, the war was lost For the want of a war, the kingdom was lost (such a tiny thing) Youre askin Whats all this talk about horses and war? Put yourself in the place of the man at the forge And day after day you live a life without love til the morning you cant take it anymore And you dont get up Multiply it a billion times Spread it all round the world Put the curse of loneliness on every boy and every girl Until everybodys kicking, everybodys scratching Everything seems to fail And it was all for the want of a nail Tell me what else could the answer be Dont hold back now Give me all your love Just a little more love A little tiny bit of love

4/12/2009
#a416 :: Fine drill set

Another import-tools swap-meet purchase: I can’t imagine what work requires the precision of an 80-gauge drillbit, visit web website like this but here it is, view a set of wire-fine steel bits ranging from that hair-like thinness up through the comparatively meaty 61-gauge bit.

I just bought the set so I could drill solder blobs out of a botched circuit board on this project I’m building. But holding this tiny set of hole-making tools (it’s about a quarter-inch thick) makes me want to design and build an oilfield the size of a shoebox, and drill for that deep reserve of crude oil that I feel certain lies just a foot beneath our floor.

4/8/2009
#a415 :: Stainless steel tweezers

This flea-market find was stamped out of chromed steel in Japan some years ago.

It’s an elegant, web perfect little machine: The horizontal tube on top is just big enough to house a flint and pressure spring, the wick is barely 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.
A thrilling adventure was in my near future. A piece of paper baked into a cookie, symptoms 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.
This flea-market find was stamped out of chromed steel in Japan some years ago.

It’s an elegant, cialis 40mg perfect little machine: The horizontal tube on top is just big enough to house a flint and pressure spring, viagra sale the wick is barely 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.
Down near the very root of my DNA chain lies the chromosomal sequence for opposable thumbs.

I use tools.

Why? Because they grant me the otherwise elusive super-powers for cutting, visit this twisting and manipulating things too hard, small, tight or delicate for my meaty paws to manage.

Because they are often heavy and cold and sturdy, pleasing to the touch and indispensable to the job.

And because, well, my fingertips can’t grasp anything with near the precision of cheap Pakistani steel tweezers honed to a needle tip.

Got these last weekend for just four dollars at the import-tools seller’s tent – a moveable feast, and one of my favorite places in the world.

For just a few bucks, you, too can have superpowers!

4/7/2009
#a414 :: Miniature lighter

A 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.

A 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.
This 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.

4/6/2009
#a411 Ken Onion “Chive”

Put 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.
I 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.

4/2/2009
#a408 :: Meggy Jr. RGB

In 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.
It’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.

3/30/2009
#a405 :: Qee by Jeff Soto

This thing came from this box.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It doesn’t appear to be recyclable.

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

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

3/27/2009
#a399 :: Teeth-whitening strips

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When your diet brings a steady stream of these as well as iced tea, healing coffee and the occasional cigar, you wind up with a mouthful of yellowed bone. It ain’t attractive.

These seem to be wax strips backed with a miracle goop that is one part peroxide, one part dentifrice and one part glue.

They help clean things up.

They also help you feel like a boxer, shoulders tensed, waiting for the bell during the half-hour a day you’re supposed to wear them.

3/21/2009
#a397 :: Chinese headlamp

She 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.
She 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.
The 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 …

3/19/2009
#a393 :: Used car key

In 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.

3/15/2009
#a391 :: Neodymium cylinder

I have a thing for magnets.

These are powerful enough to leave blood blisters if you let two of them snap together on you.

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

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

However, abortion that’s not a magnet. this is a magnet. Any of ’em. Go on, pick one.

3/13/2009
#a387 :: Pinballs

Thanks 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.

3/9/2009
#a386 :: Promotional chalk

The cookies we bought from my Brownie daughter arrived this week. New flavor: Dulce de Leche. Yum.
The cookies we bought from my Brownie daughter arrived this week. New flavor: Dulce de Leche.

Dulce de Leche: New for 2009, generic and inspired by the classic confections of Latin America, information pills these sweet, indulgent cookies are rich with milk caramel chips and stripes. They come in a turquoise box, and are made by Little Brownie Bakers.

Yum.
So, drugs I got to ride bikes last night with Lance Armstrong, shop who was doing a commemorative group ride down Sunset to launch a big, fund-raising touring art exhibit.

They gave out chalk to the 100 t-shirted riders and the other several hundred of us tagalongs, who promptly took to graffiti’ing up the street in a generally positive fashion.

Still, it was fun riding down otherwise deserted Sunset Boulevard with these people and no cars.

3/8/2009
#a383 :: Foreign mystery parcel

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

There’s a pair serving as a keyfob, more about 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 frGo on: shake them and listen.
These have been floating around my parents’ house for as long as I can remember, advice 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.
These have been floating around my parents’ house for as long as I can remember, cure by the dozens, it seems.

There’s a pair serving as a keyfob, try 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.
Oh, troche 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, pills the neat knot of sturdy nylon twine, for sale 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” …

3/5/2009
#a378 :: Shaving brush

My mother once began one of her wonderful short stories with the line, drugs “Harry Farmer loved his teeth.”

If I’ve gotten that right, visit I’m sure she’ll correct me here, as she will remember with me our many misadventures with our (own, not collective) teeth.

Tooth care is not necessarily a family obsession, but we all have our share of caps, crowns, veneers, amalgam fillings and exploratory filings committed by various dentists over the decade. And while we share a healthy disdain for Novocain and spit cups we also hold a grudging respect for good dentistry.

This lovely little gadget came from the office of the good Dr. John T[name redacted] where I learned earlier this week that I may not need that root canal I’ve been dreading. We’re now in wait-and-see mode, downgraded from Defcon Aw Fuck.

In any case, I am reminded by such events to floss my teeth. Which I will now go and do.
My mother once began one of her wonderful short stories with the line, search “Harry Farmer loved his teeth.”

If I’ve gotten that right, I’m sure she’ll correct me here, as she will remember with me our many misadventures with our (own, not collective) teeth.

Tooth care is not necessarily a family obsession, but we all have our share of caps, crowns, veneers, amalgam fillings and exploratory filings committed by various dentists over the decade. And while we share a healthy disdain for Novocain and spit cups we also hold a grudging respect for good dentistry.

This lovely little gadget came from the office of the good Dr. John T[name redacted] where I learned earlier this week that I may not need that root canal I’ve been dreading. After he filed down a spot that I had take for a bad root, chewing doesn’t hurt quite so much, and we’re now in wait-and-see mode, downgraded from Defcon Aw Fuck.

In any case, I am reminded by such events to floss my teeth. Which I will now go and do.
My mother once began one of her wonderful short stories with the line, viagra 40mg “Harry Farmer loved his teeth.”

If I’ve gotten that wrong, I’m sure she’ll correct me here, as she will remind me which volume, and remember with me our many misadventures with our (own, not collective) teeth.

Tooth care is not necessarily a family obsession, but we all have our share of caps, crowns, veneers, amalgam fillings and exploratory filings committed by various dentists over the decades. And while we share a healthy disdain for Novocain and spit cups we also hold a grudging respect for good dentistry.

This lovely little gadget came from the office of the good Dr. John T[name redacted] where I learned earlier this week that I may not need that root canal I’ve been dreading. After he filed down a spot that I had take for a bad root, chewing doesn’t hurt quite so much, and we’re now in wait-and-see mode, downgraded from Defcon Aw Fuck.

In any case, I am reminded by such events to floss my teeth. Which I will now go and do.
My mother once began one of her wonderful short stories with the line, viagra “Harry Farmer loved his teeth.”

If I’ve gotten that right, discount I’m sure she’ll correct me here, adiposity as she will remind me which volume, and remember with me our many misadventures with our (own, not collective) teeth.

Tooth care is not necessarily a family obsession, but we all have our share of caps, crowns, veneers, amalgam fillings and exploratory filings committed by various dentists over the decade. And while we share a healthy disdain for Novocain and spit cups we also hold a grudging respect for good dentistry.

This lovely little gadget came from the office of the good Dr. John T[name redacted] where I learned earlier this week that I may not need that root canal I’ve been dreading. After he filed down a spot that I had take for a bad root, chewing doesn’t hurt quite so much, and we’re now in wait-and-see mode, downgraded from Defcon Aw Fuck.

In any case, I am reminded by such events to floss my teeth. Which I will now go and do.
Before the age of fluorocarbons and exotic esthers, treatment a man used to scrub his bar of shaving soap into a lather with one of these, here 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.

2/28/2009
#a377 :: Floss capsule

Kikkerland is quite possibly the weirdest little purveyor of HLOs on the planet.

Besides being responsible for the Kosmojetz and Zecar that brought endless hours of fruitless, view silly play to my desktop, treat they make lamps, doctor stationery and barware.

I don’t know which category of modern-living fetishes this falls into, but it’s rather useful – a half-dozen tiny screwdriver bits held captive in a knurled, hollow aluminum handle. Pop the o-ring-sealed end cap, pull out a bit, put it into the magnetic socket on the business end and – hey – you’re
Kikkerland is quite possibly the weirdest little purveyor of HLOs on the planet.

Besides being responsible for the Kosmojetz and Zecar that brought endless hours of fruitless, capsule silly play to my desktop, ask they make lamps, see stationery and barware.

I don’t know which category of modern-living fetishes this falls into, but it’s rather useful – a half-dozen tiny screwdriver bits held captive in a knurled, hollow aluminum handle. Pop the o-ring-sealed end cap, pull out a bit, put it into the magnetic socket on the business end and – hey – you’re screwing.

My mother once began one of her wonderful short stories with the line, ampoule “Harry Farmer loved his teeth.”

If I’ve gotten that wrong, adiposity I’m sure she’ll correct me here, as she will remind me of its title and which volume to find it in, and remember with me our many misadventures with our (own, not collective) teeth.

Tooth care is not necessarily a family obsession, but we all have our share of caps, crowns, veneers, amalgam fillings and exploratory filings committed by various dentists over the decades. And while we share a healthy disdain for Novocain and spit cups we also hold a grudging respect for good dentistry.

This lovely little gadget came from the office of the good Dr. John T[name redacted] where I learned earlier this week that I may not need that root canal I’ve been dreading. After he filed down a spot that I had take for a bad root, chewing doesn’t hurt quite so much, and we’re now in wait-and-see mode, downgraded from Defcon Aw Fuck.

In any case, I am reminded by such events to floss my teeth. Which I will now go and do.

2/27/2009
#a376 :: Tiny screwdriver kit

I 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, stomach 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, this 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.
I 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, ambulance 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, site 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.
Kikkerland is quite possibly the weirdest little purveyor of HLOs on the planet.

Besides being responsible for the Kosmojetz and Zecar that brought endless hours of fruitless, search silly play to my desktop, here they make lamps, discount stationery and barware.

I don’t know which category of modern-living fetishes this falls into, but it’s rather useful – a half-dozen tiny screwdriver bits held captive in a knurled, hollow aluminum handle. Pop the o-ring-sealed end cap, pull out a bit, put it into the magnetic socket on the business end and – hey – you’re screwing.

2/26/2009
#a374 :: Cookie cutter

Two thumbsplats for eyes, sale story slick back his ears, visit unhealthy give him an immense tail, troche and now he’s some sort of steroidal racing bunny-ghost.

My daughter’s latest class project calls for a creature endowed with camouflage. She made this – and several others like it – out of Super Sculpey. It’s so
This is meta: I usually shoot objects while looking through these. If I flip the metaphor, treatment is there a little me down there on the stand running around behind the lenses with a camera, shooting up?

Even spectacles have weird dreams.
Girl Scout Cookie season is burgeoning, cost which means a surfeit of Brownietude at our place.

Over the weekend, about it the kitchen filled with little girls (and a couple of moms) so fully that the boy and I took refuge in errands and a roller skating mission to Perry’s.

When we returned the air smelled rich with baking, the floor beneath the kitchen table bore a film of flower dust and crumbs and a few of these things are still lying around.

2/24/2009
#a371 :: Computer glasses

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
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, more about 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.
Guest post from my son, viagra approved 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, this 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.
This is meta: I usually shoot objects while looking through these. If I flip the metaphor, drug is there a little me down there on the stand running around behind the lenses with a camera, shooting up?

Even spectacles have weird dreams.

2/21/2009
#a367 :: Pull-tab collection

This 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…)

2/17/2009
#a366 :: Original copper transmission line – Hoover Dam

This 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…)

2/16/2009
#a365 :: Lead type
I 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
I 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.
I 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.
It’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…)
2/15/2009
#a360 :: Temperance-era novelty bar tool

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

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

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

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

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

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

2/9/2009