February 4, 2009
A cunning little paper box limned with cetaceans – cheerful dolphins, a playful sperm whale, a … what could possibly be the apt adjective for a narwhal? From the previously mentioned collection of Dad.
Filed under: Art, Ephemera, My father's HLOs, Tool | Comments (2)
January 27, 2009
Every time I use it, I expect its original android owner to melt down my office door and demand it back. This rode home in a goodie bag from a birthday party at my son’s school. I love the millefiore design aesthetic, which makes me wonder if mistakes vanish more easily when rubbed with yellow […]
Filed under: Found Object, Tool | Comments (0)
January 26, 2009
It used to be Bic Stics, Bic ballpoints, the occasional Shaeffer Bros. throwaway or oddball Pentel gel-tip – whatever. Whatever the newspaper clerks stocked the supply closet with – that’s how I wrote. Tools didn’t matter. The work did. Once I moved out of dead trees and into the trackless wastes of the interwebs, I […]
Filed under: Ephemera, Fetish, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)
January 25, 2009
My old Kershaw. I carried it 12 years ago, then laid it down three or four years later after the liner lock quit holding the blade stiff, 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 […]
Filed under: Jetsam, Tool, Toy, weapon | Comments (1)
January 24, 2009
This 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 […]
Filed under: Adornment, Ephemera, Facsimile, Jetsam, Miniature, Tool | Comments (3)
January 23, 2009
This 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, it’s been sitting at the bottom of a drawer, waiting to be used. The stuff takes forever […]
Filed under: Ephemera, Tool | Comments (0)
January 22, 2009
This stuff just sort of stacks up, 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.
Filed under: Jetsam, Tool | Comments (0)
January 21, 2009
I never repeat heavy little objects. I mean, never. My little daily obsession can be a cruel taskmistress, sometimes commanding me to find something cool to post even when nothing cool has come through my life. But like an idiot samurai, I live and die by a code set in motion long ago and over […]
Filed under: Adornment, Artifact, Ephemera, Facsimile, Fetish, Objet, symbol, Tool, weapon | Comments (0)
January 15, 2009
According to the Nailhunter, who has a dizzyingly exhaustive collection of these online, workers pounded date nails into railroad ties, bridges and telephone poles to identify and date the structure, sequence and ownership of the structures. You can pick them up at swap meets for a buck or two. This one really appealed to my […]
Filed under: Artifact, Ephemera, symbol, Tool | Comments (0)
January 9, 2009
According to these guys, the Universal Minute 16 shot 16mm film in little cartridges. It’s a tight, dense little chunk of stainless steel, about half the size of a box of cigarettes. A fingernail pops up the two panes of the viewfinder. Round metal stud under the right finger trips the guillotine shutter, thumb lever […]
Filed under: Ephemera, Fetish, General, Tool | Comments (0)
January 7, 2009
She fiddles with it. Finally squeezes a needle onto it. And fixes up. Big fucking horse syringe. Soup spoon full of horse. The snap and heat of the Bic under the spoon brings her to:
Filed under: Artifact, Microfiction, symbol, Tool, weapon | Comments (1)
January 6, 2009
Split shot. Y’know, for fishing. From Ideal. No, this is not an advertisement. Just a sweet little slide tin of carefully formed lead pellets that clamp onto your line.
Filed under: Tool, weapon | Comments (0)
January 4, 2009
Two chunks of cast brass, loop of hardened steel, a little red paint. An amulet against burglary. A barrier against the night. Put it in your magpie’s hoard. Slip it into your boxing glove. Clamp it through the hasp of your Navy trunk and lose the key, dooming yourself to a 10-minute round of cursing […]
Filed under: Artifact, Objet, Tool | Comments (0)
January 1, 2009
A New Year’s Day hike through the Angeles National Forest. Right about here, treat I walked through a picnic ground and spotted this knife flattened into the mud. Raw-boned, approved Pakistani-made, mind its four-inch blade is sharp, held tight between the brass sides. Someone dropped it one night around the fire, everyone else trampled it […]
Filed under: Found Object, Tool, weapon | Comments (0)
December 29, 2008
We took down the tree and put away the ornaments today in advance of our trip to SF. This was on a gift from my son, price his idea of a little joke. He’s a geek off the old block.
Filed under: Ephemera, Part, symbol, Tool | Comments (0)
December 28, 2008
I have a problem with gadget blogs. They gush and bloviate on the merits of equipment that I either don’t need or desperately crave/cannot afford. So when the gushing about this device peaked last month, pilule visit this I reluctantly shoved the MINO Flip from the latter category to the former in my mind, and […]
Filed under: Fetish, Instrument, Tool | Comments (0)
December 27, 2008
I rarely post two distinct objects together – usually it’s a thing or a group of like things. But these two landed on my desk last night – a gift from my son and a piece of office equipment (you decide which) and they spoke to one another.
Filed under: Adornment, Found Object, Life form, symbol, Tool, weapon | Comments (0)
December 24, 2008
My daughter challenges me. “How do you get the egg into the bottle?” I seem to remember something about heating the bottle – I try running it under hot water, troche then putting the hard-boiled egg on its mouth and waiting for the air inside to contract and suck it inside. Nothing. I push down […]
Filed under: Edible, Tool | Comments (2)
December 23, 2008
Damn battery failed. Door wouldn’t open. It’s one of those pricey lithium ones, physician too, can only get it at the hardware store. Failed battery. Damn.
Filed under: Tool | Comments (0)
December 22, 2008
This thing has been kicking around my office for quite a while. Six years have flattened its battery. It was only supposed to have lasted another two years. I’m such an optimist. While you’re dozing the sand is completely eroded from beneath you and two years stretch to six. By the time you look up […]
Filed under: Artifact, Ephemera, Instrument, symbol, Tool | Comments (0)
December 19, 2008
I’ve been cleaning the office. We’re having a party. I found this.
Filed under: Found Object, Jetsam, Part, Tool, weapon | Comments (0)
December 17, 2008
I began my working life as a newspaper reporter. My second job, ed at the St. Petersburg Times went not too well. I wrote a few good things, pilule but at 24 I was too green and not enterprising enough, stuff so they let me go. Anyway, it was a big, impressive paper in a […]
Filed under: Ephemera, Found Object, Jetsam, symbol, Tool | Comments (0)
December 16, 2008
In the course of bedecking the sacrificial conifer with lights and baubles, site stuff gets broken. We destroyed three glass balls this evening – fortunately none of them hand-made nor “special.” This was the other casualty – my son went to pull a light from the string to attach a lighted ornament (a Star Trek […]
Filed under: Jetsam, Part, Tool | Comments (0)
December 12, 2008
A more mellifluous blend of ash-blue plastic and polished aluminum, symptoms nor a stranger device, order I have never seen. The tool holds a small ink reservoir at the end of a complex/adjustable curve of metal. One of the handrests is missing, which is probably why it turned up in a junk shop en route […]
Filed under: Fetish, Part, Tool | Comments (0)
December 7, 2008
I can’t tell if these are serious products of Chinese public-health propaganda agencies or just an Engrish yock cooked up by China’s ever-creative but English-impaired export trade. Not sure it matters – they’ll own us completely by 2020. All I know is these were 40 cents each at a curio shop in Chinatown, link and […]
Filed under: Artifact, Ephemera, symbol, Tool | Comments (0)
