A cunning little paper box limned with cetaceans – cheerful dolphins, pagemedicine a playful sperm whale, ampoule a … what could possible be the apt adjective for a narwhal?
It used to be Bic Stics, remedy Bic ballpoints, find 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, online I decided it was okay to buy a pen with a little more flair. So I began picking up heavier implements – Watermans, Rotrings, obscure French-made pens of anodized aluminum.
Now, I like to stick with a good multi-pen – black/red/.7mmlead/PDA – the sort of Swiss-Army-knife mentality.
But every now and then I pick up something just for fun – and this thing, with its steroidal barrel, spring-metal loop clip, stenciled-aluminum pushbutton and excessive rubber knurlies – is just that kind of fun.
Every time I use it, I expect its android owner to melt down my office door and d It used to be Bic Stics, viagra 60mg 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 decided it was okay to buy a pen with a little more flair. So I began picking up heavier implements – Watermans, Rotrings, obscure French-made pens of anodized aluminum.
Now, I like to stick with a good multi-pen – black/red/.7mmlead/PDA – the sort of Swiss-Army-knife mentality.
But every now and then I pick up something just for fun – and this thing, with its steroidal barrel, spring-metal loop clip, stenciled-aluminum pushbutton and excessive rubber knurlies – is just that kind of fun.
Every time I use it, I expect its original android owner to melt down my office door and demand it back. It used to be Bic Stics, viagra approved Bic ballpoints, symptoms 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 decided it was okay to buy a pen with a little more flair. So I began picking up heavier implements – Watermans, Rotrings, obscure French-made pens of anodized aluminum.
Now, I like to stick with a good multi-pen – black/red/.7mmlead/PDA – the sort of Swiss-Army-knife mentality.
But every now and then I pick up something just for fun, and this thing – with its steroidal profile, spring-metal loop clip, stenciled-aluminum pushbutton and excessive rubber knurlies – is hugely entertaining to write with.
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, pills which makes me wonder if mistakes vanish more easily when rubbed with yellow rubber or blue.
It used to be Bic Stics, visit thisstore Bic ballpoints, sick 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 decided it was okay to buy a pen with a little more flair. So I began picking up heavier implements – Watermans, Rotrings, obscure French-made pens of anodized aluminum.
Now, I like to stick with a good multi-pen – black/red/.7mmlead/PDA – the sort of Swiss-Army-knife mentality.
But every now and then I pick up something just for fun, and this thing – with its steroidal profile, spring-metal loop clip, stenciled-aluminum pushbutton and excessive rubber knurlies – is hugely entertaining to write with.
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 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.
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 My 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.
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, 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. 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, 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. 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 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 …
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, therewebsite it’s been sitting at the bottom of a drawer, rxnurse 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.
Here’s the other end of this equation – a fine brown potato, sickness now pocked with the wounds of a thousand battles … well, prostate not really.
This is simply what it looks like when your son swipes your Christmas present and gets crazy with a hapless spud … the potato’s a couple of ounces lighter, there are nasty cylindrical potato-pellets all over the house and you’re both laughing and trading the fun off to shoot each other because it’s such stupid fun. I scoffed at these things, more about which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, information pillssea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.
Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, unhealthy only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.
This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.
It shouldn’t work at all, really.
But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin. I scoffed at these things, link which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, sicknesssea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.
Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.
This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.
It shouldn’t work at all, really.
But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin. I scoffed at these things, information pills which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, asksea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.
Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.
This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.
It shouldn’t work at all, really.
But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin. I scoffed at these things, nurse which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, searchsea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.
Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, view only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.
This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.
It shouldn’t work at all, really.
But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin. I never repeat heavy little objects.
My little daily obsession can be a cruel taskmistress, sildenafil sometimes commanding me to find something cool to post even when nothing cool has come through my life. But like an idiot samurai, information pills I live and die by a code set in motion long ago and over which I (choose to) have no control.
However, rules are meant to be questioned and this object – like grizzlies in a cloning lab – bears repeating:
No punditry, no anecdotes, no pontification can outweigh, outrun or outlast this fact: We put two decentmen into the White House today.
We ended the longest, ugliest domestically-generated reign of terror since the Red Scare of the 50s or, arguably, the Civil War.
And we bought this once-great nation a little extra time, and a chance to become great again, before darkness could swallow us all.
Onward. And upward. Together.
Someone is reminding us how great America can be, because we all know deep in our marrow, how great Americans can be when they embrace their diversity and work together for a common good.
We should listen. And act as one. Because we know it’s better than continuing to destroy each other with words, and the nation with ideological conflict that matters far less than every liberty, right and joy we’ve allowed the past eight years to piss away.
ENLARGEI have a thing for stereo cards – particularly views of the industrial age.
Stereopticons were the pinnacle of multimedia technology in their day – twin images shot simultaneously by cameras set a few feet apart, medications approximating the 3-D view seen by the human eyes.
With the gentleman beckoning at the right, sickness you could almost fall into this one, it’s so gorgeously intricate. I found it at the Rose Bowl swap meet for three bucks, in perfect shape: the stiff card is a little curved, and you can see silver glinting back from the blacks.
According to these guys, generic the Universal Minute 16 shot 16mm film in little cartridges.
It’s a tight, approved 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 on the right winds it. There’s an aperture control, and a fixed meniscus lens.
Universal Camera Co had achieved great success with the range of cameras starting with the Univex A. The 39 cent camera sold nearly 3 million in 1934. After the war they hoped to repeat the success with a subminiature camera as well as to maintain a tight control over the processing and available film. In 1949 they introduced the Minute 16 (as in small not 60 seconds), designed to resemble a miniature movie camera, including a pop up sports viewfinder. This venture is credited with making the firm bankrupt with over 2 million US dollars spent on research and development.And if you really want to get nuts, here’s how to load the film cartridges if you can find them.
He was rendered in porcelain bisque, advice no bigger than the end of my thumb many, advice many decades ago. This angelic countenance stands ready to receive whatever whim, benediction or mad wish a child of 18XX might bestow upon him. If he had a body, it’s gone now. No matter. Capped with glazed curls, his smile is blank and open enough to absorb a million dreams. Split shot. Y’know, case for fishing. From Ideal. No, order this is not an advertisement. Just a sweet little slide tin of carefully formed lead pellets that clamp onto your line.
Two chunks of cast brass, discountask a loop of hardened steel, treat 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, prostate dooming yourself to a 10-minute round of cursing and destroying the hasp with a hatchet until you stagger back, winded and sweating, and wondering “What was that all about?”
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 into the earth in the dark, and there it lay, its wooden handle inlays softening over the months of autumn and winter.
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, pilulevisit this I reluctantly shoved the MINO Flip from the latter category to the former in my mind, and walked away.
Then this appeared under the Xmas tree, a gift from my loving wife. It really *is* all that. HD video images, good sound, excellent low-light performance and an hour of uninterrupted recording time in a gadget smaller and lighter than my phone.
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 a bit. Still no movement. it’s too big. The experiment she brought home from school calls for a medium brown egg. This is a large.
“Okay, how do you do it?”
She’s all grins as she explains, and I follow her instructions … (more…)
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 a rapacious gang of mercenary thugs has looted your nation, here fucked your reputation, approved gutshot your economy and kicked justice squarely in the nads.
Things grow so bad that basically everyone you know or would care to know raves an unlikely superhero type into power.
The ugly fear from the base of your spine moans, “it can’t succeed. It just can’t.”
And you’re left sifting through the wreckage of what’s come before. Waiting for what’s to come.
One question: Will we watch this guy a bit more closely? After all – he does work for us.
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 big, impressive industry, and I felt I had totally failed.
I eventually made my way back, covering crummy little meetings and court proceedings, doing a little award-winning work at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and found my way to the L.A Times before the industry began to collapse and I bailed into online development about 11 years ago.
This card used to let me into the gated St. Pete Times parking lot, and using it gave me a sense of power, of inclusion and self-respect. When I left, I hucked it into my toolbox, where it’s ridden since 1983.
It is beautiful in its rotten state, and maybe a little triste, considering that 2009 is fast shaping up to be The Year that Newspapers Died.
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 shuttle that someone gave us years ago) and inadvertently yanked the bulb straight out of its base.
Stripped of context, it’s a beautiful specimen – the very core of the incandescent lighting engineer’s art – a bubble of glass extruded around two wires holding a tungsten filament taut in a vacuum.
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 home from the Angeles National Forest.
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 they came with striking surfaces but no matches. The sides bear this helpful warning and – in much smaller print – the epigram, cheapest “Childhood memory, combustion pleasure.
The one at bottom left of the stack says “DO NOT PEE OUT.”
A cunning little paper box limned with cetaceans – cheerful dolphins, page medicine a playful sperm whale, ampoule a … what could possible be the apt adjective for a narwhal?
It used to be Bic Stics, remedy Bic ballpoints, find 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. 
This rode home in a goodie bag from a birthday party at my son’s school.
This nation has bought into the culture of preciousness from the very first needlepoint sampler of the earliest Don’t Tread on Me flag. 
My old Kershaw. 
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.
This stuff just sort of stacks up, check doesn’t it.
Here’s the other end of this equation – a fine brown potato, sickness now pocked with the wounds of a thousand battles … well, prostate not really.
I scoffed at these things, more about which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, information pills sea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.
I never repeat heavy little objects. 
According to these guys, generic the Universal Minute 16 shot 16mm film in little cartridges. 
She fiddles with it. Finally squeezes a needle onto it. And fixes up. 
He was rendered in porcelain bisque, advice no bigger than the end of my thumb many, advice many decades ago. This angelic countenance stands ready to receive whatever whim, benediction or mad wish a child of 18XX might bestow upon him. If he had a body, it’s gone now. No matter. Capped with glazed curls, his smile is blank and open enough to absorb a million dreams.
Split shot. Y’know, case for fishing. From Ideal. No, order this is not an advertisement. Just a sweet little slide tin of carefully formed lead pellets that clamp onto your line.
Two chunks of cast brass, discount ask a loop of hardened steel, treat a little red paint.
A New Year’s Day hike through the Angeles National Forest. 
We took down the tree and put away the ornaments today in advance of our trip to SF.
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.
I rarely post two distinct objects together – usually it’s a thing or a group of like things.
My daughter challenges me.
Damn battery failed. Door wouldn’t open.
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’ve been cleaning the office. 
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. 
In the course of bedecking the sacrificial conifer with lights and baubles, site stuff gets broken.
A more mellifluous blend of ash-blue plastic and polished aluminum, symptoms nor a stranger device, order I have never seen.
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.
