December 4, 2008
In 1969, order the Ideal Toy company came out with a line of fully operational miniature powertools that plugged into battery supplies built into their small carrying cases. This “Powermite” sander is about three inches long by two inches tall and less than an inch wide, order and came with little sheets of sandpaper, for […]
Filed under: Artifact, Ephemera, Fetish, Found Object, Miniature, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)
December 1, 2008
This has to be the antique-shop-crawl find of all time: A pocket compass in a “hunter” watch case, viagra dosage lined with copper and plated in silver. When you close the lid, more about a fragile little arm clamps the needle in place, and when you open it, it e-e-e-ver-so-slowly noses north. $10. Unbelievable.
Filed under: Artifact, Instrument, symbol, Tool | Comments (0)
November 22, 2008
This fine object puts the specie in specious: Someone at the Christian organization LivingWaters.com worked very, information pills very hard on this piece of counterfeit. The four-color printing and gravure work are fine anough to pass the “holy, shit, WTF is that” moment after you’ve picked it up and still can’t believe it’s not money […]
Filed under: Art, Ephemera, Fetish, Found Object, Microfiction, Model, symbol, Tool | Comments (1)
November 19, 2008
This gem of an art book covers the crafting of complex 3-D figures from 2D materials using little but scissors. For some insane reason, see the sole available copy on Amazon is going for $212.91. I found a copy in the Hayward Gallery last summer for about 8% of that amount. And no, you cannot […]
Filed under: Art, Ephemera, Fetish, Tool | Comments (0)
November 14, 2008
A simple soundboard, cheapest wired to a switch and a speaker. I disemboweled it from (?) an 8×11 promo folder for “Scream 2008” that landed in my wife’s office. When you opened the cover of the folder, see a horrific shriek would ensue: “AUUUGHHHAAAAAAAGOODDDDNOOOOO!!!” Soon, I’ll be attaching it to Screaming Tiki so that he […]
Filed under: Artifact, Jetsam, Microfiction, Part, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)
November 12, 2008
When you’re 9, order you’re already wondering what it means to be a man. You ask a lot of questions. A lot of questions. You challenge people twice your size to arm-wrestling matches. You suddenly take to doing pushups and situps wherever it occurs to you – like on train platforms …
Filed under: Fetish, symbol, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)
November 10, 2008
The green-ness of this gadget masks (poorly) its inadequacy as a tool. If you want steady, order reliable light for replacing a muffler under a car, unhealthy finding your way around a dark campsite or exploring a spooky derelict spaceship you don’t want to have to keep turning the light off, flipping out the generator […]
Filed under: symbol, Tool | Comments (1)
November 8, 2008
DVI. The bane of my existence this week. This adapter shifts from DVI out to VGA in. I just bought two new monitors, treatment help and this won’t do the trick. Now I gotta go out and buy a different adapter. For $100. Sigh.
Filed under: Tool | Comments (0)
November 7, 2008
I assembled a new table today. This fine tool helped. Its design has been around since 1892. You have to love the compact, price abortion almost fetishy perfection of its promise – one on which it delivers consistently so long as the nut’s not frozen too tight: It is, truly, a boxful of wrenches in […]
Filed under: Tool | Comments (0)
October 27, 2008
My son seems to have my eye for HLOs. He spotted this anodized aluminum pill container in among the bottle openers at some sporting goods store or Quikie Mart, this and quickly reminded us of his lost allowance so he could buy it. A few days later he attached some discarded pot-metal chain to it […]
Filed under: Fetish, Jetsam, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)
October 24, 2008
You own a lot of shit. You accumulate more of it every day. Sometimes, story you have to pick through it to get your desk clean. And you make little piles. That might or might not be photographs of your life told in debris. And yet, help you never seem to get rid of the […]
Filed under: Adornment, Art, Artifact, Blahg, Ephemera, Facsimile, Fetish, Found Object, Instrument, Jetsam, Life form, Miniature, Model, Objet, Part, symbol, Tool, Toy, weapon | Comments (0)
October 23, 2008
Overcome for a moment, order if you can, healing the urge to vomit: You’re looking at casts of someone’s teeth – full bicuspid-to-incisor replicas of a human’s business end, cast in peach-colored plaster, mounted on more white plaster that is set into a hinged contraption meant to approximate the original owner’s jaw. Only the hinge […]
Filed under: Artifact, Found Object, Instrument, Model, Tool | Comments (0)
October 22, 2008
Hot rod culture coughs up the kitsch once again: Dice-shaped valve caps that say, treat “I’m a-gamblin’ with my life in this heap! I’m a risky man! Don’t trifle with me, information pills ‘cos I don’t care what happens next!” Only these magnificent little bastards rode around on my thrashed ’62 Schwinn for countless street […]
Filed under: Ephemera, Model, Tool | Comments (0)
October 22, 2008
We adorn ourselves with heavy little objects. A cut and polished stone the size of a tear, sildenafil a curlicue of hammered metal, view the hardened secretions of sand-irritated mollusks – these all bear wearing for sentimental reasons, treat and demand to be kept somehow safe. Do safety and worth come to mind when you […]
Filed under: symbol, Tool | Comments (0)
October 19, 2008
I’m magnetic. Have I mentioned this before? Small metallic tools seem to fly into my hands wherever I walk. Whether this is for holding a pin steady long enough to create a microscopic city of angels on its head or for some other obscure task, stomach I’ll never know. But its jaws can clasp something […]
Filed under: Art, Ephemera, Fetish, Found Object, General, symbol, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)
October 18, 2008
I’m magnetic. Have I mentioned this before? Small metallic tools seem to fly into my hands wherever I walk. Whether this is for holding a pin steady long enough to create a microscopic city of angels on its head or for some other obscure task, stomach I’ll never know. But its jaws can clasp something […]
Filed under: Tool | Comments (0)
October 17, 2008
This deeply iconic toy from my youth let you commit a sort of reverse archaeology: Begin with the shapes left in metal by “disgusting” creatures – an aluminum “fossil” that holds the power to create a form of life. Pour plasma-like “Plasti-Goop” into their very absence. Heat it on a small thermoelectric hotplate. Watch the […]
Filed under: Artifact, Objet, Part, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)
October 15, 2008
THE U.S. MEDIASPHERE (Oct. 14, website like this post-debate) (HLO) – Joe the Plumber. Indeed. Look, this blog isn’t political. I don’t dump my heart out about the government here. Most days, this stuff is just one more step in my years-long tabletop parade of things. But please, if you’re thinking of voting for one […]
Filed under: Adornment, Art, Artifact, Ephemera, Objet, symbol, Tool, Toy, weapon | Comments (1)
October 13, 2008
I love mystery gadgets best of all. I have a sense of what this is for – but not, erectile precisely, viagra 60mg how to use it. Put the black bakelite eyecup to your eye and what do you see? A thin strip of optical film, stomach with light showing through a tower of letters. […]
Filed under: Artifact, Instrument, Tool | Comments (0)
October 11, 2008
Tonight was big. For three-plus years, order Justin has been installing and detailing my biomechanical arm. He does all the heavy shading with one of these nasty bastards – 13 tattoo needles epoxied together in a head and soldered onto a needle shaft. Tonight he finished all the principal work, order leaving only some cleanup, […]
Filed under: Jetsam, Part, symbol, Tool | Comments (0)
October 6, 2008
I had one of these when I was a kid, view and while I never drew anything that looked like much with it, medications I loved the fact that I could color with copper-colored ink. My son spotted this in Brighton. A steal at £1.50.
Filed under: Tool, Toy | Comments (1)
October 3, 2008
Almost 70 years ago, website this was the height of compact multimedia viewing equipment: A dark, here swirled cube of oxblood-and-black Bakelite with a simple double-convex eye and the weight of history upon it. Slip a 35mm slide into it, point it at the light and gaze. Good, clean American fun. And now obsolete.
Filed under: Artifact, Tool | Comments (0)
October 2, 2008
This gem glinted out at me from the cluttered shelves of an antiques mall in nether San Bernardino County, cialis 40mg and the $1.95 price tag sent it home with me. Back when the Playboy Club was truly the capital of hedonism – and not just another seedy Hollywood venue – back before the bunny […]
Filed under: Artifact, Ephemera, Tool | Comments (0)
September 30, 2008
Back in 1969, viagra dosage the Louis Marx and Company was casting its “WILD ANIMALS” series in plastic. These beautiful little facsimile animals were hand-painted (in Taiwan, unhealthy according to the garish and lush four-color offset-litho box) and turned them loose in the wilds of American family rooms. The box copy says (in all its […]
Filed under: Artifact, Facsimile, Miniature, Tool | Comments (0)
September 28, 2008
The Executive Pocket Chum measures the thickness and thinness of things to the 32nd of an inch, ambulance or the fraction of a millimeter. One can imagine it monitoring the precision of millwork tumbling from Gary, Indiana steel plants into assembly-line catch-bins by the millions in 1950s. Or the diameter of overbored engine cylinders in […]
Filed under: Fetish, Instrument, Tool | Comments (0)
