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#a171 :: Step-down transformer

August 2, 2008

Electricity surges out of British outlets at a blistering 220 volts – too powerful for western computers. While I’m blogging this from my Mac G4 laptop – a 6-year-old bulletproof box with a trim little power transformer built right in – my other work laptop (a Dell) requires a separate transformer to tame London voltage […]

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#a170 :: Lead “Indian brave”

August 1, 2008

The micro-war between the races of earth still rages on in English toy shops and adult imaginations – even though most young Londoners have graduated to XBox, what is ed find Flickr and Legomania. Most warriors wear meticulously handpainted uniforms. In the antiques stalls of Portobello Road they rest, medical weapons at the ready, approved […]

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#a168 :: Rubber coasters

July 30, 2008

Part space station, this part sex device, visit this they come in orange and gray and keep your cold wet glasses from making permanent stains in your … Formica, or whatever. It occurs to me upon posting fetishy (kitschy?) stuff like this that I’m rarely in the position of being able to point you to […]

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#a165 :: Oyster card

July 27, 2008

This debit card gives you full access to the Tube and bus system. With one in your pocket, page you can go anywhere in London, ampoule never thinking about the fare. “Touch in” – wave it at the yellow oval pad that reads it and debits cash from it for your ride – and padded […]

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#a164 :: Ice cream spoon

July 26, 2008

Zorro brings together the hoary old freedom-fighter superhero story with rock-hard flamenco performances, ambulance and it winds up being about four times as solid a piece as it otherwise would. The score, price by the Gipsy Kings is a hoarse, melodic operetta, told in guttural moans of pain and delight, and the thunderous bootheels of […]

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#a159 :: Stanley “stubby” screwdriver

July 22, 2008

From an antiques mall in Brighton. 50p. Don’t laugh. You’ll need one some day. I love the way the aluminum has corroded on the blade.

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#a149 :: Jr. Bag Clip

July 12, 2008

America’s chip bags need controllin’. Two slabs of hot-poured plastic, doctor clinic a hinge, capsule a spring, rugger jawliners and some ink. The bigger bags get bigger clips. My wife: “You’re not gonna blog that!” Well, uh, yeah. I am.

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#a148 :: Spork

July 11, 2008

A hybrid. A multi-utensil. A solution. A ridiculous word. Say it a few times: Spork. Spörk. Spoooorrrrk. k. k. Admire its completeness. Say no more. Spork.

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#a146 :: Wiimote flashlight

July 9, 2008

The world’s hardshell exterior surrounds a doughy heart of kitsch: Anything initially cool – the remote to a Nintendo Wii game system, health for instance – can impart its cool to common objects by simple mimicry. Bluntly put, treatment things that look like other definite things are automatically “better” because of the same dim-witted value […]

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#a142 :: Rubber watch

July 5, 2008

They gave these out to the kids with tickets for Wall-E. Movie – gorgeous to look at, page groundbreaking, but not nearly as smart and funny as Kung Fu Panda. Watch – blue silicone rubber around a little cheesebox chip of Chinese chircuitry. My son’s came broken.

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#a141 :: Sushi erasers

July 4, 2008

And while we’re at it, information pills sometimes you make mistakes so egregious that only wiping them out with a rubberized chunk of fish and rice will do. My wife found this at our favorite Japanese supermarket, and kindly annotated it with another HLO – the venerable Post-It note – about which, more later.

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#a138 :: AAA batteries

July 1, 2008

Copper-jacketed slugs of chemistry power our gadgets. It seems we need them more and more. Only the advent of rechargable lithium-ion batteries keeps a tsunami of spent alkalines from sweeping us all away to the dump. Which makes one wonder about modern man’s dwindling ability to survive without electricity. Can you put yourself back two […]

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#a135 :: Bottle caps

June 28, 2008

They began life as sheets of tin (following a long and, nurse one can only imagine, viagra buy complex refining process) – punched into circles, thumb crimped, printed, lined with plastic and clamped atop bottles of beer, soda, cider, seltzer. They rode in place, dutifully sealing out the world of dust, bugs and oxidization. They […]

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#a133 :: Pig lighter

June 26, 2008

“So what are you gonna write – that your wife spotted this on a counter at 7/11 and had to have it?” Yup. Happy birthday, buy pills my dear love.

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#a127 :: Aluminum pencil sharpener

June 20, 2008

I love the precision of this dramatically machined little block of a tool. Each hole feeds a standard diameter pencil’s point up into a carefully positioned groove, malady at a particular angle. Each groove pushes the pencil against a steel sharpening blade at a blade of a different length – assuring you a fresh point […]

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#a125 :: Rusty nails and screws

June 18, 2008

Our neighborhood was built in the 1920s. I don’t know when they set these telephone poles, there but ever since then, buy people have been tacking notices up on them with whatever fasteners came to hand. The signs, drugs posters and advertisements all came down – by weather or by hand – but the metal […]

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#a123 :: Cigar cutter

June 16, 2008

A good cigar is a smoke, mind but only if you trim its bullet end first with this – a pocket guillotine. It’s the sort of tool with which bad men threaten to maim hopeless patsies in cruel movies. Being as it’s extremely dangerous and cheaply made, it defies one to think of other, more […]

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#a116 :: Chinese stainless-steel swivels

June 9, 2008

We swam with manta rays in Hawaii last summer. Yes, cialis 40mg it really was that idyllic. We tell ourselves it was kharmic payback for a summer of pain – our dear friend Keith died horribly and too young, we were both working 14 hour days and struggling to be with the kids, our daughter […]

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#108 :: Chibi giant robot warrior

June 1, 2008

I’ve written before of chibi. No more about that need be said. Right here, erectile Scope Dog (or someone very much like him) packs two big fat weapons on his short, stout person. He’s 5 inches high and balances quite well on his feet – one at a time – if you provoke him.

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#a102 :: 88MB Syquest Drive cartridge

May 26, 2008

Ah, medical Syquest. This 8-inch-wide slab of a disc, buy information pills encased in a high-impact plastic carrier, was the very height of portable data storage 16 years ago. You could pack a lot into 88 megabytes – screenplay ideas, hundreds of newspaper stories, Photoshop tomfoolery – so long as you had a Syquest drive. […]

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#a100 :: Atwood HexBaby

May 24, 2008

Little slabs of steel, malady plasma-cut and and grinder-shaped by hand. Peter Atwood makes rock-solid finger tools. ‘Nuff said. This one’s good for prying open paint cans and yanking stubborn nails and splitting things and opening beers. Coupled with the Leatherman and the chain mail, it makes my keyring a nasty fistful of metal. Which […]

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#a97 :: Iron box wrench

May 21, 2008

This beautiful little enigma began life as a hot rivulet of molten iron, ampoule poured into a sand mold with a precise 5/8ths-inch hex opening at one end. After knocking it out of its mold, search its maker probably quenched it, viagra 40mg heat-treated it again and then dipped it once in black paint and […]

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#a96 – Craftsman adjustable pliers

May 20, 2008

I love the Sears Crafstman tool guarantee. It’s simple: break it and they’ll replace it.For the rest of your life. Period. I bought these adjustable pliers a good 25-some years ago, sildenafil when I was spending hours at a time lying on my back under a filthy Volvo. Cursing. A lot …

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#a95 :: Nail clipper

May 19, 2008

The elegance of pure and simple machines springs often from the plainest of needs. Without this crisp chrome gadget, dosage link we’d all look something like this. So when the industrial revolution and the boom of cheap tools crested late in the 19th century, sildenafil Wikipedia tells us that Chapel Carter – of necessity – […]

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#a92 :: Thimble

May 16, 2008

Armor on the brain lately: The Telmarine king’s armor was about the best thing in Prince Caspian, help which was otherwise a dull roar of a film. Gorgeous, view filigree’d stuff. … and … Grant Williams, The Incredible Shrinking Man stabs an un-armored tarantula (which poses as a giant killer spider) and lives to explore […]

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