Sometimes a heavy little object is so pure it cannot be parsed from its origins.
Analyzing Stan Lee and Jack Kirby‘s emerald-muscled Mr. Hyde is as pointless and masturbatory an exercise as trying to glean God’s “actual” intentions from line-by-line interpretations of the Bible.
Text overpowers context. Some things just are. (more…)
There are few tools-cum-trinkets so marvelous as a good butane lighter.Palm-sized inferno, order pocket-bling, salvation in a snowstorm or the desert.I found this one at DealExtreme amid a whole page full of them … (more…)
“This is shit, stuff dosage Phil.”
“Whuh.”
“This. It’s shit.”
“Wharyuh tawkinboutshit. ShitWHUH. WHUAH shih.”
“Phil, price you brought me a 1962 quarter for Chrissakes. It’s shit.”
“THASSNODDUH QUARH MIKUHLLL, SSSA SSSSILVERR DOLLLLR YUH CHEEEDN’ FUKKHN’ GUINEA!!!”
Phil undulated a little in the breeze from the door, which alternately freshened the shop and polluted it with half-digested esthers of the Olde English 40 he was now waving around for emphasis … (more…)
I found a little knob of dried mud clinging to a rake today while cleaning the garage.I pulled it off and found these two time travelers, abortion forever locked in their coccoons, waiting to be born as wasps. You can see the larvae through the membrane – still as stones and doomed to a future different from the one that was planned.Maybe the winter killed them.Maybe they’ll hatch out on my desk. Must watch now.
Two blue plastic cases, help packed solid with thumb-length slugs of hardened steel. Each slug’s tip spells out a number or letter in reverse.Put the letter-end onto the thing to be marked. Thump the other end hard with a hammer. The blow makes a metallic “ding“. The target is marked – forever – with one crisp character.The full alphabet runs A through Z, adiposity plus a dash to round out the stack to fit in to a box three letters by seven. It goes for $18 in the Chinese-tools stall at the weekly Mexican swap meet at L.A. City College every Sunday. $12 for the numbers.It can mark anything permanently. Anything that is not already harder. Anything that is not harder than hardened steel.
Never tattoo hastily.
I took that to heart. I wasn’t going to be one of those mopes with the harridan-ex’s name tattooed on my ass.
So I waited to choose first to get tattooed, visit this cure then the subject matter until I reached 40 and my son was born.
The theme is biomechanics. Chip Delaney‘s vivid space opera, this Nova – humans have gone cybernetic, price piloting heavy starships jacked directly into their nervous systems – plugged deep into my 14-year-old soul the year I read it, rattling my brass ribs … (more…)
It cracks nuts. Nothing more, website like this nothing less. It does it well.
No maker’s mark hints at its origins, but its polished-nickel receptacle fits the hand with a deep, authoritative heft. Turn the thumbscrew on its thick threads, and you’re exerting dozens, perhaps hundreds of pounds per square inch upon its prey.
Design a better nutcracker. You won’t get rich doing it. But that’s not what this is about. This is about cracking nuts.
Clutching the thick domes of bronze, hospital he waited.
Not to strike yet. No, not yet. These were a gift. To be saved. To be waited for. Until it’s time.
Memories of his long ride down boiled up now. He exhaled hard through pursed lips, and shook himself. He blew a hard, rattling raspberry, and padded towards the back of the house.
He pictured himself three months ago, and shuddered. A hulking, twitching, blind mass of suck wearing five days of unintentional beard, a bib of fresh barf and $500 basketball shoes designed by some big-name graffiti tagger … (more…)
Its rubber-nubbled exterior belies its pragmatic steel skeleton.
It’s dressed for a party but armed for business: smack its spiky head and deliver two pinpoint-sharp staple tips into its anvil where they curl under, illness trapping and binding whatever flimsy document it penetrated along the way.
It’s a stapler that wants to start something, shop but finish the job. It would probably be happiest binding together harrassing lawsuits, porn-video inventory lists, dear-John letters, death-metal ‘zines, restraining orders
It’s the kind of stapler that gets in fights. The kind of stapler that would kick the crap out of Milton Waddams’ red stapler, bust its plastic housing, bend all its staples and then piss on the mangled wreckage, if only it had a … never mind.
It was also a birthday present from my kids. Go figure.
A skosh. A nanometer. A smidgen. A c#nt-hair. A whit.
Measurement of tiny gaps requires something capable of splitting hairs, help dicing degrees into tenths and tenths and tenths again.
This old Brown & Sharpe micrometer is made of precision-milled stainless steel alloy, approved hashed up one side and down the other with notches & numbers. It’s designed to calculate thickness by degrees barely visible to the naked eye.
I’m not a mathematically precise person – I bought this off an antiques dealer for 9 bucks because its heft and knurled handles please me, viagra sale because finding and fiddling with sharp tools is a good and true pursuit.
Because it’s heavy.
(more…)
So powerful, website like this this chubby little block of portable redemption.
One swipe removes all sins, leaving behind a trail of pure potential littered with filthy little crumbs. Sweep them away. Begin again.
A new future, an alternate reality, another chance – await the pencil’s reinvigorated stroke. Begin again.
I open the capsule. Inside, sildenafil the tightly-rolled message lies in wait, a fragile knot of mystery.
I pull it out with tweezers as carefully as I can (cotton gloves probably would have been far less intrusive, but I’m a geek, not an archivist) and unfold it.
Attempts to spread it flat are not quite futile, but close – it’s been opened and re-folded many times before, perhaps by antique dealers, perhaps by the son’s sons of the military man who received the original message and stuffed the capsule into a pocket after reading it in the previous century.
(more…)
For the past, order let’s see, six months, my 8-year-old son has been bandying this … phrase … about.
For a while, he didn’t know what it meant, and cared even less, but he would utter this phrase every chance he got, snickering and cackling like a fiend.
It is the funniest thing he’s ever heard. And for the first two or three times I heard him say it and cackle, it was the funniest thing I’d heard in a couple of hours, at least.
Now, hold that thought. (more…)
For the past, order let’s see, six months, my 8-year-old son has been bandying this … phrase … about.
For a while, he didn’t know what it meant, and cared even less, but he would utter this phrase every chance he got, snickering and cackling like a fiend.
It is the funniest thing he’s ever heard. And for the first two or three times I heard him say it and cackle, it was the funniest thing I’d heard in a couple of hours, at least.
Now, hold that thought. (more…)
It was the perfect metaphor, order really. His hair plugs, his teeth caps, his botox, his Bavarian penile-compensation vehicle.
And now, she sighed, biting her lip, this.
She sniffled a bit more and peeled back the red foil. The “blossom” popped out of its green-plastic receptacle and tumbled under the futon.
I will not lose it. I will not.
On her knees, she reached under, crushing it slightly in her fist and fished it out. It wore a fuzz of dust bunnies. Brushing them off, she sagged to the floor. Cheap, waxy chocolate melted across her teeth as she teetered over whether to bite into it.
She caved.
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Here are some of the posts I had the most fun writing and/or shooting.If you like any of them, maybe you’ll email one to a friend who might enjoy it, too. And if you just discovered this site, any of these is a good place to jump in:
Rubber Ghoul
Drain Valve/Bell
Photo-Theremin
Saab Front Wheel Bearings
Nuclear Bomb Test Souvenir
Monocular
Battle Suit
Daguerrotype
Brownie Hawkeye
Vinyl Frog
Lightcycle
Minnie Ball
Spoke Wrench
Art Deco Reading Lamp
Spiky Silicone Keychain
Fuckin’ Wirenuts
Tiara
Doll Leg
Shalom Bracelet
Gunslinger
Last Resort
Novelty Lighter
3 Red Demons in a Little Rowboat
Fortune Cookie
Wallpaper Print Block
Welcome newcomers: For clarity, I have swapped this post’s halves from its originally posted state. Note also that I’m running around cleaning up some bad internal links – a legacy from when I switched to WordPress at the end of the 2004-2005 run … mr …12/16/08
The old man lived in a small trailer park in one of the Carolinas, by a huge stand of bamboo. He sat beneath the awning of the old Airstream with his second wife. I don’t remember her saying much. But I remember him bouncing me on his knee, asking questions, listening with that sort of benevolent, distant warmth that I came to know ever so briefly as grandfatherly.
We had ridden in Frog Belly, our beaten third-hand two-tone Ford (?) for so many hours to get there. Down from the little Connecticut college where my father taught and would later turn to glorious painting, where my mother wrote like a weaver, with focus and care. That evening, after lemonade and maybe it was fried chicken, I lay in the motel room nearby, all of six or seven years old. Night heat smothered any chance at sleep, which was already elusive, thanks to the rock’n’roll band blaring from a stage beneath bright lights in the field next door. Insects keened outside, the cicadas out in force on their once-every-17-year cycle of birth, sex and death.
The next morning, we went back over to the trailer for breakfast. And my father’s father took us out to the bamboo afterwards, where he cut chunks from a stalk and fashioned it into a little two-piece slide whistle that he gave to me. I wish I had kept it. I can’t even remember what became of it – I must have left it behind because the aching memory puts it only and fully in that place, no other. Just there, blowing the bamboo mouthpiece and sliding it up and down the octaves – and then it was gone.
Joseph Wayne Reed Sr. was my father’s father – a medical corpsman in WWI and a Red Cross medic in the Pacific in WWII, a Linotype operator for the St. Petersburg Times in his later years. Heart disease killed him – I remember, he was overweight and not too athletic – when I was eight.
Four years later, my father gave me his ring – white gold and onyx. I have worn it every single day of my life since then. Dad had the stone flipped over to hide what must have been a lifetime of chips and scars, and new gold added to the bottom where abuse and wear had ground it down to the thickness of a kite string.
Once in 1984, body-surfing high at Misquamicut, Rhode Island, I thought I had lost it to the sea. The empty-handed sensation of realizing this was a head-to-toe shock that overpowered the full-body battery of cold October breakers and left me feeling naked, careless and stupid. At this point in my life, my young journalism career seemed to have fallen apart and I was casting about for some sense of direction. So I bounced on tiptoes in the surf as my mother had taught me there long ago, and tried to absorb the loss of the ring as an omen – a clean break, a fresh start, a way out to new thinking. Weak, I thought. Fuckup. I dragged myself back to the parking lot to towel off in abject depression, which shattered in a paroxysm of joy only when I realized that I had sensibly stashed the ring in the glovebox of Steve’s Celica before jumping into the ocean.
I nearly lost the ring again 20 years later. A brain-crushingly bad week at work sent me home in a funk, and drumming seemed the only way to shake it off. Pounding out amateurish polyrhythms and 2/4 tribal stomps at full volume in the empty house, I pummeled the shit out of my kids’ tubano until my arms tingled. Then I looked down and saw that not only had the circle of white gold cracked, but the stone had disappeared and the empty prongs gaped up at me in blinded reproach. After five solid minutes of knees-and-fingertips searching through the pile of the thick Oriental rug around the drum area, I found the small, black stone, and resumed breathing. Our local jeweler set things right, and my arm is complete again.
My wife says she considers this the ultimate Heavy Little Object – it’s not the sort of archetypal machined steel gizmo upon which I first focused this site. But it is of stone and precious metal, and freighted with meaning and worth beyond the reach of my words. It’s part of me, and a good place to stop – maybe so I can devote a bit more time to my other blog – and think about where I’m headed next.
The British Natural History Museum did something extraordinary on the grounds outside its magnificent building – a diversion from the ossified remains of dinosaurs and sloths and the over-loved “interactive” displays of swimming hippos and oversized scorpions:
They built a hothouse, adiposity filled it with plants, and started cultivating butterflies.
These were just two of the fantastic array of insect ephemera on display in Amazing Butterflies which closes, sadly, on Aug. 17.
If you’re in town, whether you have kids or not, go have a look
I’ve missed this blog. Hello, this web old friend.
This black lump of cast iron could be any number of things: A chunk of railroad tie fashioned into a doorstop, approved (or so claimed the antique store owner in Cutchogue, Long Island who sold it to me for 9 bucks over Christmas). An anchor for wayward blueprints on windswept building sites, perhaps. An “equalizer” stuffed into the boxing glove of an outmatched pug.
Instead it’s a simple tool: Hold it behind the car-body panel you’re undenting. Smack the panel’s outside with a hammer. Hammer, meet anvil – rock the dolly back and forth a bit as you taptaptaptap the steel – and eventually the dent is shallow enough that you can cover the rest of the blemish with Bondo. That’s what I did with Steve’s car.
The backstory on all this? (more…)
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They arrive like smuggled slugs of radioactive metal, encased in sheets of cedar and sheathed in little tubes of machined aluminum. A relative (I shan’t say which) snuck them off a cruise ship and back in through Customs. The tobacco tastes no more extraordinary than the average Dominican blend – woody, rich in the back of the throat. But the frisson of illegality – a mesh of spiteful Cold War trade embargoes slapped on an English-branded product of Cuba – adds layers of flavor and meaning to the experience. I have maybe one cigar every month or two. There is the ritual – moisten the end, slice off the tip, light a match to light the cedar sheet, use it to heat the end of the cigar for precisely 45 seconds (holding it slightly away from your body appraisingly, at approximately the level of your navel) – then you light. A few quick, deep puffs while rotating the cigar end through the flame. Stoked with a puff every minute or two, it will last about an hour. A cigar is a welcome break from painting, a post-dinner respite around a campfire, a warming influence on a cold boat. As the man says, a good cigar is a smoke.
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I am homo sapiens, a tool user.
GRUNT.
I feel naked without a blade. Ill-equipped for the day without my pocket knife and PDA. Impotent when faced with a Torx screw that needs budging and a toolbox full of flatheads and Phillipses. I’ve gone through quite a few pocket multitools: the Swiss-Tech Micro-Tech was nice, but the heads were a tad large and it kept unfolding and falling off my keyring. The Swiss-Tech Micro-Plus was better – two sizes of driver heads and a folding design that kept it from opening quite so easily – but I resented the hard profile it held in my pocket since it’s designed to pinch my keyring at a hard right angle and it always managed to dig directly into my hipbone when I was rolling around the family room floor with the kids. Then came the Gerber Multi-Tool which hung around for a good year and a half – a terrific little collection of tools that proved only as good as the fastening mechanism: The pliers-grip grew loose and the thing floated off my keyring somewhere and vanished. I then bought a multitool-and-flashlight set for my son’s birthday and – forbidden to give the “that’s-dangerous-he’ll-hurt-himself!” tool to a 5-year-old boy, I kept it. The Coast Micro-Pliers hung obediently from a jump ring, but they were bulky, balky, crummy-feeling. They had scissors (something I never understood the need for in a tool that already has a knife blade). And they were stiff, almost impossible to open.
There’s no pleasure on earth like the feel of doing a task with a good tool in your hands. The Squirt is a damned good tool, trim, crisp and handsome in anodized blue. I’ve mounted it on a swivel clip so it moves in and out of my pocket easily. The plier handles fold and open on smooth leaf springs, the pliers themselves are spring-loaded and easy to operate. There are two sizes of flathead driver and the Phillips head is actually a modified flathead with a triangular tip rather than the usual thick cross-head. The blade is sharp, there’s a double-sided file, wire cutters, an awl … I am a happy ape.
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He wakes up after an hour or so, his face pressed to the wet bar, his brain still well-pickled on the shots of rye he’d been tossing back before (and after) he insulted that lady (well, she wasn’t, really) and she slapped him hard. He doesn’t bother raising his head. It’s comfy here. A warm pad of numb flesh covers his cheek, nerves deadened to sleep by the constant pressure of his sweating head against pocked mahogany. If he gets up, he’ll just feel cold, the breeze from the open bar door chilling the spilled booze on his face. So he lies there and considers: Beer taps hunching, cobra-like, overhead. Change puddling near his nose – before passing out, he kept dredging up pennies from his pocket for every shot the bartender slid his way that didn’t arrive with it a disapproving sneer. Olives lurking in a murky jar of oil. The incandescent hush of warm lights beneath the liquor racks float up through colored bottles – rye, whiskey, bourbon, gin, vermouth, absinthe, coca syrup, malt, seltzer, grenadine – a woozy hallucination of polychrome gems. This one bottle is … so pretty – a delicate turqoise lozenge of serenity, its maker’s name mock-etched into the glass. The barkeep shoots himself a seltzer/rocks, and returns to mopping the other end of the bar. Be here long, the drunk thinks. He’ll work his way down here and I’ll just have to move, finally go home to Virginia and the kids. And the dog. And the house, the newly electrified townhouse with a gas tap in every room, the huge mortgage he took out a month ago, before his boss let him go on Tuesday. I’ll have to steel my resolve and face it all. He turns his head a bit – well, turns it on the bar as if moving a huge, soggy block of soap – twisting it free so that the suction of his face on the wet, varnished wood is broken slightly, and sensation tingles back into his cheek. God. This’ll kill Virginia, he thinks. And slowly, he picks himself up.
Back in the first or second decade of the 20th century (future shock, anyone?) this was a state-of-the-art delivery system for bubbly water. It was refillable: Once you used up the liter or so of seltzer, you’d toss it back into its crate for collection by the seltzer man, who would return the whole thing to a delivery plantto be cleaned out and refilled. At about five pounds and nearly 12 inches high, it’s just under the bulk limit for HLOs, but it’s so gorgeous I had to squeeze it in.
CONTEST ENDING SOON:
The identity contest for El Luchador Libre is drawing to an end – as is the first (and perhaps only) year of HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS. There have been some excellent entries so far, but I know there are great ones out there still unwritten. If you’d like to win the multi-masked Mexican grappler and at least one other relentlessly nifty HLO of your very own, drop by the contest and bang out a few paragraphs. I’ll announce the winner (and there will be fine runner-up prizes) in Entry #366. Jump in. Have fun.
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The oil lamp guttered and went out in a little puff of soot.
She sat, thumbs a-fidget, not wanting to stick her finger with the needle, but unable to keep still, with her sewing on the lap of her crinoline hoopskirt, in the dark.
“I’m done being pleasant about this, ma’am,” Mr. Quimby had muttered, through twisted, disgusted lips, his greased handlebar mustache a-twitch. “You just be out o’ here in the morning with your brat and I’ll see to it Tom comes round with the cart to take your things wherever you’ve a mind to go.”
She straightened, put her petitpoint needle into the heather blossom on the sampler she had been sewing, and carefully set the hoop frame and the spools of yarn into the wicker basket beside her. A deep breath eased the frown from her face. Well, it’s all one can do, isn’t it. One does what one can, and it’s all one can do.
Rain hammered on the roof. Gertrude slept fitfully, making little piglike snorts beneath the counterpane, and rain hammered the shake roof with a hissing roar. Three weeks now the storms had been battering them, off and on, three weeks since her August was taken – finally returned to his Lord by the fever that had wracked him since the accident with the surrey, three weeks alone in this godless mining town in northern California, surrounded by ruffians and drunkards and women of loose character, and the claim August had staked was nowhere to be found in the records and Mr. Quimby had finally had enough excuses, he had a load of Chinamen he needed to house and the railroad was willing to pay double what August had been paying so what can one do.
It’s all one can do.
She stared around her through the gloom. Flickering shadows from the streetlight outside skittered across the floral wallpaper, which hung in great festoons from the wall now, its glue undone by the relentless rain. She bit her lip.
She walked across the room, tore off a piece of it, stuck it into her mouth and began to chew. Bitter, bitter and sticky with mold. She chewed harder, but kept her eyes dry as she began to pack.
(A note tacked to this block by the seller says:
Hand-carved, labor intensive wallpaper print block. Circa 1840-1880. Note square nails and peg construction. Each is a unique piece of art; no two are alike.” It has hand-grooves gouged into its flanks, and the print surface feels velvety, soft. On its end are very old white numerals that some printmaker painted by hand: 2866.)
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At some point – midway between the Playskool block-sorting drum and the Thomas the Tank Engine fetish, we began to sort our two young children’s toys. Bricks, gears, stuffed animals, dress-up clothes – all were assigned translucent plastic bins in a pine toy rack – and my wife would spend a happy, idle hour every week or three sorting. Broken toys are banished. New alliances arise – the Monsters, Inc. figures with scale-model doors are grouped first with cheap toys, then building toys, then action heroes – and sundered at a whim. A constant surf of toys and parts batters the rack, rising and falling over days, hours, minutes. One of my favorites is the animal box, a mad, mis-scaled menagerie gathered from countless birthday party goodie bags, Christmas stockings and some mysterious wormhole that exists in parts of the house unknown and admits animals while inhaling socks.
Just now, I have imagined a flood from the nearby bathroom, my son frantically building a Lego ark amid the rising waters, and all these marvelous one-of-a-kind species perishing upon reaching dry land in the absence of mates.
I 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, doctor approximating the 3-D view seen by the human eyes.
With the gentleman beckoning at the right, website you could almost fall into this one, pill 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.
Here’s what the Underwood and Underwood Works and Studios had to say about it: (more…)
more about decease ‘popup’, ask ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The oil lamp guttered and went out in a little puff of soot.
She sat, thumbs a-fidget, not wanting to stick her finger with the needle, but unable to keep still, with her sewing on the lap of her crinoline hoopskirt, in the dark.
“I’m done being pleasant about this, ma’am,” Mr. Quimby had muttered, through twisted, disgusted lips, his greased handlebar mustache a-twitch. “You just be out o’ here in the morning with your brat and I’ll see to it Tom comes round with the cart to take your things wherever you’ve a mind to go.”
She straightened, put her petitpoint needle into the heather blossom on the sampler she had been sewing, and carefully set the hoop frame and the spools of yarn into the wicker basket beside her. A deep breath eased the frown from her face. Well, it’s all one can do, isn’t it. One does what one can, and it’s all one can do.
Rain hammered on the roof. Gertrude slept fitfully, making little piglike snorts beneath the counterpane, and rain hammered the shake roof with a hissing roar. Three weeks now the storms had been battering them, off and on, three weeks since her August was taken – finally returned to his Lord by the fever that had wracked him since the accident with the surrey, three weeks alone in this godless mining town in northern California, surrounded by ruffians and drunkards and women of loose character, and the claim August had staked was nowhere to be found in the records and Mr. Quimby had finally had enough excuses, he had a load of Chinamen he needed to house and the railroad was willing to pay double what August had been paying so what can one do.
It’s all one can do.
She stared around her through the gloom. Flickering shadows from the streetlight outside skittered across the floral wallpaper, which hung in great festoons from the wall now, its glue undone by the relentless rain. She bit her lip.
She walked across the room, tore off a piece of it, stuck it into her mouth and began to chew. Bitter, bitter and sticky with mold. She chewed harder, but kept her eyes dry as she began to pack.
(A note tacked to this block by the seller says:
Hand-carved, labor intensive wallpaper print block. Circa 1840-1880. Note square nails and peg construction. Each is a unique piece of art; no two are alike.” It has hand-grooves gouged into its flanks, and the print surface feels velvety, soft. On its end are very old white numerals that some printmaker painted by hand: 2866.)
purchase ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false” href=”http://www.factoidlabs.com/heavy/archives/2005/01/011105.html”>At some point – midway between the Playskool block-sorting drum and the Thomas the Tank Engine fetish, we began to sort our two young children’s toys. Bricks, gears, stuffed animals, dress-up clothes – all were assigned translucent plastic bins in a pine toy rack – and my wife would spend a happy, idle hour every week or three sorting. Broken toys are banished. New alliances arise – the Monsters, Inc. figures with scale-model doors are grouped first with cheap toys, then building toys, then action heroes – and sundered at a whim. A constant surf of toys and parts batters the rack, rising and falling over days, hours, minutes. One of my favorites is the animal box, a mad, mis-scaled menagerie gathered from countless birthday party goodie bags, Christmas stockings and some mysterious wormhole that exists in parts of the house unknown and admits animals while inhaling socks.
Just now, I have imagined a flood from the nearby bathroom, my son frantically building a Lego ark amid the rising waters, and all these marvelous one-of-a-kind species perishing upon reaching dry land in the absence of mates.
I 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, doctor approximating the 3-D view seen by the human eyes.
With the gentleman beckoning at the right, website you could almost fall into this one, pill 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.
Here’s what the Underwood and Underwood Works and Studios had to say about it: (more…)
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Yin to the raygun’s yang, the Clic-Clac is useful, modest and crisp – an elegant tribute to simple industrial design. Press the center of the puckered lid and the edge-tabs around the rim flip open. Squeeze the rim, and the puckered lid springs up again with a pop, clamping the tabs firmly into place once more. Press-open. Squeeze-closed. For a while, it seemed these tins were available only in a tiny size, full of silly mints and emblazoned with dot-com logos. But I just found a source for larger, 3.5-inch-diameter models at the amazing Surfas restaurant supply store a couple miles from here. They make a happy sound.
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To wait for a thing, to truly be patient and allow it to come at its own pace, is an inhuman act of will. We yearn – for new jobs, hot concerts, latest games, fast cars, slow weekends, a first kiss, a second chance, freedom, food, rest, love. Childhood trains us to await Christmas with palpable, potent longing. The Santa legend, the daily ritual of the advent calendar, the growth of the pile beneath the tree. Our lives seem measured out in the stroboscopic wink and bubble of tiny lights on slaughtered evergreens.
Time was, you pounded nails into your mantelpiece from which to hang your family’s Christmas stockings. Now there are hooks for the purpose. This plated, urethane-coated pot-metal facsimile of a bristlecone pine weighs close to two pounds. It sits on our rounded fireplace shelf, its hook dangling tongue-like through the loops of the children’s two empty Christmas stockings.
It waits. Because it must.
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Finding the perfect gift for someone quirky. It’s an elusive goal at Christmastime, particularly when you have about two dozen such nebulous missions to add to an agenda of stocking-filling, tree-buying, menu-planning, house-cleaning, wreath-weaving and the otherwise headlong rush of your already insane life. You have secrets for efficiency. The oddball hardware store with everything. The coffee-fueled, lunchtime dead run down the most diverse shopping strip in town. The scientific, ballistic, oddball, geekhead, propeller-beanied sites in the “e-commerce” section of the bookmarks you’ve been collecting for the past 10 years (whatever became of that font of Mexican wrestling gear, LuchaSwag?) And in the end, you’re surrounded by a pile of rubbish, blearily scotchtaping things shut and hoping you haven’t insulted anyone or shortchanged anyone or spent too much money or too little or … Christmas didn’t used to be this stressful when you were a kid, you tell yourself as you try to curl ribbon with scissors without slicing off a finger. And then the day comes, and everybody turns out to be (mostly) tickled with what you got ’em. My talented and industrious brother-in-law likes – among other things – to make candy. Chocolate butts are a favored specialty. This little stamped-tin submarine went into his Xmas bag this year – a 1930s-vintage repro stamped from an old die, by the look of it. I haven’t heard yet, of course, whether it was the perfect thing. Or rubbish.
this ‘popup’, this site ‘width=500, web height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
(front)
CHOU TALook! Magic Tree (R)
FLOWERS GROW FROM PAPER
The flower begin to grow from the tree after 1-2 hours and will grow to marvellous flowers in 6 hours.
(front)
Color Buds appear in 1-2 hours. The fun is watching its growing. You will have more fun when you grow the flowers by yourself.
INSTRUCTIONS (Please refer to following pictures)1. Assemble tree.
2. Place tree in middle of the saucer.
3. Cut off corner of plant food envelope and squeeze out entire contents in saucer
4. Look at it, it will start to grow little by little after 1-2 hours when it blooms completely the flowers usually can maintain several months.
5. Be sure to keep the tree away from warmer moisture and wind. which will affect its growth.
6. In case the tree blooms in one side only , please turn it to the other side, the flowers will continue to grow.
NON-TOXIC
approved ‘popup’, and ‘width=500, doctor height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
The vast majority of us have no sense of war. We have never served. We absorb media – most of it fictitious, some tiny part of it news – that lets us put our acceptance of the real thing in our world view into a neat box: It’s hell. It’s necessary to protect our national interests. It’s the right thing to do. It makes of men pure animals. It kills children. It topples despots. It bankrupts nations and tortures innocents. We cobble together imagery from TV and movies, equal parts Paths of Glory, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan and Casualties of War, and we note the nightly news’ body count and the empty blather of whatever politician has taken on the White House, and whatever pro-war demagogue is braying for the death to continue. But – save for the words of a few honest soldiers – we know nothing of blood and shit and killing for the leadership of one’s countrymen.
What to make of this little icon? He tumbled out of a dainty, girly pink-and-purple toy that we bought at a second-hand kids’ shop recently for our daughter – a gritty black pearl from a soft, innocent oyster. He not fully formed, but half the thickness he should be, as if someone injection-molded a microminiature study in thermoplastic of the burly stone bas-reliefs of heroes of the revolution that line Tienanmen Square – impersonal gallantry incarnate, a sketch of a warrior that offers no hint of the reality of his job. He’s a toy.
And what to make of the perspective whiplash you suffer when you’re blogging smugly about a plastic toy, and suddenly learn that one-tenth the number of U.S. soldiers have died the in Iraq war to date, as Asians have died in today’s horrific tsunamis? This site seems pretty trivial at the moment. Links here to aid organizations.
find ‘popup’, story ‘width=500, price height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
A nylon tube filled with one chemical inside which floats a glass tube filled with another chemical. Snap them, and a chemiluminescent reaction takes place – cold light – for a few hours of crisis visibility, emergency lighting or party fun. They look fuzzy here, as they are on the web, which offers up a bewildering array of data – little of it pertaining to their actual origins. Somewhere in California, something like 25 years ago, something something. Half the time, the phrase “glow stick” winds up alongside “rave,” “ecstasy” and “drug threat assessment, as if it the simple device is illicit by association. You can buy glow cubes, you can get necklaces, bracelets and sooner or later someone’s going to go out on the liability limb and start marketing chemically phosphorescent glow fangs that don’t need incandescent charge-ups. In the end, history will cast American Cyanamid, (now the subject of EPA investigations) in the role of Prometheus to the drums-n-bass-n-pacifiers crowd.
All of which is utter trivia compared to what now seem to be 25,000 deaths and untold people uprooted in the weekend’s disaster. A few agencies, such as Doctors Without Borders are stepping up to provide aid. You can donate to them if you want to help. in some meaningful way.
stuff ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
He weeps for the sins of the world. And the world sins with his tears. We are a manufacturing society, and objects of devotion and symbolism are among the things most easily manufactured and sold. I plucked him from a bucketful of his kind, where they tumbled in silent mass grief in a San Francisco curio shop, surrounded by southeast Asian artifacts mass-produced, mass-shipped, and sold as one-of-a-kind objets. He is the size of a golf ball, and about a third of the weight.
As more children and adults are counted among those who were drowned or crushed in the disaster, his posture seems the only appropriate response.
approved ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
We scurry on with our materialist lives. We return Christmas presents that were the wrong size, we drift into post-holiday sales and buy things on a whim. We ignore horrors that do not affect us. It’s a peculiarly American behavior. Heads appropriately buried in “our” culture we can ignore the active stupidity of our leaders, the crimes committed in our name, the suffering of millions with shattered lives who live at a safe remove on the other side of the planet.
I needed a new keyring. The old one was thrashed, threatening to pop open and lose the keys to my car, my house, my bike, my computer, my bike racks. This one’s held together with steel cable anchored to a chunk of anodized aluminum. It’s whimsical. It was on sale. Doubtless this would be seen in some quarters of Washington as – in its own small, consumerist way – patriotic.
On the other hand, it’s just a heavy, little object, number 325 in a yearlong series.
order ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
In your mind, banish all tension. Sign a binding, planetwide truce to end war. Master genetics and cure all disease. Solve poverty and end hunger and illiteracy. Eliminate pollution and extinction. You’re omnipotent. Go ahead. The planet is safe and happy in your care. Now that you’ve given everyone on earth everything they need, you’re left with 9 billion people who still want, who desire, who manufacture needs to give their lives purpose. What happens? War and crime return to restore equilibrium. Now, return to reality’s yin/yang balance, to the natural tension that keeps us circling each other, giving and taking, punishing and rewarding, destroying and creating, warring and reconciling. John Lennon’s “Imagine” is a lovely, unrealistic pipe dream. We live in conflict.
A pair of powerful ellipsoidal hematite magnets, their poles aligned through their narrow circumfrences, allow you to demonstrate the constant tension and readjustment of power in the universe. Throw them into the air about six inches apart, and they fly together, wrestling for equilibrium in a clattering, buzzing collision until they land at rest, centered and quiet in your cupped hand. They sound like this, and they can be bought online.
viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
Chiseled, hammered brass, given a round volume and a ringing edge, stamped or engraved with religious symbols. Three for a dollar, here, labeled “Xmas bells” – and nothing farther from the truth. Banged out they were in India, sweated over for more than a few seconds each and tossed into a basket, upmarketed, shipped, distributed and displayed in another basket on the floor of a shop. The ugliest, most deformed of them made the deepest tones, while the smaller, finer ones sound tinny and the biggest, finest of them give a sort of castrato
malady ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
Pairs attract me: Magnets. epoxy resins. Fornicatin’ keychains. And this delicately handcrafted dual slide whistle barely 8 inches long, which puts out a ripping din. To the man or child who carved this, and his countrymen, and to anyone reading this: blessings for strength and solace in 2005. It can only improve upon 2004.
Tech note: Spambots (and a stern host) have forced me to shut off comments. Please bear with me over the next few days, while I move to a different blog platform, and thanks for reading this thing all last year. Your interest and comments (when working) have been a stout anchor for me.
viagra buy ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
My grandfather was a newsman. He helped the St. Petersburg Times get started, and in later years he ran a Linotype. A story and a half high, the huge machine with its weird keyboard (ETAOIN SHRDLU instead of QWERT YUIOP) let the operator bang out lines of hot metal type in a few seconds instead of hand-setting them letter by letter. When I was a sprout, a school field trip took me to the composing room of the Hartford Courant, which – as much as any other experience – doomed me to a lifetime addiction to journalism in one form or another. I remember the roar of the presses and the Braille-like experience of touching a fiber-board plate offset printing plate that had been embossed by lines of type. This little chunk of history is a carmaker’s logo rendered for use on the press, in etched zinc mounted on wood. There’s a box of these at the Great American Antiques Mall in Bakersfield (mentioned yesterday) for 50 cents apiece. It’s a reminder of how we used to communicate before Tim Berners-Lee went and caused all this damn trouble.
doctor ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
Hang around cars long enough, and you gain a reverence for lubrication. For want of a few drops of oil, the gears of the world could grind into stillness, and cool to dead silence. Which might or might not be a bad thing, depending upon how much you listen to your inner Ted Kasczynski.
This Industrial Age artifact brings cinematic images to mind – Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, slaves to the machines in Metropolis, Danny Kaye’s little daydreams from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty which, of course, sprangfrom this wonderful passage from James Thurber’s short story:
“We are going through”. The Commanders voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. “We can’t make it sir. It’s spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me.” “I’m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,” said the Commander. “Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8,500! We’re going through!” The pounding of the cylinders increased; tapocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” he shouted. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” repeated Lieutenant Berg. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” shouted the Commander. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. “The Old Man’ll get us through,” they said to one another. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of Hell!”…
¡þ¢Ó¡þ¢Ó¡þ¢Ó¡þ¢Ó¡þ¢Ó”Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast for?”
¡þ¢Ó¡þ¢Ó¡þ¢Ó¡þ¢Ó¡þ¢Ó”Hmm?” said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. “You were up to fifty-five,” she said. “You know I don’t like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five.” Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN-202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. “You’re tensed up again,” said Mrs. Mitty. “It’s one of your days. I wish you’d let Dr. Renshaw look you over.”
The movie’s to be remade with (gack!) Jim Carrey.
visit web search ‘popup’, advice ‘width=500, ask height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Yin to the raygun’s yang, the Clic-Clac is useful, modest and crisp – an elegant tribute to simple industrial design. Press the center of the puckered lid and the edge-tabs around the rim flip open. Squeeze the rim, and the puckered lid springs up again with a pop, clamping the tabs firmly into place once more. Press-open. Squeeze-closed. For a while, it seemed these tins were available only in a tiny size, full of silly mints and emblazoned with dot-com logos. But I just found a source for larger, 3.5-inch-diameter models at the amazing Surfas restaurant supply store a couple miles from here. They make a happy sound.
stomach ‘popup’, no rx ‘width=500, adiposity height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>To wait for a thing, to truly be patient and allow it to come at its own pace, is an inhuman act of will. We yearn – for new jobs, hot concerts, latest games, fast cars, slow weekends, a first kiss, a second chance, freedom, food, rest, love. Childhood trains us to await Christmas with palpable, potent longing. The Santa legend, the daily ritual of the advent calendar, the growth of the pile beneath the tree. Our lives seem measured out in the stroboscopic wink and bubble of tiny lights on slaughtered evergreens.
Time was, you pounded nails into your mantelpiece from which to hang your family’s Christmas stockings. Now there are hooks for the purpose. This plated, urethane-coated pot-metal facsimile of a bristlecone pine weighs close to two pounds. It sits on our rounded fireplace shelf, its hook dangling tongue-like through the loops of the children’s two empty Christmas stockings.
It waits. Because it must.
cost ‘popup’, information pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Finding the perfect gift for someone quirky. It’s an elusive goal at Christmastime, particularly when you have about two dozen such nebulous missions to add to an agenda of stocking-filling, tree-buying, menu-planning, house-cleaning, wreath-weaving and the otherwise headlong rush of your already insane life. You have secrets for efficiency. The oddball hardware store with everything. The coffee-fueled, lunchtime dead run down the most diverse shopping strip in town. The scientific, ballistic, oddball, geekhead, propeller-beanied sites in the “e-commerce” section of the bookmarks you’ve been collecting for the past 10 years (whatever became of that font of Mexican wrestling gear, LuchaSwag?) And in the end, you’re surrounded by a pile of rubbish, blearily scotchtaping things shut and hoping you haven’t insulted anyone or shortchanged anyone or spent too much money or too little or … Christmas didn’t used to be this stressful when you were a kid, you tell yourself as you try to curl ribbon with scissors without slicing off a finger. And then the day comes, and everybody turns out to be (mostly) tickled with what you got ’em. My talented and industrious brother-in-law likes – among other things – to make candy. Chocolate butts are a favored specialty. This little stamped-tin submarine went into his Xmas bag this year – a 1930s-vintage repro stamped from an old die, by the look of it. I haven’t heard yet, of course, whether it was the perfect thing. Or rubbish.
this ‘popup’, this site ‘width=500, web height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>(front)
CHOU TALook! Magic Tree (R)
FLOWERS GROW FROM PAPER
The flower begin to grow from the tree after 1-2 hours and will grow to marvellous flowers in 6 hours.
(front)
Color Buds appear in 1-2 hours. The fun is watching its growing. You will have more fun when you grow the flowers by yourself.
INSTRUCTIONS (Please refer to following pictures)1. Assemble tree.
2. Place tree in middle of the saucer.
3. Cut off corner of plant food envelope and squeeze out entire contents in saucer
4. Look at it, it will start to grow little by little after 1-2 hours when it blooms completely the flowers usually can maintain several months.
5. Be sure to keep the tree away from warmer moisture and wind. which will affect its growth.
6. In case the tree blooms in one side only , please turn it to the other side, the flowers will continue to grow.
NON-TOXIC
approved ‘popup’, and ‘width=500, doctor height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The vast majority of us have no sense of war. We have never served. We absorb media – most of it fictitious, some tiny part of it news – that lets us put our acceptance of the real thing in our world view into a neat box: It’s hell. It’s necessary to protect our national interests. It’s the right thing to do. It makes of men pure animals. It kills children. It topples despots. It bankrupts nations and tortures innocents. We cobble together imagery from TV and movies, equal parts Paths of Glory, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan and Casualties of War, and we note the nightly news’ body count and the empty blather of whatever politician has taken on the White House, and whatever pro-war demagogue is braying for the death to continue. But – save for the words of a few honest soldiers – we know nothing of blood and shit and killing for the leadership of one’s countrymen.
What to make of this little icon? He tumbled out of a dainty, girly pink-and-purple toy that we bought at a second-hand kids’ shop recently for our daughter – a gritty black pearl from a soft, innocent oyster. He not fully formed, but half the thickness he should be, as if someone injection-molded a microminiature study in thermoplastic of the burly stone bas-reliefs of heroes of the revolution that line Tienanmen Square – impersonal gallantry incarnate, a sketch of a warrior that offers no hint of the reality of his job. He’s a toy.
And what to make of the perspective whiplash you suffer when you’re blogging smugly about a plastic toy, and suddenly learn that one-tenth the number of U.S. soldiers have died the in Iraq war to date, as Asians have died in today’s horrific tsunamis? This site seems pretty trivial at the moment. Links here to aid organizations.
find ‘popup’, story ‘width=500, price height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>A nylon tube filled with one chemical inside which floats a glass tube filled with another chemical. Snap them, and a chemiluminescent reaction takes place – cold light – for a few hours of crisis visibility, emergency lighting or party fun. They look fuzzy here, as they are on the web, which offers up a bewildering array of data – little of it pertaining to their actual origins. Somewhere in California, something like 25 years ago, something something. Half the time, the phrase “glow stick” winds up alongside “rave,” “ecstasy” and “drug threat assessment, as if it the simple device is illicit by association. You can buy glow cubes, you can get necklaces, bracelets and sooner or later someone’s going to go out on the liability limb and start marketing chemically phosphorescent glow fangs that don’t need incandescent charge-ups. In the end, history will cast American Cyanamid, (now the subject of EPA investigations) in the role of Prometheus to the drums-n-bass-n-pacifiers crowd.
All of which is utter trivia compared to what now seem to be 25,000 deaths and untold people uprooted in the weekend’s disaster. A few agencies, such as Doctors Without Borders are stepping up to provide aid. You can donate to them if you want to help. in some meaningful way.
stuff ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>He weeps for the sins of the world. And the world sins with his tears. We are a manufacturing society, and objects of devotion and symbolism are among the things most easily manufactured and sold. I plucked him from a bucketful of his kind, where they tumbled in silent mass grief in a San Francisco curio shop, surrounded by southeast Asian artifacts mass-produced, mass-shipped, and sold as one-of-a-kind objets. He is the size of a golf ball, and about a third of the weight.
As more children and adults are counted among those who were drowned or crushed in the disaster, his posture seems the only appropriate response.
approved ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>We scurry on with our materialist lives. We return Christmas presents that were the wrong size, we drift into post-holiday sales and buy things on a whim. We ignore horrors that do not affect us. It’s a peculiarly American behavior. Heads appropriately buried in “our” culture we can ignore the active stupidity of our leaders, the crimes committed in our name, the suffering of millions with shattered lives who live at a safe remove on the other side of the planet.
I needed a new keyring. The old one was thrashed, threatening to pop open and lose the keys to my car, my house, my bike, my computer, my bike racks. This one’s held together with steel cable anchored to a chunk of anodized aluminum. It’s whimsical. It was on sale. Doubtless this would be seen in some quarters of Washington as – in its own small, consumerist way – patriotic.
On the other hand, it’s just a heavy, little object, number 325 in a yearlong series.
order ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>In your mind, banish all tension. Sign a binding, planetwide truce to end war. Master genetics and cure all disease. Solve poverty and end hunger and illiteracy. Eliminate pollution and extinction. You’re omnipotent. Go ahead. The planet is safe and happy in your care. Now that you’ve given everyone on earth everything they need, you’re left with 9 billion people who still want, who desire, who manufacture needs to give their lives purpose. What happens? War and crime return to restore equilibrium. Now, return to reality’s yin/yang balance, to the natural tension that keeps us circling each other, giving and taking, punishing and rewarding, destroying and creating, warring and reconciling. John Lennon’s “Imagine” is a lovely, unrealistic pipe dream. We live in conflict.
A pair of powerful ellipsoidal hematite magnets, their poles aligned through their narrow circumfrences, allow you to demonstrate the constant tension and readjustment of power in the universe. Throw them into the air about six inches apart, and they fly together, wrestling for equilibrium in a clattering, buzzing collision until they land at rest, centered and quiet in your cupped hand. They sound like this, and they can be bought online.
viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Chiseled, hammered brass, given a round volume and a ringing edge, stamped or engraved with religious symbols. Three for a dollar, here, labeled “Xmas bells” – and nothing farther from the truth. Banged out they were in India, sweated over for more than a few seconds each and tossed into a basket, upmarketed, shipped, distributed and displayed in another basket on the floor of a shop. The ugliest, most deformed of them made the deepest tones, while the smaller, finer ones sound tinny and the biggest, finest of them give a sort of castrato
malady ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”> Pairs attract me: Magnets. epoxy resins. Fornicatin’ keychains. And this delicately handcrafted dual slide whistle barely 8 inches long, which puts out a ripping din. To the man or child who carved this, and his countrymen, and to anyone reading this: blessings for strength and solace in 2005. It can only improve upon 2004.
Tech note: Spambots (and a stern host) have forced me to shut off comments. Please bear with me over the next few days, while I move to a different blog platform, and thanks for reading this thing all last year. Your interest and comments (when working) have been a stout anchor for me.
viagra buy ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>My grandfather was a newsman. He helped the St. Petersburg Times get started, and in later years he ran a Linotype. A story and a half high, the huge machine with its weird keyboard (ETAOIN SHRDLU instead of QWERT YUIOP) let the operator bang out lines of hot metal type in a few seconds instead of hand-setting them letter by letter. When I was a sprout, a school field trip took me to the composing room of the Hartford Courant, which – as much as any other experience – doomed me to a lifetime addiction to journalism in one form or another. I remember the roar of the presses and the Braille-like experience of touching a fiber-board plate offset printing plate that had been embossed by lines of type. This little chunk of history is a carmaker’s logo rendered for use on the press, in etched zinc mounted on wood. There’s a box of these at the Great American Antiques Mall in Bakersfield (mentioned yesterday) for 50 cents apiece. It’s a reminder of how we used to communicate before Tim Berners-Lee went and caused all this damn trouble.
sick sick ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>
At a certain size, you start letting the experts do the measuring. Boats – believe the manufacturer. Homes? Your realtor’s bonded. Anything over 50 feet or s0, you’d rather see a pair of guys in hazard-orange tunics and hardhats fiddling with lasers than trust your own wits and tools. Mis-measured real estate lands in court, and poorly calculated building-materials orders leave you with either holes in your house or an extra truckload of fancy firewood. This is a tool for settling disputes, a spring-steel peacemaker on a reel, clad in leatherette and trimmed in chrome. It’s a Keuffel & Esser Co. Favorite Wyteface (Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.) They go for about $10 on eBay, which is a damn sight cheaper than you’ll pay for a new Stanley that size.
visit web search ‘popup’, advice ‘width=500, ask height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Yin to the raygun’s yang, the Clic-Clac is useful, modest and crisp – an elegant tribute to simple industrial design. Press the center of the puckered lid and the edge-tabs around the rim flip open. Squeeze the rim, and the puckered lid springs up again with a pop, clamping the tabs firmly into place once more. Press-open. Squeeze-closed. For a while, it seemed these tins were available only in a tiny size, full of silly mints and emblazoned with dot-com logos. But I just found a source for larger, 3.5-inch-diameter models at the amazing Surfas restaurant supply store a couple miles from here. They make a happy sound.
stomach ‘popup’, no rx ‘width=500, adiposity height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>To wait for a thing, to truly be patient and allow it to come at its own pace, is an inhuman act of will. We yearn – for new jobs, hot concerts, latest games, fast cars, slow weekends, a first kiss, a second chance, freedom, food, rest, love. Childhood trains us to await Christmas with palpable, potent longing. The Santa legend, the daily ritual of the advent calendar, the growth of the pile beneath the tree. Our lives seem measured out in the stroboscopic wink and bubble of tiny lights on slaughtered evergreens.
Time was, you pounded nails into your mantelpiece from which to hang your family’s Christmas stockings. Now there are hooks for the purpose. This plated, urethane-coated pot-metal facsimile of a bristlecone pine weighs close to two pounds. It sits on our rounded fireplace shelf, its hook dangling tongue-like through the loops of the children’s two empty Christmas stockings.
It waits. Because it must.
cost ‘popup’, information pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Finding the perfect gift for someone quirky. It’s an elusive goal at Christmastime, particularly when you have about two dozen such nebulous missions to add to an agenda of stocking-filling, tree-buying, menu-planning, house-cleaning, wreath-weaving and the otherwise headlong rush of your already insane life. You have secrets for efficiency. The oddball hardware store with everything. The coffee-fueled, lunchtime dead run down the most diverse shopping strip in town. The scientific, ballistic, oddball, geekhead, propeller-beanied sites in the “e-commerce” section of the bookmarks you’ve been collecting for the past 10 years (whatever became of that font of Mexican wrestling gear, LuchaSwag?) And in the end, you’re surrounded by a pile of rubbish, blearily scotchtaping things shut and hoping you haven’t insulted anyone or shortchanged anyone or spent too much money or too little or … Christmas didn’t used to be this stressful when you were a kid, you tell yourself as you try to curl ribbon with scissors without slicing off a finger. And then the day comes, and everybody turns out to be (mostly) tickled with what you got ’em. My talented and industrious brother-in-law likes – among other things – to make candy. Chocolate butts are a favored specialty. This little stamped-tin submarine went into his Xmas bag this year – a 1930s-vintage repro stamped from an old die, by the look of it. I haven’t heard yet, of course, whether it was the perfect thing. Or rubbish.
this ‘popup’, this site ‘width=500, web height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>(front)
CHOU TALook! Magic Tree (R)
FLOWERS GROW FROM PAPER
The flower begin to grow from the tree after 1-2 hours and will grow to marvellous flowers in 6 hours.
(front)
Color Buds appear in 1-2 hours. The fun is watching its growing. You will have more fun when you grow the flowers by yourself.
INSTRUCTIONS (Please refer to following pictures)1. Assemble tree.
2. Place tree in middle of the saucer.
3. Cut off corner of plant food envelope and squeeze out entire contents in saucer
4. Look at it, it will start to grow little by little after 1-2 hours when it blooms completely the flowers usually can maintain several months.
5. Be sure to keep the tree away from warmer moisture and wind. which will affect its growth.
6. In case the tree blooms in one side only , please turn it to the other side, the flowers will continue to grow.
NON-TOXIC
approved ‘popup’, and ‘width=500, doctor height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The vast majority of us have no sense of war. We have never served. We absorb media – most of it fictitious, some tiny part of it news – that lets us put our acceptance of the real thing in our world view into a neat box: It’s hell. It’s necessary to protect our national interests. It’s the right thing to do. It makes of men pure animals. It kills children. It topples despots. It bankrupts nations and tortures innocents. We cobble together imagery from TV and movies, equal parts Paths of Glory, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan and Casualties of War, and we note the nightly news’ body count and the empty blather of whatever politician has taken on the White House, and whatever pro-war demagogue is braying for the death to continue. But – save for the words of a few honest soldiers – we know nothing of blood and shit and killing for the leadership of one’s countrymen.
What to make of this little icon? He tumbled out of a dainty, girly pink-and-purple toy that we bought at a second-hand kids’ shop recently for our daughter – a gritty black pearl from a soft, innocent oyster. He not fully formed, but half the thickness he should be, as if someone injection-molded a microminiature study in thermoplastic of the burly stone bas-reliefs of heroes of the revolution that line Tienanmen Square – impersonal gallantry incarnate, a sketch of a warrior that offers no hint of the reality of his job. He’s a toy.
And what to make of the perspective whiplash you suffer when you’re blogging smugly about a plastic toy, and suddenly learn that one-tenth the number of U.S. soldiers have died the in Iraq war to date, as Asians have died in today’s horrific tsunamis? This site seems pretty trivial at the moment. Links here to aid organizations.
find ‘popup’, story ‘width=500, price height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>A nylon tube filled with one chemical inside which floats a glass tube filled with another chemical. Snap them, and a chemiluminescent reaction takes place – cold light – for a few hours of crisis visibility, emergency lighting or party fun. They look fuzzy here, as they are on the web, which offers up a bewildering array of data – little of it pertaining to their actual origins. Somewhere in California, something like 25 years ago, something something. Half the time, the phrase “glow stick” winds up alongside “rave,” “ecstasy” and “drug threat assessment, as if it the simple device is illicit by association. You can buy glow cubes, you can get necklaces, bracelets and sooner or later someone’s going to go out on the liability limb and start marketing chemically phosphorescent glow fangs that don’t need incandescent charge-ups. In the end, history will cast American Cyanamid, (now the subject of EPA investigations) in the role of Prometheus to the drums-n-bass-n-pacifiers crowd.
All of which is utter trivia compared to what now seem to be 25,000 deaths and untold people uprooted in the weekend’s disaster. A few agencies, such as Doctors Without Borders are stepping up to provide aid. You can donate to them if you want to help. in some meaningful way.
stuff ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>He weeps for the sins of the world. And the world sins with his tears. We are a manufacturing society, and objects of devotion and symbolism are among the things most easily manufactured and sold. I plucked him from a bucketful of his kind, where they tumbled in silent mass grief in a San Francisco curio shop, surrounded by southeast Asian artifacts mass-produced, mass-shipped, and sold as one-of-a-kind objets. He is the size of a golf ball, and about a third of the weight.
As more children and adults are counted among those who were drowned or crushed in the disaster, his posture seems the only appropriate response.
approved ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>We scurry on with our materialist lives. We return Christmas presents that were the wrong size, we drift into post-holiday sales and buy things on a whim. We ignore horrors that do not affect us. It’s a peculiarly American behavior. Heads appropriately buried in “our” culture we can ignore the active stupidity of our leaders, the crimes committed in our name, the suffering of millions with shattered lives who live at a safe remove on the other side of the planet.
I needed a new keyring. The old one was thrashed, threatening to pop open and lose the keys to my car, my house, my bike, my computer, my bike racks. This one’s held together with steel cable anchored to a chunk of anodized aluminum. It’s whimsical. It was on sale. Doubtless this would be seen in some quarters of Washington as – in its own small, consumerist way – patriotic.
On the other hand, it’s just a heavy, little object, number 325 in a yearlong series.
order ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>In your mind, banish all tension. Sign a binding, planetwide truce to end war. Master genetics and cure all disease. Solve poverty and end hunger and illiteracy. Eliminate pollution and extinction. You’re omnipotent. Go ahead. The planet is safe and happy in your care. Now that you’ve given everyone on earth everything they need, you’re left with 9 billion people who still want, who desire, who manufacture needs to give their lives purpose. What happens? War and crime return to restore equilibrium. Now, return to reality’s yin/yang balance, to the natural tension that keeps us circling each other, giving and taking, punishing and rewarding, destroying and creating, warring and reconciling. John Lennon’s “Imagine” is a lovely, unrealistic pipe dream. We live in conflict.
A pair of powerful ellipsoidal hematite magnets, their poles aligned through their narrow circumfrences, allow you to demonstrate the constant tension and readjustment of power in the universe. Throw them into the air about six inches apart, and they fly together, wrestling for equilibrium in a clattering, buzzing collision until they land at rest, centered and quiet in your cupped hand. They sound like this, and they can be bought online.
visit web search ‘popup’, advice ‘width=500, ask height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Yin to the raygun’s yang, the Clic-Clac is useful, modest and crisp – an elegant tribute to simple industrial design. Press the center of the puckered lid and the edge-tabs around the rim flip open. Squeeze the rim, and the puckered lid springs up again with a pop, clamping the tabs firmly into place once more. Press-open. Squeeze-closed. For a while, it seemed these tins were available only in a tiny size, full of silly mints and emblazoned with dot-com logos. But I just found a source for larger, 3.5-inch-diameter models at the amazing Surfas restaurant supply store a couple miles from here. They make a happy sound.
stomach ‘popup’, no rx ‘width=500, adiposity height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>To wait for a thing, to truly be patient and allow it to come at its own pace, is an inhuman act of will. We yearn – for new jobs, hot concerts, latest games, fast cars, slow weekends, a first kiss, a second chance, freedom, food, rest, love. Childhood trains us to await Christmas with palpable, potent longing. The Santa legend, the daily ritual of the advent calendar, the growth of the pile beneath the tree. Our lives seem measured out in the stroboscopic wink and bubble of tiny lights on slaughtered evergreens.
Time was, you pounded nails into your mantelpiece from which to hang your family’s Christmas stockings. Now there are hooks for the purpose. This plated, urethane-coated pot-metal facsimile of a bristlecone pine weighs close to two pounds. It sits on our rounded fireplace shelf, its hook dangling tongue-like through the loops of the children’s two empty Christmas stockings.
It waits. Because it must.
cost ‘popup’, information pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Finding the perfect gift for someone quirky. It’s an elusive goal at Christmastime, particularly when you have about two dozen such nebulous missions to add to an agenda of stocking-filling, tree-buying, menu-planning, house-cleaning, wreath-weaving and the otherwise headlong rush of your already insane life. You have secrets for efficiency. The oddball hardware store with everything. The coffee-fueled, lunchtime dead run down the most diverse shopping strip in town. The scientific, ballistic, oddball, geekhead, propeller-beanied sites in the “e-commerce” section of the bookmarks you’ve been collecting for the past 10 years (whatever became of that font of Mexican wrestling gear, LuchaSwag?) And in the end, you’re surrounded by a pile of rubbish, blearily scotchtaping things shut and hoping you haven’t insulted anyone or shortchanged anyone or spent too much money or too little or … Christmas didn’t used to be this stressful when you were a kid, you tell yourself as you try to curl ribbon with scissors without slicing off a finger. And then the day comes, and everybody turns out to be (mostly) tickled with what you got ’em. My talented and industrious brother-in-law likes – among other things – to make candy. Chocolate butts are a favored specialty. This little stamped-tin submarine went into his Xmas bag this year – a 1930s-vintage repro stamped from an old die, by the look of it. I haven’t heard yet, of course, whether it was the perfect thing. Or rubbish.
this ‘popup’, this site ‘width=500, web height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>(front)
CHOU TALook! Magic Tree (R)
FLOWERS GROW FROM PAPER
The flower begin to grow from the tree after 1-2 hours and will grow to marvellous flowers in 6 hours.
(front)
Color Buds appear in 1-2 hours. The fun is watching its growing. You will have more fun when you grow the flowers by yourself.
INSTRUCTIONS (Please refer to following pictures)1. Assemble tree.
2. Place tree in middle of the saucer.
3. Cut off corner of plant food envelope and squeeze out entire contents in saucer
4. Look at it, it will start to grow little by little after 1-2 hours when it blooms completely the flowers usually can maintain several months.
5. Be sure to keep the tree away from warmer moisture and wind. which will affect its growth.
6. In case the tree blooms in one side only , please turn it to the other side, the flowers will continue to grow.
NON-TOXIC
approved ‘popup’, and ‘width=500, doctor height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The vast majority of us have no sense of war. We have never served. We absorb media – most of it fictitious, some tiny part of it news – that lets us put our acceptance of the real thing in our world view into a neat box: It’s hell. It’s necessary to protect our national interests. It’s the right thing to do. It makes of men pure animals. It kills children. It topples despots. It bankrupts nations and tortures innocents. We cobble together imagery from TV and movies, equal parts Paths of Glory, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan and Casualties of War, and we note the nightly news’ body count and the empty blather of whatever politician has taken on the White House, and whatever pro-war demagogue is braying for the death to continue. But – save for the words of a few honest soldiers – we know nothing of blood and shit and killing for the leadership of one’s countrymen.
What to make of this little icon? He tumbled out of a dainty, girly pink-and-purple toy that we bought at a second-hand kids’ shop recently for our daughter – a gritty black pearl from a soft, innocent oyster. He not fully formed, but half the thickness he should be, as if someone injection-molded a microminiature study in thermoplastic of the burly stone bas-reliefs of heroes of the revolution that line Tienanmen Square – impersonal gallantry incarnate, a sketch of a warrior that offers no hint of the reality of his job. He’s a toy.
And what to make of the perspective whiplash you suffer when you’re blogging smugly about a plastic toy, and suddenly learn that one-tenth the number of U.S. soldiers have died the in Iraq war to date, as Asians have died in today’s horrific tsunamis? This site seems pretty trivial at the moment. Links here to aid organizations.
find ‘popup’, story ‘width=500, price height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>A nylon tube filled with one chemical inside which floats a glass tube filled with another chemical. Snap them, and a chemiluminescent reaction takes place – cold light – for a few hours of crisis visibility, emergency lighting or party fun. They look fuzzy here, as they are on the web, which offers up a bewildering array of data – little of it pertaining to their actual origins. Somewhere in California, something like 25 years ago, something something. Half the time, the phrase “glow stick” winds up alongside “rave,” “ecstasy” and “drug threat assessment, as if it the simple device is illicit by association. You can buy glow cubes, you can get necklaces, bracelets and sooner or later someone’s going to go out on the liability limb and start marketing chemically phosphorescent glow fangs that don’t need incandescent charge-ups. In the end, history will cast American Cyanamid, (now the subject of EPA investigations) in the role of Prometheus to the drums-n-bass-n-pacifiers crowd.
All of which is utter trivia compared to what now seem to be 25,000 deaths and untold people uprooted in the weekend’s disaster. A few agencies, such as Doctors Without Borders are stepping up to provide aid. You can donate to them if you want to help. in some meaningful way.
stuff ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>He weeps for the sins of the world. And the world sins with his tears. We are a manufacturing society, and objects of devotion and symbolism are among the things most easily manufactured and sold. I plucked him from a bucketful of his kind, where they tumbled in silent mass grief in a San Francisco curio shop, surrounded by southeast Asian artifacts mass-produced, mass-shipped, and sold as one-of-a-kind objets. He is the size of a golf ball, and about a third of the weight.
As more children and adults are counted among those who were drowned or crushed in the disaster, his posture seems the only appropriate response.
approved ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>We scurry on with our materialist lives. We return Christmas presents that were the wrong size, we drift into post-holiday sales and buy things on a whim. We ignore horrors that do not affect us. It’s a peculiarly American behavior. Heads appropriately buried in “our” culture we can ignore the active stupidity of our leaders, the crimes committed in our name, the suffering of millions with shattered lives who live at a safe remove on the other side of the planet.
I needed a new keyring. The old one was thrashed, threatening to pop open and lose the keys to my car, my house, my bike, my computer, my bike racks. This one’s held together with steel cable anchored to a chunk of anodized aluminum. It’s whimsical. It was on sale. Doubtless this would be seen in some quarters of Washington as – in its own small, consumerist way – patriotic.
On the other hand, it’s just a heavy, little object, number 325 in a yearlong series.