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#a191 :: Metal ant

August 23, 2008

A birthday gift from my aunt. I kid you not. Eight rods of steel, remedy buy artfully bent, and welded to three metal spheres. Where’s he off to? What’s his business?

Filed under: Art, Facsimile, Model, Objet, Toy | Comments (0)

#a187 :: iPhone 3G

August 19, 2008

My birthday gift. My wife’s love in a handheld marvel. My new video game platform. My toy. My crack pipe. My next-gen paid-content conduit. My memory bank. My little wallet-suck. My preeeeciousssss. My underestimation of Apple‘s continued brilliance at industrial design. My PDA. My GPS. My portable Thomas Guide. My jukebox. My phone. The blue […]

Filed under: Art, Fetish, Instrument, Objet, Part, symbol, Tool, Toy, weapon | Comments (0)

#186 :: “Thunderbird”

August 18, 2008

The decision had cost Daniel. Which is why he was standing here now with this ridiculous knife in his hand. Ankle-deep in all the tools he had yanked from the toolbox and flung to the floor as he rifled fruitlessly for a real weapon. weapons. Both blades out. Ready. Wicked. He tried not to look […]

Filed under: Adornment, Fetish, Objet, Tool, Toy, weapon | Comments (0)

#a184 :: Maxam “Assisted Opening” Liner Lock Knife

August 16, 2008

Larger image Mom and Dad, medications being loving, clever parents, took pity upon me after reading about the pocketknife incident. They Googled around and stumbled on BuynSaveDirect.com, a sort of geek-heaven/tactical-weapons porn shop masquerading as a knife’n’flashlight supplier. For barely $7 you can buy (among other things including Tasers and swords) solid, Chinese-made pocket knives […]

Filed under: Fetish, Tool, Toy, weapon | Comments (0)

#a184 :: Message fan

August 15, 2008

You can keep your Adobe Photoshop, cialis 40mg your diffraction foil, your glitter-gel pens. For my money, mankind’s greatest contribution to democratizing flashy art and entertainment has been the light-emitting diode. This programmable, Chinese-made fan lets you spell out messages that it miraculously traces in the air by spinning eight tiny LEDs at hundreds of […]

Filed under: Tool, Toy | Comments (0)

#a181 :: Handheld laser projector

August 12, 2008

A clear memory: I was 9. We were in the Smithsonian. The room was dark. Someone was demonstrating laser beams. The name, page doctor so ineffably cool. L-A-S-E-R. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Sharp, medical bright red patterns on the wall. In the future, approved we’ll all be using lasers. Living rooms and […]

Filed under: Fetish, Instrument, Toy | Comments (0)

#a180 :: Tiny kaleidoscope

August 11, 2008

A fingerlength of brass tubing, visit this site three rectangular slivers of mirror, stuff a thimbleful of tiny glass beads, a translucent end cap and a leather thong. Elegant. Hold it to your eye, face the sun and forget your age. Found in Covent Garden.

Filed under: Objet, Toy | Comments (0)

#a179 :: Finger rocket

August 10, 2008

Tightly-woven strands of super-stiff nylon thread only look like a Chinese finger trap. In fact, here if you crush this end-to-end, try it compresses, grows fat with potential kinetic energy that – when you suddenly release your fingers – shoots the thing 10 feet across the room. The simplest toys are the best.

Filed under: Toy | Comments (0)

#a154 :: Antique race car

July 17, 2008

The vehicular fetishes of young Britons of the 20th century line the crowded shelves of the marvelous Brighton Toy and Model Museum. This land-speed monster dates from the 40s or 50s.

Filed under: Facsimile, Fetish, Miniature, Model, Toy | Comments (0)

#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 […]

Filed under: Facsimile, Fetish, Miniature, Model, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)

#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.

Filed under: Facsimile, Fetish, Miniature, Tool, Toy | Comments (1)

#a132 :: Korg Kaossilator dynamic phrase synthesizer

June 25, 2008

Fair warning: I held Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson in very high regard when I was, diagnosis like, cialis 40mg 13. I thought Frankenstein was the single coolest thing I’d ever heard played on keyboards (after “The Well-Tempered Synthesizer”). I keep Amon Tobin and DJ Spooky on heavy rotation these days. I am a hopeless […]

Filed under: Fetish, Instrument, Toy | Comments (1)

#a131 :: The NeoCube

June 25, 2008

Magnetism enchants and mystifies me. These 216 neodymium magnets – each 3mm thick – cling together in clouds when crushed, erectile in polyhedrons and exotic coils when aligned. I roll them between my fingers, pharmacy and they snap together with the surety of pure particle physics. They form a collective entity, this site a hive […]

Filed under: Fetish, Objet, Part, Toy | Comments (1)

#a128 :: Japanese bug collectible

June 21, 2008

This life-sized stag-beetle toy came pre-fetishized from Mitsuwa Marketplace, seek our favorite Japanese supermarket. The Japanese culture of packaging dictated that F-Toys Confect. manufacture the 3-inch-long, hand-colored, pre-assembled dorcus titanicus castanicolor from 12 hand-assembled parts, encase it in a two-piece, blowmolded thermoplastic container sarcophagus, box it in cardboard emblazoned with myriad messages via multiple fonts […]

Filed under: Facsimile, Fetish, Toy | Comments (0)

#a126 :: Astrojax

June 19, 2008

When you play with Astrojax correctly, prescription its three torusoid balls, here each mounted with a different colored LED, whip around in concentric, flickering orbits. The red and green ones anchor either end of a 3-foot-long nylon string, and the yellow ball slides up and down the string, exchanging weight, mass and inertia with the […]

Filed under: Toy | Comments (0)

#a122 :: Easter egg

June 15, 2008

We had an egghunt all over the hillside behind our house for Easter a few weeks back. While I was tearing down a fence yesterday, shop I came across this escapee – one of William‘s fantastic eggs for the kids – packed with little vinyl characters and equally-chewy Starburst, sealed in a chrome eggshell. Should […]

Filed under: Found Object, Toy | Comments (1)

#a120 :: Silicone clown fish puzzle

June 13, 2008

A lifetime of desiring and acquiring manufactured things has warped my brain, diagnosis reprogrammed my very lizard DNA, I’m sure of it: This toy’s translucent color and pungent, exotic-plastic aroma make it seem good enough to eat. I pull it apart into convenient, bite-sized pieces, and consider the options: reassemble? Or devour?

Filed under: Facsimile, Fetish, Model, Toy | Comments (0)

#a118 :: Space man

June 11, 2008

He waits, thumb always, pharm tools in hand: a coil of something (rope? wire?) and a cryptic triangular gizmo. Or maybe an alien artifact. He stands tall – barely 1.8 inches of light-gray plastic. Why is he smiling?

Filed under: Facsimile, Miniature, Model, Toy | Comments (0)

#a117 :: Dot-com relic

June 11, 2008

Like all major American newspapers, thumb the Los Angeles Times – as we know it – may be doomed. Never thought I’d say that – I worked in newspapers for 17 years, side effects including ’90 to ’97 on staff at the Times, and I always kept the faith. I had rough moments mixed in […]

Filed under: Artifact, Jetsam, symbol, Toy | Comments (0)

#a113 Jelly silicone ninja

June 6, 2008

At the hallucinogenic nexus of pop culture, information pills American tastes and mass-production technology, here odd blossoms bud. Here, nurse forming an icon of cool stealth for the amusement of the mobs calls for transparent violet jelly silicone. What better way to say “They know nothing of his presence until his blade has already passed […]

Filed under: Facsimile, Miniature, Toy | Comments (0)

#a112 :: I just stepped on this in the dark

June 5, 2008

Something of my daughter’s. It once contained spring-loaded paper snakes that leapt out when you opened the can to get a tasty Chees Ball (sic). Now it’s full of miniature Chinese coats made of silicone, treat fitted with little tin bells.

Filed under: Facsimile, Found Object, Miniature, Model, Toy | Comments (0)

#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.

Filed under: General, Jetsam, Part, symbol, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)

#a99 :: Neodymium cube magnets

May 23, 2008

One hundred twenty-five cubes of high-power synthetic magnets, prostate each barely three millimeters on a side, discount stick together tightly. Pull them apart and they align into strands, sickness each North pole sticking to the next one’s South. Strong polar attraction plus weak sideways attraction means a strand bends and flops – and defies efforts […]

Filed under: Fetish, Toy | Comments (1)

#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 […]

Filed under: Artifact, Fetish, Objet, Part, Tool, Toy | Comments (0)

#a94 :: Lesney station wagon

May 18, 2008

My wife found this excellent machine at a garage sale, and and garaged it in our bedroom alongside the others in her collection, physician which includes a purple travel trailer, stuff a hot-orange Stude custom and a thrashed yellow fuel tanker. She’s a collector not of brands (Lesney, Dinky, Matchbox are all the same in […]

Filed under: Artifact, Miniature, Model, Toy | Comments (0)