HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

Category: Facsimile

  • #a434 :: Z-card robot

    042609I’ve posted some Z-Cardz before – they’re nifty little 3-D models that you assemble from pieces that you punch out of precision-die-cut 2-D plastic cards.

    This is not one of their better ones – and I guess that’s why I’m posting it – as an example of Not Good Enough.

    Warner Bros. cartoons had their bad years.

    Everyone would rather forget the Mustang II for the miserably anemic botch-up it made of a once-proud marque.

    And Phantom Menace sucked.

    So this particular Z-Card is actually a tribute to its superior brethren.

  • #a430 Spun aluminum pillbox

    042109A Halloween candy bowl kept at the back of our cupboard finally (pardon the pun) gave up the ghost.

    Used to be you would reach into it for a tasty treat, drug and a little infrared sensor triggered an animated rubber witch’s hand to snatch at yours and a voicebox would rasp, thumb “Trick or treat!”

    This morning we reached in to find the rubber-encased, cotton-stuffed digits had gone the way of all silicone flesh.

    I’m loving these thing
    042109A Halloween candy bowl kept at the back of our cupboard finally (pardon the pun) gave up the ghost.

    Used to be you would reach into it for a tasty treat, more about and a little infrared sensor triggered an animated rubber witch’s hand to snatch at yours and a voicebox would rasp, “Trick or treat!”

    This morning we reached in to find the rubber-encased, cotton-stuffed digits had gone the way of all silicone flesh.

    I’m loving these things so much, they may even get the Object of the Month award.
    042209I’m at the far end of the wire.

    The warmth of the crowd rises up into the moldy canvas peak of the tent here. It pours from their eyes, search their upturned, prostate open mouths.

    I toss the balance pole into the air, pivot the other way, catch the pole and head back across the wire.

    Their glasses glint up at my sparkling soles, my cartoon skirt.

    Light from the fresnels spangles the tent through the beveled reflections of all that eyewear.

    I stroll to the other side.

    And this image from our apartment is what I focus on behind my eyes.

    God DAMN it, Seth. You left me.

  • #a429 :: Rotten witch fingers

    042009At some point last month, approved my mother-in-law gave my daughter (age 7) a little keyring with a big fob that spelled out “Love” in lurid gold-chromed script.

    It was schwag from some utterly-too-grownup movie, check as evidenced by the little stamped-metal tag proclaiming the brand. Here’s what ensued the moment I laid eyes on it:

    Me: (rummaging for the pliers) Here, buy let me fix that for you.

    Daughter: Dad, can’t I keep that?

    Uh, no. (*snap!*)

    I could go on here about the bizarre cultural currency our infantilized nation has created around the fetishism of branded schwag, but I’m saving all my energy for
    042109A Halloween candy bowl kept at the back of our cupboard finally (pardon the pun) gave up the ghost.

    Used to be you would reach into it for a tasty treat, sildenafil and a little infrared sensor triggered an animated rubber witch’s hand to snatch at yours and a voicebox would rasp, what is ed “Trick or treat!”

    This morning we reached in to find the rubber-encased, cotton-stuffed digits had gone the way of all silicone flesh.

    I’m loving these things so much, they may even get the Object of the Month award.

  • #a379 :: Las Vegas tiki culture artifact

    022809Before the age of fluorocarbons and exotic esthers, link a man used to scrub his bar of shaving soap into a lather with one of these, daub it on his face and shave.

    I gave this to Dad for Christmas a few years ago, and he sent it along last month in a boxful of HLOs he generously lent to the cause (yes, I’ll be mailing most of them back).

    Chromed brass, by the way it’s corroding. I don’t think he uses it much.
    022809Before the age of fluorocarbons and exotic esthers, help a man used to scrub his bar of shaving soap into a lather with one of these, daub thge resulting suds onto his face and shave.

    I gave this to Dad for Christmas a few years ago, and he sent it along last month in a boxful of HLOs he generously lent to the cause.

    Chromed brass, and little used, by the way it’s corroding. Somewhere in the sound stages of Hollywood I imagine a prop man is working very hard to apply this sort of finish to a gilded-age industrial opera.
    022809Before the age of fluorocarbons and exotic esthers, more about a man used to scrub his bar of shaving soap into a lather with one of these, daub it on his face and shave.

    I gave this to Dad for Christmas a few years ago, and he sent it along last month in a boxful of HLOs he generously lent to the cause (yes, I’ll be mailing most of them back).

    Chromed brass, and little used, by the way it’s corroding.
    030109The Aku-Aku Restaurant opened in 1960 inside the much-fabled Stardust Casino in Las Vegas.

    When the Stardust was imploded in 2007, prostate mob-culture journalist Nick Pileggi called it “the Bellagio of its day, ampoule the most dazzling casino out there.”

    The Aku Aku ran for 20 years.=, a veritable temple of tiki culture (Here’s its appetizer menu).

    My step-father-in-law, who has a massive Vegas collection both in cabinets and in his head, very generously gave me this today. (Thanks, Lee!)

    I don’t know whether this fellow is laughing or grimacing, but he’s the real deal – a rough-hewn head in wonderfully scratchy ceramic.

    He’s now living in a place of honor, among the other shrunken heads.

  • #a363 :: Bronze and stone sculpture

    021109A leopard, viagra savaging a prone man.

    The man’s head has snapped off the sculpture, information pills which makes it extra-poignant.

    I love the way this is rendered, his spots suggested by little rings of bronze, his tail curled down between the man’s legs and shoulders hunched in a pose of Darwinian dominance.

    Fitting, for the week of Charles Darwin‘s 200th birthday.
    021109A leopard, viagra sale savaging a prone man.

    The man’s head has snapped off the sculpture, prostate which makes it extra-poignant.

    I love the way this is rendered, his spots suggested by little rings of bronze, his tail curled down between the man’s legs and shoulders hunched in a pose of Darwinian dominance.

    Fitting, for the week of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday.
    021009Around our house, cialis 40mg I make dinner one of two ways:

    1. Crank something out in a hurry on the stove, prescription slap it down in front of the kids and hope they don’t moan or spill all over their clothes as they forget to use their utensils;

      2. Or grill something big and munchy (think ribs or sesame-garlic chicken with corn on the cob) on the barbecue, hand out plastic utensils and grab a beer.

    But somewhere in the world, people are bunching up their good linen napkins in lovely napkin rings for fear of – what, I don’t know – having their napkins look unceremonious.

    I appreciate the culture of a good table setting. On our trip to London last summer, we got to tour Windsor Castle’s grand ballroom, where HM the Queen had ordered a state dinner prepared for 150. Picture that in gold dining utensils set aside 150 bone china plates on gold-plated chargers, each with little LED floodlights illuminating a hand-calligraphed nametag beneath this ceiling and you begin to get the picture.

    These rings (a loan from Dad) are part of the same Culture of Preciousness, about which I have bloviated a bit in the past.

    Precious. When you somehow need to feel special by making your guests feel special.
    021309It’s rare that an object straddles the razor-fine line between art and camp, between craft and kitsch.

    Yet here is a little man of bronze, order made to recline in the cup of a water-pocked stone.

    His blobby countenance, shop his Giacomettian proportions keep him from being a thing of manufactured cuteness and maybe lend him a bit of gravitas. Or, he could be just a quaint paperweight. I can’t decide.

    This is something my father lent to the cause by way of his collection.

  • #a362 :: Leopard’s victim

    021109A leopard, viagra savaging a prone man.

    The man’s head has snapped off the sculpture, information pills which makes it extra-poignant.

    I love the way this is rendered, his spots suggested by little rings of bronze, his tail curled down between the man’s legs and shoulders hunched in a pose of Darwinian dominance.

    Fitting, for the week of Charles Darwin‘s 200th birthday.

  • #a360 :: Temperance-era novelty bar tool

    020909This conflicted fellow was cast in pot-metal and chromed in cheap silver probably more than 100 years ago.

    His top-hat is a jigger, decease ed his feet end in a spoon, order information pills the better to mix you a nice drink and present you with a little moral dilemma in the bargain:

    Do you spoon something into your drink, facing the two-headed man’s disapproving snarl and wagging finger of reproach on the front side?

    Or do you prefer to see the back, where heedless souse’s happy guffaw uncorks your beer and his little cocktail glass foameth over?

    I’m really grateful for this loan from the amazing collection of Dad.

    Update – Apparently this comes from the early 20-th century temperance era – see Dad’s comment quoted below. More about Carrie Nation here.

  • #a359 :: Silicone dolphin

    020609Los Angeles jetsam reminds me daily that I live in a freakish magpie’s nest of a city.

    Stolen from aboriginal people by Spanish missionaries who gave huge chunks of it away to soldiers, pharm information pills whose families then sold it off in ever-decreasing slices and slivers, sildenafil Los Angeles has always been shaped by grabbers, opportunists and self-reinventors. Angelenos take, procure, manufacture, buy, steal or create whatever they think they need to move forward.

    Lubricated by commercial/political struggles over water and oil and finally fertilized and electrified by booms in aerospace, post-war manufacturing, Hollywood and wave upon wave of immigrants, this city is like an immense 50-by-50-mile petri dish: teeming with virulent, ever-mutating cultures of nationality, religion, science, sexuality, sport and art .

    So when I’m shambling across Figueroa Blvd. in a hammering rainstorm USC to teach a room full of brilliant multi-cultural computer programmers how to architect social networks for a fictitious neighborhood watch and contemplating whether to eat Thai or Mexican that weekend before or after tackling a new video game or clean out my gutters, it’s no surprise to happen upon this: a wickedly sawtoothed chunk of palm.

    This non-native species was imported to L.A. in the 20s and 30s to pretty things up.

    Because when it comes to cooking its own ever-evolving recipe for the future, L.A. tosses whatever the hell it likes into the pot and keeps stirring.

    That’s why I love living here.
    020809If there’s a story behind this creature, online my father will have to supply it.

    It arrived in a box of things he offered for photography, information pills and it suggests nothing but a happy life aquatic, swimming through the dust in a drawer and surviving on pencil shavings until he’s required to dance on his tail, chatter and save the day.

    Or is it a she?

  • #a344 :: Chrome-plastic miniature cutlery

    012309This tin of oil-based printing ink has not changed since I bought it (counting on his fingers) nearly 15 years ago on my honeymoon in Beijing.

    Intended to be art supplies for some project that hasn’t yet materialized, physician it’s been sitting at the bottom of a drawer, visit this site waiting to be used.

    The stuff takes forever to dry out. I’m tempted to cover it and leave it untouched for another 15 years, as a sort of ongoing talisman against adversity.
    012309This tin of oil-based printing ink has not changed since I bought it (counting on his fingers) nearly 15 years ago on my honeymoon in Beijing.

    Intended to be art supplies for some project that hasn’t yet materialized, this site it’s been sitting at the bottom of a drawer, waiting to be used.

    The stuff takes forever to dry out. I’m tempted to cover it and leave it untouched for another 15 years, as a sort of ongoing talisman against adversity.
    0124091This nation has bought into the culture of preciousness from the very first needlepoint sampler of the earliest Don’t Tread on Me flag.

    We can’t say we invented it- I think we can thank the Egyptians or the first culture that ever created chubby little fertility-goddess fetishes for that.

    But the U.S. has a by-God pride of ownership in kitsch-oozing preciousness. The way we wear our hair, more about the creature comforts we advertise in Christmas ads, viagra the mints on the pilllows in hotels and the silk bows we tie on our domesticated poodle-shaped animal friends.

    So precious to us is preciousness that the caterer at a big Hollywood function my wife attended this evening (one Wolfgang Puck) saw to it that everyone was fed their finger food and pocket puddings with itty-bitty, thumb half-scale silverware rendered in chromed plastic.

    Unsustainable, landfill-bound straight-up manufactured trash. By the thousands.

    Again – when we look at the toxins we bring upon our own land for the sake of a few seconds’ worth of enjoyment – we really should draw a sharp breath and pause …

  • #a341 :: Obama campaign pin

    011909Here’s the other end of this equation – a fine brown potato, sickness now pocked with the wounds of a thousand battles … well, prostate not really.

    This is simply what it looks like when your son swipes your Christmas present and gets crazy with a hapless spud … the potato’s a couple of ounces lighter, there are nasty cylindrical potato-pellets all over the house and you’re both laughing and trading the fun off to shoot each other because it’s such stupid fun.
    011809I scoffed at these things, more about which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, information pills sea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.

    Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, unhealthy only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.

    This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.

    It shouldn’t work at all, really.

    But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin.
    011809I scoffed at these things, link which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, sickness sea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.

    Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.

    This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.

    It shouldn’t work at all, really.

    But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin.
    011809I scoffed at these things, information pills which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, ask sea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.

    Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.

    This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.

    It shouldn’t work at all, really.

    But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin.
    011809I scoffed at these things, nurse which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, search sea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.

    Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, view only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.

    This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.

    It shouldn’t work at all, really.

    But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin.
    ENLARGEI never repeat heavy little objects.

    I mean, sales never.

    My little daily obsession can be a cruel taskmistress, sildenafil sometimes commanding me to find something cool to post even when nothing cool has come through my life. But like an idiot samurai, information pills I live and die by a code set in motion long ago and over which I (choose to) have no control.

    However, rules are meant to be questioned and this object – like grizzlies in a cloning lab – bears repeating:

    No punditry, no anecdotes, no pontification can outweigh, outrun or outlast this fact: We put two decent men into the White House today.

    We ended the longest, ugliest domestically-generated reign of terror since the Red Scare of the 50s or, arguably, the Civil War.

    And we bought this once-great nation a little extra time, and a chance to become great again, before darkness could swallow us all.

    Onward. And upward. Together.

    Someone is reminding us how great America can be, because we all know deep in our marrow, how great Americans can be when they embrace their diversity and work together for a common good.

    We should listen. And act as one. Because we know it’s better than continuing to destroy each other with words, and the nation with ideological conflict that matters far less than every liberty, right and joy we’ve allowed the past eight years to piss away.

    So let’s go.

  • #a339 :: Potato Gun

    011709There’s a thick magnet in the base of the mirror, website like this information pills two smaller ones with their poles pointed counterclockwise to each other in her base.

    Push the mirror towards her, she pirouettes away.
    011809I scoffed at these things, visit web which used to appear alongside ads for X-ray spectacles, prostate sea monkeys and GRIT on the backs of Marvel comics when I was a kid.

    Potato gun. Hah. My friend Phil has a BB gun that he once used to nail the pillar on a house nearly a block away once, only he managed to shatter the family’s front window … but thats another story.

    This appeared in my Christmas stocking last month courtesy of Santa Wife, who knows the buttered side of my bread quite well: Sturdy blowmolded thermoplastic – a simple mechanism made of two parts – a red barrel/trigger assembly mounted tightly to a black receiver with a good, stiff spring.

    It shouldn’t work at all, really.

    But just shove the muzzle into a raw potato, tearing off a bit of ammo as you withdraw it and you have the power to nail someone30 feet away with a tiny cylinder of potato that leaves the gun with a sharp *Plick*, and leaves your mouth with a stupid 10-year-old’s grin.

  • #a326 :: Porcelain doll head

    ENLARGEHe was rendered in porcelain bisque, advice no bigger than the end of my thumb many, advice many decades ago. This angelic countenance stands ready to receive whatever whim, benediction or mad wish a child of 18XX might bestow upon him. If he had a body, it’s gone now. No matter. Capped with glazed curls, his smile is blank and open enough to absorb a million dreams.

  • #a324 :: Fuse-Bead eyeball

    ENLARGEMy son shambles in, diagnosis decease his hand covering his brow.

    “Dad, I hate to tell you this, but I’ve got a terrible case of pinkeye.”

    “What??? Oh, no. C’mere, let me see.”

    He turns and I see this fantastic Fuse-bead concoction clapped to his face.

    It’s still warm, fresh from the iron.

    I’m doubly thrilled – a) that he’s making a gift of it to me and b) that it’s not really fuckin’ pinkeye.

    In seconds, we’re both cackling like idiots.

  • #a285 :: Toy compass

    enlargeWere you lost in the wilderness, remedy this would not help you out.

    Its needle swings wildly, no rx influenced by the pulse of your hand, the mass of nearby metal, the wind, the whims of its Chinese manufacturers.

    It is a toy, smaller in diameter than a quarter, and if you put it down on the burning desert sands where you’re stranded and danced around it three times you might have just as much luck finding your way out as if you consulted its direction.

  • #a281 :: Cupcake topper

    enlargeMore than 500 million human beings live in absolute poverty. Right now.

    Their lot is not changing.

    More than 15 million children die of hunger every year. Starve. To. Death.

    How many children is that? Numbers are pretty meaningless when you’re talking about entire nations of people, try but do some math:

    Remember the faces of the kids in your own first-grade class? Remember the fat kid and the anxious kid? The punchy kid and the silly kid and your very best friend in the world who laughed when you ate paste? Now multiply the size of your own first-grade classroom by about 20 … (more…)

  • #a253 :: Desk cleaning time

    ENLARGEYou own a lot of shit. You accumulate more of it every day. Sometimes, story you have to pick through it to get your desk clean. And you make little piles. That might or might not be photographs of your life told in debris. And yet, help you never seem to get rid of the things as swiftly as you take them on. So you amuse yourself with the illusory luxury of a desk-clearing brawl – all elbows and rags and windex and a sweet sparkling aftertaste. And you cap the day doing the very thing you told yourself you were done with five or six hours ago. Staring at the desk. Letting shit pile up on it. Because it’s your desk. And it does that.

  • #a230 :: Tintype

    ENLARGEBalefully he stares at the lens and struggles to hold his pose.

    The photographer has gone to lengths to make him appear comfortable – with a little wall and urn upon which to lean poeticallly – and “natural” – with tufts of grass and twigs underfoot and a bough of oak leaves overhead.

    But he cannot look comfortable: He must stand stock still for up to 20 seconds. He doesn’t really want to be here. His collar is tight. The shoes pinch.

    Are you ready? The photographer pulls the dark slide from the holder carrying the prepared sheet of japanned tin.

    I guess so. The man steadies himself and exhales deeply, buy searching for inner calm.

    Hold it now.

    The photographer pulls off the lens cap and looks at the man. Okay now – just a little while longer.

    The man waits. He cannot help blinking at least once, this and glancing around the studio: this blurs his eyes on the painfully slow emulsion.

    In happier times, shop before the marriage, and the kids and the mortgage, this fellow might have enjoyed hanging out with these fellows. But not here. No longer. That life is gone.

    The photographer vamps: Just a liiittle longer … the man sighs. His shoulders lift and his head moves, imperceptibly fuzzing the edges of his face.

    … aaand, okay, sir. Thank you. He caps the lens, and the ordeal is over. The man’s picture is now inside the camera, and the photographer must get it out.

  • #a229 :: Marx mule deer

    ENLARGEBack in 1969, viagra dosage the Louis Marx and Company was casting its “WILD ANIMALS” series in plastic. These beautiful little facsimile animals were hand-painted (in Taiwan, unhealthy according to the garish and lush four-color offset-litho box) and turned them loose in the wilds of American family rooms.

    The box copy says (in all its unproofread glory):

    MULE DEER

    Ranging from the cold mountains of Alaska to the burning deserts of the South west, Mule Deer are exclusively western animals. They are up to 6 feet long and four feet high at the shoulders and weigh up to 350 pounds.

    Avoiding Deep forests, they prefer a partly wooded habitat. They eat leaves and wild fruits. The bucks meekly spend the winter in the herd, but as do other deers, the doe hides her fawns during the day and returns to them after feeding. The Mule Deer is the most abundant big-game animal in North America.

    Ten years later, according to Wikipedia, the company closed down.

    This one bears a price sticker from “California Toys” that says, simply, “15¢.”

  • #a228 :: Candy corn

    ENLARGEPopped my chain before dawn this morning as I hoisted my bulk up on the pegs today and hammered up this steep little hill. This is what was left after the repair – the first two attempts at which failed because I had threaded the chain incorrectly. Both times. Furthermore, order the XBox 360 flung the Red Ring of Death at me precisely one year after we bought it – and exactly 74 minutes after Best Buy closed. Which puts me 12 hours out of warranty the next time I can possibly try getting a replacement.

    Oh, ampoule and the stock market geeked out all over itself in a mad 900-point feint at recovery, order which is sure to be followed by an equally geeked-down plunge as everyone realizes amid the many layoffs.

    Not to mention the endless ideological and bloody wars.

    And now fucking this

    Yeah, it was that kind of day. It’s been that kind of decade. Make of it – er, rather, the future – what you will.
    ENLARGEo thou wicked junk
    corn syrup all sticky sweet
    rot my teeth, clinic you fiends

  • #a223 :: Sawyer View-Master

    ENLARGEIn the 50s multimedia realm of celluloid filmstrips and magnetic tape, prostate this was, ed arguably, order the iPhone of its day.

    You could get “reels” of stereo photos or cartoons on virtually any subject – 8 shots each – and completely immerse yourself in 3-D imagery – even sometimes with a soundtrack.

    Sawyer’s View-Master put images of the world in your pocket, hours of time-eating enjoyment at your fingertips with the most simple-minded of technologies: (more…)

  • #a215 :: Bus

    ENLARGEParallel to the spine of the bus:
    LEYLAND
    ROYAL TIGER COACH
    MADE IN ENGLAND
    BY LESNEY

    (and then just beneath the engine compartment)

    #40

    From my wife’s collection.

  • #a214 :: Miniature tempura

    ENLARGETiny morsels of molded silicon, tadalafil hand-daubed to an irresistible crunchylookingness. Only 900 yen. The linchpin to a successful front-window display in your 1:8-scale restaurant.

    From the same niche of Japanese collectibles culture as this

  • #a191 :: Metal ant

    enlargeA 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?

  • #a169 :: Happy Hippos

    ENLARGELike hippos emerging through river foam (?), thumb Kinder brand Happy Hippos are hazelnut-cream cookie pods dipped in thick-grained sugar and given a few squirts of color in each eye just prior to put into individual cellophane wraps and released to a cute-susceptible public.

    They’re also yummy.

  • #a159 :: Stanley “stubby” screwdriver

    ENLARGEFrom 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.