I love surplus.

I was at my local surplus store when I came across these great tools.

I'm not sure what the original intended use for these was but... I will find a good use for them.
They looking more like they would be used for torture then any thing else.

(If you know the purpose these bad boys where designed for drop me a line.)

Mini pliers sweet.

I cannot think of any practical use for them, they are almost too small to use successfully.
Yes that is a Quarter for scale

I am all for getting things online but these are things that you I would not find online because they are not something that one goes looking for, for that I say here is to the store, the place where I can go and touch, feel and see the crazy fun things that I just have to have and will find a use for later.

Yea... I need one or... maybe 2

Watch Robo Dog in Game Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Guys at London's Mutoid Waste Company sure have made Mark Pauline and the rest of the crew at Survival Research Laboratories very proud.

"I like to make machines that can just do their own shows... machines that can do all that machines in the science fiction novels can do. I want to be there to make those dreams real."- Mark Pauline

"Rube Goldberg" Machines

I think it might be time to stop calling them Rube Goldberg machines.


The Honda Cog ad

I don't think that it is an accurate or fair to either side. The sides being Rube Goldberg and those who make these contraptions. When done well these contraptions are well , like the cog commercial, they are poetry in motion. Maybe the poetry of motion. At their worst even Rube goes "What?"



Rube Goldberg's illustrations are great whimsical illustrations that play with the imagination.

These machines really got their start with Peter Fischli and David Weiss with their short film Der Lauf der Dinge, The Way Things Go.
Here are two of my personal favorite, besides the Cog ad or The Way Things Go.






I'm not sure what we should be calling them but I do feel that there has to be a better way to describe them.

It's soo cutie.

I don't go awe it's so cutie very often, but I saw this and...


"Look at the little baby trailer."
Ok then...
"Hay, you gotta license for that thing."
"So, is that the practice trailer and when you pass the test you get the real one."
"I take it you where at the toy store Christmas shopping and just could not resist getting a toy for your self."
"So, what is gonna go on something that small."

I think that is all I got.
But I'm sure that it has many uses, I cant think of any. It fits nicely in the garage.

"It's pledge time here on PBS."

That can only mean one thing tracking down when "Alone in the Wilderness" is going to be on.
If you have not seen this than... well you are missing out on something. "Alone in the Wilderness" give an account of what it was like for Dick Proenneke living day to in the remote Twin Lakes, Alaska. I have to say that he is one of my hero's, dear I say idol. He moved there in retiment and build everything thing he needed and live by himself for 30 years. He made his cabin and it could be one of the greatist single pices of craftsmanship of the 20th centry. The footage in the film he all shot him self on 16mm with a tripod all in his first year and his journals are used as the sript.




Needless to say Dick did not hunt wolves, moose or anything else from a airplane.
He died in 2003, after moving to calinforina in 1999 at age 82. I belive the resaon he gave for leaving Twin Lakes had something to do with the it being to long and to cold in the winter something 80 below with windchill.

5-in-1

The 5-in-1 painters tool.
No work shop or tool box should be without one or more.


I can't tell you what the 5 tools in the 1 are but I know that it has more than 5 uses. I have pushed these bad boys to the edge doing things that they were never meant to do, and I can not recall ever breaking one (new mission try to break a 5-in-1 or at lest damage beyond all repair).