I was bored. That's how most of my stories begin. I was bored, so I started photoshopping word balloons onto pictures of my friends. I was bored, so I plotted a scenario to drive my girlfriend out of my life. I was bored, so I stopped going to class. In this case, I was bored, so I started shooting rubber-bands. This was at work, where the nature of the job dictates long periods of intense boredom punctuated by heavy bursts of frantic and desperate activity. This was the former. Hence the being bored, which I will keep hammering on until you are just as bored as I was.
Shooting rubber-bands is all fine and good, but I am descended from a long line of clever tool-using monkeys and it quickly occurred to me that I could build a device to shoot them better. Based on the materials at hand I took two pens, hollowed them out and taped them together. On one end I taped down a small binder clip. With small pliers I pinched a paper-clip into a narrow s-shaped hook and I pushed it through the pen cap on the other end. Rubber-band goes here, stretches to there, clip, aim, squeeze. Thwish, snap, smack.
The basic design was in place. The only problem was, no handle. I took stock of the items I had available to me, holding various office-supply items in my hand, squeezing them, juggling them, feeling them out. I eventually settled upon the common household tape-dispenser, the disposable plastic kind that comes with a roll of tape on it. Flip it upside down and it becomes a nice grip. I taped the shaft to it and my first rubber-band gun was born.
That was September 1st. That night at home I took an old clothespin and replaced the binder clip. I attached a prescription bottle to the bottom of the shaft in such a way that it could be detached and rubber-bands stored inside. I wrapped the whole thing in duct tape as a finisher. I pointed, I aimed, I shot. The world felt right.
The next day I built another one.
The day after I built another one.
By now I was hooked. I was experimenting with different designs, different materials. I went to Wal-Mart and bought a whole bunch of colored duct-tapes. I bought different size clothespins. I bought wooden dowels. I began scrounging around work for weird pieces of plastic, usually to be found on the floor in the back or on the ground by the dumpster. I decided that since I had built a gun a day so far for the month of September, that I would continue on that path and build at least one gun per day for the entire month. I decorated them in different colors. I gave them names: The Originator, Number Two, The Aardvark, The Assassin Pistol, Silver. I tried out different design novelties -- although I never went back to the detachable storage bottle of my first gun, I built double-shot guns (in both rifle and hand-gun variety) with Vitamin Water bottles and a dozen pen-tubes. I built one on a ruler and decorated it to look like a sword. I decorated another shaft-only model to look like the classic black and white magic wand. Abracadabra, shoot! By this point my bedroom floor was carpeted in a soft layer of rubber bands, a decor that extended to every reasonably flat surface in my room.
In the end, I kept up to my project and didn't miss a day. Actually, by the end of September I had actually built fifty guns, ending on the 30th with the Ultimatum. Some of them were really good, a lot were mediocre -- the risk any creator faces when sticking to a given schedule -- but I had built fifty of the damn things and now I was done.
I cleaned up the rubber bands.
I boxed up the guns. Two boxes, one for the guns that were good shooters and aesthetically pleasing and one for the aforementioned mediocre ones.
Then, a few months later, I built another one at work.
Then another one. I had found a new hooking device to use, the "roundhead fastener". These were more reliable than the bent paperclip if not as easy to load.
Then, just when it seemed I was beginning a second renaissance of rubber-band guns, I stopped.
A similar thing had happened with the photoshopping word balloons.
I was bored. That's also how most of my stories end.
Shooting rubber-bands is all fine and good, but I am descended from a long line of clever tool-using monkeys and it quickly occurred to me that I could build a device to shoot them better. Based on the materials at hand I took two pens, hollowed them out and taped them together. On one end I taped down a small binder clip. With small pliers I pinched a paper-clip into a narrow s-shaped hook and I pushed it through the pen cap on the other end. Rubber-band goes here, stretches to there, clip, aim, squeeze. Thwish, snap, smack.
The basic design was in place. The only problem was, no handle. I took stock of the items I had available to me, holding various office-supply items in my hand, squeezing them, juggling them, feeling them out. I eventually settled upon the common household tape-dispenser, the disposable plastic kind that comes with a roll of tape on it. Flip it upside down and it becomes a nice grip. I taped the shaft to it and my first rubber-band gun was born.
That was September 1st. That night at home I took an old clothespin and replaced the binder clip. I attached a prescription bottle to the bottom of the shaft in such a way that it could be detached and rubber-bands stored inside. I wrapped the whole thing in duct tape as a finisher. I pointed, I aimed, I shot. The world felt right.
The next day I built another one.
The day after I built another one.
By now I was hooked. I was experimenting with different designs, different materials. I went to Wal-Mart and bought a whole bunch of colored duct-tapes. I bought different size clothespins. I bought wooden dowels. I began scrounging around work for weird pieces of plastic, usually to be found on the floor in the back or on the ground by the dumpster. I decided that since I had built a gun a day so far for the month of September, that I would continue on that path and build at least one gun per day for the entire month. I decorated them in different colors. I gave them names: The Originator, Number Two, The Aardvark, The Assassin Pistol, Silver. I tried out different design novelties -- although I never went back to the detachable storage bottle of my first gun, I built double-shot guns (in both rifle and hand-gun variety) with Vitamin Water bottles and a dozen pen-tubes. I built one on a ruler and decorated it to look like a sword. I decorated another shaft-only model to look like the classic black and white magic wand. Abracadabra, shoot! By this point my bedroom floor was carpeted in a soft layer of rubber bands, a decor that extended to every reasonably flat surface in my room.
In the end, I kept up to my project and didn't miss a day. Actually, by the end of September I had actually built fifty guns, ending on the 30th with the Ultimatum. Some of them were really good, a lot were mediocre -- the risk any creator faces when sticking to a given schedule -- but I had built fifty of the damn things and now I was done.
I cleaned up the rubber bands.
I boxed up the guns. Two boxes, one for the guns that were good shooters and aesthetically pleasing and one for the aforementioned mediocre ones.
Then, a few months later, I built another one at work.
Then another one. I had found a new hooking device to use, the "roundhead fastener". These were more reliable than the bent paperclip if not as easy to load.
Then, just when it seemed I was beginning a second renaissance of rubber-band guns, I stopped.
A similar thing had happened with the photoshopping word balloons.
I was bored. That's also how most of my stories end.
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