June 25, 2007

Yet Another Bout With the Cool Tool Gene

First off, I have to set the record straight. In last week’s column I wrote an inventory of my Fathers Day gifts, and I mentioned that my son had given me a barbecue apron that said “The Chef Is An Idiot.” This is not entirely true. To be more precise, the barbecue apron he gave me was actually more of a tool kit consisting of a laser level, an electronic stud finder, and a sonic distance measuring thingie.

The only excuse I can offer is that in this instance I took a little bit of “Poetic License” – what we in the news industry call “Making Stuff Up.” For those of you who have always relied on me for meticulous journalistic accuracy, I apologize – and wonder what in the world you could have been thinking.

Anyway, this week I wanted to talk about what it is like to suddenly own things like a laser level, an electronic stud finder and a sonic measuring thingie.

It’s cool! Here in one little red zippered case I hold 21^st Century technology that would have been the stuff of science fiction just a few short years ago. I think we all fondly remember the seminal 1970s motion picture, “Buck Rogers Finds a Stud.”

The laser level has endless applications, as far as I know. According to the instruction manual, with just slightly more than four hours of set-up and calibration I can use it to effortlessly determine whether the shelves I nailed to the wall 11 years ago are absolutely level. If it turns out that they are, I hope to go ahead and use the laser to identify the distortion in the space-time continuum that must be causing all the books to slide off.

My tool kit came with these nifty red-colored sunglasses that are supposed to make the laser easier to see. I discovered that they also make all three colors on a stop light look like they are the same, and that they make a police officer’s uniform and ticket book look really amusing.

Here’s an important tip for daily living – you can’t disable a police cruiser and escape using a laser level as a weapon.

I was also able to put the sonic measuring thingie to immediate use. For instance, I was able to finally answer, with digital accuracy, the question men have been asking themselves ever since the invention of yardsticks and underpants with flies.

As I have mentioned before on these pages, I’m as much a slave to the Cool Tool Gene as any man. If it has “Craftsman” or “Black & Decker” engraved on it, I find myself pretty much a helpless slave to my desire to own it.

Of course, I know better than to try to build or repair something with my new Cool Tools, since afterward that always seems to involve the trouble and expense of calling in expert carpenters, electricians, plumbers or FEMA.

In fact, as far as I can remember, the last time I put a tool to any kind of constructive (ha ha!) use was when I screwed those bookshelves to the wall. Of course, the tool I used was a butter knife, since I couldn’t lay my hands on the 21-piece screwdriver set I got for Christmas that year.

Oh yeah, as far as the stud finder goes, I haven’t done much of anything with it yet. I like experimenting as much as the next guy, but I still haven’t completely recovered from seeing that Buck Rogers movie.

  © 2007, Michael Ball