02 September 2012

The 'f' word, many times

Rico says that his mother turned him onto Colin Nissan's a column at McSweeney's, which Rico wishes he'd written (though Rico might've used one or two less f-words):
Building tiny fucking ships inside tiny fucking bottles has been a traditional maritime art form since the early 1800s, when sailors on lengthy voyages were in need of something to occupy their time at sea, and decided that frustrating the living fuck out of themselves would be that something.
This guide will teach you everything you need to know, from finding the right bottle with a tiny fucking opening, to making a tiny fucking boat, to jamming the tiny fucking boat into the tiny fucking opening.
Before you get started, make sure that you have a clean workspace and that there isn’t a single other fucking thing you’d rather do besides this nautical disaster of a hobby.
First, you need to find a bottle. Any wine or liquor bottle will do. Some of you may be wondering if there’s some two-piece trick bottle that’s glued back together once the ship is inside. There’s only one way into that bottle: the fucking hard way.
Next, you’re going to carve the ship’s hull, keel and rudder out of wood, which is actually quite simple if you’re a professional fucking wood carver. If you’re not a professional wood carver, this will be really fucking difficult.
Now it’s time to make the masts and booms out of toothpicks, then tie very fine wire around the ends of the toothpicks to act as hinges. This is also very easy, unless you have human hands, then it will be unbelievably fucking exasperating because everything you’re working with is fucking miniscule and dumb.
Remember to periodically hold the ship up against the outside of your bottle throughout the building process so you can keep tabs on how completely fucked you’re going to be.
Now you’re going to need to drill tiny holes through the masts. Quick recap: the masts are made out of toothpicks, so you’ll need to drill a fucking hole through a fucking toothpick—fucking twice. One helpful tip is to have several thousand extra toothpicks ready in case you don’t nail this step right away.
Once you’ve woven a line of thread through five drilled pin holes in the hull, whittled a bowsprit and attached two lines to it from the hull to the booms to the tops of the masts and another directly to the shrouds, then made sails out of tiny pieces of cloth and glued them all over the fucking place, it’s time to simply fold the boat down on its hinges and push it through the bottle with a pair of long medical tweezers, then glue it into place and pull on the strings to hoist the sails.
Didn’t work? Hmm, that’s weird. I wonder what twenty-five fucking things went wrong. Don’t get discouraged, just smash the bottle over your own head as a lesson for leading the kind of life where this seemed like a good idea, then start over again.
Still not working? Strange. This time break the bottle in half like in an old western saloon and jab the jagged glass into your midsection a few times, while pondering the sixty additional hours of your life you just pissed away.
Eventually you won’t want to do this anymore and will place whatever the fuck you end up with on the mantle. At which point, it’s time to sit back and admire your weird, limp-masted, S.S. Who Gives A Fuck, and relish your kindred bond with the brave seafaring artisans of yore who battled violent seas, crippling dysentery, and tiny fucking toothpicks to pave the way for this Bermuda fucking Triangle of crafts.

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