So this object lives on the screened porch of our beach rental. It’s made of bamboo. We have no clue what it is. There’s a barcode on it, which I scanned. But not even Google could enlighten us. It was made in Vietnam. Any ideas?
Please discuss whatever.
UPDATED: I switched out the photo, so hopefully it won’t be sideways now. I moved the thing out to the driveway for a better view (it wasn’t really attached to the house in the original photo; it just looked that way from the camera angle). It’s about two feet tall. It has a solid floor halfway down and is hollow at both ends. WTF?
Redshirt
LOL. I am sideways with no answer. Bamboo wood chime for Viet Jug Band?
Betty Cracker
And it’s fucking sideways! Gah! I hate posting with a goddamned iPhone. Can y’all see TWO sideways pictures or just one?
shortstop
Clearly, it’s a guillotine.
Shakezula
No idea, is it hollow?
Elizabelle
well, it leans to the left, so it’s come to the right blog
Shakezula
@Betty Cracker: 1
quannlace
Looks like a kind of boot jack. You know, a thingy that helps you pull off your boots. Course the fact that it’s hanging of the side of a house argues against it.
Edit: Oops. didn’t realize the pic was sideways. Maybe it’s to help scrape sand off your feet.
Amir Khalid
It’s the lost bukket of a very skinny Vietnamese walrus?
KG
It’s either a do-hickey or a thingamabopper, can’t tell for certain though.
wenchacha
Bong.
Chet
I think it’s a bucket, but maybe the next picture could have it lit from the front?
piratedan
the portrait of the artist as a young man?
Chris
@shortstop:
It says something about what a history/politics nerd I am that that’s the same thing that immediately jumped into my mind.
quannlace
Nice view, by the way. What’s the temps down there?
MikeJ
People are commenting on the thread that appears when you click on the pic too.
rikyrah
have no idea…but you must be having one helluva vacation to where you can relax to the point of researching this
sharl
How do they keep all that water in that vertical alignment, without it draining downward?
Hah, gravity has been defeated on Earth at last! Someone alert Michelle Malkin regarding this good news! (h/t TBogg)
MikeJ
I notice the bar code says “Tiger Lil”. Any other info on the sticker?
Trollhattan
Whoa, my comments done been disappeared. I blame the sideways thing.
Trollhattan
@MikeJ:
Oooh, that’s where they are. Double-fun.
SatanicPanic
Overalls for a one-legged person
TooManyJens
What’s that thing tied to it on the upper left?
NickT
Outdoor bathroom tissue dispenser for when nomadic giants happen by.
Or possibly some sort of washing line hook-up point.
nemesis
Its a diframaloid.
ant
you put yer weed in there
scav
Bamboo hanging vase is my (v. dull) guess. Part one of an all’Mercan build-it-yourself water system for the post-zombie-gay-women-with-income-tseunami is behind door number two. Pen1s gourd speedo is a late-breaking #3.
Neddie Jingo
Sidelong Glance of Sauron. With the lights off. Couldn’t be clearer.
Trollhattan
It’s a Bufano sculpture of a guy doing chinups.
BGinCHI
I checked the catalogue. It’s not a Brancusi.
jl
If BC doesn’t know what it is, this post is a bleg, not a mystery object open thread.
I expect and answer from the distinguished front poster at the end of this thread, or I am suing this damn blog, that commits post title fraud.
piratedan
or to paraphrase what my Grandfather used to say when confronted with questions like these…. “whatever it is, it sure is a dandy one!”
Suffern ACE
I don’t think you should keep that outside. It’s for use on a boat. In areas where whales are few and far between, it is used in the whale watching industry to attract them. I’ve seen captains wave them, and a few minutes later, a herd arrives with very big bottles of beer. Whales always forget to buy brands with screw tops.
Somsai
It’s a bucket. You carry it on a pole with another one at the other end of the pole to balance. The pole has slight notches so the buckets don’t slide. Far from roads, in places where people have few store bought goods, they use these.
The water is downhill or sideways of the village and can’t be piped via bamboo halves. It’s women’s work, every day, maybe four or five trips. To feed the pigs and chickens and water vegetable gardens. Sometimes they load the buckets into tall packbaskets and carry them on their backs with a taught line to their foreheads.
Women also cut the young bamboo and peel it to cook and feed to the pigs.
They husk rice with a foot powered mortar and pestle. They weave cotton, they hunt for half their protein. Few villages left now. Governments move them to steal the land for timber and rubber.
Time passes.
Fred Fnord
Ah, those. I remember those. I used to have one but the wheels fell off.
Good times, good times.
Mark
put it on reddit.
just remember to accuse it of terrorism in the description
j
I know what it is. It is held during prayer in certain religious rites, like a rosary or a prayer wheel. I think the ones praying use the hole to align their faces with the setting sun.
I saw something on PBS about an American architect who was commissioned to design a new seminary for the sect/order (Ankor Wat, maybe??), and he saw the students holding a smaller version of what you posted during evening prayers, so he built their bell tower to look just like it.
I’m trying to find pictures of it and the explanation of how the design came about.
Time Travelin
Bat box?
Bill E Pilgrim
Uh oh. I don’t know, but whatever it is, it just stood up. Run!
sharl
@Mark:
Winning the Internets…+1….Awesome…etc.
JPL
@Somsai: Erick Erickson wants to know how much females are being paid for their labor. It’s important to know for those that watch Fox Business channel.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Aw jeebus, it’s a wớng. Good luck finding a xêung to make it work.
MomSense
It is a “Total Gym” exercise machine for garden gnomes.
mark
No idea what is is now, but if the talking points change it will become the biggest scandal since Watergate.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: So, if you had another one it would make a wight?
Edit: This looks kind of like the same thing, so would seem to bear out what Somsai wrote.
Emma
Water bucket. The “solid bottom” is the bamboo node. If you cut too close to the node you can damage it, so you leave a piece of the other internode. It also probably makes for a better balance.
MikeJ
@Mark:
She’d need an upskirt pic of it.
NickT
I reckon we’ve found Rob Ford’s two-person bong.
j
OK, so I think I narrowed down the architect. I guess he found a formula and stuck with it, because he also designed this building with similar lines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_World_Financial_Center
The wiki article explains why the circle was scrapped in favor of a trapezoid (religious and anti-Japanese reasons) but it’s pretty much the same thing.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Buddha, in the marble Sutra, declared that although two wớngs cannot make a wight, two Wangs can make a Chung.
Betty Cracker
@quannlace: High around 90 with afternoon / evening storms to cool things down. I have to stay on the porch during the hottest part of the day. I got sunburned in the 20 seconds it took to snap that photo.
JGabriel
Could it be a post-holer?
To dig holes?
For posts?
H/T: Kaley Frye
MomSense
@Bill E Pilgrim:
OMG for giants! Run, Betty run!
PhoenixRising
Bukkit. You need the second one and the pole to parry any decent quantity of liquid, though.
Keith
Looks like a device for digging up clams.
NickT
@PhoenixRising:
When parrying liquid, do we get a saving throw?
Shakezula
You’ve found the GOP’s giant dog whistle!
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
FTFY. It’s very important to get your terminology correct.
Lavocat
It’s a fermentation vat for bandersnatch urine.
Mmmmm … bandersnatch urine!
brettvk
Ikebana vase.
raven
I think it’s a support for a beach umbrella.
Jamey
It’s a round too-it.
Betty Cracker
@MikeJ: Nope. All it says is that it’s made in Vietnam.
@TooManyJens: The thing on the handle is a silver twisty-tie with old bits of tape clinging to it. The mystery deepens!
ulee
It’s an extra dimensional object. Everything is involved in the taco. It is all repeating itself. Watch the news.
Butch
Planter.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Jamey: I gotta get one of those one of these days.
Anna in PDX
@Chris: Me three. GMTA!
kindness
Oh Nohs! You ran the bar code? OMG!!!!
That is the Omega-13 module and running the bar code activates it. Ahhhhhhh!
I for one will welcome our new overlords, as long as they are TeaHaddist sociopaths.
schrodinger's cat
Bukkit fur a skinny lolrus.
ulee
The quarterback that died near the river in Michigan said he was leery. He had entered an extra dimensional situation. It is coming quickly now.
srv
Isn’t there an app for this?
Bill E Pilgrim
@ulee: Wait Tim Tebow said he was Timothy Leary? Okay this is all making sense now.
Southern Beale
Nooo!!!! You didn’t MOVE it?! Have you not seen ANY horror movies from the ’70s! Now you’ve unleashed the Krakken!
cleek
long, tubular, handle at the top, at the beach:
therefore…. it’s a carrier for fishing poles.
Hannity Hussein
That, my friends, is the last woman “dominated” by the esteemed Erick Erickson.
ulee
@Bill E Pilgrim: As you know, Billy Pilgrim became unstuck in time. That is what is happening.
raven
We met with the city utility folks and I don’t think it could have gone better. They obviously are not going to admit any kind of guilt but they do acknowledge that their GIS map are wrong. They are going to have to do survey and design work but we may be up and running by September. They were very nice, not that taking the princess along had anything to do with that!
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ahem.
srv
It’s a well bell
Hanging well planter and wood bell.
Or it could be an elephant dildo
Bill E Pilgrim
@ulee: Oh you mean “Bill E Pilgrim” is like “Billy Pilgrim”?
Huh. You’re right. Never occurred to me.
raven
@cleek: It may be a rod holder for surf fishing, I’d like to know the dimensions.
ulee
@Bill E Pilgrim: no shit sherlock.
JWL
It’s a cylindrical breathing tube template the Viet Cong employed in construction of their network of tunnels. The cross-T handle on top was typically driven 1 to 2 inches below ground level, lifted out, and re-used in incremental spacings along the length of the particular tunnel. The breathing holes thus created were then camouflaged to appear as solid terrain.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: Mind meld!
Kyle
It’s a Japanese flower vase. Have bought similar ones.
Bill E Pilgrim
@ulee: Maybe I should go back to my old handle, “SmokeTooMuch”.
srv
In other news, Harvard is lowering the bar for sociopaths:
ulee
It’s a vision swallower.
cathyx
Can it be a clam digger?
Riccardo Cabeza
It’s a bucket, maroons.
piratedan
@srv: well it’s not like writing essays helped those two asshats that brought back Dickensian economics. Maybe they’re replacing it by demonstrating a knowledge of how to use Excel.
scav
@srv: Well, they couldn’t lower their mathematics / excel qualifications any lower.
cathyx
Try this: http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/452169652/clam_digging_fishing_tools.html
Clam digger.
ulee
@Bill E Pilgrim: don’t believe lies but first get supplies.
Roger Moore
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Well, you’d better cut back then.
Amir Khalid
@Riccardo Cabeza:
Just not for a skinny lolrus. :(
JGabriel
srv:
So, Harvard has determined that writing skills are no longer required to be trained as an economic sociopath?
raven
@cathyx: or this
Certified Mutant Enemy
@srv:
But having Walker and/or Bush in your name will still give one an edge…
Warren Terra
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I thought everybody had to Wang to make a Chung tonight.
ET
Vase for dried flowers??
scav
@JGabriel: Talking points come pre-packaged (even tweets are outsourced). Might add a screen test though, especially if they can make them appear wired and digitally with-it.
Suffern ACE
I don’t read Salon that often any more but I found the article on Ford Motors’ Panel on Millenials kind of interesting. http://www.salon.com/2013/05/30/millennials_dont_hate_cars_they_cant_afford_them/
In the era of Big Data, it would appear that no one in marketing actually knows how to do anything but spout off anecdotes about the kids. I don’t actually interact with many people under 30 on a regular basis, but those that I do know don’t seem to be anything like the young folks described by the panel of experts.
jl
Schlafly decides to join the Wisdom of The Donald and help the GOP decide to head for extinction. I like their outreach program so far. It seems a success if the idea was to limit but solidify support among older white male bigots.
Conservative Icon Calls GOP’s Need To Court Hispanics A ‘Great Myth’
Catherine Thompson, TPMLivewire
Phyllis Schlafly of the “pro-family” group Eagle Forum called the GOP’s need to reach out to Hispanic voters a “great myth” during a conservative radio program Wednesday.
‘ “The Hispanics who have come in like this will vote Democrat and there’s not the slightest bit of evidence that they will vote Republican,” Schlafly said… ‘
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/conservative-icon-calls-gops-need-to-court-hispanics
cathyx
@raven: Yes, and it makes sense since she’s at the beach.
Pete
An oar lock?
jl
@cathyx: Of course. When I get up early, like around dawn, to walk along the beach, I see fishers using things like this all the time to dig bait.
raven
@jl: It’s just that the clam digging devices have T handles for twisting into the sand and that handle doesn’t look like it would be easy to apply much force.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Pete:
Probably not an Eloi…
Rainy Day
It’s a shishi-odoshi base. It’s missing the second piece. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishi-odoshi
Redshirt
The sideways picture was way better.
BGinCHI
Water carrier for trolls.
AKA, the Breitbart.
AKA, The Tea Party.
Betty Cracker
@raven: You’re right about the handle not being too sturdy, but I am leaning toward the clam digger theory. Maybe it’s just a crappy clam digging implement.
scav
A) the continued existence of the barcode might argue against it being anything employed usefully in damp sand (although it might have been aspirational). But I may B) just never have been impressed by the functional utility of random objects found in rental vacation houses.
raven
@jl: fishers? No one ever called me that!
Betty Cracker
@Rainy Day: I always associate those with the O-Ren Ishii showdown in “Kill Bill.”
scav
@Betty Cracker: Betty, is the bottom of the tube (away from the handle) open or closed? Critical detail distinguishing two common, if duller, hypotheses.
Meg
Not the same height. But have a look at this wine bucket
Betty Cracker
@scav: Open. It’s open at both ends with a solid floor (possibly the naturally occurring bamboo node wall as someone suggested earlier) about 8 inches from either end. I’m guessing its about 2 feet tall if you include the handle. It’s big enough around to drop canned goods into it.
RyanayR
Calm digger.
Maude
It might be Art.
John McCain had his picture taken with a group of kidnappers who kidnap pilgrims in Syria.
Go, Johnny, Go.
scav
@Betty Cracker: that helps (plus scale), if only increases the general weirdness to some degree! not as stupid a bucket contender as I once thought as the bamboo is on the larger end of the scale, although still smallish in light of usual water demand.
Redshirt
Viet Jug Band.
rea
It’s a bulb planter.
peach flavored shampoo
Is it a Mobius stripper?
Dupe70
Tiger Lily website has them on sale: http://www.tigerlily-vn.com/proList.asp?gid=2
Item code: P7K21
But no description – lol.
tybee
@RyanayR:
calm down, it would have to have a sharpened edge at the bottom to efficiently dig calms.
Meg
@Dupe70: Yes, it looks similar to the wine bucket I linked above in #117.
I think it is for you to carry wine for a beach picnic.
p
made of bamboo, no discernible function? the idea that it’s a guillotine is amusing, given fla (for the tiny minds of the state’s politicians? i have neighbors who’d use it for the squirrels that eat the distributor cables in their cars).
a memorial?
p.a.
Rea beat me to it. Anyhoo, that place looks nice- invite me down. I’m reasonably housebroken. But I am a yankee.
kindness
You people are funny. Have none of you ever actually dug clams? Growing up on the shore in CT I did every week either for bait or for the clams to eat.
Soft shell clams (the ones with the long neck) burrow deep so we used a pitch fork shovel. These clams live at the inter-tidal zone so you walk out when the tide is out and dig.
Hard shell clams live in in deeper water but in sandy/muddy bottom pretty shallow. Those we used an actual clam rake.
Just Some Fuckhead
It’s an ashtray. Fill up the bottom with sand to make it heavy and stationary. Put sand in the top to stub out cigarettes in.
Suffern ACE
@Maude: Just like our founding fathers! Freedom fighters!
BruceFromOhio
Umbrella stand.
@peach flavored shampoo: Saw one of those once. No matter how much clothing she removed, she was never truly nekkid.
R-Jud
Feedbag for an aardvark.
JasperL
I’ve used something like it to pound fence posts into the ground – hollow tube with a solid core. You put the tube over whatever you want to drive into the ground and use the tube as a guide. Then lift the device up keeping the fence post in the tube, and bring the device down like a hammer to drive it into the ground. Easier than a sledge hammer – don’t ever “miss.”
So it might be useful to pound things (like a rod holder, or umbrella stand) into soft sand, depending on how sturdy the device is – hard to see from the picture. You might even be able to use it as a device to push things (rather than hammer them) into soft sand.
Tim B
It’s a big umbrella holder.
Susan K of the tech support
Fountain part?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Tweety asks why Democrats are always on defense, why aren’t they talking about jobs, and then brings on Sherrod Brown and…. Harold Ford. Ford uses his time to speak for something called “regulatory certainty for the broadband industry”– I don’t know what he means, but I don’t trust him– and for building our “pipeline infrastructure”. Gee, Tweets, I can’t figure out why the Democrats can’t change the conversation. Why don’t you ask Harold Ford?
Trollhattan
@ kindness
All I know about is Puget Sound and the Pacific coast, where we’d use a “clam gun,” which kinda looks like Betty’s wood thingie, for razor clams. But the wood thingie is too wimpy.
http://www.dfw.state.or.us/resources/fishing/docs/ClammingFlyer.pdf
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I hate to say it but Mornin Joe was funny this morning with Howard Dean and a panel moaning about the press “scandal”. They all got in their argument and then Joe said “I’m going to be Harold Ford”, I agree with you, you, you you and you. . .”
kindness
@Trollhattan: Quite cool. Way more technology than what I grew up with.
No, living in the Bay Area now I just buy clams in the market like everyone else. Hardly ever fish any more. But I’ve had a feeling of wanting to make some Boulliabase. Mine tends to be more shellfish stew than fish stew so I suspect I will be visiting those markets soon.
Jebediah
Since the thread, it is open: dogs being tired together.
Trollhattan
@kindness:
Yum! I think my three favorite things to eat are boulliabase, cioppino and paella.
Trollhattan
@Jebediah:
Dey both gotted teh dog meezelz!
smintheus
Looks like an ash tray.
ETA: Already said by Just Some Fuckhead.
Geoduck
If you don’t get an answer, there’s a blog that does a weekly listing of tools that need IDing:
http://55tools.blogspot.com/
Mnemosyne
@Jebediah:
Aww. Is Juno also the boss (or at least the caretaker) of Chucky like she is with Otto?
Bucky Reynolds
I have seen these in a series of sizes and they are used as a gong instrument.
DLew On Roids
It’s a TRAP
SG
It is, I believe, a bamboo Japanese Ikebana vase. Google “bamboo ikebana vase” images for some similar examples.
Jebediah
@Trollhattan:
But I can’t figure out which one gave it to the other…
Jebediah
@Mnemosyne:
She’s pretty bossy with Chucky – she goads her into playing, then shuts it down with a (tiny little) bark’n’snarl when Chucky gets a little too rough for her taste. But no caretakeriness. Chucky is young and spry, so I guess Juno figures she’s on her own. (And I love that you remember details about my doggies!)
sacrablue
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s why I can’t watch Tweety anymore. I think he had Lanny Davis on the other day. FSM forbid he should have anyone under the age of 50 on his show. Somebody need to tell him that it is not 1982 anymore. MSNBC wants to know why they are losing viewers? Argggh!
Redshirt
All worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landings.
maya
Though I have been unable to find a facsimile I’m pretty sure it’s a cog from a water wheel. Picture a wheel with many of these attached by the handle end to the wheel. The wheel goes round, water fills in the upper floored chamber, the lower open chamber acts as a ballast holding the cog against the wheel until it spills into whatever spout draws the water away. They can be replaced very easily. There are bamboo water wheels in Viet Nam of all different types, but this has an aesthetic design to it as well, so, an ob-jet. d’art
rea
Dupe70 clearly found it above at No. 125
http://www.tigerlily-vn.com/proList.asp?gid=2
Which of course is consistent with the “Tiger Lily” tag. It’s hysterical that the company selling it online does not indicate what it is . . .
kwAwk
Given that it is on the screen porch and in Florida could it not just be an umbrella stand?
Hawes
It’s pretty clearly a snark facilitator attached to a thread starter.
Tim Gollmer
ikebana vase maybe
Debbie(aussie)
Apologises if this has all ready been stated- I thi k it might be a tool do sucking up sand likely to contain worms pull it out empty sand and check for yabbies, just my guess
Ashin Sopāka
Reorienting the pic seems to have deleted my comment.
It’s a “gong” used in Buddhist temples.
Dean Thomas
It’s a Clam Gun. Really – just google “clam digging tool”, there’s even a DIY plan.