The Museum of Swingline
“Why do I have so many staplers?” I asked no-one in particular when they just kept turning up in every drawer and cabinet today.
“Because the last time we moved, you wouldn’t let anybody throw one away,” said a voice from the opposite cube, “don’t you remember?”
No. But I believe it. My boss usually waited until I took a day off to throw things out; it was so much less painful than prying my fists open and listening to my ululating wails.
Look at these beauties! Big and heavy and streamlined, like some mighty diesel engine of stapling. They streamlined everything back then, as if the efficacy of simple office supplies was determined by their coefficient of drag. Is your desk holding you back? Get the sleek, modern, aerodynamic model, new for 1952! Now with wind-tunnelocity!
This company is both old and parsimonious; stuff hangs around until it flat out disintegrates. Do you know how long it takes furniture of the mid-twentieth century to fall apart? And since we were the art department and got shit on everything we touched, we got the leftover’s leftovers.
My old desk was a heavy, grossly overengineered slab of a barge of a piece of furniture, something like the QEII on legs. Blaaaaart ding ding! Out of the way, you little fishing vessels! Weasel doing paperwork!
We shed most of that stuff when we moved here, across the street from our old offices. But I managed to rescue these few small time travelers. And some rather nice scissors. And a magnifying glass. And all the X-Acto knives and pica rulers. A french curve set. Two excellent multi-hole paper punches. A six foot tall motorized photographic enlarger. And a Bernoulli box.
Ambassadors from another era.
Come, my pets. Would you like to visit England?
October 3, 2007 — 5:52 pm
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