Hello, Muleteers, and welcome. I’m Nick Offerman and here are your Donkey Thoughts for Thursday, April 14, 2022.
I’ll start by issuing a correction from my recent post entitled “The Quality Goes in…”. A few of you gently pointed out my error, but I’ll illustrate it by almost name-dropping a dear friend who texted the first and sternest admonition:
“The quality goes in before the name goes on” is the tagline for Zenith electronics.
Ford was “Quality is Job 1”.
Idiot.
I know this for two reasons:
1) We had a Zenith television that weighed about 600 lbs. with a “Space Commander” remote control that was sound operated, so often the dog scratching his neck and jingling his collar would change the channel. And,
2) I’m Don Draper.
Apologies to the fine folks at Zenith Electronics. Ford, you shoulda got there first, that’s a much doper tagline! You snooze, you lose! (Oh shit, that’s probably the tag for MyPillow…)
And now, on with the Thoughts!
Cammie from Gilroy, California asks,
“Hello Nick. I was wondering if you have a favorite tool? And do you ever name them?”
Cammie, thank you for these excellent questions, and I am immediately comforted by the merest mention of your hometown, also known as “The Garlic Capital of the World”. Anybody who has driven up the 101 Freeway knows that Gilroy Gardens Family Theme Park has human-sized bulbs of garlic in sunglasses just chillin out, because their pungent flavor requires no effort, which is maybe why garlic is so good for lowering your blood pressure, dudes. All kidding aside, we love to pause a road trip in Gilroy and eat a bowl of soup. Garlic soup. Megan and I usually make out beforehand because we know it’ll be a while before the garlic in our systems will dissipate and we can resume face-to-face lovemaking.
As for my favorite tool, it’s a tough call. The charismatic thing about good tools, implements that have stood the test of time, is that you can’t improve upon them. Like the hammer. When I need to persuade a nail into the frame of a stud wall, there is no greater hero in the toolbox than my hammer. I don’t expect to ever be framing houses again on the clock, like I did as a teenager, so I always prefer the hammer to the more industrious air nailer, which takes all the fun out of the process. You don’t get to hit anything with a pneumatic nail gun!
The same goes for the chainsaw, the block plane, the oscillating spindle sander, I mean, you name it. They are my favorite tool when I need their specific functions. Maybe a well-tuned drawknife is the ultimate champion, if it has been sharpened to Peter Galbert standards, and one can employ it to remove as much material as possible from your chair parts. It makes for the most efficacious sculpting, which feels robustly powerful indeed.
I can only think of one tool I ever named, which was the driver I bought for powder-actuated fasteners. I had no idea this existed until I needed to drive some big masonry nails into concrete: it’s a sort of rivet gun/nail holder, and the nails have little loads of black powder in a capsule on top of the nail head, so when you hit the end of the handled “barrel” with a little sledge hammer, it straight-up fires the nail into the concrete like a damn bullet. I dubbed it, obviously, the “Boom-Boom”.
My dear Muleteers, thank you kindly for your support. This weekend I’ll post some more video content which will only be fully viewable to the paying subscribers. Do please leave me your questions in the comments, including where you’re from, and we’ll have some more fun soon.
Love,
Boom-Boom