A Thing On My Desk

[ltmurnau]

One of my best scores EVAR at Value Village, years ago, was a ThinkTank.



It is a plastic sphere about the size of a head, and inside are about 13,000 little strips of styrene plastic with random, rather esoteric words printed on them - sameple:

frankness
katydid
codex
hostility
calcium
penknife
myopy

According to http://atomiq.org/archives/2002/07/5_think_tank.html, it was used as one of those random word generators and came with a booklet by Edward de Bono on how to use it in lateral-thinking exercises. About 25,000 were made, in the 1970s in Scarborough Ontario. Most were white, some were red or black or green.

My Thinktank is one of my precious possessions. It never fails to excite comment at the office when someone sees it. I try to take care of it, sometimes I am afraid to use it because one of the knobs or steel turners on the inside might break and I'd be reduced to shaking it like an Englsih nanny to get my random word inspirations....

Comments

[scuttle.livejournal.com]

I forgot to tell you Saturday: the wedding is back on.

I didn't want to bring it up on my post for obvious reasons. I have also screened that picture reply I just made, in case you don't want your mug visable online.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Yeek!
Well, we talked about all that before. My motto for Other People's Affairs, no matter how interesting a train wreck they might be, is "don't get any on ya."

Thanks for the photo - I did see you fiddling with the camera.

[victriviaqueen.livejournal.com]

That is awesome and I am completley covetous.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

As I said, best thrift store score EVAR.

[victriviaqueen.livejournal.com]

Oh, FER SURE! I would totally wrestle someone for that.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

OMG LOLZ!!!!

[emmabovary.livejournal.com]

That is truly a treasure.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

And it's mine, all mine!

But I'm sure one day someone will make up a virtual-reality version of the ThinkTank so it looks as if you are generating the words online by "turning" the knobs.

[worded-snapshot.livejournal.com]

I'd never seen/heard of a manufactured random word generator before.

B.C. (before computers) it was great creating different word trigger generators with words cut out of magazines or 3x5 cards.

Thank you for posting the Thinktank.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

The link in my post is one of the very, very few online refences to the ThinkTank. Follow it and you will see emails from the designer and manufacturer.

Like you, I've seen and used lots of manual random-thingy generators for creativity and loosening up, but the ThinkTank, with 13,000 words (well, I didn't count them, that's what they say it was loaded with) is the best manual device I've seen.

[bruxists.livejournal.com]

beautiful!

somewhere, ol' bill burroughs is grinning.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

An understanding of floating violence
Unbar the city command cradle
And declassify that leather silliness

Gee, it's easy to make Old Sarge smile....

[worded-snapshot.livejournal.com]

13,000 is quite an impressive number of words. When I get to around a thousand I have a tough time thinking of more that I really want to put into a mix without diluting it too much.

Your wordplay is exactly why I like the combining of two words. So many possible surprises the mind has to wrestle over.

muddysunlight@hotmail.com

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if there are 13,000 slips in that plastic ball, but I'm not going to open it and count them!

As I said, it's one of the best word-manglers I have found, partly because of the choice of words - a little unusual but nothing too pretentious. Those fridge-poetry kits, of which I have too many (and they all came from thrift stores too) are too limiting.