Brass balls in the Boing Boing Bazaar

Yes, brass balls. An easy-to-assemble kit, created by Paul Spinrad, MAKE editor and author of such timeless tomes as the RE/Search Guide To Bodily Fluids and The VJ Book. These balls are $18 in the Boing Boing Bazaar and would make a wonderful gift. For someone. Paul says:

You don't need a semiotician to know that these bad boys are full of meaning. As a token of esteem, they have a purity that makes other gift attempts look weak. Gleaming atop your desk at work, these totems of potency dare people to acknowledge their presence with a calibrated test-blend of serious appreciation and ironic distance-- and woe be to anyone who calibrates incorrectly. Everyone will want to touch the brass balls, feel their impressive weight, their uncompromising hardness. They are the family jewels.
These brass balls are sold in legal, kit form, and it is your responsibility not to assemble and use them as the deadly weapon or that they are. The balls are not toys; they weigh over one pound, and they will smash fingers, eyes, teeth, and skulls if swung in a fit of unbridled rage. Think of brass knuckles whipping around on a string, but without the soft, velocity-limiting hand inside... 
Cinema buffs may associate the brass balls with the opening scene of Glengarry Glen Ross. Cable television viewers may recall similar "Big Brass Balls" from episodes of The Colbert Report. Lawyers may note, then, that this product is not solely derivative of any one intellectual work. Rather, it taps into the broader culture, expressing a common folk idiom that no single motion picture studio or playwright (to take some hypothetical examples) can plausibly claim exclusive rights to.

Brass Balls Kit

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

MORE: Gadgets

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

voiceofreason

Is it just me, or are those brass balls kinda, well, small?

I mean if you are gonna have brass balls you want BIG brass ones, not dinky little lamer ones.

And to #15 Anon, of course Ben Wa balls come to mind…
Paul Spinrad

Thanks, David– I was wondering why I was getting so many orders today!

Re: “For someone,” I believe the traditional phrase is, “For the man who has everything.”
GoDownMoses

He needs to cross the strings to create tension. Just sayin.
- KremlinLaptop
  
  Testicular torsion isn’t just something on TV, it’s a real problem!
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfLEQVQr744
Anonymous

Street weapons!
- jfrancis
  
  I bet you can bring down a running ostrich with those
burningcanoe

Keep it away from monkeys.
- jfrancis
  
  Even brass monkeys?
Anonymous

Look like metal Click-Clacks, ca. 1975, if anybody remembers those…
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Actually, Clackers were pulled from the shelves in 1971.
  - Brother Phil
    
    There was a craze for them in the UK in the 80s.
- MollyMaguire
  
  That’s the first thing I thought of. That they would be useless as clackers.
palindrome

Ting-a-ling!
JoshP

And me with a birthday coming up… :)
bja009

These are awesome, but it occurs to me that I don’t know anyone I’d give these to, at least as a token of respect or admiration.
I might need new friends.
jfrancis

They are pretty substantial in person. Heavy. Nice brushed metal surface with anisotropic ‘stereo knob’ reflective quality.

I think I want red cord. I’m going to shop for some before I assemble mine.

They are easy to assemble and disassemble, although you can threadlock them closed if you buy the necessary product elsewhere.
Anonymous

Am I the only one who thought “Oooh brass Ben-wa balls. Noice!”?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Wa_balls
eyemyth

ABC. A, always, B, be, C, closing. Always be closing.
Anonymous

And when they jingle together…
tomwj

I would like to see steel balls ; ) possibly a formalised hierarchy brass balls -> steel ball -> unobtanium balls.
When I rode/ride BMX there was this sort of hierarchy
Love the idea so many people to give this to
Anonymous

I think these would look best attached to the trailer hitch on my truck. :D
- Shelby Davis
  
  I saw a truck the other day with a rusty chain pendant from its trailer hitch, with two of the most enormous machine nuts I’d ever seen dangling above the asphalt. Because they and the truck were pretty beat up, it at first seemed more accidental than decorative, and there was a wonderful Aha moment as the pun dawned on me.