How To Do Nothing

More from Jennifer!

admin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:16:45 +0000

Jennifer (aka TheRavenofPoe) talks about How to Do Nothing

admin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:07:35 +0000

Miles makes a button buzzsaw

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:27:44 +0000

Miles makes a toothpick dart shooter

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admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:21:23 +0000

A New York Times Bestseller

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:56:18 +0000

“Every great book reminds us that we’re all alone in the world. At least this one provides us with the means to entertain ourselves while we’re here.” — Lemony Snicket

“What a joy to give children something they can do without ‘hollering for help’…How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself is replete with the sort of fun that childhood should be, and too rarely is.” —Blogcritics.com

“It’s what you’d get if you crossed the Boy Scout Handbook with the Anarchist’s Cookbook, and it’s definitely the wildest how-to manual I’ve seen this year.” —Greg Cowles, The New York Times Paper Cuts blog

Michelle Wildgen, Tin House senior editor

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:55:28 +0000

I made a small cottage industry out of inventing commercials for random household objects. Like spoons or a piano bench. I subjected my family to this for a few years straight, but sadly no record survives.

The other thing I did turned out to be the best game I ever, ever played. We had a swing set and a jungle gym and that sort of stuff out back, and I had this whole fantasy that the swing was a time-and-world-traveling swing, controlled by pressing its chain links that I used mainly to pop into certain worlds and battle Vikings. I think I tried to re-create this one time but never got the magic back. It’s still about the most fun I ever had.

Donald Andrews

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:54:36 +0000

In the late ’40s and early ’50s black synthetic rubber was used for car tire inner tubes and had replaced the natural red rubber tubes. The black rubber would stretch just a little bit while the natural red rubber would continue to stretch to twice its original size. This made the red rubber especially desirable for the boys in my neighborhood to play with but it was also very hard to find.

We found several ways of entertaining ourselves with the red rubber including making rubber guns that could be made by cutting out a gun shape with a jigsaw and a piece of wood and using a clothespin on the butt end of the gun to hold the stretched rubber. Squeezing the clothespin trigger would fire the weapon with stinging results.

Spear guns made out of a welding rod, a piece of bamboo, and a red rubber sling fitted with a leather pouch cut from a shoe tongue were very effective for shooting crawdads and fish in the water storage lakes that were within hiking distance if I packed some food and water.

Beany shooters made from bands of rubber tied to a forked stick were always in my arsenal of weapons. I still have a large scar on my hand from the saw that slipped while cutting a Beany Shooter. As a navy airman on survival training I was able to put my boyhood Beany Shooter experience and marksmanship to use by making a man-sized shooter and killing wild game for food.

Lucy Corin, author of The Entire Predicament

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:53:53 +0000

I made things out of junk I collected, mostly furniture for my dollhouse. I made a cradle out of a bobby sock stiffened with lots of white paint. I made dish sets out of the plastic inserts from soda bottles that I also painted. I made matchstick cupboards and a miniature owl out of the insides of a calculator. A lampshade from an eggshell. I also excavated a trash heap in the woods behind a neighbor’s house where I found a ton of broken china (and chicken bones) that I had a lot of plans for but I think that project was eventually nixed from above.

Handkerchief Parachute

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:41:38 +0000

For this you’ll need an old handkerchief—it’s got to be an old one, that you or your father don’t use any more—some string, and a stone, or some washers.

1. Lay the handkerchief out flat.

2. Now take a piece of string, cut it into four pieces, each about a foot long, and tie one piece around each corner. Twist up each corner and tie a square knot. That’s right over left, left over right.

3. Pull the strings out straight so the corners of the handkerchief

are all together. Now take all four strings and tie a knot about three or four inches up from the bottom.

4. We used to hunt around and find a stone with a kind of dent in the middle, so you could tie the string around tight. But we rarely found a good stone, and it almost always comes loose sooner or later, and then I found a box in the basement that had a lot of heavy washers in it. If you can find washers, it’s better. You put the string through the holes and tie it up tight. If all you’ve got is a stone, tie it the best you can, in all directions.

5. Now take the center of the handkerchief between your thumb and index finger and whirl it around and around, until it’s going good. You can tell it’s going really good when you hear it make a kind of whistling noise. Let go of it when the stone is coming up. The stone will carry it up in the air, then it will start to fall, stone first, the handkerchief will open out like a parachute, and there you are.

Lots of times it will get caught in a tree or on a telephone wire. What do you do then? If you can climb a tree, you climb the tree. If it’s on a telephone wire, you do not climb the telephone pole, because maybe it’s also an electric light pole, and the kind of electricity that runs in those wires is very dangerous. If you threw it in a tree that’s too tall, or if it’s a telephone wire, build another parachute.