[joelpatterson]

I am wandering through the aisles of Home Depot... a cavernous place, we could be miles underground for all I know... I'm trying to find something that should be fairly simple--but nothing is ever simple in a dream!

There's this elaborate network of hanging microphone wires at a prestigious hall I've begun recording at, and last time the outgoing guy let me use his custom clamp-onto-the-microphone-wire-and-hang-your-mics clamps, they sure were nice. $95, the guy told me. Little thumbscrew, very nicely calibrated with angle markings. So here I am... somewhere, and I feel like I'm roving over the vastness of the African continent, somewhere in this Home Depot there must be an equivalent thing, God knows what they'd call it or what it's for... plumbing adapter, I'm thinking, or a tightening thing, a tool for tightening, flookin' idunnowhat.

I claw through an immense stack of bungee cords, and I find some cable connector things, yeah, that might almost work, but I give in to the urge to interrupt a few of the orangeshirts yukking it up with each other and explain my dilemna. They listen bemusedly and concernededly and one says he'll go call Ice Station Zebra and get me "The Hardware Guy."

I gaze at the dozen samples of huge signs they will make with your street number when this wary, weary, worried haggard old guy strolls over, and I suspect it's him. I do my haiuku charades pantomine as I explain what I need... and he has the brilliant flash of insight that what I need are these quaint curiosity micro clamps over here in Aisle Nineteen. They are perfectly sized miniature versions of serious clamps, for like spraypainting and stuff, and they seem expertly calibrated for XLR cable, maybe putting out 30 or 40 pounds of pressure over the quarter inch gap. Nice dip coating of rubberized plastic. The perfect thing.

They are 37 cents each.