Home > Uncategorized > “Tie me kangaroo down, sport…”

“Tie me kangaroo down, sport…”

September 13, 2010

Well it wouldn’t work very well to secure a wandering wallaby, but it’s a surprisingly handy thing to have in your toolbox:

I have a dislike/hate relationship to zip-ties; they are useful once in a blue moon but mostly they exist to make it impossible to service multimedia consoles while I am twisted into an awkward position trying to unplug something.  I much prefer securing cables with Velcro or a short piece of wire.

This bundle is from about 20 feet of CAT3 signal wire, stripped of its outer insulation and cut into 12-inch lengths, formed into a heavy bundle and twisted to hold them together.  Throw it in your tool bag and pull off a strand or two when you need it.  Strong enough to organize cables but much easier to cut (or un-twist and re-use) than a nylon zip-tie.

Making such a bundle is even easier if you get one of those fat trunk bundle cables of 100 wires, but it isn’t hard to find old phone wire thrown away.

By the way, anybody remember this song?  And could you get it out of your head if you heard it?

Categories: Uncategorized
  1. Ray
    September 14, 2010 at 07:21 | #1

    What memories that evoked!  When I was growing up in the UK, Rolf was a constant presence on both radio and television, and this is but one of many songs of his I know by heart.  He is a man of many talents, and one of his earliest television programs that I recall is of him drawing a cartoon character which would then magically become animated [OK, so I just looked it up, and the character’s name was Willoughby, and this was, apparently, around the min-1950s. I guess that dates me somewhat!].

  2. Ray
    September 14, 2010 at 07:22 | #2

    “mid” 1950’s, that was supposed to be. Sigh…

  3. September 14, 2010 at 13:13 | #3

    I use various things to tie cables together. Nylon zip ties are usually a last resort, unless I’m almost positive I won’t be moving those cables again. The place to use zip ties is inside an electronics case, where anything that can conduct electricity is a potential hazard.

  4. Neil
    September 14, 2010 at 20:10 | #4

    Oh Christ, NOT THAT ONE!!!

    Okay, a bit of an overreaction…maybe…

      I guess I feel the same way about that song that DOF feels about zip ties…I’m sure it’s good for something, I just haven’t figured out what.  Just like I’ve never figured out why anybody would tie a kangaroo down anyway… 
      My problem could be emotional contamination of a sort…that song was a hit about 10 years before I was born, and I had heard it a few times on oldies radio stations, kid’s tv shows, etc, but not a whole lot. 
    Then in my freshman year of high school one of the required P.E. classes was six weeks of square dancing, and this song was used at least once per class and a lot more while learning the routine.  I couldn’t believe that in late 80’s California, at a decent-sized high school with a semi-decent budget, that there would be or could be such a thing as six weeks of required square dancing.  The only thing that made it tolerable (and yet more humiliating in a way) was the fact that it had to be co-ed.
      I have a theory that it was a ploy to minimize snobbery, social pressure and sexual tension among the students…I mean, how seriously could one take any of those pressures after spending six weeks at a forced hoedown with dozens of other random students?
      Anyway, it permanently damaged my perception of this song and a few others as well.

      I did actually listen to it for old times sake, and I noticed it didn’t have the last verse, which was the only one I ever liked-
    “Tan me hide when I’m dead, Fred
    Tan me hide when I’m dead…
    so we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde
    and that’s it hangin’ on the shed!”

    A death scene is okay in general, but no corpse jokes?  Was that too rough for television at the time?  Or was the song just too long?

    And, thanks to internet exposure to Aussie culture I noticed for the first time, the verse stating “let my aboes go loose”…
    no comment…

  5. September 14, 2010 at 21:11 | #5

    WOW!  I’ve got to include old songs in completely unrelated posts more often!  :coolgrin:  Well at least it wasn’t torture for Ray.

    Cujo – sometimes I tie long bundles together with nylon string, cheap, tough and flexible.

    When I think of it, I’ll show my favorite low-cost super-functional under-desk cable-management trick.

    Neil, love that last verse – never heard it before.

    Square dancing… oh, my.

  6. September 23, 2010 at 22:06 | #6

    He seemed like a real character. Catchy song.

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