I was working in the yard and I needed an extra hand to hold a length of bamboo that I was sawing into 6 inch sections. I ended up using my knee as a clamp, but I’m getting old and raising my leg up to the bench height was a bit taxing. I could have used a vice.
In the basement workshop of my previous house sat a vice to remember. My dad had passed it on to me, all 50 pounds of it. For anyone who has had a vice, you know the value of it. This one was not quite of blacksmith proportions but for holding wood, metal, or plastic secure while you fiddled away. It surpassed those C-clamps you can buy at the dollar store. Alas, I passed it on to my son and it ended up a great mass of rustled steel, only worthy of its scrap metal price.
Last night I watched a film that involved a vice used on a suspect’s hand to force information or a confession. I wasn’t sure about the result because I looked away. That scene was not even remotely amusing. ‘But’ (to use one of Louis CK’s favourite words) it was once entertaining to see that old timey Bond character use titanium teeth to crush his opponents with one deadly chomp. Now that was a new take on the term Jaws of Life, which is kind of like a vice versa device used to open cars that have trapped drivers involved in high speed collisions. Forgive me – my mind wanders.
These days if you use the word vice in conversation, people might look about over their shoulders shouting, “Where?” I think the acronym ICE is too close in name to the film Vice Squad for comfort. I feel for the folks of amurca who probably didn’t bargain on a White House regime that would treat immigrants as though they had every despicable vice known in our society. The ICE force is clamping down on people who have fled terrible life circumstances, only to be treated with inhumane dispassion. My feelings on anything to do with trumpism are extremely visceral. I seethe as I grieve.
In a spectral view we might agree to assign compulsions, addictions, distractions, and obsessions somewhere in a line under the category of vices. Some of these behaviours we can keep under control until we can’t. When I was younger governments tried to help those who couldn’t resist smoking cigarettes by using a “sin tax”, but it didn’t persuade my parents to quit, it only made them poorer. These days the ads for lotteries ask you to ‘gamble responsibly’ but again this intervention may force folks to choose between their vice-of-choice or groceries. I admit to some mild vices: loving my woman, potato chips, cinema, and alcohol (in that order).
When I think about my ancient heavy metal DIY-helper-vice-anvil-tool the word vice in any context seems just too old fashioned; like 007, religion, dating, phone books, or carburetors. But anything can be a vice I guess. Just look at me playing with words!
