Five guys playing the electric brobdingnag? No, just gigantic red rubber bands, made to hold stuff on pallets together. Striated along their lengths, they measure 48" long x 3/4" wide x 3/32" thick and will stretch to a 7- or 8-foot circle, or more, depending on your nerve.

You will survive, too, just like Gloria Gaynor, and in the woods, even. But only if you have this U.S. Army manual, cleverly titled: SURVIVAL, Department of the Army Field Manual FM21-76. It's 287 heavily illustrated pages of techniques for staying alive (add your own BeeGee jokes here) including orientation, food & cooking, fire- and shelter-making, rafts, animal, insect and plant recognition, and much more. This is the 1970 edition, but staying alive in the woods hasn't changed a whole lot since then. In soft-cover.

The correct answer is "I don't know; I've never toggled." If, however, you just want to turn something on and off, here's a choice of toggles for your switching delectation. The DPDT toggle is rated for up to 20A at 125VAC and has screw terminals below. Measures 1-1/4" x 1-3/4". No center-off position. The first DPST toggle is rated for 20A at 125VAC or 15A at 250VAC. Screw terminals on the bottom. Measures 1-5/16" x 3/4". The smaller DPST toggle is rated for up to 4A at 125VAC or 2A at 250VAC. Has 3/16" spade terminals on the bottom and measures 1" X 9/16". All the toggles come with switch-plates and mounting nuts.

How about three extra hands? This multi-purpose workstation tool has a large 3X, 3-1/2" dia LED-lighted magnifier on a 10" gooseneck (you add 4 "AA" batteries), a soldering-iron stand, cleaning sponge plus steel wool, a canister of flux paste, a pair of  alligator clips with ball-socket mounts on the ends of a 4" rod  plus an extra hand with a third alligator clip on a 10" gooseneck. It all weighs in at a stable 3+ lbs and has a 7-1/4" x 6-3/4" base so you won't need fourth hand to hold it upright.

Attention robotics boffins: Here's a nice, powerful 12-24VDC Mabuchi brush motor with a gearbox and pulley attached. At its nominal 24DC, it spins 45rpm, draws 280mA no load, and stalls a 750mA. 7.5 in-lbs of torque and is rated for continuous duty. Has a 3/4" long x 5/16" flattened shaft with a 4-5/8" dia x 5/16" wide (3/16" ID) single-sheave pulley attached, with a matching O-ring. The gearbox measures 2-3/4" x 3" x 9-1/16". The motor measures 1-1/16"dia x 1-5/8" long and comes with 7" leads and a 2-pin Molex connector.

These are the split rings with the beveled profile, the good ones. The bevel and the largeness of these rings translate to fewer chipped fingernails and blurted-out obscenities. Measure 1-1/2" dia x 1/8" thick, in steel, and hold a bunch of keys.

Lego® goes crazy with this 100+ piece kit with everything you need to build (16) different contraptions (be pretty stupid if they made 16 of the same contraption) for your amusement. In the mix are gears, pulleys, belts and axles, which you could turn into a rocket racer, Lego® launcher, donkey cart or scissor grabber, among other things. Includes a 50-page spiral-bound graphically illustrated instruction booklet. And, yes, adding Lego® pieces of your own just ramps up the fun.

How to shoot an azimuth for fun and profit: Get the ultimate direction finder, a lensatic compass. It has a 2-1/8" dia face marked in 5-degree increments, a 1/4" dia sight lens, 9/16" dia bubble level, and a 1-1/2" sight with crosshairs. Measures 3-1/4" x 2-1/2" x 1-1/8" when folded and comes with an 18" long cord and an olive drab belt pouch. For instructions, go to www.armystudyguide.com, click on "prep for basic" then "land navigation," then click on "determine a magnetic azimuth using a lensatic compass." Piece o' cake.

Why does Roger always get the credit for the skull and crossbones pirate flag? We feel it is time to share and have elected Barry to the post because he just walked by the vast editorial department here at A.S.&S. (AKA "my desk") Our Jolly Barry flag is 3ft x 5 ft., black polyester with a reinforced edge containing grommets for flying. It has the traditional skull and crossbones in white with the added fillip that the skull is wearing an eye patch! Sail Away!!

These clear glass octagon 10 oz bottles are nice enough to leave out on the counter. Measure 4-1/4" tall x 2-11/16" from flat side to flat side with white plastic non-gasketed screw caps.

Blank dog tags, ready to punch. Each set measures 2" x 1-1/8" x 1/32" thick in matte stainless steel with (2) ball chains, one 24" long and one 4-1/2" long. You get (2) sets of (2) tags, with (4) chains altogether. Made in the USA.

Geology for those with short attention spans? The original Magic Rocks®, of course! Mix the solution in a jar of water, drop in the pebbles, and watch them grow into a forest of multi-color stalagmites. Growth starts in 10 minutes, is impressive in 30 minutes, and complete (up to 4" tall) in 2 hours. Extra credit if you can make it grow stalactites by gluing the pebbles to the bottom of a jar, then pouring the solution in and turning it upside down. Who knows? Maybe it will work. Comes with a set of marine decals to decorate the jar. Definitely not for use with living fish. For ages 10 and up.

Smart campers buy glow-in-the-dark rope. You'll get (100) feet of 5/32" dia 7-strand paracord with a 220-lb working load, a 660-lb breaking point, and a nice light green glow-tone. Handy for not tripping at the campsite, and for rustling cattle in the dark, as long as they weigh less than 660 lbs.

Veterans will know this as an entrenching tool, but to everyone else it's a folding camp shovel. Our hardened steel version is 22-1/2" long when open, folds to a measly 9-1/2", and weighs just over 2-1/2 lbs. Blade is 8-1/4" long x 6" wide, serrated on one side. Fits into the light canvas pouch, which you can carry on your belt because you never know when you'll need to dig a hole.

Hold the bottom onion-shaped bulb of this 4" glass toy in your hand and watch the liquid (green, red, blue or purple, we'll pick) magically bubble up into the top chamber and keep on bubbling like the dickens, as your grandmother used to say. The magic is ethyl alcohol and physics. WARNING! The glass if fragile and the liquid is nasty. If you drop the thing in the kitchen it will eat the finish off the tile and permanently stain the floor, so don't let the kids handle this item unsupervised.

Never seemed fair to nail the "lazy" tag so permanently on the "Susans" but that probably has no "bearing" on the issue. Also called turntable bearings, they are the square or circular flat ball bearing devices YOU bolt between two flat objects to achieve rotation. Like that spinning center section of a Chinese restaurant table. We had these in surplus once and they were quite popular. To our chagrin, we discovered they could be bought commercially for the same price. So we did. The 4" version is rated for a 300lb. load and the 12" (round) for 1000lbs.

Nice little pulley unit kit includes (1) pulley each at 50, 30, 25 and 20mm and (3) pulleys at 11mm, plus myriad bushings, a 3VDC motor, (2) belts and a belt guide, base, mounts and assorted hardware. Includes graphic assembly instructions, plus a couple of rudimentary drawings with suggested projects. It's a mechanical science project waiting for a home.

Nifty device that takes maxi air and squeezes it down into a mini condition. The device is roughly 6-1/2"" long x 6" tall x 4" wide. It has a 10 ft. cord that plugs into an auto lighter socket: i.e. it runs on 12VDC @ 10 amps. Air output is via a 12" hose with a variety of valve adapters for tires, soccer balls, rubber rafts, and just dusting off the environment. Complete with a 0-250 psi gauge. Which should be plenty of pressure to explode a weak bike tire or flimsy beach ball, so please be careful!