Things (I Don't Understand, Please Help)

Regular readers know that I've been going through all my stuff and deciding what to keep and what to toss.

Trash, treasure, none of the above?

In the process of combing through everything I've owned in the last 25 years, I've come across many interesting items, and a lot of memories, and many things I'd forgotten I owned.  

And at least one complete WTF headscratcher of an artifact.

I'll tell you what I'm talking about, Arnold.

I found this in my closet.

Look, it's smiling.

The box isn't a mystery. I know it's hard to tell the scale of it from the picture, but in person it's obviously a case to store cassette tapes. Hahahaha, yeah, cassette tapes. I honestly am not sure how many generations we currently are ahead of cassettes for music reproduction. Like, eight? Three hundred? Does vinyl count as a new medium because it came back? So confusing.

Anyway, the box isn't a mystery. But inside the box, I found this.

It's a pair of metal (aluminum?) tongs with serrated edges. There's a thin, sharply pointed rod attached to it. Overall it's maybe four or five inches long.

WTF is it?

My first thought was drug paraphernalia. So I showed it to my resident illegal substances expert, aka my spouse. He said he didn't recognize it and didn't know what it was. I tried Google image search and got nothing. 

So I'm throwing it open to you.

Does it have something to do with drugs? Or cassette tapes? Or, I don't know, alien anal probes?

I'm kind of at a loss here.

Me.

If you have intel on this thing, feel free to let me know. If this is something you want, I'm more than happy to let you have it. If I'm under a curse for having it in my possession, you know, that's intelligence I would appreciate having.

Otherwise it's going in the trash and good riddance. Because things I own but don't understand occupy a special place of repulsion for me.

Let me know, Drunkards. I'm looking forward to that shared wisdom of yours.

Peace out.