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 4s seen on

ew principle that will no doubt leave countless audiences seriously in doubt of their

senses. It will also delight those of us in the dark, deceptive arts with a fondness for

eects so deceptive they border on mental cruelty. After all, it is clearly insane tosuppose that a single, unfaked business card can be torn into two inter-linked

squares. Or that this can be done in real-time, while the audience watch, with

nothing to hide or steal away. Or that the resulting linked squares of card can bc

given away to bc studied and eamined !and they will be"#, since there is nothing to

$nd. %hat&s the good thing about 'oshua( he keeps having these insane ideas and

then $nds a way to make them into practical pieces of delightful magic. )on*unction

represents a signi$cant leap forward in the art and science of +impossible+ linkage.

It is practical, albeit some diligent study will be required by those wishing to

master this particular miracle. It should also become one of the most performed,

and most talked-about pieces of modern close-up magic !given how often we tend

to hand out business cards#. /uite simply, magic doesn&t get more impossible than

this. 0110)% 2efore handing out your business card to someone with whom you&d

like to leave a strong impression, you give the card a series of folds and tears, in the

process trans$guring it into an impossible ob*ect( two unbroken paper rings which

end up linked through one another. 3o what&s the dierence between this and the

profusion of other eects that have cards linking together4 3imple( 5ou do it for real.

 %he rings are given away in their genuinely linked state, from which they can&t be

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unlinked without ripping them. %hey can be eamined inde$nitely with no danger of

anyone $nding any seams, *oins or tears, because there aren&t any. 1urthermore, no

glue, tape, or adhesive of any kind is used. Only one card is involved, with no gas,

gimmicks or etra pieces, and nothing to ring in, ditch or switch. And naturally, if

you&re smart, the rings will still have nothing to ring in, ditch or switch. And

naturally, if you&re smart, the rings will still have nothing to ring in, ditch or switch.And naturally, if you&re smart, the rings will still have nothing to ring in, ditch or

switch. And naturally, if you&re smart, the rings will still have nothing to ring in, ditch

or switch. And naturally, if you&re smart, the rings will still have nothing to ring in,

ditch or switch. And naturally, if you&re smart, the rings will still have your name and

contact information on them, intact, at the end. 60%7O8 In essence, the description

is the method( 5ou do it for real. 9o kidding. %his is one of those rare occasions in

magic when you&re actually doing eactly what you say you&re doing, and therefore

have !almost# nothing to hide. 3o, how do you genuinely tear two interlinked rings

from a single business card when any lopologist, origami epert, or high school

geometry teacher will tell you that such a thing is physically impossible, and has

been known to be so for centuries4 1irst I&ll show you the basics of creating the link

via a process that requires no circumvention of natural laws, but *ust a slightly

dierent way of looking at things !which has evidently eluded centuries& worth of

topologists, origami eperts, and high school geometry teachers#. %hen I&ll discuss

how to make the $nal product look deceptive. 1inally, I&ll teach you what I&ve found

to be the most eective handling, which will allow you do the whole thing in front of

an audience without giving them any clue how you did il. 1irst o, let me address a

small point of terminology. %hroughout the tet I refer to the linked pieces you&ll be

left with as +rings+ even though they&re not ring-shaped at all: they&re rectangles

with rectangular holes in them. +1rames+ would probably have been a more

accurate term, %he result is a wonderful new principle that will no doubt leavecountless audiences seriously in doubt of their senses. It will also delight those of us

in the dark, deceptive arts with a fondness for eects so deceptive they border on

mental cruelty. After all, it is clearly insane to suppose that a single, unfaked

business card can be torn into two inter-linked squares. Or that this can be done in

real-time, while the audience watch, with nothing to hide or steal away. Or that the

resulting linked squares of card can bc given away to bc studied and eamined !and

they will be"#, since there is nothing to $nd. %hat&s the good thing about 'oshua( he

keeps having these insane ideas and then $nds a way to make them into practical

pieces of delightful magic. )on*unction represents a signi$cant but *ust didn&t like

it as well. I mention this only so you won&t read through the whole thing epectingto get to the point where you tear the pieces into circle shapes, only to be

disappointed with their rectangularity in the end. ; All right then, lo start with you&ll

need( < 3ome business cards < A pen or pencil < A ra=or knife < A cutting surface

8on&t worry, when you do this in real life you won&t need anything but a business

card, but for now you&ll need thing to say, and getting comfortable saying it while

making the link. %he $rst part I can&t give you much help with: your spiel will depend

entirely on things like your persona and your audience and your performing

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conditions and what you want to convey. I&m not including mine here because it

wouldn&t $t anyone but me. 2ut the one thing I can tell you is to be sure to impress

upon your audience the fact that tearing a piece of paper into two solid, linked rings

is impossible. >ithout having that established in advance, people won&t quite know

what to make of the result, and it will take a few minutes of contemplation for them

to decide whether they should be ama=ed or not. As for the second part, I havesome more concrete tips. Obviously, you&ll need to practice making the link while

delivering your spiel out loud. 2ut before you start doing ?@ that, you may $nd it

helpful to practice looking away from your hands as much as possible while making

the link. !%hose of you who have worked on a center tear will be in familiar territory

here.# 8on&t close your eyes, because you&ll never want to do that in real life:

instead, practice looking up away from your hands, at the spot where a spectator&s

eyes would be if there were one there. 2eing able to look someone in the eye rather

than constantly staring at your hands will go a long way toward keeping people

engaged all by itself. Once you can do that, speaking at the same time will come

easier. Also, get in the habit of holding your hands up toward your face rather than

down in front of your chest. %hat way when you do have to look at your hands, you&ll

have less distance to travel and you&ll seem proportionately less disconnected.

803I9 6A%%0B3 >hen it comes to where you can and can&t have printing on the

card, this picture of the reassembled demo card pretty much tells the story( %he

peeled parts will end up blank, and the discarded parts will be, well, discarded. 3o

plan the placement of the crucial information accordingly. 7ere&s one basic but

eective design... C ...which ends up looking like this( %he title line ends up being

discarded, but if people don&t remember the basic gist of what you do by the time

you give them something like this, then you&re doing something very wrong. Of

course your design can be a good deal more elaborate than this, provided you bear

in mind which parts will be peeled o and you plan the placement of your tet andgraphics accordingly. C Also note that it&s okay to have graphic elements that end

up getting peeled o completely, provided they won&t be obviously missed and call

attention to the method through their absence. %he only problem is if you have

something that gets only partway peeled, thus giving away what you did( %hat&s

bad. 8on&t do that. 6A%0BIAD )O9)0B93 If you&re going to get custom cards to use

for this eect, there are basically two ways to go about it( have them printed, or do

it yourself. If you decide to have them printed, all you have to do is $nd a printer

that has suitable paper, and give them your design and your credit card number.

2ut if possible. I would recommend going to several dierent printers and getting

samples of their paper to try out before choosing one. %his is because not all cardstock paper is created equal. 1or one thing, some is easier to peel than others. 1or

another, sometimes the inside looks slightly dierent than the outside, making the

peeled sections more apparent. 3o it will be worth your while to $nd the best kind

that&s readily available to you. If you want to make them yourself, besides a desktop

printer, you&ll also probably want to make one other investment( an odd but

etremely handy piece of oEce equipment known as a +business card cutter.&+ It&s

basically a plastic, loaf-of-bread-si=ed thingamabob that lakes an F.G piece of

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paper and cuts it into ten business cards. 5ou feed a piece of paper into it, turn the

handle, and it comes out the other end sliced into two long strips. %hen you turn

those strips @ degrees, feed them into a dierent slot, turn the handle again, and

they come out the other end sliced into business cards. I love the thing because I&m

constantly $ddling with dierent card designs and types of paper, and it lets me try

them out without ordering a thousand at a time. If you too like to tinker with suchthings, you may well $nd it to be a worthwhile investment. 1or me it&s been an

absolute godsend. I found mine on e2ay for about sity dollars, and since then there

have always been a few up for auction at any given time. A search for the phrase

+business card cutter&+ or +business card slitter+ will turn them up. %here are also

electric ones available that don&t require you to turn a handle, but they&re

considerably more C4 epensive, and for me the added cost wasn&t worth the

minimal added convenience. Of course both options have their advantages and

disadvantages. 7aving cards printed professionally is more convenient, and the

print quality may be better than what you can get at home !though ink*ets have

come a long way#. On the other hand, doing them yourself allows for more

eperimentation and doesn&t stick you with a whole bunch of cards that you then

have to either use or waste. And now for something that many people have told me

I&m a fool for tipping( the Bolls Boyce of card stock paper and how to get it.

9umerous friends have opined that rather than revealing the origin of this stu, I

should *ust buy a bunch of it wholesale and then sell it to )on*unction users at a

reprehensible markup. And while the idea is not without a certain appeal, the

bottom line is that dealing with receiving, storing, and shipping large quantities of

heavy paper is not my idea of a good time. 7ence, my hedonistic la=iness is your

gain. I mentioned earlier that having a visual pattern in the paper is more helpful

than having physically tetured paper, and that&s true - but it&s even better to have

both. %he best is a combination of a good visual pattern and what&s known in thepaper bi= as a +felt+ teture, which consists of small, random bumps and ridges not

unlike, well, felt. It&s the closest thing you can get to the actual teture of paper

that&s been peeled apart. It&s not identical, but when combined with the visual

pattern, the dierence really is unnoticeable. %here are a number of brands out

there that $t the bill, but as of this writing the best ones available are( < 3undance

1elt paper, made by the 1o Biver division of the ilbert Haper )ompany, in the

9ava*o >hite or 6ai=e colors. < ia 1elt paper, made by 6ohawk Haper, in the 1la

or 'ute colors. Out of the hundreds of papers I tried, these two in the colors I&ve

listed are the cream of the crop. %hey hide the work well, they practically peel

themselves, and they make great looking cards. %he samples you got with thisbooklet are made from one of those. I6HOB%A9%( >hatever kind you get, you&ll have

to specify the weight you want it in !which, in paper bi= terms, means how thick it

the paper is#. %he weight you want is +F- pound cover.+ 9ote that both parts of that

phrase - the +F-pound+ part and the +cover+ part - are important. 5ou don&t want

F-pound tet, which is regular writing paper, and you don&t want JG-pound cover,

which is Kimsier, tougher-to-work-with card stock. 9ow that you know what to get,

the tricky part is $nding it. %he only place I&ve found that carries both brands, and

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will sell them in quantities from individual sheets to cartons, is a company called

lodan, reachable on the web at wvvw.glodan.com. 5ou can also order 3undance

paper direct from the manufacturer at(

www.gilbertpaper.comLfoLpapersLsundanceLbuy C? I also had some luck with %he

Haper 6ill 3tore !.com#, who didn&t stock any of the ones I wanted but oered to

order it for a good price, provided I bought a carton !G sheets#. %here. 9ow don&tsay never gave you nothin&. I1 5OM&8 BA%70B 1I7% %7A9 3>I%)7 reali=e that

many of you reading this will not want to have new cards made up for this eect,

either because you&re attached to the design of your current card, andLor because

designing a new one to meet the requirements of the eect seems like too much

trouble. And that&s $ne. I&m not hurt. 9o, really. I mean, I only put three years of

sweat and toil into developing this eect, tenderly nurturing it from its promising

but problematic conceptual infancy, onward through a long, clumsy, awkward

adolescence fraught with impractical handlings, elaborate preparations, imperfect

method concealment, and draconian design requirements, before $nally seeing it

through to its maturation into the elegant piece of mystery so lovingly presented to

you here. 3o there&s absolutely no reason for me to be upset if people get this far

only to decide not to use it because they can&t be bothered to spend a pleasant

evening&s work making up a new business card. Beally, it&s no problem at all. I&ll *ust

be in the corner wailing and gnashing my teeth. 2ut seriously, there arc a number of 

options that don&t require changing your current card, for those of you who are

unwaveringly intent on riding roughshod over the creative eorts of one of your

fellow N3top it. - ed. Bight, sorry. 2asically, if the piece of paper you use for the

eect is not your business card at all, but rather a completely separate card that

you utili=e to demonstrate something interesting and impossible, then a whole

world of choices opens up to you. %he easiest and most obvious one is to use a

blank card. >hy blank4 >ell, maybe something about a blank piece of paperrepresenting in$nite possibilities, andLor impossibilities, and even the gray areas

where the two intersect... but that will be for you to work out. Or the card could bear

a pre-printed message that tics in with your presentation - something like, +I am

impossible,+ +I can&t eist,+ &+Impossible is only a word,+ etc. Another option is to

start with a blank card but write something on it that lends itself to the

circumstances. If you&re performing for a couple, a nice idea is to have them write

their names in the appropriate spots, and end with them &&*oined together.+ Or if

you&re working a corporate event or trade show. I+m sure you can come up with

some word or phrase that would be bene$cial to make &&intrinsically linked+ to the

company or product you&re representing. !Ah, I can smell the corporate cheesealready( +3ome people will tell you it&s impossible to make customer

satisfaction an integral part of a company&s identity, but here at 3chmuck%ech, we

do the impossible...+ I confess I look forward to my eect being used for such

purposes with the same anticipation with which one looks forward to one&s daughter

becoming a whore.# 5et another possibility is to have a diagram of two linked rings

printed on the card, and use that picture as a starting point for discussion. I hope

the above provides enough alternative ideas that those of you who were epecting

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to use your current card can now be persuaded to put down the pitchforks and

torches. CC >7A%&3 5OMB 1M9)%IO94 I&ll be the $rst to admit that as eects go.

)on*unction is an odd bird. It doesn&t $t within any of the standard categories of

magic plots - vanishes, appearances, transformations, transpositions, penetrations,

levitations, etc. >hen I&ve described the eect to magicians, many of them have

said, +Oh, so you mean it&s a one-card link.+ >ell... no. %hough the similarity isobvious, there&s a subtle but important dierence. In a one-card link, the rings start

out separate and then link together, so the impossible act is the passing of solid

ob*ects through one another - a standard and easily de$ned plot. %hat never

happens with )on*unction, as the rings are linked from the moment they come into

eistence. 3o the impossible act becomes the very creation of an ob*ect that should

be uncreatable - not eactly a soundbyte-friendly premise. 3o, you may ask

yourself, what&s it good for then4 As with many things in our $eld, the answer is,

+whatever you choose to make of it.+ >ith the right framing it can be a $ne piece to

use as an eect within a close-up performance, be it formal or impromptu or

anywhere in between. Hersonally I tend to use it more as a thought- and

conversation-provoking promotional and marketing tool - a way to make myself and

my business card more memorable and more likely to be talked about after I&m

gone. I&ve found it&s an eective thing to do for someone whom you&re trying to

convince to hire you, as it leaves them with a tangible piece of impossibility that

serves as a constant, hard-to-ignore reminder of you. And in a $eld where the word

+pu==le+ has become one of the most derogatory terms in the leicon, it can make

for a $ne one in the best sense of the word: not something to be solved and

defeated, but something with which to challenge people to think about what is and

isn&t possible. %ruth be told, it&s also a great way to win free drinks from engineers

and topologists. 9ote also that this doesn&t have to be performed as an 0ect with a

capital 0, with all attention focused on it. In a casual environment you can *ust graba card and start $ddling with it, without calling attention to what you&re doing until

the appropriate time. It&s worth pointing out that when I perform, I do so as a

mentalist, with no +straight+ magic included: I deal solely with abilities of the mind,

and I don&t ever make things vanish, appear, transpose, levitate, or *ump to the top

of the deck. 2ut I do use )on*unction, because although it has nothing to do with

what we think of as the standard mentalism feats !demonstrations of telepathy,

precognition, telekinesis, etc.#, it is a $ne eample of the power of the human mind

to overcome accepted limitations and accomplish things that are considered

impossible. And it helps that unlike most premises and *usti$cations in mentalism,

that happens to be an accurate characteri=ation rather than a line of unmitigatedbullshit. 3imilar ground has been eplored by such mentalists