The squid module provides a nice easy way to use threading effectively for I/O bound tasks that you want the results back to do something with.

squid.py

import threading


def tentacle(f, daemon=False):
    """Decorator adopted from http://stackoverflow.com/a/14331755/18992 (thanks bj0)"""
    import Queue

    def wrapped_f(q, *args, **kwargs):
        """Call decorated function and puts the result in a queue."""
        ret = f(*args, **kwargs)
        q.put(ret)

    def wrap(*args, **kwargs):
        """Fire off wrapped_f in a new thread and return the thread object
        with the result queue attached."""
        q = Queue.Queue()

        t = threading.Thread(target=wrapped_f, args=(q,) + args, kwargs=kwargs)
        t.daemon = daemon
        t.start()
        t.result = q
        return t

    return wrap


class Squid(object):
    """Encapsulate a threading task."""
    def __init__(self, action, daemon=False):
        self.action = action
        self.daemon = daemon

    def go(self, call_params):
        """Call all the threads with the given params, wait for all to finish,
        and return the results."""
        tentacles = []
        for args, kwargs in call_params:
            func = tentacle(self.action, daemon=self.daemon)
            tentacles.append(func(*args, **kwargs))

        results = []
        for t in tentacles:
            results.append(t.result.get())

        return results