BAM! Take that, blahs! Angst? Get out of here. Suicidal depression? This is your $4.99 ticket to sweet thrift shop therapy.

This is a completely awesome HAPPINESS CONCENTRATOR. Check out the science.

See the mirror on the left, and the mirror on the right? Happiness is attracted to the sunflowers and glitter–not a LOT of happiness, small doses. On its own, the glitter itself is able to generate small traces of happiness, but it’d take ages to build up a charge using that kind of slow-but-steady stuff, you’d never reach capacity. Still, if you’re in an area that’s got a naturally low happiness level–let’s say you work at Dell, for example–you take what you can get.

Drawn by the sunflowers, the happiness drifts toward the concentrator in the slow, aimless manner of Congress making progress. But once it wafts in, it’s STUCK. The crystals hold the happiness in place, the mirrors direct the happiness inward, confusing it with an infinite field of glittery sunflowers, and the box EXPLODES with happiness.

I’m not ruling out the ever-so-faint possibility that the science here is wrong, and that happiness can’t really get stuck behind fobs from a 1960s lamp. But I’m pretty sure the basic idea is sound. Unfortunately, when I bought it, a terrifyingly plain man in a black suit with dark glasses came out of the Half Price Books next door, told me I’d found stolen military secrets. Then he sprayed me with some sort of knock-out gas. I really don’t remember much after that.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

Actually, I THINK that title is kind of a lie, I’m kind of terrified of the egg-girl. I am, in all fairness, amazed by her dress, which is absolutely fabulous. Not everyone can stuff tulle into a styrofoam egg carton, throw some silver glop on it, and call it fashion. AND find a matching umbrella to go with the outfit.

But I’m not sure anymore.

First, the dress…it really looks more like some sort of froofy military ordnance–a glittery explosive device, a globe of charges that, in a heartbeat, will make someone’s life tragically festive. It may be you, or someone you love.

Do not, under any circumstances, touch.

I didn’t fear her PROPERLY until I tried to look into her eyes, to see what she was thinking.

Nosferatu!!

Talking about daring fashion, though–It would take at least two bottles of party juice before I was brave enough to slather myself in paste, see how much glitter sticks, and then paint the town silver. Not going to happen. In the balance, that’s probably a good thing.

Braiiiins…

Texas Thrift near 51st and I35, Austin

Let’s throw some things at this blank sheet of virtual paper and see if they stick.

Just as a quick question, what do you drink in the morning? Coffee? Tea? Three fingers of bourbon? Me, I like to drink a big mug of Borax.

Let me tell you, NOTHING wakes you up like a mug of borax. After a steaming hot cuppa, I’m ready to face the day with bounce in my step, a song in my heart, and a full-body rash.

Just…don’t get any of that imported Borax. British borax is a sweet sweet lie, it doesn’t have the rich flavor and dark aroma of the U.S. kind.

Whilest clicking around for inspiration, I stumbled across a “we pay people to write gibberish and call it information” site which shall remain nameless (though the first three letters are “shv,” the last five are “oong,” and it is MAGIC ON TOAST if you like incomprehensible nonsense) informs me that borax makes brown sugar “very loud and hard to split” and display “visible beads of shiny.” Ford knows what it would do to coffee. Could give you super powers. Or rosacea.

Continuing the “theme”…I have had this picture for years, and never really knew what to make of it.

I know what it’s for, it’s for pushing. But I still haven’t quite noodled what it’s meant to push. Borax, maybe? Hopes and dreams? An agenda? Drugs? All of these things at once?

We performed an experiment with the pushing block. I stood in front of the door and refused to leave until the block itself shoved me out the door. Nothing happened, but two people asked me how much the same food processor cost and one of the cashiers might have hit on me. I kind of hope so, second-hand employee discounts are the best.

Mug full of Borax from Goodwill on 2222; Pushing Block from Texas Thrift near I35 and 51st.

We here at Thrifthorror would like to applaud the DIY community, because without people willing to go the extra mile–check that, the extra five feet–we would have to work to find material. Amateur craftsman, we salute you.

But finding a ham-fisted glassworking project? That’s a treat.

It’s good to recognize the limits of your craft. Let’s say you’re making an hourglass. Further, let’s say that you’re not very good at this, that you failed remedial hourglass-making and got an “F” on your egg timer…or maybe you like VERY runny eggs. If all the sand runs out before you’ve actually flipped the hourglass over…maybe because the sand-sphincter is as wide as a yawning abyss…you’ve got a solution.

And that solution is scraping gravel and asphalt off the side of the road. GOOD solution. Now not only can you measure time with your new project–about 2.3 seconds, but who’s counting–it makes a gentle, restful thundering noise as the gravel strikes the glass.

While the choice of road grit as medium is a revolutionary one, we really must look at the art of the device itself, to truly read the mind of the artist. Two vastly uneven chambers speak volumes of metaphor. “Time is relative, uncertain. 2.3 seconds may feel like a brief moment, or a claustrophobic eternity. And you do not want to get it in your shoe.”

I think the top was actually epoxied onto the base–a glass slab to keep the grains from scattering, slammed onto the top of the project like time was a scorpion trying to escape. Top it all off with a whimsical little twist of glass, a piece of molten drool plastered to the side–is it a handle? Is it a tumorous growth on the rigid construct that binds us to our “schedules?” We’ll never know.

Experience the joy for yourself with this first–a Thrifthorror multimedia extravaganza!

Goodwill at 2222, Austin

Of course you wouldn’t want to use a LIVING doghorse, because it would just turn around and eat all your bread. It’s a little-known fact about our necromantic neighbors to the South that at least half of all Central American agriculture makes heavy use of zombie doghorses. Without a steady influx of still-living doghorses to slay in fiery rituals, and then reanimate with a combination of ancient dark arts and J-B Weld, the economy of Guatemala, Honduras and Belize would collapse entirely. El Salvador has never had the advantage of a large zombie doghorse workforce, primarily because their powerful magical seal has been something of a zombie doghorse deterrent.

Note the telltale scorched muzzle, empty eyes, and strange surgical scarring of the typical zombie doghorse. Once they’re reanimated, the doghorse is a very placid beast, capable of carrying loaves of bread for days on end without resting, losing any limbs, or, amazingly, eating the bread. These amiable shambling aberrations used to be common sights at restaurants, wandering aimlessly from table to table with plates of tapas, until the smell got to be a bit much.

He followed me home, mom! Can I bury him?

Zombie doghorse from Goodwill on 183 and Metric, and was, weirdly, the second undead horse thing I found in a week.

Valentine’s day, like Santa Claus with extreme flatulence, has blessedly come and blessedly gone. In its wake, the Thrift Stores, their shelves already heavy with other people’s stale romance, try to shift the the unshiftable: used broken Valentines gifts. What better way to say “I love you, like $.35 worth” than the gift of dime-store affection?

My love is like a red, red rose
that floateth upside-down,
Like mouse or rat, or chirring bug,
that in the water drowned.

Where once she thrilled me with her stare,
inflamed me with her sighs,
Her bladed glare reminds me now,
sometimes affection dies.

If this little trinket wasn’t slowly turning into a gelid, opaque slurry, I would have bought this for someone special. Maybe it would be for something bigger than a valentine’s day statement of something self-evidently beyond words. Maybe it would be for a special anniversary. Is it the 15th or the 24th that you give someone irony?

If your significant other can’t be won over with embalmed flowers floating upside-down like a dead fish, maybe you’re lucky enough to be dating someone with “standards.” In that case, win him or her over with a really unfavorable comparison. “You’re my gangly, stilt-legged dog with a weird skin condition and strange space-alien eyes.”

Or, “I love you like I love a dalmation in pumps.”
Or, “I’d give you my heart, but the dog stole it.”

I wish I could look at this again, I’m trying to remember why its back is either perfectly flat or strangely hollow. Maybe you’re supposed to fill it with candy. Or very small, hand-written apologies.

But let’s say you already did it? Suppose you gave your lover a black-eyed, heart-eating Dalmatian in stilleto heels last year? How do you say “Remember that undying affection? It’s still there, only with more hair and age spots on it, like a well-seasoned banana?” Basically, how do you top that one?

Oh yes.

Rose and cow both from Savers on South Lamar, pump-heel Dalmatian from Savers on North Burnet. It’s kind of a Savers Valentine’s day, which is the BEST Valentine’s day.

So, this prematurely exciting! So, thrift store blogging is highly competitive and cutthroat. The field’s nightmarishly crowded with like SIX blogs and…well, it’s rough. So, naturally when I saw a big old jug of FREE BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICATION samples, they HAD to come home with me.

Initial exploration of the giant plastic heart was interrupted by a small attack of rats, which was fended off by space priests. Unpacking the contents of this treasure chest was immediately complicated by the armies waging war on my living room table. I continued, undaunted.

A few small skirmishes around the faceplate left the sample case blood-spattered, but not much worse for wear.

Some initial research revealed the following interesting facts about amlodipine beysylate:

There are several side effects that can be happen when you use
amlodipine besylate, since it’s not familiar with the function,
and then you need to introduce and describe what you got when
you got a hypertension. You will need to stop consume the medicine
immediately when you fee a massive heart beat, cool sweat rash,
itchy, hard to breath and also any, serious hurtful symptoms that
might be appear at the first time when you consume amlodipine
besylate , you should stop consume this medicine and go back and
see the doctor to change the medicine for your hypertension therapy.

We learn ever so much from the internets. Remember, if you fee a massive heart beat, you should definitely stop consume.

 At some point, someone told me that I probably had spent $3 on individual pre-wrapped tongue depressors. “Don’t be absurd,” I said. “They wouldn’t be labelled amlodipine besylate if they were tongue depressors. That’d just be silly.

However, I had the sinking feeling that I was wrong…tongue depressor wrong.

The invading rat army was quite irritated when they managed to take the central chamber and found out how wrong I was, and how right my naysayers were. Curse their correct eyes.

“God damn it, we lost 230 rat people to take these things, and they’re TONGUE DEPRESSORS? What were we THINKING?”

Between the endless complaining of both the rat men AND the space priests, I decided “screw it, I’ll just take the tongue depressors. Maybe they’ll help.”

No luck. Night settled. The rat men established camp, illuminating the medical sampler with their strange issue. At some point, I heard the screams of a very small sacrifice. That, and the weird red glow, lent a surreal cast to the dinner table. Eventually I left the rat men to their dark task.

Eventually, the sun rose, and the fruits of their labors were revealed. From their far-off camp, even the space priests were obliged to cheer a little, because say what you will about their hygiene, they were definitely good on the follow-through.

Aaanyway, happy valentine’s day!

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

She knows she’s beautiful. She’s sassy, sexy, and not afraid to wear a plastic garbage bag for a hat, because she can make it work. Just possibly, she’ll strut around wearing nothing but a slightly burnt whole wheat pizza crust on her head. Because she’s got the kind of self confidence you could back a truck onto to give the mechanic a better look at its undercarriage.

Hi!

I don’t have the heart to tell her that her corn muffins are unevenly mounted. It might hurt her feelings.

I am, I’ll confess, a little worried about whatever that is trying to escape from her abdominal cavity. It looks like there’s something large trapped there, trying to force its way out. Maybe it’s her inner child? Possibly her inner adult, actually, this is clearly someone who self-actualized at age 10 or so and stayed there. Otherwise, she’d be wearing more clothes.

From this angle, she’s suddenly the kind of person that would put a giant candle in her hat, which may be more inner child than I’m honestly prepared to deal with. “Naked woman Who’s Embraced Her Inner Pixie And Has a Flaming Hat” is a lot to bring home to mom. Particularly if mom’s got low ceilings. Though it would be worse if mom ended up with her wardrobe tips.

Goodwill near 620 and 183, Austin

Somehow, this week has gotten away from me.  I think it was the bears that did it. Okay, let’s just take this and run with it, as far as it will go. Will it go all the way to nipplepots? I think it might.

This is, as it were, the tip of the iceberg.

I haven’t seen much in the way of suggestive pottery, not this year anyway. In fact, I think this might be the only piece I’ve seen, but…it’s a doozy.

I’m having a hard time faulting the artistry of this piece. It’s bounteous and round, with a lovely coppery-brown dollop that gives it that quality you so rarely see in glazed ceramics–this pot is pert. And is it abundant? Yes, yes it is.

But I’ll be hornswoggled if I know exactly what it is. The little ribbony tendrils add a fanciful, feminine touch, just in case the overall effect wasn’t fanciful or feminine enough. Maybe it’s a special pot that you use to store wiles and charms in, and it was just so overfull that it BURST into bosoms.

This breathtaking boobscape simulates the experience of crash-landing on the set of Heavy Metal. Or a very very large bowl of strawberry ice cream and magic shell.

These things drift through our lives, and we step back and say “Artist…oh, artist. Where did you go astray? Was this what you intended all this time? Is this the culmination of your dream, the product of three years in art school?” And the artist responds, saying “Don’t you like my boobpot?” And you have to say “Well, yes. But that’s not really the point, and please stop waving that at me. You’re distracting me from a very reasonable conversation.”

This…weird little thing from the Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

So, normally I have to *work* to find naughty, NC-17 stuff at the thrift store. Stuffed animals and dolls thrown into compromising configurations. Like this happy couple here.

Actually, with the fellow passed out on the left, this might have been a pretty good party. With Santa Claus knocked out over there, and the Amish couple disporting themselves, it’s probably the most wholesome bacchanalia I’ve ever seen. I mean, the guy even keeps his hat on. Very modest. I don’t know what Santa was drinking, though.

And occasionally there’ll be a piece that kind of speaks to me, that says “there’s probably a reason I’m here. I’ve been remaindered for inappropriate behavior.” And, to be fair, sometimes it’s just that after months of trolling the thrift stores, things start to seem funnier. Even things that you might have given your teacher, or Grandma. Depending on what Grandma was into.

Trust me, with only three hours of sleep, this was the funniest thing EVER.

Although in retrospect, it was definitely funnier at the time, and now I feel like I have to explain it, and maybe it’s only “3:00 AM” funny.

But it’s good that he’s trying to increase his flexibility.

But SOMETIMES the Thrift Gods hand you something on a silver plate. They say “Take this. TAKE IT.” And you do, and you say “Dear sweet Sally Mae, how could that have escaped them?” Is it even possible that an artist would create this and not…step back…and think about it? Or would they smirk and say “Oh yes, job well done, indeed”?

For instance.

Here is a clear-cut case of design going terribly, dreadfully wrong. Really. One must ask, “why? Why there? Why red? Why are they so cheerfully smug?”

Well…maybe they have a good reason to be cheerfully smug. As coat hangers go, this one is certainly, well, hanged. I guess you could put a coat on it, a small coat maybe, or hang your keys from them, but that just seems inappropriate. Plus, if you had to send someone back in to get your keys, you’d have to say something like “It’s hanging on the bear with the cheerful red baculum, second from the right. The lady bear. I guess. I don’t know. It’s…so hard to tell with bears.”

Oh proud, proud bears, we salute you. Though to be fair, you saluted us first.

Strangely wholesome bacchanalia from Texas Thrift, where I’ve found a LOT of this sort of thing. I think one of the employees has a…special…sense of humor. Extra-flexible unicorns from Thrift Town in South Austin, and Proud, Throbbing Bears from the Savers on North Lamar.