From the “I have no mouth yet I must scream” department…

A moment of silence for those poor people who were made…tragically bland. The powers-that-be were not content to make this poor woman simply dull, or forgettable, or “just a face in the crowd.” No, she is so utterly, painfully dull that she doesn’t warrant a face. Or hands.

On the plus side, she did get a lovely dress. It’s made out of the same pure, refined boredom as the rest of her sad little existence—if you want to sculpt something out of “dull” go with a nice, tame putty-color, like pencil erasers left out in the sun. And she recently had her hair done, so points there. But how much of her existence is spent staring at her little stumps, saying “Am I really so blisteringly dull that I don’t even deserve hands?”

She turns her stubs over and over in front of her, staring at them…or would, if she had eyes. Without them—heck, without any sensory input at all—I could imagine her wandering slowly through the pressed masses of humanity, holding her truncated arms before her, hoping that someone will scream, take pity on her, update her wardrobe for the 21st century, or otherwise break the endless expanse of monotony stretching before her, this poor woman, terrifying in her blandness.

From the Salvation Army on South Congress near Ben White. I remember starting this day out thinking of writing a humorous blog entry. What happens to our childhood dreams?

I can’t explain this one if I tried. But whatever it is, it doesn’t look happy.

I want the thing in the back to be some sort of sun-god or goddess. Perhaps it is, it’s got that whole “radiant smile” thing, and a lovely halo of hair, very much in the model of a corona or nimbus. If it rose in the east, I wouldn’t really be that surprised, it would actually be a nice way to start the day. You could say “Hello, Sun Goddess!” and it might say “Hi, tragic human! Do you like 115 degrees?” and then you’d say “no, no I don’t really! How about a balmy 72?” And it’d say “No! You will have 115 degrees and you will enjoy it! Or don’t, I don’t care, I’m the SUN GOD!”

Which basically we get down to this display here at the Goodwill on 290 and I35, which basically says “the sun, the sun is a harsh sky-demon, and we will grovel before it like little baking worms and it WON’T HELP.”

Weep before the sun, tiny thing.

I will, of course, take other opinions on what the heck this is, or what’s going on here. This too strongly resembles a pop-eyed cabbage patch kid in a tortilla wrap for me, or some sort of horrible fish-child. I’m really not comfortable with fish-children, though this one was thankfully in a small cage, waiting for the Saturday action.

In hindsight, I should have gone to hear the caller try to sell this one. “Item number 37, we’ve got a….ah…kind of lumpy, fist-sized, looks dead…made of clay…hey, Barbara, you know what this is?” “Cruel sun-goddess and prostrate victim.” “Right. Cruel sun-goddess and prostrate victim. Do I hear $25?”

For those of you that got an early start on Friday night, we at Thrifthorror want you to wake up to this. We think it will add to the experience of being hung over.

Oh, hi, how are you?

Imagine if you will, a colorblind madman sculpting a pigeon in the style of Edward Gorey. But because he is, after all, a madman, his artistic media are limited to beeswax, melted chocolate, and red gumdrops. And because he is a madman, his interpretation of a pigeon has a gaping, hungry maw where its stomach might, in a normal bird, be.

Thankfully, because of the miracle of 21st century technology, you no longer have to merely IMAGINE chocolate-and-beeswax Gorey pigeons with gaping chest-maws. You can SEE them. If you’re in Austin, and wanted to really go crazy with $.97, you could even BUY one, but we do not recommend this, nor do we condone lumpy wax bird things.

Well crap, now I made it sad.

Maybe it’s a kiwi? Or a coconut? There is the smallest chance we’ve misunderstood the artist’s intent, but we hope this is not a damning offense.

I didn’t really have the heart to light it, though in a technical sense it is a candle of some sort. I was about to, but I had this horrible vision of the thing dragging itself around in a sad circle, dribbling brown wax and making a horrible, low squawking sound. I put the ligher away and cried inwardly.

Fly free, noble birdlike wax product. Fly free, to whatever horizon your heart carries you.

Lumpy waxish bird-type thing from the Savers on South Lamar, Austin

Years from now, someone will come up to me and say “you remember that picture you were telling me about? The one that looked like the ship from Asteroids being attacked by pasta? I will buy that picture off you, my friend, for 1.3 million dollars.” And I’ll start crying, and say “will you give me a thousand for a photograph?” And they will say, “no.”

So, be with me as we discover a new artist for the 21st century. Your guess is as good as mine which end you hang the darn thing from. Are the squiggly lines coming down like glorious heavenly beams to EXPLODE the strip of turkey bacon? Or do they represent the deep and primal sea, boiling up from below, lashing like tentacles at what, still, seems to be turkey bacon? Is that an olive inside the giant red wedge? Does the red wedge represent the masculine principle, and the circle abstractly represent the maternal nature, both of which contain the other, linked eternally together by…uh…nuclear pasta and high-velocity cheddar fries, but separated by, again, turkey bacon?

Look closely. You may see God. Mostly, though, I see bacon.

Surprisingly, I’m not seeing any bacon here at all. I don’t really know who the artist is, but I rather assume they were going through their green period. I should have figured out a way to wear this for St. Patrick’s Day, except the brown squiggle looks like another fun round of “name that medium,” the game where everybody’s a loser.

The best part of this, though, is how many times you can look at the image without actually noticing the pricetag.

This abstract expressionist double-header from the Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin.



Won’t you come inside? No? Well, just don’t say we didn’t ask.

Once again, welcome to the strange and maybe a little tragic world of high school ceramics. Watch your step, the floor’s kind of tacky. Plus, like the sign says. BTW, does anyone know what font that is? I need it for a brochure I’m working on.

So, where to begin? We could, of course, start at the top and work our way down. I love how the roof is slowly sliding off toward the floor. Like the entire thing was made of thick shingles of tasty, tasty caramel, and it’s August in Texas. Gloop! Shingles slide to the ground in a thick, viscous drop of liquid roof.

And that is a nice, sturdy door. If you’re trapped in a shjL hust, don’t try to break through the front door. It’s Mission Impossible thick, reinforced with extra clay by a team of hard-working construction gumbies. You better get used to living in a hust, you’ll be there a while.

Unless, of course, you just slip out the window.

So, what horrible beast tried to break into this sad little hut? Twelve-inch talons, possibly sabres for teeth? Did the previous owners huddle inside their hust, fearful for the moment when the monster realized, “oh hey, window’s bigger than the door, it’s better than the drive-through window at “Porky Pie’s”? Or maybe night terrors and the vague threat of suddenly being eaten are just some of the amenties of a shjL hust. We don’t know, we haven’t lived in one.

We rather hope we don’t have to, but at least they’re cheap. About as structurally reliable as a marshmallow joist, which might explain why the roof sags like a dorm sofa. I love the window, it would have been the perfect place to let a fresh-baked triforce cool off, until Ganon stole it. Again. Darn you, Ganon, stay away from my hust.

shjL hust from Family Thrift on Oltorf and South Congress

Now, if we only knew what it was. I started out pretty confident that it was a shoehorn for one of Santa’s elves, but now, not so sure.

You can see the source of my initial confusion. If you wanted to wedge your foot into a foot long, curly, bell-toed sort of a poulaine thing, this WOULD be the way to go. Except…well, firstly, that it seems to be covered in an aggressive, penicillen-like mold. Secondly, it was in housewares, which made no sense.

There are a lot of things that don’t make sense. The complex ceramic knotwork, that was a little weird. The wedge jutting off into the sky, like some sort of clay shark swimming through the plates, also a little weird. The entire thing had a marine sort of look–besides being covered in green splotches, it had a predatory sort of look, like it was hunting small fish along the sea floor, and was just about to, say, pry open a clam.

Eventually, just when we thought it was safe to go down aisle 6, it leaped from the shelf onto the back of a volunteer’s neck, drove a clay spike into his spinal column, and piloted the lurching monstrosity to Women’s Clothing, where it found the most god-awful vest and pantsuit combination. It was arguably the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen at Goodwill. After shopping to its heart’s (?) content, it returned to its quiescent state, but we weren’t fooled.

If it could shop, it could kill.

Goodwill at 2222 and Lamar, Austin

I really try to avoid the more bibulous holidays. The fear is not that I might blow all my money on some stupid useless purchase that I couldn’t even begin to explain the next day, or say something I’ll totally regret and have it come back to haunt me for years, or even that I’ll swerve off the road and hit a nun. That’s pretty much every day stuff there. No, it’s that after enough green beer, anything starts to look pretty good.

But you have to take a few steps back occasionally and say, “No, not even on St. Patrick’s Day. We have our pride.”

While I do think that it’s…interesting…that this fellow has so much magic in his pants that it’s escaped its bondage and crawling up his not insubstantial Guinness Storage Unit, I don’t like what he’s done with his hair. What I don’t like about it–well–

–what I don’t like is that he seems to have sculpted it out of an unwholesome mixture of egg yolk, mucus, and Aquanet White. At least he wore protective gloves. But he didn’t take them off afterward.

I do not like Green Hands and Beard. I find them odious and weird.

And if you’re so incredibly, bizarrely distorted that even on St. Patrick’s Day—even when there’s so much booze sloshed around that green beer starts making a strange sort of sense and “Kish me I’m Iris” actually works as a pick-up line—you STILL are going home alone, consider covering your hat in wax and setting it on fire. You never know. A lot of the girls I know really like candles.

Savers on South Lamar, Austin

Weight of the world got you down? Think you have problems? Think you’re job’s not worth two thin dimes? Cat crawl into your car’s exhaust pipe, now it backfires hairballs and the mice are getting into the salad? Wife left you for some guy in advertising? Some girl in advertising? Doctor look at your x-ray and say, “huh,” and then reach for an actuary? Friend, whenever I have one of those days–and I have a lot of those days, friend–I’m glad I have my duck.

Because when you’ve had one of those “they’ve cut a pancake-sized hole in my head to use me for a candle-holder and now my eye’s full of wax” days, you’ve got to have a duck. Friend, you don’t want to face that kind of day without a cinnamon teal, a black-bellied whistler, or at least a mallard.

And I don’t rightly know what kind of duck I’m facing this particular day with–fact of the matter is, after the procedure, a lot of things don’t make much sense, my guess is it’s some sort of merganser, but it might be a sock with some orange beanbags stitched to it–I know that, gaping cranial hole or no, I’ll face the day with my chin high, the wind blowing through my parietal granular foveolae, and I’ll proudly, proudly show my duck. And in some small way, the day’ll be a better one for it.

Hold your duck high, my friend.

Salvation Army near 620 and 183, Austin

Don’t sit on that. You don’t know where it’s been.

It’s passingly rare to see a buffalo shot on a piece of furniture, even in Savers. I’m glad I caught this rare occurrence on film. Remember, before donating your gently used furniture to charity, shave your sofas.. Frankly, it’s embarrassing, even a little non-hygienic. Does anyone really want to see your couch’s happy trail?

No. No, they don’t. Bad enough to think about what’s no doubt caught behind the cushions…ancient chee-tos, candy wrappers, small abandoned pets…without a graphic display.

Particularly with bikini season right around the corner, urge your thrift store community–both distributors and donors–to put out just a little extra effort, get out the extra-wide razor, and shave your sofa. Remember, the sofa you shave could be your own.

You could, of course, wax your sofa, but in many cases, the cure is worse than the disease, and that’s a lot of paraffin. You’ll never get that out from between the cushions.

Savers on South Lamar, Austin

I’m not sure what this is…but it’s festive.

I think it’s hungry, too. There’s a real artistic clash going on here between the “folk art and tinfoil” aesthetic and the “art glass vase” look, and I’m not honestly sure who thought they’d go well together.

Of course, whoever thought this was a match made in heaven also, presumably, thought putting “nerf dart gun” suction cups all over the mask was a fine idea. That way, if someone was a few sheets too many in the wind, and just happened to throw the entire thing across the room, it might just stick to the far wall and work its way down with a series of delicate “pop” sounds. I like art with a plan.

Even at extreme close-up, I’m still not sure those aren’t suction darts.

This is one of those pieces where the eyes seem to follow you around the room. Be careful, you could cut yourself on one of those. Which would just be a total downer, particularly if you had one of THOSE sorts of parties and just bought yourself one of these things. You’ll regret it the next day, we promise.

Sometimes, we ask ourselves, “just what would Tim Curry wear to a Mardi Gras party?” The answer always comes back, “Probably not that..” Because Tim has class. And much better make-up.

The girl on the left has a sort of “Satan’s sheep” quality to her. I think the little hat says more “please admire my flippy floppy ears” than “I am princess, hear me roar.”

But…check out these cheekbones.

Wait, you CAN’T check out these cheekbones because there aren’t any.. The entire contents of his head were sucked out through his eye sockets, leaving a yawning darkness where his interior should be, his head turning into a pale, doughy mass that’s barely strong enough to balance a crown without a supporting structure of burnished copper. In some weird mockery of life they apparently replaced his chest hair with a salad made largely of frisee lettuce and possibly cottage cheese, possibly sequins, possibly frog spawn. I don’t want to come to the kind of parties these people go to, where the king is an empty gourdlike mockery of a monarch and someone has to staple the queen’s headpiece onto her forehead such that the queen-juice runs free. On the other hand, they probably look awesome with the black lights.

Strange candle-holder (?) from Goodwill on Parmer near I35. Royal Couple from Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar.