Oh, Shelfpig. You are one of the great constants in my life, like shell art, like high school oil paintings, like the angry glares from Annette, who always seems to be straightening the brick-a-broke section when I’m innocently taking photos of a mutant Virgin Mary. I do not understand you. I do not WANT to understand you, that might take away the magic. But I admire your good cheer, and your fine variety of colors.

My current theory–and as I said, I do NOT want to be disillusioned of this–is that somehow, they ward off evil, through their extreme cuteness. That at some point, there was an army of demons, or Europeans, or the Black Death, and a small population in Mexico, maybe Coyoacán or Tlalpujahua or something, was spared because of their pigs’ knowing, sidelong glances, or they were able to survive the Starving Times because they’d hidden their porklings under large daisies. Now, every spring, each family paints their own Shelfpig, and in a spirit of great pomp and ceremony, donates it to Goodwill.

I love my theory. And I love Shelfpig.

What dimples these pigs have. “I may be full of bacon, but if you eat me, you’ll never see these cute cheeks again! You can only enjoy ham once, but let me live and you can see these rosy little dimples every morning. Every morning! Think of it!”

Erk. On her–or him, I don’t know if Shelfpigs are gender-coded by color–the dimples aren’t working for me. They look more like blemishes, and the nose has a sort of “I lost my rag so let me polish your shoes with my nose, sir” thing happening. Maybe these are better appreciated from a distance. But look! She’s looking up at you! Shelfpig LOVES you, and respects you, too. Buy Shelfpig. It may be all the respect you get this week…and maybe it’s still enough.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

It was a hard year, 1973. There was a terrible drought, Watergate was wreaking havok on public trust in the government, we lost Noel Coward, and got “Wheel of Fortune.” But mostly, it was the year the frogs stood up and started picking.

We didn’t think much about it at first. Truth be told, it was kind of pretty. But it freaked the hell out of the dogs. Every time they went to drink from the pond, some damned amphibian started riffing bluegrass, maybe something more modern, like Thelonius Monk. Sometimes they could sing AND play, and then, well, you’d find the dogs shivering under the covers, ‘fraid to move, just two black eyes and maybe a paw sticking out. And outside, you’d here that infernal banjo. And maybe a “croak” now and again, or else a couple of verses of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” That, my friends, was too much. We drained the ponds, had ourselves a nice cook-up of frogleg etouffee, which was kind of nice, with a side of squash and okra, a couple Colorado Bulldogs, and the dying strains of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” And if that’s what it took to get the dogs out from under the covers, well, then. But they never did go near the pond again.

Savers on South Lamar, Austin

Frankly, I think she’s got more important things to worry about than where she left her purse. Like that lamé dress. Seriously, that stuff went out in the late 80s.

I’m not sure how you’d actually wear that. It’s thicker than a layer of cake frosting. It probably creaks. It may actually be the only thing holding her up.

Just…very very slowly, okay? It’s been a hard day.

Ah, irony. It’s not so much “laughing outside, crying inside.” In fact, it might have actually been “crying outside, laughing inside.” But instead, it looks like he’s upset because the French revolution started going after mimes. Or like the absolutely creepiest ghost at Hogwarts. I’m glad the phantasmal gray gnome of Gryffindor isn’t judging him. He’s like, “oh, don’t worry about it. Just because you’re dead, and a clown, doesn’t mean your life’s over. It’s just beginning. Oh, wait, a CLOWN? That’s pretty sad…maybe you should go hang out with Moaning Myrtle downstairs. Crikey, a clown…”

Headless girl in gold, Goodwill on Metric and 83. “Dash” from goodwill on 2222. Unhappiest mime from Savers on Burnet and North Loop.

Exhibit “B” apparently–The Possibly the hot new “be cruel to your contestants” game show? Possibly a dedicated team of 5th century China entomologists climbing their way toward lepidopterist fame and glory, scaling a treacherously narrow tree-mountain-chimney to find the marvelous three-foot-wide Emperor Butterfly. Possibly a metaphor for the fundamental futility of living too much in the future, rather than embracing the “now” of the task, much like Sisyphus rolling a boulder uphill, or following leftist politics.

The sad thing is, the joke is, entirely, on them. Once they reach the top, they’re dealing with the world’s largest squirrel baffle, and won’t they be surprised!

These sad, lumpy men are in sharp contrast to the glorious Emperor butterfly. Whereas the butterfly is tricked out in magnificent detail, every scale on its wing lovingly painted, the little guys climbing it are weird, amorphous little proles, each one like a panda wearing a “stay-puft marshmallow man” costume. In truth, it does not matter which one makes it to the top of this tower of tragedy. There are no winners in candlestick-climbing, because everyone climbing the candlestick loses their identity to the mad crazy candlestick frenzy. Perhaps it is you climbing the candlestick. Perhaps it is me. Actually, I know it is not me, because I’m holding the camera. It does not matter, because, well, because of the damned squirrel baffle.

Goodwill on Parmer near I35, Austin

I’ve meditated for many hours over these two artifacts, trying to guess…why? What was the artist’s intent? Was there an intent, or is this just another example of Craft Grannies Gone Wild? There’s a certain “found at an art show amidst a shelf of their kin” element to both of these…a standardized shape, distinguished only by the clever message. If it’s a message. Messages, as I understand them, transmit meaning, whereas these only transmit a certain vague confusion, possibly unease. They’re the “twin peaks” of craft pottery.

pic

I would think that they’d kind of clog up the spout. I guess, if you pulverized them, ground them up really fine–and if you were talking about, say, Nilla Wafers, not Oreos, because the cream filling would just gum up everything, spouts, arteries, whatever–then maybe you could actually pour yourself a nice cup of cookie. Or at least a mug of crumbs. And who doesn’t want a steaming hot cuppa biscuit on a cold winter morning?

How long do you think it takes cookies to come to a rolling boil, anyway? Do you steep them?

From the enigmatic to the mildly offensive–I’m going to have to give the artist credit, this one actually borders on clever.

Initially, I was just a little bit creeped out by this. I looked in side it, no skins. I wondered if possibly there was a “shirts” jar somewhere. I wondered if I’d left the stove on, and if my pot of cookie had boiled away again. I wondered what I was missing. What the hell was this jar for?

Well, it was for…skins.

Ahah. hah.

Cookie kettle from Texas Thrift near 51st and I35. “For Skins” from 2222 and Lamar.

Ways thrift stores lie to us. The little angel wings tied onto this girl, one might think, indicate that she is an angel–a sweet little blond cherub.But the angel thing stops at the wings, I promise. This girl’s got plans. And they’re not nice plans.

And if you happen to be a bunny, or a deer, or god help you, any animal with parts that can be ripped off, twisted off, scraped away, or otherwise folded, spindled or mutilated, this is clearly NOT the hill you want to be on.

That bunny. I love that bunny. The deer are pretty funny too–if indeed they ARE deer, they look a lot more like Mexican Hairlesses than deer–but that bunny wins the prize for “shocked expression of the year.”

Look, the poor creature’s totally lost control of his vital functions. That’s how much the fuzzy woodland creatures fear her.

I think it’s the deer that have suffered most of all. Well…except for the sparrow with the deep cranial wounds, and I swear I was going to be off cranial wounds this week, but they’re never far from my heart. Or cranium. Anyway, the deer.

The deer may once have had majestic antlers, or cute little white tails that swished this way and that, but now? Now they’ve got stumps for antlers, the dubious kindness of a splash of calamine lotion on their deer-butts, and shocked, violated expressions. Disbelief and horror are the only appropriate responses.

The birds, they don’t chirp anymore. Sometimes, they just fall off the roof and flop in little circles until someone sets them back on their feet. This used to be a happy bird–this used to be a happy place–until the Procedure. The other birds left pretty quick after the Procedure. Not this one. The most he does is hop toward a bowl of birdseed, if you point him at it and give him a little push.

Don’t expect a song. His bob-bob-bobbing days are in the distant past.

Okay, so, a lot of Goodwill finds are a lot funnier in extreme close-up, here’s the full pic. It was worth it for the fuzzy bunny with the extreme facial expression–he’ll be joining the Schadenfreude Pumpkin in my “keepers” file.

Boo! Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin.

Somehow, I don’t think being a semi-collectable vintage reproduction has really worked out for this kid. She–possibly he, maybe it, but we’ll go with she because of the amount of lace involved–aged pretty well, didn’t mess up her very nice dress over the years, even seems to have all her limbs–and that’s saying something, in a thrift store!

But the part where her head was shaved, and a substantial portion of her skull was replaced with a metal plate, didn’t go so well for her. That, we might go so far to say, was unfortunate, in that “My creature’s form, which I thought would be like that of an angel, now seemed to be abhorrent and twisted!” sense of the word unfortunate.

At LEAST try to get a decent seam around the edges. It’s a skull replacement, not a yarmulke.

Poor thing. I confess to having a soft spot for maimed dolls. That whole “created in our image, innocent and young, made to be defenseless, waiting for the nursery magic to make him-her-it a real boy-girl-heffalump” thing is on some level pretty powerful stuff. But on the other hand, you see an awful lot of nursery magic worst-case scenarios at Goodwill. The Nursery Magic Fairy is a horrible imp, like a first unrequited love that shows up again, when you’re like 93, abandoned by your kids in a nursing home, and says “oh, yeah, I’d love to go dancing tonight, I just now got your note, is 7:30 good?” and they haven’t aged a bit.

Though exactly why she needed to have her skull partially removed and replaced with a metal plate is one of those special thrift store mysteries. Was she wounded in the Crimean war? Did she receive a badge for heroism after smuggling medicines, gunpowder, letters from home, and 15 pounds of Twining’s Earl Grey to the troops in her chemisette and cranial cavity? I hope so, she really needs a medal or something.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

I wonder if I can keep this theme going all week. Oh, I hope so.

Unfortunately, superscience wasn’t a viable career option for women in the 1890s, which was, really, a tragedy. That really was the glory day for mad scientists, gentleman adventurers, and the worldwide spread of cultural dominance, so when a woman with a genuine aptitude for high end evil-geniusing graduated from Lady Ettersham’s Academy for Judiciously Learned Girls, ready to throw away her hand-embroidered diploma in Textile Studies (minoring in Whist), stride dismissively beyond the gates of marriageability, melting its gold, putti-encrusted columns into slag with her hand-knitted death ray, there wasn’t a career waiting for her when the smoke finally cleared. She had to settle for “evil governess.”

Which, to be fair, she was very good at. When the wee little nippers saw her engorged, faintly glowing cranial matter peaking through Lady Constance Utonium’s Becherated Bombazine Thinking Bonnet, they generally went straight to bed, took their purgatives, and waited, trembling, for the brief surcease of the classroom, where discipline consisted more of a rap with a ruler than an agonizing psychic remonstrance.

But doesn’t it go well with her poufy lace undersleeves? We think so.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

I’m not sure exactly what he is, but he’s sincere, and I do like his mustache and winning smile. And if that isn’t a ribbon for “Miss Congeniality 2011,” it sure as heck should be.

Is he a tiny little polyp with a heartwinning grin? Is he an ambulatory cerebral cortex stalking through a dungeon on little green tentacles, waiting to burrow through some dungeon-delver’s skull, tear out (possibly devour) their brain and replace it with its own mass? These are not exclusive concepts. Most things that want to practice a little freelance trepanning, burrow into your skull, and replace their intelligence with yours have a disarming smile. Like that guy I met last night at “Woody’s.”

Is it some sort of octopus with a skin condition? A tragic, yet resolutely cheerful, example of man’s inhumanity to the oceans, wrapped up in a twist-tie deathgrip of discarded plastic, the chemical deterioration of its mantel showing the mutated brain structure underneath…somehow much bigger, and more active, than any cephalopod has a right to?

Really, about the most we’re prepared to say right now, is that it’s Paco.

And frankly we’re lucky to know that much, we were afraid it might be Jeanette.

Paco from the Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

When you’re dealing with clowns, you have to give up on a lot of what you, as a sane, rational human, view as “normal.” “Don’t wear size 38L shoes when you’re sized for a size 10.5.” “Don’t soak your boss in seltzer water.” “Don’t put cream pies down your pants, in someone’s face, or, indeed, anywhere except a refrigerator, table, kitchen counter, or manufacturer’s suggested pie caddy.”

And “Don’t do that there.”

Though in point of fact I’m not entirely sure what he’s doing. It’s clearly biological. And he clearly derives no small amount of enjoyment from it.

Okay, so, I do know what he’s doing, I do. This is obviously a candle holder. Obviously. And he’s, just as obviously, warming up his clowny little backside. And yet, it’s hard not to imagine that he’s performing some sort of clown-science experiment, “Let’s see what color methane burns,” or some such. Because that’s how clowns do things, particularly how clowns do science. I’d be hard-pressed to think of any other clown experiments, except for testing the amount of carbon dioxide that could be dissolved in seltzer water under temperature and pressure extremes.

In fact, Clown College is actually combining these two bold experiments to create methane-based seltzer water, which wouldn’t, properly, be seltzer water, but something altogether less pleasant. Even with the high-level security clearance I get as a blogger, I haven’t been allowed to see the methane-pressurizing process, but I’ve been assured that it’s both very funny and a little bit embarrassing. More for me than the clowns, though, they don’t actually have that emotion.

Oh clowns. Going there, so we don’t have to.

Thrift Town on Manchacha and Stassney