So, I discovered “Adventure Time” this week.

Just saying.

When you get right down to it, no princess is really happy until she’s filled, totally filled, with dimes. That’s what royalty is about.

You can even see how close they are to being full, because royals have large, transparent bellies. You can generally judge the health of a nation’s economy by how close to full their monarch is.

Something about this shared princess moment feels weirdly voyeuristic. As if she’s pulled her gown aside so we can view her spare change. She even dressed up for it. She’s wearing her special levitating crown AND her best lips.

You can almost imagine the artist giving up, right….there. “Sod this, I’m not paid enough to do lips.”

Abnormally rosy cheeks? Buboes? Headlights? Her warm, healthy glow and serene expression is clearly a lie, as she was BORN WITHOUT LIPS. A rare defect that, like hemophilia, was common in noble families. At least, the quieter ones.

Well..maybe that cute little curve was actually her lips, and some joker gave her a spare. Lady, those lips do not flatter you. Delipify yourself.

This only gets worse when seen from the back, where we get a clear view of the princess’s hungry coin orifice. I’m really not comfortable with this, and thankful that I live in a democracy, where we’ve managed to overthrow our strange, conical slot-necked tyrants and replace them with…uh…

Oh well, at least it’s Friday.

It’s been a while since I felt a rush of danger in the toy section. I’m glad to get that resolved, the thrift scene just hasn’t been as adrenaline-filled since the Goodwill on 2222 moved the glassware away from sporting goods section.

This is what happens when they make a Saturday morning cartoon based on the movie, “Saw.”

Good lord. That face. That…beard? This is an instrument that’s clearly very into its concept. “I saw. I saw well. Here, let me demonstrate on your exposed flesh.”

The drill press looks away. The drill press knows a thing or two about atrocities, and would prefer to keep a low profile. The clamp, witness to more horrors in its young life than it had hitherto thought possible, and has been forcibly silenced. Both are mere accessories to the devilish delight of the saw itself, the creature gnashing its teeth and straining at its bindings, eagerly waiting to put a final end to Barbie and Ken’s on-again, off-again relationship. How the small plastic heads will roll!

Well, at any rate, it clearly enjoys its work.

Regrettably defunct St Vincent De Paul’s near 620 and I35, Round Rock

Florida: Yes, it’s the Sunshine State. But did you also know it was the Soft-Boiled Egg state? It’s true. Tens of thousands of slightly-congealed eggs are shipped to Florida from neighboring, egg-producing Alabama, where the state bird is the Short-Crested Leghorn. A well-fed Leghorn can lay up to eight eggs per day…and they’re already soft-boiled.

You were nothing in Florida if you didn’t have a diligent and well-paid dwarf to serve you your eggs in the state’s official soft-boiled egg costume. The life-sized version didn’t have the word “Florida” on the back. It had the word “Eggs,” with the “G”s cleverly placed for maximum dignity.

I tell a lie.

Dignity: not a concern.

We cannot even begin to list the things wrong with this image. But we will begin with two. Firstly, the act of eating a soft-boiled egg is, frankly, barbaric, if you have a soft spot for eggs. You knock the poor thing’s top off, stir salt in frantically, then scoop out the delectables with a tiny spoon. Do you really want to anthropomorphize the experience? No, you do not. If you begin feeling for the egg, you’ll never be able to enjoy breakfast. You might as well be concerned with the dwarf, and then where does that land you? You’d starve.

Secondly: I just don’t think that’s the right place for a mouth. It makes me feel uncomfortable, even a little fearful, and have associations with a soft-boiled egg that I’m not at this stage in my life ready for. Egg cup, I beseech you, do not have lips.

 Salvation Army near 183 and Peyton Gin, Austin

The Goodwill on 2222 recently, maybe six months ago, putting discount bins in the front. I’m guessing it’s to give a bit of shape to the cash register area, or maybe just to slow down the occasional mad rush toward Women’s Sleeveless Tops. We are not sure. Mostly, it’s filled with religious devotionals and textbooks, but there is the occasional diamond in the rough. Take this for example. Take it. It’s probably been disinfected.

I’m pretty confident in identifying the conebunny as an example of the lagomorph tribe. That one’s pretty straightforward. And the embarrassing eggsniffing rat may be Chucky Cheese’s genderqueer cousin (although after the buxom ladymouse showed up at Showbiz, we children of the 80s are still unsure about Chucky, or posssibly Charlotte). Neither here nor there. I’m sure that everything in this bin could have been one for $.50 in one of those crane-games, but that’s about where my certainty ends.

Clearly, this is some sort of long-legged leaping egg, but that seems like a pretty flawed concept. Unless it’s really good at landing it’d be a bit of a one-off joke. Or a graceful ballerina egg, but good luck finding someone to pas-a-deux with an egg.

Maybe a young racing egg? When full-grown, its mighty strides carried it across the sand at breathtaking velocities. Many of them were incubated and hatched by wind friction alone. Or by suddenly hitting a Saguaro. But that’s not so much “hatching” as “a mess.”

Elephant? Mouse? Elemouse? Strange stumpy gray aquatic ferret? It’s one of those little goodwill mysteries. Like that horrible crunching sound from housewares. What was that? And what is this? Were its ears blown off by French cannons? Nibbled by that horrible rainbow rat? Answer unclear, ask again later.

Adopt me. Adopt me, and bury me.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

Because lord knows, babies hate to miss “pooh week.” They’re really all about pooh. He’s even wearing the team colors.

This assumes the team colors are jarring red, cheerful yellow, and “gently used spaghetti-os” brown, and that Pooh would have some of that action leaking down his chin. I’m willing to make this assumption, though, because the poor little guy’s obviously having a bad day. I’m not sure if I meant the baby or Pooh, though. The baby doesn’t seem to be having a bad day, he’s clearly crushed his enemies under his mighty, flannel-wrapped bottom, and that MUST make anyone’s day a little better. Perhaps that’s a scowl of rage, determination, and triumph. It only looks like gas.

All babies look a little like Winston Churchill. This one looks like Winston Churchill just ate a caterpillar, and then learned that he was severely allergic to lepidoptera in all their many and splendid forms, and had about three hours left to live. And badly needed a diaper change. Do I waste ten precious, precious minutes on clean nappies? Or do I give that impassioned and history-changing speech at Parliament? These are the times that try baby’s souls.

 Goodwill on Parmer and I35, Austin

Someone needs to call an exterminator. Their shoehouse is filled with rabbits.

Rabbits, or mice. I’m not sure which. The ears say rabbit. The body and thin whiplike tail says “mouse.” The hooked clawlike hands really say “gargoyle,” or maybe “Nosferatu.”

Theory one: balancing an Easter egg on the point of his nose. Theory two: Nasal cyst. Do note the doughlike foreleg. This is clearly some sort of extruded, quick-rise life form. The unbaked “Pillsbury Doughboy” of the rabbit set. Yum.

Good lord, it’s got bunnies coming and going. Ever since they installed a pet door on their size 175 extra wide, they can’t keep the vermin out. They act like they practically own the place.

Do lips normally roam freely about the body? I didn’t think so. And yet, definitive proof, if of course you take “painted on the back of a ceramic boot” as anatomical canon. Shoe bunnies have detachable mouths that can drift around their faces and land somewhere below their chins. I assume this is going into a child’s room of some sort–or was supposed to, I note that it actually went to Goodwill. I hope they weren’t planning on being a veterinarian when they grow up.

Goodwill on I35 and 290 near Walmart, Austin

I tried to help him, I did. He was such a sad frog, I tried to, you know, lift his spirits a little, put him back on his feet in some small way.

Sadly, it didn’t work.

This is what the toy section of Thrift Town does to you. It breaks your spirit, and your back, and makes you wear comically chunky plastic shoes. Of course, being made of terrycloth might have the same effect. Five minutes in a giant green towel can make anybody wilt, particularly an amphibian.  If you had a football team, and your home town game was widely considered improved if it was rained out, this could easily be your mascot.

“We’re the Makinaw Frogs.”

“The Frogs?”

“Yes. Frogs.”

“The Fighting Frogs, maybe?”

“We fought. We fought once. Never again.”

“It’s still not much of a name.  You can’t really rally around it, can you? You could at least be, I don’t know, the Brave Frogs, or the Raging Frogs.”

“The Orthopedic Frogs.”

“Not planning on going to state, are you?”

“Not really, no.”

But this level of despair really wants to be set…to music. Enjoy.

Emo Frog from Thrift Town on Stassney and Manchaca, Austin

Mom and dad were concerned by Jasmine, both about her new look and her territoriality. But young girls need to express their inner boy band.

In Kindergarten, half the girls in Jasmine’s class wore their favorite princess costumes to school. Not Jasmine. Even if she, like, owned the rights to Princess Jasmine by unassailable playground logic. No, that was her Donnie Walhberg phase, she really went for the edgy, dangerous look back then. Over time, she softened a bit on Donnie, and moved on to other, more gently benign singers. But she still wore her leather jacket, well into the fourth grade.

Frankly, I’m a little surprised that her parents bothered to laminate this heartthrob. Really, they only last so long, I wouldn’t go investing in an acid-free mounting board, if you catch my meaning.

Maybe I’m reading this wrong. Maybe in some cultures, it’s considered appropriate to mount a mid-adolescent teen idol to a little girl’s room, to scare away the fairies. I’m not sure that actually works, Justin Beiber’s obviously some sort of twisted changeling made from an enchanted stick. So, scratch that theory.

Savers on South Lamar, Austin

One thing they learned after Christopher Robin’s tragic disappearance–never let a child play with a bear.

Particularly one that just ran out of honey.

When Pooh came for Roo, no-one said anything. When Pooh came for piglet, no-one said anything. When Pooh came for me, there was no-one left to say anything.

Okay, not a horror per se, but what the pooh, it’s Friday.

It’s Friday, and dammit, I’m sharing my ill-formed gummilump with you. I’m having a hard time figuring exactly what it is about this little guy that I find unsettling. The head that comes to a misshapen point, that’s odd, not normal even for bears. The weirdly predatory eyes, a little creepy, but not a deal-breaker.

I think it’s that he’s rising out of the honny pot like some sort of clodlike honny elemental, terrible and adhesive. That’s probably it. At any rate.

I think someone got too close to him. There’s still blood on his face. Blood…and honny.

Greetings, I am Winnie, the one who is Pooh, whose eyes are the star-filled void. Sit upon me, and tremble.

This particular pooh is a very complicated organism. He has feetknees, weird boney protrusions from what might normally, in a universe that made more sense, be called a lap. In the meantime, you may sit upon him, if you wish, but we are not recommending the experience, as he’s still pretty manky after all the honny.

Winnie the Chair from the Oak Hill Goodwill, Snow-Globe Pooh from Texas Thrift on I35 near 51st, DIY Pooh from GW on 2222 and Lamar, Austin.

The sad thing about this first guy is not so much that it’s a teddy bear made out of shells…now, that in itself is sad, because teddy bears are by their nature cute and cuddly, and making one out of cold, sharp-edged crunchy things that, when they break, become even sharper is a bit of a cruel joke. No, the sad thing is that I’ve had him sitting for years in my photo slushpile because someone else made a post about him. This means that, in this increasingly harsh and unfair universe, there’s two of these things.

Much about this guy reminds me of a picture collection done by the deeply disturbed. The way his eyes sit in nests of jagged concentric spikes speak volumes, or at least chapters, of A Book of Crafts for the Obsessive-Compulsive. The googly eyes seem a little bit of a cheat, though, as if they really wanted to be made of tinier shells, or little periwinkles leading you ever deeper into the bear’s gaze, coiling tighter and tighter into twin spires of madness. Or some such.

Next guy…not really a “horror,” but I can’t feel that somehow he’s…not like all the other bears. Although he seems intensely eager to come home with you.

Although I guess that depends on how you define “bears.” Certainly, there are a number of entities called “bears” that may wear fetching, and fairly snug, black vests. Though in Austin they tend to wear bright Hawaiian shirts. So, perhaps he is like some of the bears. Certainly, some of the lavender bears. I’m not judging, here.

Though I will judge “sugarloaf.” It seems more “inanimate and prostrate” than “cute and cuddly.” Maybe that’s just me.

Shellbear from the Savers on South Lamar, “Sugarloaf” from the Goodwill near Anderson Mill, Austin