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.

So, really, the only reason I snapped like 70 photographs of this was because of the box.

Yes, I could go on a long, rambling, and ultimately humorless tirade about “animal massagers,” and “how do they get the animals to hold still anyway?” But that’s really not why I got the pictures. I got them because of dad.

There’s a man who really knows how to get into his animal massager. I mean, He’s even kicking a foot back in delight. I hope Damien behind him at least gets a few bucks out of this transaction, because his client’s really into the moment.

Also, is dad like 10 feet tall, or is it my imagination?

Here, have a pig.

Or maybe a lion. Possibly a pig-lion.

I’m assuming this is meant to be cute, but a cute what? Porcupine, bear, lion, pigdog, lots of options. None of them are wholesome. Though overall, the effect is more like some primal wind-god from the corner of a map than any animal I’m familiar with. Like a legend that says “here there be dragons,” only, “here there be pigdogs.” I don’t know. I don’t question thrift store craft anymore.

Pigdog from Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, animal massager from GW on 183 near Anderson Mill, Austin

…but were afraid to ask.

Once in a while, you find something that’s so personal, so specific, that you can’t imagine how any sane thrift store manager expects to move it–a question that contains its own answer, really. Like a memento of someone’s funeral, with a name plate. Or a “Sweet Dreams, Mary Elizabeth Sue Spenser” plaque. Or…or Glenn Woelfer’s horse.

It’s not a very big horse. I hope Mr. Woelfer didn’t have to get out of Dodge in a hurry, because I’m thinking that would have been a slow, awkward trip, involving a lot of short hops and extended rests. I mean, where do you even put the saddle?

What a sad little thing. It’s like a hobby horse from the Great Depression, when it was so bad they had to cook and eat the 3/4-inch dowel rod for soup. I’m imagining a tragic little waif, wearing shorts and dirt, pulling it a foot or two, looking dejected, wandering off. Someday, kid…smartphones.

Someone call Death. Tell them we found his hood ornament.

Unfortunately defunct Saint Vincent De Pauls near 620 and I35, Round Rock

Tragically, this was unfinished. I think it was because if we could see the glory of Heaven we would go blind, and the artist was sparing our vision. Or, possibly, because it’s rude to paint the Virgin Mary with an ass so big it’s got latitude and longitude lines. And she’s already…well, a little gourd-shaped.

Maybe I should have saved this for Christmas? She’s looking a little bit 38th trimester. Or possibly just expecting a miracle, if that miracle were both “birth of the savior…” and “…and the savior is a hippity-hop.”

I was a little sad that you couldn’t tip the Madonna over like a Weeble. That would have made my day. I would have done that for hours, or at least until the employees told me the giggling was scaring the customers.

Though the real question of the day is, what’s going on with her hands? Is she wearing a pair of fuzzy-wuzzy mittens? A potato wearing bell-bottoms? Or did she just dunk her hands in chocolate, for reasons that shall remain ineffed?

Potato with bell-bottoms, definitely. I’ll look it up in “Saints Preserve Us,” she’s probably the patroness of vegetables in pants.

Savers on Burnet and North Loop, Austin

(Just a note, ThriftHorror will be on a short haitus this week as I’m on a little vacation. Catch up with people next Wednesday!)

For me, this post brings a tear to my eye, because these beautiful, weird little artifacts of someone’s creative fancy were almost a part of my life. Except that I don’t have any great need for a cream pitcher whose lid has been permanently glazed on. Granted, I would drink less cream, which would do wonders for my waistline, but it’s nice when things have a purpose and aren’t just vaguely interesting. On the other hand, people keep fish, so maybe I don’t have an argument.

If you switch back and forth between these two images and put on some 70′s pop, it’s kind of like the final dance scene in “The Full Monty.” Maybe he should see a doctor about that.

There. RIGHT THERE. That’s the lid that broke my heart. It was like a beautiful cupcake that was made entirely out of concrete, or looking out the window, seeing snow, and then realizing you’re at the Thrifty Nickle and they’ve spray-painted snow on the windows. It’s that kind of spirit-crushing moment. “Oh. OH! oh…”

(There’s a tone-of-voice thing in that last onomatopoeia that’s important to the sense of the moment. Otherwise you’re just saying “oh,” and that’s more like the audience response to a physics lecture than heartbreak.)

“Captain Candyfloss! Prepare the royal icing cannon! Don’t fire until you see the marzipan of their eyes!”

Poor choice of glaze on that handle, though. It makes it look like a melted-butter pot, and as far as I know, no-one needs a melted butter pot. Even people who eat LOTS of waffles would think that was shameless decadence.

Savers on Burnet and North Loop, Austin

Have you ever appreciated beer? Like really, really appreciated? Like, build a small shrine to it, and give it a fabulous decorative hat as might be imagined in a 1950s sci-fi wedding sequence hat?

Well, someone has.

Do note the way each tear-shaped glass droplet captures both the rays of the sun, the image of the viewer, and another can of beer within. Let your breath catch within you as you climb the pedestal, reach out, touch the beer, knowing that this fragile, perfect moment is echoed thrice over in crystal beads, that a lace of beads will shield you from the harsh glare of the sun so that the only radiance you see–indeed, the only light you will ever need–shines from the beer–not over it, though someone has mounted a small bulb there, it does not need it–for that light comes from within the beer itself.

Beer. It’s what’s for lighting the endtable.

Beer light–oh, I get it–from Savers on Burnet and North Loop, Austin

It takes deep strength of character to hold to your convictions in the face of opposition. Particularly when you’re fighting for your right to bear firearms and your well-tanned, possibly supple, possibly as leathery as the centerfold in a Cavender’s Boots catalog, body. And frankly, we are leaning toward the latter.

I have to respect a man with strong opinions and no pants. It’s like the camera caught him just in the middle of making his final, cutting remark, and just before scampering across the hot concrete to the pool. Or maybe he was emitting a constant, unearthly moan for the last, like, five minutes. Or was lecturing his much, much taller teenage grandson after the damned fool sat on his favorite Westchester rifle.

“In my day, we’d respect a gun, not sit on it! Plus, when you’re not wearing pants, when you sat on a gun, you’d KNOW it. Not like these kids today, with their…jeans…”

There’s something acutely simian about him. It’s the ears. It makes him look simultaneously like a howler monkey earning its name, and a member of British nobility. Though the almost total nudity baseball cap takes away from that somewhat, at least the British nobility bit. But I work about a block from Fraternity Row at the University of Texas, and I will say that monkeys definitely wear baseball caps.

Salvation Army on 183 and Peyton Gin, Austin

We were pleased this year to find Christmas available in convenient 12 and 18-oz bottles.

This first one, though, is not bottled Christmas. It’s bottled starfruit. But with the lovely (?) red peppers that look like a cross section of a cow with really bad capillary seeding, I think the stars are quite festive. One wonders occasionally how much of the world’s starfruit ends up in glass tombs…75%? The entire starfruit market? The tragedy of being an aesthetically pleasing fruit is that you’re continually rendered inedible :(

See, I know it’s a Christmas starfruit because of the penguin. The eagle’s throwing me. In a certain light, I guess it could be patriotic, sort of a “Starfruit and Stripes Forever” thing. Maybe the gods planted this bottle of starfruit and peppers on the ground with a mighty crack like of thunder, and the eagle is fleeing in terror.

On the subject of terror, though, this is not a happy bottle. I’ve never seen peppers scream before, and the starfruit’s looking a little alarmed itself. Poor thing. “Let me out! I am not a pepper! I am a carambolan being!

If you just uncork it, you know the full Christmas experience will wash over you in a pine-perfumed flood. Or maybe you’ll just get mineral oil on your hands and leave translucent fingerprints all over the gift wrap. Best to just leave this one corked.

Santa probably keeps a couple of these stashed away to make it through July. “Just a few thimblefuls of christmas magic…Mrs. Klaus doesn’t have to know.” But she knows. He gets the pine needles stuck in his beard. And contrary to popular belief, Santa is not a right jolly old drunk. He’s more a maudlin type, give him a couple bottles of Kringle’s Finest and he’s singing “In the Bleak Midwinter” on the porch with Donder.

Remember: Never never sleigh drunk. You might kill someone’s house.

Mathematicians have worked out that Santa travels at a bare minimum of about 340,000 miles per hour. At a speed like this, not only would the lead reindeer burst into flames, but houses may well tumble and swirl in the wake of his mighty passage.  Although this particular image makes it look a bit like Santa’s actually folding spacetime into a bottle shape, which is, really, not what’s happening.

Don’t be absurd.

After the reindeer trashed Old Man Carlton’s house, they attempted to flee the scene of the crime. Their escape was caught on high-speed film. Santa was no-where to be seen.

I am a little curious what that note says. “Santa has discovered the secret of lightspeed travel. DARPA must purchase eight tiny reindeer. The elves have spotted me, if I do not return home give my wife my season’s greetings.”

Enter the realm of Extreme Minimal Effort Crafts.

Step one. Cut circle out of seasonal fabric. It really doesn’t matter what, this is a craft for the entire year. But let’s assume Christmas.

Step two. Fill mason jar with rice and walnuts.

Step three. Cover jar with cloth and close lid. [Christmas or festive season of choice] magic! Now take a dozen of them to that store that sells crafts from the local retirees community. They’ll thank you and put a $5 pricetag on it. And you’ve made a better world, and a tidy profit margin for them!

If you don’t have Walnuts, feel free to get creative! We do not recommend fresh fruit, as it is likely to deteriorate if the jar is not opened promptly, and in every scenario we can imagine, it will not be opened promptly. Go with dessicated things–apricots, large dried ants, and so on. The end result will not be particularly less seasonal than walnuts and rice.

On the plus side, with the rice acting as a dessicant and preservative, your craft is likely to remain in this precise level of edibility for many years to come.

Bottled fruit from Goodwill on 183, though to be fair, it could have come from any Goodwill. Bottled pine from Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, bottled sleigh wreck from Goodwill in Oak Hill, walnuts in jar from Goodwill on 1st and Slaughter, Austin.

Bear with me, this actually is Christmas-related.

For one, she’s trapped in a glass dome, which is something of a gift in and of itself. That means the incessant jingling from the bells sewn permanently to her hands is at least somewhat muted, and as we all know, the only thing more annoying than a clown is one that jingles all the damned time.

But she doesn’t let the weird surgically-attached bells get her down. No, this clown is full of cheer this holiday season, with a smile on her face and, if not a song in her heart, at least some extra stuffing. Because she knows this Christmas there’ll be someone waiting under the mistletoe for her. And he’s traveled a long, long way to be there.

The romance, they said, could never be. “You’re a wise man from the east, bringing gifts of myrrh to the newborn messiah. I am a yarn clown. Our love is forbidden, because I’m made of mixed fibers, and that’s forbidden in the Torah.”

“Baby, that’s for the Israelites. I’m a Zorastrian.”

“…hold me. Hold me now.”

thump.

“Stupid glass bubble…”

“All I want for Christmas is my two front hands…” It must be a royal pain to tie those bows. He must use his face. And feet. Which would be an impressive trick and one well worth the price of admission. I’m just glad he gave up on the lit advent wreath, that could have been messy.

So she’s not really a scarecrow, but seems to partake of the esprit de scarecrow. But the poor dear’s having some sort of reaction to the pine and tinsel. She’s all puffy and and bloated. Maybe it was the eggnog. Should have stopped after the second bowl.

At least it’s not going to go to her hips. She hasn’t got any.

Clown in bell from goodwill on Parmer near I35, handless goofy from Goodwill in Oak Hill, weird little peg-girl from GW near Anderson Mill and 183.

It’s like three days after Thanksgiving, and I’m just now starting to feel like I haven’t eaten an entire pumpkin. For the last three days, this bottle and me, we were on the same page.

In a “form follows function” sort of thing, if you’d put absinthe in an elegant bottle crafted to resemble a bottle of Victorian spirits, then this is a bottle of generic store-brand Pepto-Bismol, slowly oozing its way off the shelf in a slow bid to flush itself down the toilet and end its suffering.

I’m not sure what the weird runic letters mean. It’s probably an apology of some sort, or maybe “for external use only.”

Day 16: bereft of any sympathetic contact, the bottle decided to end it all, leaning out into open space and gently ejecting its cork. It’s final cry of “spok” was heard by none.

I will have nightmares about this…dark dreams about a bottle copping an extreme attitude and telling me how it is, and how it is going to be, waving its handle in a “I steadfastly refuse to take any sort of jive” way. I’d listen to a bottle, a bottle like that.

“Hey, sailor! Care for a pint?”

Goodwill on South First and Slaughter, Austin