Sheriff Santa–protector of the North Pole’s Wild West. Which, technically, is South, because…well, there are diagrams. Anyway. Santa doesn’t like people to see him like this. Because, when you’re spanning the globe at roughly 650 miles per second, in an open sleigh behind a bunch of reindeer, you’re not a right jolly old elf by the end of your journey. You’re exhausted, probably covered in caribou exhaust, and your hair is really, really messed up. Assuming of course that Santa has some sort of mystical protection against the hazard of his hair burning off at re-entrylike velocities, we might imagine him looking something like this.

Particularly if he decided to fight crime among the pine forests of the Great West, and Mrs. Claus made him some denim pants and a nice overcoat. And actually, Sheriff Santa makes a heck of a lot of sense. He already knows if you’ve been naughty or nice. Judge and Jury, we only need an executioner.

Not sure why he has pine stuck to his shoulders. I guess once the sap gets on your hands, everything’s sticky.

So…about the effect that traveling at nearly relativistic velocities has on your hair. If you ever want to blackmail Santa, here’s your moment, because that is NOT a right jolly old elf.

Good god. Please, Santa, use some conditioner next time. I swear, his mustache is crammed halfway up his sinus cavity.

Of course, Mrs. Claus has her bad-hair-days too, though she doesn’t tend to hop in the sleigh quite as much as Santa. Her sleigh-hopping days are a bit behind her, thanks, and don’t make a lady tell stories. Particularly after the lady’s apparently been in a bar fight.

A fight that, apparently, cost her arm. Though she could probably give someone a world of hurt with those boots. Damn, Mrs. Claus. Are you packing iron in those Doc Kringles?

Takes a beating, still smiling. Though she might want to put an ice pack or a cold steak on those cheeks before they swell up any more. And sorry about the glasses. Maybe you could ask Santa for a new pair?

Mrs. Claus stands triumphant over her enemies! Fear her bloody fist of destruction!

This supports my theory that snowmen are a race of aliens, possibly benevolent, from the Auriga Quadrant. They have come to earth for our carrots and coal. This one, unfortunately, has not found any carrots or coal, and he is angry. And when he’s angry, his nose and eyes pop out like a novelty squeeze toy.

Don’t know what he stepped in, there. Maybe a Festive Christmas Slug.

We have met the aliens…and they are Amish.

And we have met the angels, and they have very tiny heads. I really want my angels to be majestic, but something about “Christmas” and “Angelic majesty” tends to fail. This one has a higher degree of fail than usual.

This raises that old theological question: How many pinhead angels can dance?

If it’s this angel, probably not one. S/he/it would probably just stumble over that enormous bib or something, and then its halo would slip over its face, and it’d just stagger around flailing until its little feet got caught in its massive, all-concealing robe, and then it would just roll around slowly making sad “perp” sounds. And we’d all feel kind of vaguely guilty for asking in the first place.

The nutcracker guard: Here to protect your nuts.

This particular nutcracker’s courtesy of Jim Henson Studios, who provided the initial designs and feltwork, and Quaker Oats, who provided much of the superstructure. I’m sure all nuts everywhere feel distinctly safer with this guy watching. Mind, all he does is watch, because of his ridiculously  tiny arms.

Actually, he doesn’t watch, because he’s got no eyes. He’s also lacking a bit in the ear department, and may or may not have a nose. If he DID have a nose, it’s got a mustache stuck to its front like a propeller, though he looks about as aerodynamic as a 1975 console television. IT might be his mouse, in which case he should stop chewing on that, whatever it is. Might be some sort of mole…really, he should get a dermatologist to check that out, if so.

Still, he cuts a fine figure. Or he did, until the accident.

Sad, really. I left the store for an hour, and here’s what I found. Christmas needs to invest more in security, these guards are kind of fragile.

Let’s close with a decapitated Santa, always good for a laugh at parties.

Through some strange process of metaphor, his hunger for cookies grew so profound that, like in a late 60s French surrealist film, he becomes his hunger, leaving nothing but a gaping void that wants to be, must be, filled with cookies. Oreos, for preference.

Scary beard Santa from Goodwill at the “Y” in Oak Hill, Fighting Mrs. Claus and Martian Snowman from the Goodwill on 183 and Metric, Tiny-headed Angel from Goodwill on Parmer near I35, Boxy the Christmas Guard from Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Headless Santa Wants Cookies from Savers on South Lamar, Austin.

Planet Goodwill: Like Pluto, Planet Goodwill isn’t classified as a “real” planet. This is because so-called astronomers are not yet ready to wrap their fragile minds around a planet made of Styrofoam. Without their telescopes they’re so shortsighted.

Astronomers didn’t notice Planet Goodwill until 2006, because up until then it was eclipsed by a giant Persian cat. We still haven’t gotten a good glimpse of its presumably blue-green orb, but can infer its presence by its gravitational effect on the giant fluffy cat, occasional sightings of its sparkly blue-green moon “Savers,” and by spotting the sparkly stars that it occasionally sheds.

Distinctive features: Many planets have moons with eccentric orbits. Savers is actually nailed down to the planet’s surface with an amazingly, inconceivably large toothpick, large enough to spear 363 million olives. Its atmosphere, which is painted on, is dominated by a free-standing formation known as the “Great Green Smudge.”

It’s the lightest planet in the solar system, occasionally being blown out of its orbit by a stiff breeze, or by the aforementioned giant fluffy kitten. Nevertheless, Planet Goodwill’s importance in our understanding of cosmology and philosophy cannot be understated, because it’s the only planet that is actually signed by its maker.

Goodwill on 183 and Metric, Austin

That reminds me, it’s time to clean out the fridge.

I’m not sure what’s for dinner tonight. Nothing served in a crockpot should be that bursting with life, unless it’s been sitting out for a few days. Even then, what the hell kind of cooking experiment coughs up mountain laurel? The mushrooms I can handle, they’re opportunistic. I’m sure that if I left a big bowlful of…something…out, it’d develop mushrooms after a while. But little tiny trees are beyond the pale. You have to have committed some major kitchen sins to end up with a heaping bowl of mountain laurel.

Not sure what the yellow pods are. They look armed and dangerous, a bit like something out of a low-budget sci-fi movie. I’m waiting for one of them to tense up, cough, and blow a seed across the aisle into the coffee mug section.

Traditionally, as a part of the Thanksgiving feast, the pawnbrokers would decorate a tree with fruits for the orphans. Of course, it was a very small tree. With very small fruits. But the deeply destitute should be thankful for the little things.

A lovely bouquet of dried corn cobs, a misplaced feather, and Brazilian pygmy oranges for the scamp on the crutches. There you go. Nail it all down to a bowl of Styrofoam and pretend the little nipper could get some nourishment out of it.

I’m guessing this is intended as a holiday bookend or plaque, but once the festive holiday rats have chewed through the outer layer of leaves and twigs to get to the tasty, tasty hot glue layer, it’s less visually appealing. If it was visually appealing before, we rather doubt it.
Savers on South Lamar, Austin

It’s the darkish lady of 50% gray saturation, risen from the dead to drain all the toner from your photocopier! For the love of god, save the gem tones! SAVE THE GEMTONES!

There’s an old legend about how the patron saint of bakers got her patronage. Apparently, she was engaged to be married to a pagan king, and decided she would rather be Christian than be married to a pagan king. So, as is was done in the days of martyrs and pagan kings, he gave her an informal, untutored round of breast reduction therapy. Miraculously her breasts grew back (which is, actually, an amazing little miracle, if touched with whimsey). Ultimately she died anyway of a bad case of pagan betrothal, but her icon showed her holding a platter of two pale, doughy lumps that were NOT steamed buns. But neither here nor there. And I really have no idea why I’m rambling about this, except that she could easily be the patron saint of leeks or other pale root veggies, if she had half a mind to go down that road. And weren’t undead, because there are no vampire saints.

Except of course for Saint Mareaux the Exsanguinated. But he was decanonized in 1836 for excessive eyeshadow.

Anyway.

I’m not sure why I thought this was funny. I did, it was REALLY funny at the time–something about weird trust-building exercises like “don’t fall backward and spike yourself!” that ghosts play. But it was 2008, and I was a different person then.

A bit like a ghost, a bit more like a cartoon sea lion. Or a mascot from a shaving cream commercial. A Spooooooky shaving cream commercial.

Happy Halloween! Now off to scare the trick-or-treaters with ceramic clowns. The neighborhood loves me, I’m sure of it.

Pale and Deathy from Savers on Burnet near North Loop, ghostly candle holder from Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

But I didn’t, much to my shame, and now Father’s Day is nearly a year away. But the world can’t wait for Super Dad.

Superdad! With powers granted to him by our yellow sun, he fights crime with his power of invisible underpants! Superdad! Able to launch his head over a ten-story building (Sproiiing!!)

“Look, up in the sky! My god, where’s his underpants”

“Lady, where’s his head?”

This piece brings deep questions of identity. Obviously, you wouldn’t give this to Superdad and put pictures of dad on it–that would be completely silly. So, what do you put on it? Pictures of what Dad really wants for father’s day? A new car, maybe a really good sandwich, or a sexual favor of some sort? No, probably not. This was meant to hold pictures of the family on it. So Superdad, in his heroic apotheosis, is subsumed into his role within the family to a degree he has never before experienced. This isn’t simply emasculating, his identity is to be consumed, utterly replaced, by pictures of his children, just possibly his wife. Or else he has no head at all, just some rather festive wiry springy things. For as long as Superdad sits on his desk at work, he will face this dreadful choice: Either give yourself entirely to us, and accept that you have no self at all outside the smiling faces of your family, or we will, metaphorically if not actually, have your head.

And your underpants.

Savers on South Lamar, Austin

I’m not sure this is horrifying, not really, but as I look out the window and note that the trees are not just sagging, but actually MELTING, and that Texas summer survival suggestions often include “stop, drop and roll,” I think…better you than me, sister.

Wow. I’m not sure what level of decadence Victorian England actually aspired to, but if this was what all the fashionable ladies of London were wearing, the entire Scottish wool industry would have gone on strike. “Your dress,” this fashion would have said, “Your dress is like a potholder, and you, lady, are the pot…and how hot you are!”

Which worked well in my head, but I’m not sure how many people would like being compared, favorably or unfavorably, to a pot.

“I am WHAT, sir? Could you please repeat that? I fear the thick layer of wool muffled the tenor of your words, as well as the chill of the winter air.”

Heavy macrame bonnets. Yard upon yard of thick woolen flounces. This is a style that just won’t scale up very well.

From the side, though, I’m not reminded so much of a dress as much as the image of a pretty young lady slowly, over the course of years, being engulfed by brain coral. Or maybe some other ocean-going invertebrate, like the interior ruffles of a squid. Pinky-purple isn’t a flattering color, less so if your train weighs 750 pounds and smells sharply of a spill in a lanolin refinery.

Thrift Town near Manchacha and Stassney, Austin

This was threatening customers in the “Woodcraft” aisle of the big Goodwill on 2222. And they were right to feel threatened. It’s hard to say if this is a wood shop project or an alien life form, ready to crawl from the top shelf, scuttle around the corner to the toy section, and disembowel and/or impregnate a giant stuffed pooh-bear, all the while clacking its mandibles/pincers/ovipositors to say…”you’re next. You know you want it. Unless it’s disemboweling, which you probably don’t want.”

Behold, on its thorax it bears the sign of ill omen, the likeness of the star that foretold its coming! The wake of its destruction shall be TERRIBLE, but really, it’s a thriftshop, and it’s Sunday, so pretty much the same as those four kids over there farting around in Housewares, no change. I’m not sure the pooh-bear would agree with me on that count, but it’s a good blanket generality.

From a distance, that was kind of a nice shading job. From the top, it looks like the entire thing got covered in gorilla hair. It looks like my uncle Jeff with his shirt off. Tattoo’s kind of the same, too.

Yeah, we’re keeping away from that. I don’t care what you’re into, some things are just danger signs, and a tiger-striped stinger the size of a catcher’s mitt is probably one of those. Wait until it’s distracted by the super-sized “Good Luck Bear,” savor the irony, then run.

Another gift from the 1970s, and its strange love of merging the fun of handcrafted yarnwork with the color palette of a military maneuver covered in mustard. Oh, joy!

So…I’m thinking:
1) Weirdly phallic butterfly descending from Heaven,
2) Olive with pimiento throwing its arms up in celebration,
3) One of those new Japanese round pineapples,
4) Almond with protective hat calling the mother ship.

Of course, what this REALLY reminds me of is a bathmat. But the tapestry hook says no, this is Art, not Absorbent Material. Sometimes it’s a fine line.

Recently a friend showed me a pair of videos, both recorded from one of those new-fangled video game systems with a motion capture. The program would take snapshots, digitize whatever it was photographing it, and then turn it into a magical animated friend. Two things: It was not supposed to be used on living creatures, and it was not supposed to be used on, well, intimate, anatomically-accurate adult items of an insertable nature. Sooo…the first video showed what happened when you digitized a kitten–the result, a horrible, three-legged lurching monstrosity, with whiskers.

But when they animated the bright purple insertable intimate item, the result was absolute magic–a joyful winged sprite, flitting obscenely around the screen, with fairy wings and a trail of sparkles.

It may just be that this is fresh in my mind–indeed, burned forever into my mind–but that’s what I’m seeing here. Only it flew too close to the sun, and is tumbling down toward the ocean, condemned gods angry at the willful humans who dared put wings on a willie.

No idea. I thought maybe it was some sort of plant, or bug, neither of which are usually set with a smouldering ruby pulled out of the eye of a statue of a demon-god by doomed hands. Possibly it’s a fuzzy green volcano. That seems a little more likely, but I’ll be damned if I know why.

I’m pretty sure this is a pineapple, and the artist just ran out of space for the generally elongated platonic pineapple form, and made it a weird little pineapple orb. It might possibly be a gleaming tiger’s eye gazing into a blizzard, or a basketball tuned to a dead channel, but neither of those generally has a healthy crop of fronds, so I’m erring on the side of pineapple.

…and then there’s this thing. Is it an insect? Is it a flower? Is it a sophisticated communication device wearing a fuzzy hat? Only the 70′s know for sure.

Savers near 2222, Austin

All I need is a tall ship, and a star to sail her by. And some silk flowers. And plastic weeds. Oooh, and a massive oil lamp. That would be awesome.

Through the miracle of Thrift Store Technology, all this can be yours…except the star. Well, there was that one star, it could have been yours. Maybe it was yours, and you threw it away. But…we digress. In fact, it’s what we’re paid for.

So it’s sort of the conceptual opposite of a “ship in a bottle,” which is, for one, a ship inside a bottle. Also, the whole “ship inside bottle” seems to require a level of skill and dexterity. This version, on the other hand, requires ramming a bunch of fake greenery into a ship-shaped bottle. The hardest part, it would seem, is finding a ship-shaped bottle.

“Hard turn starboard, captain! They’re bringing their broadside daisies against us! Soon will be picking nasturtiums off the deck, and you know the crew hates that!”

I’m thinking this is a poorly thought-out oil lamp. Fill it with mineral oil, set it on fire, pretending you’re conducting a Norse funeral for a daffodil. Brilliant.

“And with hardly a ripple of a wake breaking the surface of the water, the mysterious ship slipped into the mist and were never seen from again, just a few petals left behind to prove she was ever there in the first place. And the crew said…’Well, huh.’ And that were the end of it. But if it’s a cold night, and the moon shines overhead like a florescent lamp, and you should see a glass cutter breaking the mist, its mast lit up like St. Elmo’s Fire, and its prow stuffed with cheap fake flowers…just wait a few minutes, she’ll go away.”

Goodwill on Metric and 183, Austin.

Ever wonder what mad cow disease looks like? Kind of like this. But maybe less cheerful. Still the same “little orphan Annie” eyes though, and the angry howling grin. They probably eat brains, too.

Sort of like a blasphemous cross between a Holstein and a rubber glove. Or maybe the mascot of a Japanese seafood company, the happy beefsquid. Very happy. In fact, the beefsquid is THRILLED to be dehydrated and cut into small cow-shaped pieces. Look at that face!

The cat, however, is a little bit doubtful about the entire thing, as she peeks around the side of the massive seagoing bovine. She’s not sure if she can eat all of that beefsquid. Her jaws are going to wear out. A long time before she can eat even half of it, she’s going to be asking for a doggie bag. Or cat box. And that beefsquid? It’ll still be smiling. Because that’s how beefsquids roll.

Savers on Burnet near 2222, Austin