…And Easter continues to continue! Today’s rabbits are truly bottom-of-the-barrel beasties. Take this guy for example.

At least I assume he’s a guy, he’s blue. The long eyelashes are a bit of a nod toward androgyny. The whiskers made of push-pins are a bit of a nod toward insanity. Overall, this is the face of a rabbit that has stared into the brink of madness and taken photos.

You kind of have to take it on faith that this is a rabbit. The ears add a bit of context. One fun thing about this particular basket? If you put “peeps” in it, they try to escape through the mesh holes. True story.

If the first one is a “before,” this poor creature is the “after.” Let’s just root around in here and see what the trouble is. Oh, I see the problem–you’re filled with jelly beans! We’ll just pick out all the bad colors.

That’s one heck of a buck tooth you’ve got there, princess. And the huge, catlike eyes are…different. It looks like spiders are trying to escape your corneas. It’s sad when the fact that you have a pop-top cranial cavity is actually one of the more normal things about you. Please don’t jump up and down too much though, something might fall off.

…well, what’s not to love here? The hideous pink eye? The stump of an arm? Or the strange yellow bile coughed up over a dress that accessorizes far, far too well with strange yellow bile? Maybe it’s the way she’s staring at you. She’s preparing a hug. For you. A sticky hug. Happy Easter.

Drink deeply from the basket of Easter. Join us. Join us in hunger and rage and strange, amorphous pantsuits and airbrushed dresses. Stain your muzzle in the juice of Easters past. Some say it’s a basket of fruit, but we say it’s…vengeance.

Blue bunny basket and hideous Easter ooze: Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar. Screwtop ziplock easter bunny and bunnies with basket of…red…from Goodwill on Stassney and Manchacha.

I was going to spend the entire week putting up my entire hoard of Jesuses. Then I considered my target audience, who are clearly on some pretty odd chemicals if they’re still reading this. So, I bow to their refined sensibilities, and present…this thing.

For a long time, I thought it was some sort of strange bent flower vase, with a weird baby motif. Or maybe H.R. Giger’s incense burner. Then someone took me aide and gently explained the birds and the bongs. And a story unfolded, of another failed high school art project, totally creeped-out high school art teacher, and the frustration of the amateur bong-maker. Or, bongateur.

Ironically, while the entire thing is covered with holes, the only intentional one is clogged with glaze :(

Which is why my first theory of the incense burner from the third circle of hell made more sense. That would make it some sort of strange, smoking unicorn-baby hybrid. The whole “drug paraphernalia” thing was actually kind of a let-down, it seemed too reasonable.

I’m thinking, though, that this would be a very bad trip. You’d be worried that the strange, pale, sluglike baby-faces that were peeking around the bottom of your white knuckles…accusingly…pleadingly…were going to start talking to you. Or worse, singing.

Friday, back to Jesus. He’ll be a welcome change from the pale, singing slug-babies.

from the Goodwill near 620 and 183, 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

Ugly birds. Ugly…dead birds.

Once again, the panopaly of “things what Goodwill sells” continues to absolutely boggle the mind. This poor little guy looks like the cat had a few words to say about him. Not kind words. Words like “How did you get in there,” and “can I get you out,” and “are you as edible as you look?” and “I guess not, but it’ll be fun to try anyway.”

The other possibility is that it’s electronic, and makes noise, LOTS of noise, and someone had quite enough thank you. Because it would take effort to work a little plastic toy over this badly.

On the other hand, if it really, really wanted to, it could escape, fly away, live a happy life in one of the rolled-up rugs in home furnishings. But it would have to make choices, sacrifices.

“We’re free. But…only one of us gots wings. That means that one of us gots to stay here. Otherwise, the volunteers will start asking questions, and start looking for us, and maybe they find the nest in home furnishings, and maybe they’ve got a better cage. So I’m asking you…telling you…that you got a home here. If the bottom drops off, come join me. You know where to find me. Under the big gray paisley deep pile on aisle 4.”

Up to a point, I kind of liked birds. Now, I’m not so sure. I didn’t buy him, I didn’t take him home with me, but I’ll still see him…every night. Oh yes.

Goodwill on 183 and Metric, which continues to amaze.

Of course you wouldn’t want to use a LIVING doghorse, because it would just turn around and eat all your bread. It’s a little-known fact about our necromantic neighbors to the South that at least half of all Central American agriculture makes heavy use of zombie doghorses. Without a steady influx of still-living doghorses to slay in fiery rituals, and then reanimate with a combination of ancient dark arts and J-B Weld, the economy of Guatemala, Honduras and Belize would collapse entirely. El Salvador has never had the advantage of a large zombie doghorse workforce, primarily because their powerful magical seal has been something of a zombie doghorse deterrent.

Note the telltale scorched muzzle, empty eyes, and strange surgical scarring of the typical zombie doghorse. Once they’re reanimated, the doghorse is a very placid beast, capable of carrying loaves of bread for days on end without resting, losing any limbs, or, amazingly, eating the bread. These amiable shambling aberrations used to be common sights at restaurants, wandering aimlessly from table to table with plates of tapas, until the smell got to be a bit much.

He followed me home, mom! Can I bury him?

Zombie doghorse from Goodwill on 183 and Metric, and was, weirdly, the second undead horse thing I found in a week.

“The crystal…the crystal tells me that you will eat…too much! And your children will…will…will fight over small things, like who got more little chocolates. The crystal shows me much of the holiday, much that might otherwise go unseen…you did not buy enough batteries for all the toys that will beep and make noise, and will have to go to the grocery store at 10:00 at night but they will all be closed.”

Okay, yes, glass ball filled with giftwrap and old ornaments, very festive. Obviously, it’s your standard seasonal gazing globe, but I look at the green thing and I think, “tentacle.” Or perhaps the entire thing can be detonated to scatter an estimated 60′ jolly zone.

“I, too, have been experienced by Christmas. Fall into it. Lose yourself in the season. ”

“I step forward into the season, and give myself to yule. Farewell!”

Now, mood change.

….”YEEEHAH!!!”

Santa comes riding into town on Christmas dinner! Awesome! It’s festively delicious! Don’t tell the pig, though, it still thinks it’s a guest for dinner.

“Oh yeah! We’re having porkchops tonight! I’m ringing the BACON bell!”

“Yay! Christmas dinner with SANTA! I must have been the best piggy in the WORLD this year!”

Meanwhile, from his secret lair, miles below the earth’s crust, Santa plots the demise of the Superfriends.

Or just stands on his head, I don’t know. He’s an old guy, but likes to prove that he’s still spry. So he builds a massive, x100 scale model of a gall bladder and does calisthenics in the colic flexure. After 1700 years hanging around elves, you get a little…whimsical.

Anyone want to guess what this is? It looks horribly biological. This is something you woudn’t want to see on any sort of medical -opsy or -oscopy, or maybe a rare case of liposuction malpractice. Maybe you could light it to cast a baleful blue glow a dark and malevolent ritual. Or maybe this was yet another C- in craft class.

After three days of hiding in the soft, warm recesses above what passed for a “cliff,” red, gelid fluids pooling around his feet, Frosty finally snapped, leaping to his death with a wet “gurgle,” nothing but a blue hat, cherry tomato, and a vaguely humanoid pool of briefly clear, melted snow to mark his passage into both oblivion and the lower digestive tract.

Ball of Christmas Magic from Goodwill on I35 and 183; vacant Christmas Lady from Goodwill on 2222; Santa on pig from Savers on Burnet; Horrid “Christmas” “Candle” from Goodwill on I10 and Heubner, San Antonio.

(Well, two horrid nativities and some filler.)

I took a lot of photographs of nativities this year–and really, every year. I don’t know why–the little kids seem to enjoy rearranging them, shuffling pieces around, and I do think the sight of the entire holy family gathered ‘roud a manger to gaze upon a kid half again as large as the camel is endlessly amusing. Most of these I’ve tossed, but a few linger in my heart.

Like this one.

My relationship with this piece evolved over a month, as pieces would move around the shelf, new ones would surface, new pairings would turn up…and besides that, it looked like the British Gay Men’s Choir dramatizing “Silent Night,” or possibly “We Three Queens.” For the longest time, there wasn’t even a Mary (Or else, they all were?). It was an all-boy’s Bethlehem club with too much eyeliner, and it got weirder over time.

“Some people ask me, ‘Why where a golden labrador to a Christmas Party?’ And I say ‘Darling, with this face, I can only hope they’re looking at the dog.’”

“Besides, it went with my canteen.”

“It’s not gold, babe, and it sure as Christmas isn’t frankincense. Ferrero rocher chocolates, love. Nothing but the best. Maybe he can take some back to heaven, they may not have them there yet.”

“I was going to bring the frankincense, someone has to, but I can see that we’re going to have to work our way up to aromatic resins, love. Let’s start with those swaddling clothes, I can see we need a divine intervention here.”

“Well, actually, I bought the gold, the myrrh, AND the damned frankincense, and let me tell you, I had to go to all three Nordstroms before I was able to find Martha Stewart’s fall ‘Myrrh’ line, and the lines were beastly.. But I tell you what.”

“I’ll take the shepherd back with me, and we’ll call it even-stevens, ‘kay?”

“I don’t know what’s going on. We were going to have a nice, quiet Christmas dinner, and then the whole place was filled with the court scene from ‘The King and I.’ With musical numbers. Mary, I’m going to go play cards with the shepherd. Let me know if your friends are heading out.”

“Yeah, if I could just drop off the sheep and, you know–it’s getting a little crowded in here.”

“Oh, Mary, don’t do yourself any favors, sister. You’re a natural blond, girl, let’s see that golden halo. Let yourself shine..”

“Mary…you said these people were leaving…”

“Yeah, I’ll just take my sheep and, you know, go…away…like to Egypt, far away…”

Yeah, I got nothing to say about this. I hope they brought enough offerings to appease it.

“Mary? MARY? Would you put that stupid frankincense down and call 911?”

“People don’t lose babies, Mary.”
“He was just over here. Really. Maybe the camel ATE him.”
“He was the MESSIAH, Mary.”
“I KNOW he was the Messiah, Joseph. Quit riding me on this. Even Messiahs can crawl off and hide behind the furniture. Be useful and look somewhere.”

“Maybe somebody has seen him in the inn next door? Just take a few breaths, we’ll find him.

“If you ate the Messiah, you are not getting ANY more myrrh, I don’t care what kind of myrrh-faces you make.”

…The following nativity may shock you. I’m not sure who thought artificial soapstone was a good idea for a nativity scene, but here’s the tragicomic results.

“Unpleasant” doesn’t begin to describe this, and I’m puzzled by the fact that it wasn’t there a week later. Either someone bought it, or a benevolent shopper “accidentally” elbowed it off the shelf, though these guys look pretty durable and probably could have survived the fall. Unless she jumped up and down on them, which, really, I’d be okay with.

“Does this soapstone gown make me look too much like I just had an appendectomy? Or does it just make my arms look like withered, skeletal vestigial limbs?”

“Please tell me when they finish taking the picture so I can…just…die…”

“I ran here as fast as I could. Yeah, the sheep threw up a couple of times, but that’s okay. Hey, where’s the messiah? Me and old, caustic-bile Betsy will try not to drip too much on him.”

“Am I going to look like that when I’m older? Crucify my now, seriously. Get it over with. God, where’s his eyes? WHERE’S HIS EYES? And what is that horrible black tar leaking from his mouth? Mooooom!!!!”

“Jest point me to the baby. Oh, I love children. Look, he’s excited to see me. Mary, it does smell like he needs a change though.”

“Eh he heh…HEH heh heh…heh heh…heh heh heh..”

Gay and angry Nativity photographed during November, Savers on Burnet. Broken Mary nativity, same. “Lost Messiah” nativity from Goodwill on Stassney and Manchacha, and horrible, horrible slimestone nativity from Salvation Army near 620 and 183.

It’s the day after Christmas, and Santa always gets a bad case of the post-gift-frenzy blues. For one thing he’s in the north pole and it’s going to be night for like three more months. For another, no-one’s going to remember he even exists until November, which has got to be quite a downer. And then that chirpy elf foreman came up with the next year’s schedule as soon as he stepped off the sleigh, and he hadn’t even gotten to the bathroom yet. So, yeah, December 26? Kind of a downer.

When the weight of the world feels like a flowerpot on your shoulders, crushing you down–wait, maybe that IS a flower pot crushing me down?–it’s time to put on the special robes Ms. Klaus gave us–the ones with the festively Christmas nipple-holes–touch up the old rouge and eyeliner, and slink slowly around the back yard, pretending to be a traffic cone. We each have our ways of coping. Mine is to be exuberantly wedge-shaped and nipple-endowed. Then sometimes I balance a flower pot on my head. That’s how SANTA celebrates Christmas. Do you like my nipple?

Some years–particularly after the CIA was putting quinuclidinyl benzilate in the snow in some weird attempt to bump off Fidel Castro…again…Santa gets a little paranoid. After all, we know who’s been naughty and nice, and lately, it’s been a LOT easier delivering presents, what with having like six stops to make, and most of them in Switzerland. But yeah, I know what list you’re on, so STEP AWAY FROM THE COOKIES, and nobody gets hurt. Because Santa’s not on Santa’s list.

…and you know, I’ve got nothing to say about this guy.

Any opinions about this particular Santa are welcome, but he seems…down. Maybe there was originally a delicious, post-Christmal pipe he could settle down with. Or maybe an enormous, reeking stogie, and Mrs. Klaus, who puts up with all kinds of hell every year (what with the elves and all), finally yanked it out of his mouth and threw it to the damned reindeer, and now Santa’s even MORE depressed and just sits there, air-smoking.

Or he’s training up for bubble tea. Not everybody can take a tapioca pearl like Santa.

At any rate, the greater Thrift Horror community would love to know what this is. Clothing rack? Poorly-planned stocking holder? Weirdly festive ticker-tape dispenser? We want to know!

Now, if you’ve been REALLY naughty…Santa sends in the Crusher.

It’s a sort of horrible anti-Santa, with MASSIVE paws that destroy any present laid before it, with a rasping metallic “HO HO HO!!” and a sickening crunch (less so in the case of, like, stuffed animals or socks, but it’s still an unpleasant noise. An XBOX on the other hand explodes nicely.) Then…he feeds another present into the terrible machine, throws down its moustache switches, and the arms squeeze again. Because that’s the kind of Christmas you deserve.

…I saw mommy kissing Santa Klaus…

Weirdly cone-shaped Santa from the Texas Thrift in San Antonio on South Flores…awesome store! Paranoid Kringle-mug from Savers on South Lamar near 290. Tall Santa with face-hole from Thrift Land on Stassney off I35, and Mecha Santa Kringle-Bot DX from Savers on South Lamar. I think I already posted him to the old Livejournal community, but he’s real special, isn’t he?

This post is going to be honest, brutally honest, about its contents. These are some owls with very scary eyes. Something went wrong in the ocular department. If Intelligent Design exists, God’s no opthalmologist, and he probably hates owls, too. Why? We don’t know. Maybe he’s really a mouse. Anyway, on to the owls, which is a phrase that, over 20+ years of writing, I haven’t used yet.

Ah, shell art. I keep coming back to you, like a dog to the cat litter box. Not only are we dealing with a very serious case of “Giant Spiral Eye Syndrome,” but we lost one of our eyes in the war. Plus, we are covered with ancient, drippy yellow glue, but that’s probably just an inevitable side effect of being a second-hand craft.

What is this little guy nesting in, though? Given his face, keep the receipt. No, wait. Given his face, particularly his beak, he’s clearly sitting in a pile of tiny bird faces. He’s the Ed Geinof elf owls. I’m hoping maybe I’m wrong, maybe those are its precious little owlings, but the horrible dripping glue tells me a more unpleasant story of an owl with a past, an owl mutilated and trying to shore up his ruined features with whatever he has at hand (feather?), and damned the cost in owl lives. Soon to be a major motion picture, Silence of the Owls.

Side view!

…And then we have this abomination of science.

Hmm…in retrospect, I’m not sure this is an owl. It may be a rare, South Austin Leopard-Print Penguin.

This is probably why Spotted Owls are endangered. They kept scaring the hell out of each other, and the cries of “Just…go away!” and “Why, sweet Jesus, why?” were interfering with their hunting.

*shudder*

Shell owl 2222 and Lamar Goodwill, hideous deformed pop-eyed penguin-owl Goodwill on Stassney and Manchacha, Austin.

“So…tell me what, precisely, is hurting today. I’m there to make it…so much worse.”

Meet Dr. Cranium. On the plus side, he’s there for you even if you don’t have insurance. On the downside, he’s not actually there to help. Quite, quite the opposite.

Real doctors don’t have scary pointy beards that make them look like Satan Taking a Position in Nursing. But then, real doctors don’t have half their skull excised to show their brains. Look closely, you may see…dark thoughts. Thoughts that a thick layer of ceramic were only just barely able to contain, then, not at all. They burst free, leaping over the retaining walls of his eyebrows to infest the west wing. But you know, he’s okay with that. Let them wander through the emergency ward, infiltrate maternity. See what twisted things have escaped from his head, and what dire forms they spawn.

“Nurse, send in the next patient. And please re-wax my gloves, I want them to be extra-slick for the procedure. Oh? He’s got a cold? Send him in anyway, he’s getting a surprise procedure.”

Urk. That eye looks like a sullen little ball of decay, like he had his eye removed and replaced with the interior of a devilled egg. And I think his lower jaw is held on with a suture. Oh, Dr. Cranium, I fear you most of all.

Dr. Cranium from the dread shelves of the Goodwill on 2222, Austin