Sorting out all the strings and limbs on this little guy…girl…androgyne…was a trick. But well worth the effort.

I think we have our next presidential candidate. Able to go left and right at the same time, and absolutely no distinguishing characteristics. We have a winner!

I think this is a cultural referent I’m just lacking–some sort of mezoamerican night-and-day deity, perhaps, or the four-armed faceless Hindu god/dess of baguettes. Who did his hair, though? It’s sort of like Carrot Top, but funnier.

Got your finger! Wait, got MY finger. That’s not how that joke works. Darn it, how am I going to hold my fourth baguette?

For his final miracle before ascending into heaven, he mystically fit the hot dog into the hoagie bun without a knife. Dozens of people in hundreds of towns saw the vision and were most impressed. Now ensconced in the clouds he symbolizes the sun setting in the evening sky, which, as we all know, is time for hot dogs.

Goodwill on Riverside near Mo-Pac, Austin

I like the fact that, after this thing escaped from Edward Gorey’s bedside endtable, it took the time to get its nails done. That’s how you know it’s a classy knob. Thing. Possibly fandangle. It’s certainly elegant, it’s got the curves of a 1940s Hollywood musical starlette. Particularly if her upper half was made out of lime “jolly ranchers” and fractured in a freak pas de deux accident.

On the other hand, it may actually be a lounge singer from the Mos Eisley Cantina. And maybe she wasn’t made of jolly ranchers. Maybe that’s her only functioning eye, and I’m judging her. If so, I’m sorry, and George Lucas  did a terrible thing to you. To all of us.

Does it make any more sense from this angle? No? Okay.

One thing that really bugs me about this is that the green nub is like 3 degrees off of symmetric. It’s…really empissing. Why? WHY?

That, dear, is probably an end.

I know that macro photography is kind of a “thing,” you can get any number of things blown up to hideously large scale with the click of a search button. But the fleshy pinkness of the balloon, the twisted little umbilicus knot, it looks like some strange pro-life advertisement. “Think before you pop…choose inflation.”

Uh…thingie…from Texas Thrift near I35 and 51st, balloon butt from Salvation Army on 1325 near Round Rock

I’m pretty sure it was Nietzsche who said, “When one gazes too long at a pillow, sometimes the pillow gazes back.” And how true that is.

We’ve got several of these pillows–well, not this EXACT pillow, because this pillow is special, and that’s not short-bus special or “I love it because you made it” special (though indeed it may also be that kind of special). No, this is “aliens from space are among us” special.

The pillows we have, which turn up with some regularity at our local crapatorium, are a little uncomfortable to lounge on, kind of like you’re resting your head on a muppet with a skin condition. But at least they don’t stare at you.

In its timeless transmigration between the stars, and its not-so-timeless period on the sofa soaking up spilled beer, or just maybe used as a dog bed, what has this pillow seen? Your mind may very well snap at the insights it has, or at least you wouldn’t want to have gotten the same view of Aunt Gertrude’s rear that it did. No-one wants that.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

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.

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

We were clearly in for an interesting ride at the Goodwill on Lake Austin Boulevard when we rounded the corner and saw this…well, there’s no other way to put it, this tomato.

Or maybe she’s an apple, all ripe with the temptation of original sin, tempting her husband to take and eat. Whatever she is, she had quite a profile.

Pick your symbol of choice. Up ’till this point, I wasn’t sure what a sex object was. Do they take batteries? Would you want to keep your mother away from yours? But I’m pretty sure I’ve found one here. The female reproductive principle is bound into a ripe fruit, filled with the promise of life, stuffed full of pips and maternity. The male reproductive principle is a huge metallic sperm. I guess that really sums everything up.

Will I understand this when I’m older? Probably not. But I know that I won’t look at tomatoes the same way again. Or else I’ll wash them, really really hard.

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

I don’t know who she is, and I suppose she’s quite pretty, but she’s got to do something about that skull. Maybe wear a hat. Maybe wear a scalp. I don’t know. The entire thing seems like some sort of grotesque accident, like she fell and hit her head on a giant wine glass or something, and now she shuns all broken glassware. “Oh broken wineglass, thou mockery of the head I now possesseth, get thee behind me! Fie on you!”

She’s got a sort of “Greek Goddess of Botched Cranial Procedures” thing happening. And it works for her. The flowing over-the-shoulder cape lends a “devil may care, la, sir” tone, it’s quite the ensemble.

But there is nothing, nay, nothing, that accessorizes with an exposed skull.

Maaaybe it’s not skull. Maybe it’s actually a weird exposed brain. The purple robe, suddenly it fits–she’s the queen of one of those “Mars Attacks” style alien empires, the ones where a race is so advanced that they no longer need to worry about protecting their meninges. Works great, until you’re, like, under a tree filled with pigeons or something.

Is there the smallest chance that I’m misinterpreting, and instead she’s got a head full of foam? Sort of a surrealist whipped dessert, “Give me a light froth of whipped cream, delicately flavored with vanilla and lavender, served in a tall, voluptuous goddess in a purple toga?” Possibly. Serves six, but only two of them will actually understand.

Goodwill on Stassney and Manchacha, Austin