Amvets 02/15

stopped by the good old amvets on presley blvd last week. nothing earth shattering, but i had the camera so i thought i'd shoot some.



i guess these are supposed to be speed dial suggestions for an old phone? what do you do if you don't know, for example, the cast of "Silk Stalkings" (numbers one and two) or the old couple from a metamucil commercial (number five) or michelle obama (number six) or the kid from the sandlot (number eight) or a cartoon policeman (number seven)? what then? THIS PHONE IS FUCKING USELESS is what.

and distracting too - you basically have to poke like nine people in the face just to make a call.





the ubiquitous cool looking but generally pain in the ass cameras





and this thing, which neither my friend alpha nor my wife nor i could identify with any certainty. clearly it's something for sewing, or cutting or stitching or ripping or maiming or something but we couldn't get it to do anything aside from sit there and confound us. one has to wonder at the $15 price tag. does the staff of the amvets know something we don't? i bet they do. i bet they know a LOT of things we don't.



RAIDERS



In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
—Horace Smith



thank you goodnight

d

goodwill southaven

okay, last and definitely not least on my voyage into destiny was this goodwill store on main street in southaven. by the time i rolled up here i was demoralized, dejected, exhausted, and generally just regretting the entire idea of going to mississippi to go to thrift stores in the first place. would this be the final blow?



hell no! this place actually rocked! it's really similar in size and scope and content to the goodwills we went to in jackson, lo those many months ago. it was love at first sight, even though my first sight was this:



it's okay, this was my second sight



that's right, it is literally the only action figure likeness of alfred molina you are ever, ever going to see, anywhere. guaranteed to produce a chuckle.



this place had tons of crap, and singlehandedly made up for the poor offerings from earlier in the day. decent prices, too - this table was only 20 bucks if i remember correctly



and this one was only 15. nice to see a thrift store that doesn't price shit like it's fucking stickley or something just because it has all 4 legs still attached.



this made me extremely uncomfortable. if you need an explanation as to why then don't worry about it, you're better off not knowing.



ahh, good old fashioned useless shit, so nice to see you again. this plastic device not only scoops coffee with one side, but it has a handy filter separator on the other! accomplishing what those boring, old fashioned "spoons" and "fingers" never could. thank god! i cannot imagine how this has remained unopened for so long.

if you look up "ridiculous shit that people find in thrift stores" in the dictionary there is a picture of this thing



REALLY nice pair of combat boots, a little too small for yours truly, but only like 10 bucks i think versus the what, 30, 40, maybe more you'd pay at any other place that cared to sell them? someone scored big time with these, i am sure of it



and of course pick-a-nick baskets. calloo callay!

it was pretty amusing to me that the last store i decided to stop at on this trip is probably the only one i'd considering going back to any time soon, and is also the most conveniently reached (right off the side of I-55) from memphis. lots of cool stuff, pretty good prices, and hell, after the other places i'd been through that day, how could it not be impressive? definitely recommended.

Goodwill
925 Main St
Southaven, MS 38671
(662) 342-7097

d

bibles for missions, house of grace

let's press on through the rest of this trek south of the border, shall we?



after the goodwill book store i popped down the street to the bibles for missions store on goodman rd, and there is only one word to describe this place.



COUUUUUNNNNTTTTRRRRYYYYY!!!!! shew! with a capital "whut?" it takes a lot to make the goodwill on chelsea avenue seem hip and urbane, but by good god damn they pulled it off without a hitch here, buddy! from the folding table full of free bible tracts next to the front door to the GIANT pile of gospel albums (10 for a buck if i remember correctly) to the... well, let's go the tape, shall we?



you can sort of judge the mental life of a thrift store by how the books look. this just made my head spin, especially after having just been in the goodwill book store down the street. now, i know, look i understand, this section assuredly doesn't have the highest turnover rate of anywhere in the entire store (the only halfway amusing thing i found was an autobiography of leslie nielsen with a bunch of fake pictures) but is it too much to ask maybe someone to come by every few weeks or so and at least make a couple piles of all the loose discarded neglected shit just lying around all over the place? i almost started doing it but i had a sort of "take only pictures, leave only footprints" moment and decided not to.



it looks like someone dropped a bomb on home depot and swept up the wreckage on some shitty metal shelves



what the fuck is this shit? seriously, what the fuck is the fucking point? can someone enlighten me? this stuff makes me think of 2 inch deep shag carpeting with 25 years of cat hair buried in it, one of those fake wood hunting picture clock things, and instant biscuits out of the fucking toaster oven. JESUS! this might as well be a commemorative dale earnhardt beer coozie. that's basically what i'm seeing when i look at this picture. a fur-covered toilet seat with something "cute" embroidered on it.

NO MATTER WHERE I SERVE MY GUESTS IT SEEMS THEY LIKE MY KITCHEN BEST

you know what was happening, when there was only one set of footprints? do you?

i won't spoil it.

bless this mess



this was the most interesting thing i saw the entire time.

moving on



next up was the "house of grace" thift store on main st, or "down on maiiinnn streeeetttttt..." as bob seeger would say. pretty apropos in this instance. i think this picture says enough about this place.

be back next time with a store i didn't loathe

Bibles For Missions
3828 Goodman Rd W
Horn Lake, MS 38637
(662) 280-6792

House of Grace
1652 Stateline Rd W (Main St)
Southaven, MS 38671
(662) 253-0041

d

goodwill book store

continuing my voyages into the uncharted wilderness here, with the goodwill bookstore, down on goodman rd. in beautiful southaven, ms.



i drove right by this place at first, for two reasons. one, my directions kind of sucked. i wrote them though, so no excuse there. two, and i don't know if the picture does it justice or not, but this place is kind of small. and by "kind of" i mean "really really," especially considering that the entire rear half of it functions as a donation center.



this is about the entire size of it. i'd been hearing about this famed "thrift store full of nothing but books!" for quite a while from a few different people and places, so i guess i couldn't help but be a little underwhelmed by the actual sight of it, but that's okay. it's a nice idea, and it's a nice little store, even if i only came away with three books.

i guess maybe if i had any real beef with this place it would be that it's sort of lowering the general level of what you're going to find in most of the regular other goodwills in this area, book-wise, that is, by culling out all the stuff that the general employee populace seems to regard as "good" (frightening thought, that) and shipping it off to one store in the middle of nowhere in southaven that's the size of my storage unit. that being said, there were more than a few people browsing around when i was there, so maybe it's attracting a different class of customer, people who wouldn't "thrift" per se but have no objections to picking up a couple books on the cheap. if that's the case, then keep it up, one supposes, but i still found myself wishing this stuff had been spread around through the three other goodwill stores i went to that day. anyway here's what i got:



sarah waters, author of a book my wife read a while ago and liked pretty well called the fingersmith. this is her next one after that, and while i'm not usually much of a fan of this kind of stuff these look pretty well written.



how could i say no to this? it's pretty good, if sort of straight forward postapocalyptic zombie fare, originally serialized (and still available for free, along with its two sequels) here i guess someone decided to publish a bound version, and bully for them. give it a read sometime if you're hankering for a dose of the living dead. or, just go to wal-mart BAZING HOT-CHA-CHA-CHA-CHA!!!!!!



i discovered p. g. wodehouse's jeeves and wooster through watching, of all things, the tv show house, md. turns out that guy is actually british can you believe it?!??!?!?!? I KNOW!!!!!!! anyway not only is hugh laurie a simpering limey but he apparently had a long and prosperous career before he settled into his greatest role as a condescending handicapped drug addict who occasionally practices medicine, much of which consisted of working with one of my other favorite british people (it's not a long list), stephen fry. they had a pretty successful sketch comedy show for a few years but i think their best stuff is the adaptations of p. g. wodehouse's jeeves and wooster stories, all of which are available from the usual dvd sources. i won't say wodehouse is the most accessible author in human history - to be fair, he is writing from, about, and of a completely different culture and era - but watching the dvds was sort of a good primer, and i find the jeeves and wooster stuff pretty amusing now. anyway.

all in all a pretty neat little store, my previous gripes notwithstanding. the prices are along the same lines as the regular goodwill prices (1, 2, 3 bucks and then up for anything bigger like photo books, etc) which aren't great but they're not horrible either, and there's probably one or two things in there for anyone, so the next time you're in southaven and you find yourself thinking "i could go for a good book right now" well first things first congratulations because you just became the mayor! also go ahead and stop into to the goodwill book store, you can probably find something.

Goodwill Book Store
1514 Goodman Rd E
Southaven, MS 38671
(662) 536-8157

love

d