Goodwill Austin Peay

had another delightful romp through the herman j. goodwill store on austin peay highway not too long ago.



i'm a sucker for novelty shot glasses, always have been, even ones like this that are actually kind of a pain in the ass to drink out of. this horse is just so fucking cute, i can scarcely resist the urge to fill his head full of bourbon and drink out of it! surely i can't be the only person who feels that way.



further proof that the playboy corporation has probably put their logo on every single item known to man by this point. lighters, t-shirts, mudflaps... why not oversized ceramic travel muggish looking things, too? i ask you, why not? damn, looking at this picture now, for two bucks, i really should have bought this thing. oh well, non-buyer's remorse i guess, always stings a little harder. i guess i just find the whole playboy "brand" such a laughable self-parody by this point that my initial reaction whenever i see anything bearing the bunny ears is always "eww, no," even though this is sort of tasteful and cool, not to mention useful, and it hearkens back to an era when ol' hef's cultural monolith seemed to stand for something a little more substantial than silicon, smoking jackets, and limp lifestyle branding. maybe i'm a little delusional.



AMERICA HAS SPOKEN, AND...



IT WANTS ITS RELISH. your guess is as good as mine as to what these two things have to do with each other. the perfect christmas gift for that friend or family member who loves democracy... and relish. personally i rather lean towards the "Monarchy Mustard" container, or even the "Communism Catsup," but really i'll take any system of societal organization that can easily be paired with a popular hot dog topping. the sauerkraut of serfdom, anyone?



stumbled across two of these righteous little table lamps, which my wife immediately snapped up and is currently artifying in her own inimitable fashion... if you're curious as to what that might look like, just picture the lamp you see here covered in desiccated bird skeletons and yellowed illustrations from old medical textbooks.

just funnin' with you, dearest. fear not, i'll keep bringing you the carcasses if you keep making them pretty.







love you. don't kill me for sharing your work with the masses... if nothing else, you'd be the most obvious suspect.



i LOVE isaac asimov. while i haven't exactly read volumes of his shit, i've liked everything i've ever encountered of his, be it in the printed word, adapted for radio, bastardized into film... you name it. i think the 20th century will be remembered as an era in which our imaginations took us farther ahead, faster, and into stranger places than any previous time in human history, and few people in the 20th century had an imagination or an intelligence to rival asimov's. his whole body of work, his whole life story (along with guys like heinlein and vonnegut) makes me unspeakably happy to be the complete and utter nerd that i am. i mean, look at this guy.



are you telling me you wouldn't want to get a beer with this guy? if for no other reason than to ask him what was up with the whole super quiz thing? i know i would.



this was a pleasant surprise. the d'aulaires' books on norse and greek mythology were SUCH a huge part of my childhood, i always sort of meant to look for more of their work, but i never really got around to it. anyone with kids, or in a position to buy gifts for kids occasionally (aunts and uncles, i'm looking at you here), if you've never seen any of their work, do yourself a favor and check it out. if the kid in question has even the slightest fraction of a brain in their head, they'll glom on to all of this stuff (especially the greek and norse mythology books) and never let go.



i believe it was actually a time/life set, but this reminded me so much of those silly commercials from the 80's that i had to take a picture of it. you remember what i'm talking about? "JOIN NOW AND RECEIVE OUR FIRST VOLUME: MYSTERIES OF THE UNEXPLAINED. FUTURE VOLUMES WILL FOLLOW AT THE LOW COST OF 19.95 PER BOOK, CANCEL ANY TIME," blah blah blah. those (and the ominous narration of Robert Stack on Unsolved Mysteries) used to scare the living shit out of little eight year old me.

meanwhile, 28 year old me is only now realizing the painful redundancy built into this title. think about it for a second...

ALL MYSTERIES ARE UNEXPLAINED. that's why they call them MYSTERIES. if they were EXPLAINED, there wouldn't be any MYSTERY any more.



"ORDER NOW AND RECEIVE OUR SECOND VOLUME: BIZARRE PHENOMENA, FOR NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE. SHIPPING AND HANDLING MAY APPLY. CALL NOW."



you want to see some bizarre phenomena? check out the fucking size of this spider we saw on the trash can outside. puts a daddy longlegs to shame, i tell you.



oh, right, we're still sort of talking about thrift stores here, aren't we, in the breaks in between lengthy diatribes about science fiction authors i slavishly adore and things that used to scare me when i was a little kid? well in that case check out this BALLIN' player piano (kurt vonnegut wrote a book called player piano which i read and liked - sorry, i couldn't help it) for christ, i don't know, like 100, 200 bucks i think. i have honestly never seen one of these things for sale before, and it's interesting, for as long as i've been doing this and as much one of a kind shit as i've seen, i still get those moments from time to time where your rational mind, which is saying, you know, "there's no place for you to put this, you can't really afford it, you have no way of even getting it home from the store" is just completely shouted down by that screaming voice in the forefront of your mind going OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD IT'S A FUCKING PLAYER PIANO BUY IT BUY IT BUY IT BUY IT NOW DAMMIT but thankfully i know enough to take a few deep breaths, collect myself, maybe go into a quiet bathroom stall and cry a little, then leave the damn thing behind, which is what i did.



...[sniff]...



i fucked up, didn't i.



yeah, i did.

d