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

3/18/2008 - Goodwill Stage Rd

it was with some mild relief that we reached the final store on my itinerary for the day. this goodwill (which i swear to god is in bartlett even though googmaps is telling me it's in memphis - is bartlett really just a glorified neighborhood? that would be funny) is HUGUNGOUS (aka ginormous) and i felt pretty confident taylor would leave with a table, i'd get some great pictures and we'd call it a day. have i mentioned our general level of wrongness about this stuff yet?



this place is really funny and weird and worth a day's inspection on its own, being the only thrift store i've ever seen with an honest to goodness "Human Resources Department" (with its own little separate office and everything - so cute!) and a picture of Herman J. Goodwill or whatever the hell the guy's name is who started the whole thing. looks like a nice chappie.



anyway for sheer square footage this has got to take the cake, biggest thrift store i've ever been in, ever, but whereas the salvo's from earlier on in this trip was all available to wander around in and get lost in thrifty goodness, this goodwill had roughly the area of a good-sized airplane hangar blocked off with the trademark particle board walls and swinging door, all devoted to processing their donations. they had a HUGE donation drop off center outside, so it's understandable, but still...mister goodwill, tear down this wall! reagan smash!



that is what it looked like. it sounded like...well, if you can figure out how to stick your head inside a dishwasher while it's running, do that. then you will know what it sounded like.



SO huge though, SO much cool sh*t just everywhere, like the half-trumpeting elephant bookend and of course the requisite wolf picture, AUGMENTED in coolness by its proximity to the framed, embroidered fish thing





although i have to pause in my elation for just a second and air a pet peeve/private beef thing i've always had with this fucking thing. no one, that's i've ever known, has enjoyed receiving one of these things. in real life, zen gardens are a byproduct of a legitimate spiritual, psychological, philosophical endeavor by some of the most dedicated people on the planet earth to pierce the veil of illusion that causes most of us so much suffering and illuminate the world, so that we might all be free. but in stupid dollar store f*ck around la la land, it's a way for bored executives to waste a few minutes every day while they wait for an email back about their next golf vacation. forgive me if this seems like a little bit of a sudden detour into bitter town (i have a summer home there) but i imagine you christians, you muslims, you whatever you are, have had that moment where you see something you love and take seriously completely trivialized and made into another stupid useless commodity clogging up our collective consciousness, and maybe you feel the same way. maybe. otherwise i am just a complete lunatic. i'm not saying that ironic gifts don't have their place, and maybe this all seems kind of dour and humorless, but don't you have to draw a line somewhere, and isn't it just as arbitrary for everyone else who does it? i don't know.



on a slightly less hysterical note, this really cracked me up. these pretty nice bamboo mats were around $5 a piece i think, which by itself is more or less unremarkable, but for the fact that they had OVER TWENTY price stickers on them - fourteen i think visible in this picture, and then like maybe ten more on the other side. i stared at this for a good five minutes trying to make sense of it...did some angry clerks just use the pricing gun to vent their frustration one day? just beating the shit out of these poor bamboo mats with the little sticker gun, hitting "$4.99" just over and over again until they were pulled off by concerned coworkers...i never really did get my head around it. three or four stickers, okay, that's kind of standard procedure to keep jackasses like me from pulling them off and substituting another, cheaper sticker (ANOTHER PRACTICE I DO NOT AND HAVE NEVER ADVOCATED PEOPLE), but twenty? especially on something that costs five dollars

okay wrapping it up you've got silly david lee roth record, check





TONS of books although by this point i was kind of too wiped out to really look through them all, i did see this however



three solid shelves of serialized romance novels, notable for their organization and the fact that they're so wonderfully undisturbed by anyone, you know, BUYING them. the next time someone asks me "why don't you want to sell romance novels in your book store?" (which actually happens a lot) i'm just going to show them this picture. and then silently, slowly shake my head. and then walk away into the sunset. with my dog. my dog will be named montavius.



i DID snag these AMAZING pictures though, $6 a piece, really well framed and without any cosmetic damage at all, just a miracle find and a perfect example of how you can never stop looking around, even at (what you foolishly think is) the end of a long day's thrifting. i was actually giggling with delight as i carried these bad boys up to the front.

total spending:
two pictures , plus tax: $13.09

plus prior $28.54 equals

$41.63 all told. not a bad day, considering all the random stuff i brought home and the number of stores i visited.

Goodwill
6899 Stage Rd
Memphis, TN 38133
(901) 507-3284

hours:
m-sat 9-8
sun 12-6

music:
there might have been a little radio playing somewhere, but really the ambient volume of the room and all the forklifts (not an exaggeration, there were multiple forklifts) just drowned everything out. insane.



before we leave this goodwill i just want to pause and point out a book that i see available everywhere, by an author i really like. i have a few copies of both of her books that i've seen, so i can't really justify buying any more for the store, but if you see this or her other book "the lovely bones" do yourself a favor and pick it up. tough subject matter, but really well written and rewarding, i thought anyway. just a recommendation.

so. there we were. my day's work was done but surprise surprise, the goodwill had let us down. no kitchen table. what now? we had some decisions to make. read on.

d