Departing Ham

Today's terror is yet another of those head-shakers that makes you ask, "What purpose was this decoration intended to serve?"

The rear end of a pig. Not a view I generally go out of my way to see.

I mean, who wakes up in the morning and says, "Gee, I really wish I had a wall hanging of a rosy-cheeked pig's bum with the word 'BYE' carved into one ham"?

Oh, Pat Robertson.

Hello, readers!  I apologize for my absence the past week; I was out of town for a while, and due to computer troubles and life's distractions, my queued blog posts ran out before I could stock up again.

No thrift store kitsch today, but I offer you a terror of another sort:

Full article here.

Now, I firmly believe that people should have the right to believe what they want to believe, and (as you can probably tell from my previous posts) I have pretty strong personal beliefs, myself.  But I'm amused -- and kind of horrified -- by the concept of, "Eh, there might be demons, there might not, so go ahead and banish them anyway just in case."

So, how about it? Has anyone encountered a used demon at a thrift store?  Now that WOULD be a terror.

All Hail The Kween

Anyone who walks through a shopping mall is probably familiar with those kiosks that sell customized belt buckles spelling out your name (or other words, usually along the lines of "PIMP" or "SEXY") in shiny metallic letters.  They're a less-subtle cousin to Italian charms and airbrushed license plates and all the other varieties of kitschy personalized junk, and they're fairly harmless in most cases.

But this one made me blink:

If I tried to wear a belt buckle this size, it would effectively serve as body armor for my lower abdomen. It would probably also weigh down my pants and make me look like I had joined an entirely different fashion trend.

Now, there are a few different meanings associated with this word, some of which can be found here if you're not familiar with them.  Some of them are unflattering and wouldn't necessarily be something I'd want to wear emblazoned on my clothing.  On the other hand, this could actually be someone's name -- in which case having it on a belt buckle is understandable (though giving it to a thrift store for resale is kind of odd, since there isn't likely to be anyone else with that unusual name in the immediate area).  Or perhaps someone was just trying to make a statement with an unconventional spelling and had no deeper meaning in mind.

But I think it was just the tragic result of the mall kiosk running out of Qs, and hoping no one would notice.

Horatio Hornlawyer

I understand that sometimes those overseas factories have a hard time figuring out what English-language words to put on their products.  I imagine it goes something like this (in, of course, another language):

Modeler: "Boss, I've finished the new figurine design."
Boss: "Great! Get it on the production floor."

Modeler: "Well, there's a problem. I don't have any titles for the books, and it looks silly to leave them blank."

Boss: "Can't you just make something up?"

Modeler: "I think we ought to use real book titles; otherwise, it'll look like we didn't even try."

Boss: "Where are they being shipped to?"

Modeler: "America, I think."

Boss: "They speak English in America, right? Hey, I think our company lawyer has some English-language books in his office. Go copy those titles down and put them on the model."

That's the only reason I can figure that you'd end up with an adorable little sailor-suited bear playing with his model sailboat, like this:

Isn't Sailor-Bear cute?

...While sitting atop a stack of law texts:

He'd better be cute. If you say otherwise, he'll sue you.

Syntax is Hard Crossing

With the rise of housing additions in our area, I've seen some really weird and confusing street names pop up.  Sometimes it's "Stable Chase Boulevard" or "Ripple Run Drive" or "Center Crossing Circle" or other names that sound odd out of context.  But now even garden stakes are becoming a jumble of awkward juxtaposition:

Is this some sort of secret drug culture code with which I'm not familiar?

Free Ashtrays, Anyone?

This isn't really a terror -- more of a head-scratcher.  It gets an honorable mention for being thrift-store related, though.

When I was in high school, my friends and I used to eat at fine dining establishments like Dairy Queen because we didn't have much money and we liked sugar.  This was back in the days when smoking was still allowed in public restaurants in our city, and Dairy Queen had these sweet* little disposable foil ashtrays with stars on them. I have always hated cigarettes, but my friends and I sometimes picked up the clean ashtrays and made crafts out of them because... well, they were shiny, they were easily folded, and they had stars on them. They were also free, and we were broke high school students.  We had to get our kicks somewhere.

Fast forward XX years.  Smoking has been prohibited in restaurants for nearly seven years in this county, and I hadn't seen those disposable ashtrays anywhere for years before that.

Until this week:

The stuff of my teenage craft projects. I still have one that used to hang on my bedroom wall.

Apparently someone stole a stack of disposable ashtrays from a Dairy Queen, hoarded them for more than a decade, and then decided to donate them to Goodwill.

The best part? Goodwill priced these (formerly) free, disposable items at a magnanimous 49 cents each.  "Yep, ladies and gents, for only 49 cents, you can own your very own free disposable ashtray!  Join us next week, when we'll be selling plastic drink lids and paper napkins for the bargain price of 29 cents!"


* I use this term in the '90s slang sense meaning "awesome," not the more common usage meaning "adorable or cute."

Love Is... Creepy.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you've probably figured out by now that I really don't like cutesy little figurines with ditzy or affectionate sayings on them.  Perhaps it's a flaw in my character, or my healthy inner snark, or perhaps I just have stronger views on the nature of love and don't feel that it can be adequately conveyed by a badly-rendered clay lump and a trite phrase.

But a lot of that comes down to taste, and I have no real problem with other people liking such things.  Except when they're really weird or creepy or odd, at which point I feel a little justified in poking fun at them.

Gives a new, creepier meaning to that Jack and Jill rhyme about pails of water.

...And what part of love, exactly, is running around in the fields totally naked and collecting your tears in buckets?  Even Miss Havisham didn't go THAT far off the deep end when her boyfriend left.

(Well, okay, there was that bit with the rats in the shell of the wedding cake, and the ruined dress and things.  But at least the woman kept her clothes on when she went crazy.)