Goodwill Southaven

We struck out across state lines on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon to check out the Goodwill just over the border in Southaven, and this time, we weren’t traveling alone. We had the company of our good friend Addison, who in addition to being a supremely talented photographer and connoisseur of kitsch, also knows a thing or two about clothes. Her friends Natalie and Evangeline were game enough to come along and join in the fun. No one died, so I guess I’d have to call it a success.

I’ll be peppering this entry with selections from the photos that Addison was kind enough to take alongside my own, and might I say it’s a refreshing breath of freshingly fresh air that refreshes me to get a look at someone’s else’s take on this endless squall of discarded junk through which I storm ceaselessly like an uncaged beast, in a neverending quest to handle every single piece of castoff cookery and mildly soiled children’s bathingware, until I die from the effort or contract rickets. Whichever comes first. What was I saying? Oh, right, Addison’s pictures are great and I’m glad she came along. UPGRAAAAAADE

I think not every pair of sunglasses are for me. These, though, I strongly felt belonged on my face. Like, permanently, attached by bolts. The overwhelming chorus of female disapproval I heard at the assertion of this notion, however, convinced me otherwise. Thank god for the intermittent voice of reason, I suppose.

Ok, this is going to get a little obscure, but I used to tangentially keep up with a website called somethingawful.com that had a thread about this picture:

that turned into this:

that still makes me laugh so hard I almost wettem every time I look at it. I strongly recommend reading through that thread if you have a few minutes to kill and want to laugh so hard you may rupture something. Anyway, that’s the rapid fire series of associations I had from looking at this relatively innocuous dog door package thing. I just wanted to take you through them with me. There you have it.

Meanwhile, Addison found the counterpart to the psychotically murderous toy piano I chanced across in a recent entry, except, is that a barbecue grill? That’s what that is, right? It’s… a grill? I understand that times have changed and children play with different shit now than they did when I was young, but if memory serves we had tanks and guns and steam shovels and princess castles and makeup sets and fucking magic wands and the like… we dreamt big. This is what we’re giving our children to aspire to now? Throwing a few shrimp on the barby? Come on, people. We can do better. In the words of Whitney Houston, I believe the children are our future. Also in the words of Whitney Houston, crack is cheap.

I scared up this sweet looking croquet set, and after a bit of debate amongst the posse about if anyone had an actual grass-covered yard in which it could be used, and some pondering of the logistics of taking it to the park and setting it up there, regretfully put it back. All I want to do is reenact this scene:

IS THAT SO WRONG?!?!?

I thought the whole point of a bare floor is that it was clean

Crib with attached mobile. I’m curious who the first person was to decide that hanging a bunch of shit over an infant’s head while it tried to go to sleep was a good idea, and how it caught on. Granted, I can only speak for myself as an adult, but when I lay in bed at night, the swirling miasma of disjointed images and sounds and associations that dangles above MY head doesn’t help me sleep in the SLIGHTEST. So who thought that would be a good thing to inflict on tiny tiny children? Oh, right. People who weren’t incessantly haunted by the demons of their past. That’s right. Well, for any pre-k readers of this blog (a surprisingly large amount of my reader base, actually… I guess that speaks more to my own level of emotional maturity and disposition than anything else), let me just assure you, the frightening things that your parents have chosen to leave suspended over your head to haunt you at night pale in comparison to the things that you will someday come to leave suspended over your own head, so perhaps attempt to take some semblance of solace or comfort in that?

This is why I don’t get left alone with children very often.

In other news, Addison found this t-shirt for PUUUUUGS!!!! I LOVE pugs, secondly only to Boston Terriers and of course my dear Charles Smith the Lazer Bean Dog:

But I LOVE this shirt, and the whole idea! That you could play golf to help out one of the cutest animals on god’s greenearth?!? Where do I sign up? Hugs for pugs. Pugs not drugs.

Did they really have a problem with people trying to sit or stand on “Shelf Wood?” What kind of mutated freaks are they gestating down there in the extreme northern environs of Mississippi? Wait, never mind. Forget I asked.

Addison came across this truly frightening bear, which I wish I’d had a chance to examine in detail, because it invites so many questions. Dead-mouthed Eyeless Bear with Hole in Crudely Drawn Heart and Red Nose? That’s either the featured entree at the most amazing Asian restaurant ever, or a thrift store mystery that deserves to be cracked. Next time, Watson, please let me know.

Fortune Cookie Jar

DOUBLE RAINDROPS, WOWWWW!

Charley Pride, also (perhaps) unintentionally representing Gay Pride

Ok jukebox time

So here’s Addison’s friend Natalie, not afraid to ham it up, considering purchasing a pair of Starburst colored jeans…

putting on a wig OH GOD YOU PUT ON A USED WIG OH ICK THERE IS NO WAY THAT DIDN’T HAVE BUGS IN IT (Photo by Addison)

and shamelessly breaking into a dressing room (Photo also by Addison). It was good to know I was traveling with a pack of similarly shameless degenerates, even if the average age range of my companions was somewhere in the neighborhood of a decade below my own. I don’t care, they were still good company. On that note though

I saw this 80’s themed edition of Trivial Pursuit and couldn’t help but chuckle at the notion that were I to get the people I was shopping with that day together for a game somewhere down the line, I’d assuredly wipe the floor with them, considering two of them weren’t even ALIVE during that particular decade. I laughed, then I got kind of sad. Then I laughed again, but I couldn’t remember what I was laughing about, but I laughed anyway. Getting older is awesome.

Not really sure what this means. Damn those Nigerians and their inscrutable proverbs. “Hold a true friend with both your hands because otherwise they may be eaten by a cheetah or succumb to malaria or some type of genocide or just basic starvation?”

Addy didn’t buy these boots, but she should’ve bought these boots… Steel tipped shit kickers? Yes.

Insert requisite “Prostitute Robot From The Future” joke here.

Recumbent Magnetic Bike! Have there ever been three less appealing words combined in the history of human language? Have you ever seen one of those douchebags riding around town on a ridiculous seated bicycle and thought “I want to be just like that, but in the comfort and privacy of my own home, where I can hide my shame from the world at large, and also I want magnets to be involved on some level”? BOOM! Here we go! We have a solution for you! Buy now, while it still seems like a good idea!

Ok so my previous “Please do not sit or stand on merchandise” question was about who would ever WANT to perform either of said activities on the object in question, but now it becomes more of an issue of “How do you ever expect to sell this fucking chair if you’re actively discouraging people from even SITTING on it to try it out?” Because I ask you, dear readers, would you buy a chair you’d never even had the chance to SIT on? It’d be like buying a car you’d never driven, or marrying someone you’d never slept with. These are things we moved past as a species when we decided to climb down out of the trees and move into caves. Although if someone had confronted us with the idea of office furniture and automobiles and lifelong monogamy back then, perhaps we wouldn’t have reacted so well to those things either. Evolution, ZOW

Words of note here: “Reality Tour Live.” I swear I stood there for 5 minutes trying to wrap my mind around that. How does one take Reality on Tour? How does one package Reality and make it mobile, available to show people in a mid-sized local arena of their choosing, for a predetermined ticket price? WE’RE SELLING REALITY TO EACH OTHER, PEOPLE. Something has gone fundamentally wrong in human society.

I will say the Live version of Reality is head and shoulders above the studio version. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s artificial Reality created in a studio. I think we can all agree that shit is wack.

Ok, so things seem kind of dire, but when all else fails…

Send chocolate. Ok here’s a bunch of random shit-

Natalie covered in purses and rainbow colored jeans. Speaking of rainbows…

Addison’s picture of a rainbow rack of dress shirts

Evangeline trying to figure out the proper way to wear a church hat

I think this is it

Addison’s badass picture of a plastic facsimile of an old fashioned alarm clock. I totally didn’t notice this at all. This is the advantage of a second pair of eyes. Especially one who’s sharp with a camera. Case in point, quick photo-off…

Mine

Hers. I gotta give it up to the lady from Instagr.am, that’s a much better shot.

Of course, she didn’t spot this particular trifecta of literary insanity. That’s Barney, Montel, and Staubach, all on the same shelf. I can’t even imagine wiping my ass with any of these books, but I still found it laughably insane that you could probably get all of them for less than seven bucks, after tax.

Ok time to wrap it up. Let’s see, here’s a digital scale branded by an unfortunately titled reality tv show, and what does it tell us?

It tells us this object I placed on it (toothbrush holder? rat container? mother?) weighs in at 143.

143 what?

Evangeline is mildly delighted with string art

I am confounded by a wide-eyed toy, and narrowly avoid bumping into my future self, skulking blurrily in the background of the left side of the frame (Addison)

This looks like a nightmare, this is probably what it’s like for vegetables to become salsa when you throw them in a food processor. VEGANS TAKE NOTE

Hip-hop Nirvana. Why I didn’t buy this is beyond me. And also beyond The Veil of Hip-hop Maya RELIGIOUS REFERENCE

Advice we could all use, I’m sure…

I always knew Colonel Sanders was a pedophile

3-D Bikebell! Yeah!

…anyone want to explain to me what that means? Ok let me finish off with a few more pictures from Addison because I really did enjoy the company, and the eye for composition, and all of it. You rule, Addie. Take it away.

DURR HEY. Until next time, keep your lamp lights trimmed and burning, my dearies.

love

d