Monday, April 03, 2006

If It Wasn't Garbage Before, It Is Now

A couple of good things about moving to a new place is the joy in finding stuff you thought you'd lost and the chance to ruthlessly toss out a load of old garbage.

The book Don't Throw It Away (1973), is a prime example of both good things. I was amused to find it in the bottom of a storage box where it had lurked for several years, but just as ready to gleefully fling it from the window of my moving van with hails and hosannas as I barrelled down the street.

Example #1 fits into the category of Hobo Ornaments, because no normal person would be making Christmas ornaments out of turkey bones painted gold and covered in rhinestones. This doesn't even qualify as a project for mental patients. They would know better.

Note: This project doesn't work if your family eats turkey loaf or that turkey-flavored Spam product.

The only sentiment I see this ornament illustrating is that you must have eaten your turkey alone and had no one to pull the wishbone with, so of course you spray paint the damn thing and decorate your Christmas tree with it. The tree you will be decorating alone and putting gifts to yourself, from yourself underneath.

A normal person would have just made jewelery out of it.

Easter is a wonderful time of year. It's Spring and everything is in bloom and birds are out bellowing and shreiking in the trees and the fuzzy-wuzzy baby animals are cavorting on the grass and the whole world is fresh and clean and new.

You can go and vomit copiously now. I'll be doing the same.

Easter is not the time of year that I consider making Tuna-Scented Bunny Houses. It's not. Really, it's not. Viciously Steel-Jawed Bunny Traps maybe, but not Tuna-Scented Bunny Houses.

There is no amount of tuelle, nor ribbon, nor plastic fruit, nor bunnies made of pecans that can hide the fact that this is made from a tuna can scarfed from the fucking garbage. This will guarantee that every time you smell old tuna, even years later, you will be taken back to Easter when you were a gullible little kid and believed that the Easter Bunny laid brightly colored eggs that were filled with marshmallow chickens and that families of nut-bunnies lived in stinky old tin cans that reeked of tuna. You'll wonder if pecans really are little nut-bunny heads and if you've been cracking open their little skulls and eating nut-bunny brains all these years. You will then weep uncontrollably for hours and wish it was Christmas so you can decorate the tree with a turkey carcass and open up all those presents from yourself.

When I usually find army boots I tend to wear them, if they happen to be in my size, but then this isn't the 1970s when everything possible was made into some offensive species of lamp.

I've never considered that if an old boot was painted pink and stuffed with plastic flowers that I'd be proud to call it a lamp. There aren't enough mind-alering drugs on the planet for that one. Just the mere thought of flicking the light switch and having this mess illuminated for all to see is more than I can take. I'd almost spray paint my leftovers and call them Christmas ornaments before I'd inflict this heresy on an unsuspecting army boot.

The author suggests that a Fruity Pink Army Boot Lamp would be perfect for a child's room, perhaps the same child blessed with a Psychotic Owl wall hanging, or some smelly nut-bunny tuna can decorations. You could also enthrall and amuse the child with stories of how the boot was once on the foot of a brave WWII soldier. Insist that since WWII was a long time ago he's now a ghost "watching over" the boot. Mutter something about him having hooks instead of feet. Don't add any details because kids can fill those in all by themselves.

The author also suggests taking a perfectly harmless pair of riding boots and causing great amounts of upset to a horse-obsessed kid who really wanted a pony lamp instead.

Have you been wondering just how many more endless, depressing, lonely years you'll be decorating your Christmas tree with dead bird parts? Are the nut-bunny flashbacks getting to you? Are you feeling like the Angel of Death has passed you by, year after year after tedious year?

Well, look no further because Egg Carton Magic (1970) is the book for you! "Can't you see her up and down the table for a Mother Daughter banquet?" Uhhh, no. Not unless they all had terminal illnesses.

You can now have the Angel of Death lurking over you from every shelf in the house. Thrill at the claw-like arms! Clap at the evil black eyes that watch your every move! Weep with shame at the thought that if you had eaten just one more egg the cholesterol would have given you a massive coronary and removed you from this rhinestone-encrusted-turkey-parts and nut-bunny-haunted world! You can't do anything right, can you???

In case you're wondering just why someone needs to buy enough eggs for the 175 dozen styrofoam egg cartons these projects use, the author's bio reveals that she has ten children. I'm going to toss out the suggestion that she really shouldn't have time to be designing jack shit from egg cartons with all those kids running loose, and she should consider that if she had a better hobby in the first place she wouldn't have become the sad, egg-carton-obsessed baby factory she is.

I'm just sayin'.