It’s a work-in-progress at the moment, but please visit The Austin Museum of Nearly New and Thrift Art of Austin, a fictional (maybe?) art museum dedicated to preserving Austin’s artistic flotsam. Christmas pictures going up now.

Thank you so much for years of comment and friendly! I hope you enjoy this new project :)

Easter is just around the corner, and that means mutant bunnies. Remember, a bunny isn’t just for Easter. It’s for splattering with so much paint that it looks like it has a bad skin condition. And a bloody nose.

THIS is what cosmetics testing on live animals does :( One ear shaved and covered with amethyst eyeliner, one daubbed in carmine, and a streak of Maybelline Red Dragon Kissable up the nose.

I don’t know what the green is. I think maybe he’s underripe.

Oh, work it, baby. Turn toward the camera. Now play it coy, hard to get. That’s it. Now…pout.

Beauty.

These next guys are either dogs, or bunnies. They might be dogbunnies, which…well, the neighborhood chihuahuas might try it, but rabbits are pretty fast, I’d think they could get away.

Was Easter on 4/20 this year? Because it looks like their baskets were not full of the little plastic squiggly grass, is all I’m saying. This was probably the year the Easter bunny got the munchies and ate all the malt balls.

Mmm. Malt balls.

There is clearly nothing going on in these guy’s heads. Which is why they’d make such great candlesticks.

Have you ever, you know, been holding an egg, and, like, it’s all covered with colors? That’s got to mean something, man. I just woke up and my ears were all purple, what’s that about?”

I was going to title this post “Spring Chicken” in honor of this guy, but I didn’t want to put him at the top of the post. Really. He’s pretty terrifying, I don’t want to face that stuff on a Monday.

Pot art is really its own category of bad. It’s a cheap medium. You give some kids tempera paint and terra-cotta plant holders, and it’s whole minutes of fun. But then you have to sneak off to the Goodwill donation porch at like midnight and leave them there, thinking how you’re going to explain it if there’s someone there after hours.

“Oh, this? It’s my daughter’s chicken pot. Those kids, and their…uh…bird pots…”

Really, it has no good side. But it does have a worse side. At least this way it isn’t staring at you, pleading. “If you don’t take me home, at least do me the small mercy of pushing me off this shelf. Let me end it all in a crunch.”

I have no mouth, yet I must peep…

textPainted bunny, Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar. Stoned Hares, Salvation Army on Anderson Mill and 183. Chicken Pot, Goodwill in Round Rock.

They call him Flipper. Flipper–flipcuffs restraining,
No one you see, ties knots tight as he…

Although I’d be happier if there were knots in this intimate little tableaux, as opposed to just a gold chain and two mid-sternum attachment points. I didn’t know that dolphins were into this stuff.

Although what I don’t know about dolphins would fill a pretty large book. They love fish, I know that. And have several convenient attachment points around the chest, median notch, and blowhole.

Every movement is a dance, every toss of the flipper, poetry. Also, be really, really careful of bleeding in the ocean. Because, sharks.

Look away, friends. This moment is too intimate. We’re talking Jacque Cousteau after dark. The things that happen beneath the waves, we do not discuss on the cracked, unyielding surface.

Faster than she could eat it and then she loved him.

“That won’t always work,” I told Iron Mike.

The teeth are never finally the teeth of love.

…This is a thing that happened, 1931 “The Public Enemy.”  This is a poem that happened, “Iron Mike,” ~1977.

One line they conspicuously left out of the original, which I think is relevant to this artist’s interpretation of the poem, is the line about being “sent mad by eyes like a child’s crayon drawing.” That shit happens, I’m telling you. I see it all the time. The art aisle at the Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, is like a surreal cross between Viet Nam and Bellview. They come in. They see the art. They go insane. They buy broken french presses and intimately stained pants. This is the only way to sell a broken french press. Nobody needs them, but the shelves are full of them. Only insanity, despair, poetry, tempera paint.

This is the Goodwill plan: Your madness puts people to work.

What’s this? Some sort of beautiful woman/girl/boy/larva? Either way, s/he/it’s torpid and I’m armed. I could totally exchange cards with this hot mess.

Erf. Okay, I was doing good on this post until I saw those horrible fleshy buttocks. I’d forgotten about them. I’d kind of forgotten why I took these pictures in the first place. How much this image looked like a tiny child had found his own dead clone inside a clam. How the tiny shreds of modesty ribbon just made this soo…much…worse.

How much the entire thing looked like the most inappropriate Homestuck cosplay ever.

I wanted to make sex jokes, but I just can’t. I only hope this made everybody as uncomfortable as it made me. Thank you for playing.

Savers on South Lamar, Austin

Just a little kiss for Valentine’s day. Because I love you. You know who you are. And you should be afraid. So…very…afraid.

I’d be curious to know if this was the photographer’s girlfriend. Or boyfriend, those could be drag lips. It’s really hard to tell because there’s NO FACE, just…kind of…floating space whore. Which is a difficult look to pull off.

I can’t get the opening to “Rocky Horror” out of my head now :( It’s really stuck there.

I’ve looked everywhere, but she doesn’t have a good side.

I didn’t know there was an intersection between Valentine’s Day and misplaced patriotism. But, thank god, you can find anything at Savers if you go every day.

Not everybody can wear that with dignity. Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam has not yet managed it. But look at that face. This is a man who is prepared to take indignity, even abject humiliation, for his country. I regret that I have but one heart to give to my country. But it’s a big, big heart.

Ooh. He’s gone into crazy grandpa mode. Hide your womenfolk.

Lips from Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Uncle Sam Luves U from Savers on North Lamar, Austin

I’m pretty sure this has some sort of function, I’ll be damned if I know what it is though. Maybe a broom cover that does not detract from the functionality of the broom (plus has the added feature of the pleasure of sweeping the floor with a cat’s face.) It’s not a hot pad. I’ve learned, oh, I’ve learned, about hot pads made with big holes in the mesh.

But really, it’s just a very frightening cat.

There’s a lot going on here. We have a grotesque skin condition. we have a remarkable helix-shaped tail which distends to over 25 feet (much like a mouse’s small intestine, if you unwind it a Goodwill employee asks you to leave the store. True fact.

Tentacles. Whiskers. We do not always know the difference.

Supporting the idea that this thing was created for some intent, some purpose, it has magnets on it. Magnets imply a great design plan. Stick it to your refrigerator, put spoons in it. Three years later, throw it out because you never washed off the tomato soup that one time and now it’s attracting bugs with a high weirdness tolerance. Put it on your fridge and now lose all appetite when you search for leftovers. Don’t you wish you had one?

No?

Texas Thrift on Manchaca and Stassney, Austin

Although it might have actually been shortly after he bought the canvas.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

It’s best if you think of Steve as a metaphor. Do not ask who Steve is, if you do, you’re really just missing the point. We are all Steve.

But some of us are more Steve than others.

Personally, I am mostly Steve on Tuesdays, anywhere between 2:00 and 4:30 PM, and the entirety of both January AND February. Three days before payday? Prime Steve time. My partner trying to explain TCIP switch protocols? Oh yeah, total Steve.

Because Steve is there when smiling and nodding is just too hard. When you are asked what the best time of day is for a two-hour meeting about nothing, when your SO asks you what you thought about that one tweet they made, when someone says “Fantastic! The caterer’s vegan!”…embrace your Steve.

Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin

That’s by way of explanation, but I’m not really sure what we’re explaining. Except there are sure as heck a lot of these people.

A seemingly limitless army of women bearing Titus on small trays. If you have a strong need of Titus 3:3-6 in your life, I would strongly recommend getting down to the Salvation Army on 183 and Metric. They’ll set you up.

Okay, I really don’t have anything snarky to say about her, except that she’s wearing a LOT of rouge, and I don’t think it works for her unless she’s specifically going for that Raggedy Ann/clown look. And there’s a lot of her, she gains humor through repetition.

Though it’d be kind of neat if my mom ever made me Titus cookies.