Life Without Taffy

I found this great Olan Mills family portrait at a thrift store. 40 cents later and it was mine. I wasn’t a big fan of the frame so I was going to move the picture into another one and I found these other two photos behind it. I’m guessing this one is for a high school yearbook photo or something:

And this one, this one is the best. Of ever.

Another thrift store find from the other day was this book on gas warfare from 1975:

I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, but I pretty much got it for the pictures anyways. Like this guy in an early French gas mask. It was pretty much just 32 layers of the finely woven cotton fabric muslin.

A recent thrift store acquisition. For 20 cents I couldn’t pass it up.

Artwork from the Guinness Book Of Phenomenal Happenings from 1976. I just picked it up from the local thrift store the other day for a quarter. I dig the heck out of the artwork by Kenneth Laager.

This is the largest Easter egg ever. Made in Australia in 1974, it was  6 feet high, 13 feet 3 1/2 inches in circumference. The thing weighed 648 pounds. Not too sure if this record still stands or not.

A quick googling says it doesn’t.

Some recent thrift store acquisitions:

This one was a little too surreal to pass up. A cowboy riding a seahorse. The vaguely homo-erotic nature of the shirt, the seahorse in particular. The back of the shirt mentions David Flower Productions. After a quick googling, I find out: yep, it’s gay. Although I am not, I still dig the shirt and will continue to wear it.

I have a rule when frequenting the local thrift stores: if it’s signed, buy it. I have several record albums and books signed by authors, artists and musicians, but this is the first t-shirt. I probably would’ve bought it anyway. It turns out that Dr. Thomas Moore is nationally recognized as an early childhood consultant, keynote speaker, workshop leader, and children’s recording artist. At least that’s what his bio page on his website says.

I got a super-fantastic book from the local thrift store (always a great place to find old kids books for 20 cents): Health Safety & Manners 1. It was produced with the Pensacola Christian School in 1983 and it’s awesome. The photos are all amazing such as the ones above. I saw them side by side in the book and had to animate them. There’s some more goodness I’ll be sharing with y’all soon. Stay tuned.

Today on Boing Boing there was a little piece about velvet unicorn paintings. Heck, we have two hanging in our bedroom that we got at the thrift shops on two different occasions. Yeah!

So what an awesome trip to the Salvation Army today. Oh, yes. An autographed picture of former World Wrestling Federation Champion Tatanka. I’m considering changing my name to Dustin so it’d be like it was for me. That and I got it for a buck fifty rather than the $45 he charges for them.

So I was out thrifting with the girlfriend today and I saw this monstrosity hanging on the wall at the local Salvation Army. Beautiful and somewhat grotesque at the same time. I had to have it. The girlfriend doesn’t care for it that much, but I could look at it for hours. Freaking hours. Sometimes bad art is loads better that actual art. Where do I even begin with this one. Dang. The complete disregard for actual anatomy? The Windows? That guy hiding to the woman’s left with the jar on his head? This shit is fantastic. I have this hanging right above the computer I’m typing this up on. Anytime I want I can look right and see this bastard up on the wall and know I got something special.