Holy frijole, that SkyMall catalogue is such fun. I shall be revisiting it before long (probably during the holidays when I will have the time to scan crap).
Our own English crapfest catalogues (the bewilderingly kitsch Argos gift catalogue and the WTF-fest Innovations catalogue - thanks for the reminder, Lynn) are almost as bad and I shall endeavour to get hold of copies to reassure our Colonial Cousins that they are not alone in their inexplicable yen for tasteless tackiness.
The "collectible" trash in SkyMall reminded me of a dear friend who once got bitten by the "collectible" bug.
Well not just bitten but comprehensively savaged …
So … Are you sitting comfortably?
If not, arm yourself with a cup of coffee and a nice biscuit and settle in for a true yet tedious tale of love and loss among the SkyMall people.
Once upon a time there lived in Norwich a girl called Lemony.
Lemony was my secretary for several years; a sweet, pretty girl, very good at her job, great fun to have around the office, made a good cup of coffee, filed like a dæmon and indeed was quite normal in almost every respect.
Talk to her for any length of time, however, and it became apparent that something was missing in there.
Lemony had lived all her life with her oddball mother in a house full of feathery screeching, psittacosis and birdshit (made even more maddening by being located right under the flightpath at the end of the airport runway) but was now spreading her own wings at last in her late twenties and had bought herself a nice little house.
When I popped round to see it, what was missing in Lemony became apparent; she possessed not one scintilla of a real life outside of her deranged batshit-for-brains mother and the dreary office.
Much to my dismay, however, she soon found a purpose in life … she began to collect "collectible heirlooms".
For want of anything to do one dreary Sunday afternoon Lemony fell victim to one of those awful Franklin Mint ads and "invested" half a week's wages in a "collectible" plate … basically a dinner plate with a picture of a cat on it, excitingly "created by a world famous collectible artist" who nobody had ever heard of.
Nice …
"That's very pretty, Lemony, but I do think it was a little expensive for a dinner plate with a picture of a cat on it."
Against my cynical advice that wasting her money on these things would not pay her pension, sweet yet empty little Lemony started on a spending spree, plundering her savings account and filling her sweet yet empty little house with hundreds of these appalling, ugly, cheap and trashy "heirloom investments".
She - with more than a little help from Franklin Mint - convinced herself that these worthless pieces of crap would gain exponentially - indeed miraculously - in value and that in a few years she would be able to prove me wrong and pay off her mortgage by selling a few to slavering fellow collectors.
What made all of this even harder to watch was that Lemony somehow managed to find a kindred spirit in one of Elaine's cast-off Marks (Elaine from the tax office spent several years serial-dating guys called Mark, to whom she referred as Mark 1, Mark 2, Mark 3, etc. This was not a conscious decision to start with but after the first three she decided to roll with it and kept going up to Mark 7).
Anyhoo … Mark 4 and Lemony hit it off straight away. She came in to the office floating on a cloud of cheap perfume and googly-eyed bliss.
Lemony in love was quite a sight.
Perhaps - I thought foolishly - now she actually has a life she will stop wasting her money on this crap.
Hey ho …
A brief aside:
Mark 4, although a pretty nice guy in most other respects, was in fact a werepig.
Outside of a full moon, werepigs are a lot easier to spot than werewolves - and mercifully less dangerous; simply place a finger under your nose and lift it up so your nostrils face forward.
Werepig.
You know the word "retrousé"? Well, use it as a euphemism if you want, but there's no hiding from the fact that it's a werepig.
You probably know some yourselves. You chat away to them at the water cooler but you can't remember a word they've said as your attention is drawn wholly to the contents of their nose which they are pointing straight at you.
Pray they don't sneeze.
Anyhoo, werepigs are perfectly normal for most of the month but the day after a full moon they wake up naked in your vegetable patch having rooted up all your carrots and trashed your kitchen looking for your truffle oil.
And Lemony was dating one …
Pretty soon one thing led - as it does with tedious inevitability - to another and I found myself helping Mark 4 to move in to Lemony's house one Saturday.
The cause of their mutual attraction soon became clear as we opened his boxes: to the house full of "collector plates" was added several dozen "collectible reproduction antique firearms" (made of plastic) and a quite awe-inspiring quantity of Star Trek, Star Wars and Doctor Who memorabilia and figurines.
It was a match made in "collectible" Heaven!
We started playing a rather cruel game at work.
We got hold of a copy of our own version of SkyMall, the Argos Gift Catalogue and went through it, placing bets on which of the monstrously crappy kitsch items Lemony and her werepig would choose to grace their home.
One of the things we picked was a quite hideous white porcelain "sculpture" (straight out of a mould) of a pair of praying hands. They had a little gap between them and you were supposed to put your TV remote in there.
Boy, did we hit the jackpot with that one! There on the coffee table in front of Lemony's sofa were three (you heard) of these monstrosities, each holding a remote for their TV, video and "home entertainment centre".
Anyhoo, within a worryingly few weeks Lemony and the Mark 4 werepig were marrried and we waved them off on their honeymoon; a two week coach tour of Germany and Austria during which they learned that they had nothing in common outside of collecting "collectibles" and by the end of the second day they could not stand to be in the same room together, let alone jammed against one another on a coach.
They grimly stuck it out for the whole two weeks as neither of them had been abroad before and they didn't want to waste the holiday, but as soon as they got home the Mark 4 werepig was ejected from Lemony's house together with his plastic "collectible reproduction antique firearms" and his nutjob hoard of sci-fi trash.
Lemony - much to her credit - took stock of her life and reined in her "collectible" collecting, boxing the whole shebang up and shoving it all in the attic.
Once the mutually agreed interspecies divorce came through she sold up (redeeming her collection at less than a hundredth of what she had paid for it - each of her "investments" revealed to be worth slightly less than a second hand dinner plate) and moved to the southern colonies where she appears - from the occasional email - to be leading a normal life as a slightly batty but sweet expat Englishwoman.
Make of this sorry tale what you will, but I advise you to never buy anything advertised as "collectible" or "heirloom" and to stay the fuck away from werepigs.
This has been a public service broadcast.
32 comments:
oh.my.gawddddd.
that was hilarious, but incredibly instructive, sugar! xoxoxo
The story, at least, is priceless!
"They had a little gap between them and you were supposed to put your TV remote in there." OMG! That's worse than the chocolate Pieta.
A true and tragic tale, Savannah. Thankfully Lemony is now doing pretty well for herself. She came home on vacation a couple of years back and we had a lovely lunch together during which she showed me photos of her apartment, mercifully free of collectibles.
xoxoxo
You know what's worse is tose little hummels and snow babies....what are THOSE all about? Squishy faced kids in snow suits?
Hee hee, Katherine. I hope to get hold of one of those catalogues soon. I think they still sell those awful things.
And I'll get on to the kid and animal horrors in Sky Mall over the holidays.
Watch this space, kitsch crap fans.
Goodness. I know what you mean about these collectible - and I use the word advisedly - plates. Just yesterday in the auction we had a whole load which someone had clearly collected for years and we couldn't budge for love nor money. I think that's very sad, if not criminal, to make such claims against these bits of transferred china. Yuck, but these people have been duped, in my view. People who, though should but, do not know any better.
Poor ole Lemony. How COULD you sit there with the Argos cat. choosing out vile items she might have in her home? Ahh. Snigger. I wonder where she and werepig are now and what they're into. Purchase wise I mean, of course.
I totally agree, Lynn. These things are a tax on the stupid.
Lemony is fine now (see my answer to Savannah's comment above), though nobody has seen hide nor hair of the werepig for years; perhaps he's were-bacon.
I'm so glad the story turned out well for Lemony! I was getting very sad thinking of her surrounded by worthless heirlooms. Even though things mercifully didn't work out with the werepig, it sounds like maybe his collection of crap, which was what I gather made him initially attractive to Lemony, was maybe what short-circuited her collection impulse and she suddenly saw the insanity of it. I wish her many years of clutter-free living.
That said, when I went to Europe in the 80s I collected those cheap plastic snowglobes from many of the cities I visited (purely for the kitsch value). I kept them until about 1995 when I was a volunteer at a psychiatric nursing home in Minneapolis and saw the barren rooms of many of the residents. Not a single thing to brighten the otherwise frightening drabness of the concrete walls. So I pulled out my collection, carefully refilled each one with water, and handed them out at Christmas to all the residents that were in a position to receive one. From the reaction I got, you'd have thought I was handing out Fabrege eggs or something. Some teeny tiny part of my brain misses seeing it snow on the Eiffel Tower, and Big Ben, and and . . . ok I'm over it.
Great little tale,dive. and speaking of tail...Lemony?
Did she win any Star Wars collectibles in the divorce?
WOAH! SNOWGLOBES !
COOOOOOOL!
Awww Katie! What a wonderful gift to your patients. Everybody loves snowglobes. Me included.
Now I know just what I'm going to bring home from Paris next year.
As for Lemony (not her real name, just my pet name for her); you are right about the overdosing on collectibles. Even before the wedding she would come in to the office in the morning and moan that they had been arguing about whose crap got pride of place in their display cabinets.
I'm glad she managed to escape the addiction. She really seems to be doing well these days.
Rich: Yes, Lemony was pretty, but not the sort of girl you want to have around your house. Were she sane and were she not encumbered with her mother I would probably have asked her out, but mercifully for both of us she was as mad as a chocolate sun-hat.
Hee hee, Katherine. No; the divorce was amicable. They realised their mistake and just backed away from it. Probably the most sensible thing either of them had ever done.
I like snowglobes too! Though I know them as snowstorms. I haven't had one for years. It's a must.
Great story Dive. I think you helped save her.
Dive have you seen the old Pixar short called "Knick Knack"? Great little adventure of a poor snowman trapped in a snowglobe. I'm relieved that you didn't mock me mercilessly for having once collected those. I'm sure we'll be able to find you a really nice one in Paris next year!
Good thing the pair didn't have time to have collectible children together.
And tell me Dive, as a foreigner I must be missing something but how does a girl earn the name Lemony?
Lynn: Every home should have a snow globe; the tackier the better.
Mark: We certainly had enough arguments about it all, poor girl. At least she managed to escape the clutches of "collector" hell.
Katie: No, I've not seen that one but it sounds great fun. If ever you get to see the English surreal gothic horror comedy The League Of Gentlemen (the TV series, not the crappy Sean Connery movie), you'll discover just why snow globes are "precious things".
Nathalie: Children! Augh! That would have been a true horror story!
As for Lemony's name; it was not Lemony. Lemony (I love saying that) was my pet name for her. She still uses it in our emails.
Yes but Nathalie's question wasn't answered, dear Dive! HOW did she EARN that nickname? Pah! Men, huh, Nathalie? They never give us the details we want.
By the way Dive whilst I'm telling you off, you asked us to do the question meme thingy, I've put it on Things blog and you didn't come! In fact... no-one has...! LOL. I'm all dressed up and nowhere to go. Where ARE you?
Poor Lemony. Beautifully told story though, Dive
Lynn: I am compiling questions and I'll pop across during the holidays. aAs for Lemony, I honestly can't remember how the name came about. It was a long time ago.
Mme: Thank you. I'm glad it all turned out alright in the end.
I've already fallen for the 'collectable' nonsense, the warning came too late but thanks for the sentiment.
And Merry Humbug to ya!
thanks Lynn for understanding my point. Hadn't I expressed myself correctly?
I completely agree with dive and Katie about snowglobes.
Ah, but at least you collect guitars, Istvanski!
Nathalie: I am never sure what women mean when they speak. It is a failing that has plagued me all my life and leaves me dateless and unloved.
Sigh …
As for snowglobes … YAY!
I love the name Lemony. I picture a sort of frail, swishy haired blonde woman with pale pink lips.
Lemony is around five-three, slim, fit with long dark hair and is quite lovely to look at. Not so lovely to listen to, however.
Dive,
You have all the makings of a great Indy film here.
I am amazed at the things people gather and heap, er "collect". My neighbor was a beanie baby fanatic. She wouldn't let her daughter play with the things. She stashed them in the attic.
She was appalled that I let my kids actually "play" with them. They are toys for God's sake.
I don't get the "collecting" thing.
I'm with you there, Neetzy. A have friends whose attics and bedrooms are stuffed full of toys still unopened in their boxes and that will never be played with.
It baffles me.
On a similar note, I remember when I ordered my last guitar. It was a custom built PRS and cost a little more than my car did new. The people at PRS were appalled that I was going to play it; all the other custom built specials sit in climate controlled rooms and are never touched. "Collectors" use thm as investments.
Mine is a dream to play and I was really pleased when the gold plating started to wear off the pickups and it began to look used.
What a waste of a beautiful instrument merely to keep it unplayed. I never understood that.
Hey ho.
That's interesting Dive since all in your life seems pristine so I wouldn't have been surprised to hear you are keeping the guitar in a box, glazed and loved from afar! I am like this with books though, I like them read (not abused) but used looking and loved as they have been. I don't mind them looking worn. You don't extend this to your books, I know!
Compiling a list of Qs! Goodness. Should I be scared?
Instruments, toys, cars, dolls...these are meant to be played, used, driven. They can be mothballed and admired after they have been used, but for God's sake, turning an object into a shrine is a bit weird.
I just spend approx. two grand on my daughter's new flute. It is sterling silver after all! She auditioned for and made the county junior symphony. She is playing the damned instrument! I do not want to see it in a glass case!
That sounds like a superb instrument, Neetzy. And it is being put to very good use, being played and being heard. Wonderful!
You are a great mom!
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