3.24.2008

Barrelhouse Invitational: What the fuck is this fucking thing?



Remember when you were younger, when stores would sometimes put a bunch of jellybeans or marbles or other smallish doodads in a big glass jar, set the jar on a counter or table in an area of the store where everyone (even children, or very short people) could get a good look at both the jar and its contents, and then next to the jar would be a little box, with a slit cut through the top, and a stack of tiny blank cards on which you were to write down a number, plus your name (of course) and a phone number where you could be reached (of course), and then if your guess was the closest to the actual number of jellybeans or marbles or other smallish doodads you'd win some sort of prize -- a gift certificate, perhaps, or a Swiss Army knife, or maybe just all the jellybeans or marbles or other doodads (sans the jar, unless the shop owner in question was a particularly generous shop owner, and not a miser, as most shop owners are)?

Well, today we're going to play a similar game. Except there's no glass jar, or jellybeans, or marbles, or other fancy doodads. There's just this ... thing (above), which was sitting, unattended, on a bench down the block from my house, at approximately 7:00 pm, Monday night, near a health-food store named Essene, which sells strange-smelling vegetarian dishes and wildly overpriced cookies.

The object of the game, the thing to write on your little slip of paper (i.e., the comments field of the blog), is: what the fuck is this fucking thing?

I know the photo is of dubious quality, but believe me when I tell you that a clearer photo would not at all help when it comes to the guessing. I can tell you the material of the thing is something akin to papier mache, though I confess I didn't touch it, for obvious reasons. I wish I could tell you whether this thing is in its original condition, or broken, or maimed, or not as it was intended, but, unfortunately, I cannot. I stared at it for a good long while, and still I have no idea.

I'm not sure how to crown a winner, since I don't, so to speak, actually know how many jellybeans or marbles or doodads are in the proverbial glass jar. All I know is that this thing, whatever the fuck it is, will surely haunt me in both my sleeping and waking hours.

So, Barrelhousers, what say you? What the fuck is this fucking thing?

9 comments:

JP said...

Whatever it is, there's a dog humping it. Thusly, my guess is that it's Heidi Montag.

In a snowsuit.

Drunk.

And dead.

cmq said...

Theories (yeah, I'm cheating with more than one answer -- what are you gonna do about it?):
1) voodoo doll (watch the f*ck out)
2) shrunken body missing its head
3) mummy
4) child's art project on the importance of recycling and the tragic waste that is the plastic bag
5) a viral marketing scheme designed to get Essene free ad space on the Barrelhouse blog (mission accomplished!)

Mike Ingram said...

a) I'm not sure that's a dog (it may, in fact, just be part of the thing).

b) the rest of you people don't have any guesses? Really? I've got to say, I was pretty much counting on Pease to solve this mystery.

JP said...

You're saying this thing:

(dog head)

is NOT a dog's head?

cmq said...

The dog head theory is just implausible -- that thing looks as much like a dog's head as it does a bowl of oatmeal, a ball of rubberbands, or stuffed panda bear. And it raises the question -- how did the dog make its lonesome way to the bench to take up this particular affair?

Anonymous said...

Looks like an alien from Planet Out of Focus Pink.

Anonymous said...

It's a dog sniffing the butt of a passed out, possibly dead, very possibly plunger sodomized Easter Bunny. Happy now, Mike?

Mike Ingram said...

I wouldn't say "happy."

Satisfied, yes.

dave said...

This thing is clearly the empty husk of a Mummer, raped and sucked dry by vampire aliens and left as a warning to the rest of us. The vampire aliens are here, people, and it's not just Mummers they're looking for. Mummers first, yes, but not just. Watch your backs.