Well, having some unexpected free time, we went back to Goodwill and found some glasses. They weren’t the ones we’d come up with initially, but they’ll do. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy picking through the glassware at Goodwill – it’s like a giant, transparent, three-dimensional puzzle, and your challenge is to find the items that match. Since the glasses are transparent, generally a bit grungy, and poorly lit, it’s quite challenging. The little kids kicking soccer balls around in the aisle behind you as you step back to get a longer view complete this transcendent shopping experience. I highly recommend it, and will continue building matched sets amid the chaos for hours, until pulled away by Viv.

Wandering the cavernous store I took some pictures of interesting gimcracks. I have assembled them here for your viewing pleasure.

This primitive spam machine comes complete with a mailing list.

At the exit, you’ll be pleased to know, the management has made a concerted effort to cater to the needs of the post-atomic hipster with these rare Polynesian craft-charms. These “primitive symbols of nature” undoutedly reflect centuries of craftsmen’s secrets and the ancient spiritual wisdom of the South Seas.

As we were browsing I happened to come upon what I will argue to be the most radical and confrontational public exhibit of art I have ever encountered in a Goodwill. The pieces were all available for sale, uncredited. I do not think I am wrong in crediting them to a single unknown artist.

The first piece I encountered, which enunciates the theme of the show, is this one. It charges radically past the boundaries of traditional collectible-sculpture aesthetics. The base features a quote from President George Bush – “The advance of human freedom – the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time – now depends on us.” Yet the still-recognizable profile of the Statue or Liberty, defiled and broken, mocks these words. Dangling from the neck are a pair of bare wires. It’s a clear reference to Abu Ghraib and ancillary torture policies such as the deliberate deportation suspects to friendly, torture-using states. Rarely if ever has a Goodwill played host to such an evisceration of a sitting American President. Buy it now, and get a gallery show!

Here, the unknown artist has crafted a loving homage to exploitation movies of the past fifty years while simultaneously managing to keep the theme of torture in the air.

In this disturbing diptych, the same artist now tackles the effects of torture – and, it must be noted, makes a glancing reference to Western ideas concerning Islamic jurisprudence. Taking as their starting place a Norman Rockwell painting, the unknown artist has, shockingly, dismembered the child. The infant gazes in shock at the stumps of their forearms while a doctor gazes helplessly on. Only on closer examination do we realize that the beloved professional is himself the victim of dismemberment. Too shocked to acknowledge his recent loss, the now-missing hand is clenched in fruitless determination about the physician’s very emblem: his stethoscope. America’s turn toward the dark side has removed trust, self-awareness, and competence from the domestic landscape, the sculptor argues.

In what this critic found to be the most disturbing piece of the show, the artist trangresses the boundaries of gender, sexual orientation, and what is delicately known as “the furry barrier” with this image of what is presumably the artist’s prescriptive remedy to the degradation and impotence of the preceding works. Like Jimmy Stewart in High Noon, the figure stands at the door to the church, ready for action. The fact that this sheriff is not so much a cowboy as a cow, beteated belly unleashed in what can only be described as the mother of all wardrobe malfunctions, outs the radicality of the artist’s approach. The fact that the cow is also dressed in a gay man’s fetish uniform, featuring chaps, puts us all on notice: the gay furry cow sherriff is a-comin’, and she is pissed!

It’s clobberin’ time, friends. Are you right with the Goddess?

Fortunately, hir mercy is a fountain, or rather hand-pump, that flows from the heads of angels, and surely our hands will be free from chaps for the rest of our days, ever and ever, amen. May the heavenly angel of hand-lotion (or hand-soap, emphasizing the clean-hands thesis of this critique) remain with you unto the end of your days.

As noted, when we left the Goodwill, each of these items remained available for sale. Hurry!