I was woken up by this morning by a friend calling to ask me along to The Bins, the place where Goodwill items go to die. They sell clothes per pound there, and you have to pick through big piles in the eponymous bins, shelves being an unnecessary luxury. I've been once before, and it's a definite treasure-hunting experience -- one person's trash is very literally another's treasure here. Most of this proof is in the pictures, both of utterly baffling junk like this GI Joe grooming kit (???)



and totally surprising finds



like this book of records from 1904. I left most things where I found them, except for a bona-fide 8-track tape, something I had never seen before,



a potato masher, which I plan to boil before using, given the general skeeviness of the whole place, and, the big find, a light up, moving reindeer!



I have long wanted one of these, not to inflict on my neighbors at Christmas, but to gut and light on fire. (In the ancient Norse tradition, straw goats were burned at midwinter for Thor. My plan involves newspaper and lighter fluid stuffed in a metal reindeer, which seems like a close enough modern approximation to me.) As soon as I can get all the plastic crap off, and hopefully remove the servos, which my partner is excited about, I'm planning a firey test run in the back yard.