Camera Phone Horror

My sister and I recently went with our mom to Asheville, NC to celebrate her 71st birthday (my mom's, not my sister's), and we had a blast. Asheville is a beautiful city, picturesque and poetic, and it simply demands to be photographed. So obviously you're all dying to see pictures of the inside of a few shops, no? Allow me to take you on a tour of a few hilarious/terrifying shops (actually, one shop and one shoppe) we visited so mom could browse through figurines and stuff, which she's currently in the market for more of (she's always in the market for more figurines).

'Tis the season for bunnies dressed in their best spring threads, which in this case were stitched from your Aunt Sadie's bedspread.

Mom always loved your Aunt Sadie's bedspread.

A terrifying Easter Bunny ornament for your Easter Tree.

A Christmas ornament based on that scary Christmas ornament you used to dream about.

This is the expression Santa has when he doesn't like the cookies you leave him.

Watership Down meets Holly Hobbie.

Well, I guess I know what I'll be dreaming about later.

This is another shop we found, one with a reverence for the olden days when the world had a surplus of the letter e.

(Shudder)

I think this is the point in the browsing when I got a headache and had to sit down.

Wait, is that Gandalf in the back?

There is a great deal of pathos in this photo.

So much tinsel.

Mom needed a bear.

Because f*ck traveling in a sleigh.

Mom got a bear.

Mom's Annual Christmas Horror Show: A Photo/Video Essay

Mom is awesome and she loves Christmas. Every year she gets a little bit crazier with the decorations, and this year's wonderfully garish gallery of Christmas kookiness provides the long-sought-after answer to the question that generations before us have posed to the Gods for centuries: "Why not dress that duck figurine perched in front of the fireplace in a Santa costume?" The above video is what greets you as you enter the house, a motion-sensor Christmas Moose that IS VERY SENSITIVE TO ANY AIR MOVING IN FRONT OF ITS FACE AND OFTEN SINGS UNTIL YOU THINK YOU'LL LOSE YOUR MIND.


Nativity scene #1, with Mary and Joseph welcoming the newborn baby Jesus and the three wisemen welcoming the birth of that big black plug.


Mrs. Clause and her magical Christmas dildo.


Nativity scene #2, this one on the piano. Mary is played by Patricia Clarkson and Joseph is played by Ryan Gosling's older brother.


This creepy little elf/dwarf/gnome thing also greets you when you enter the house, staring and pointing with both hands. (Both hands!) I think the most unsettling thing is you can't see his mouth. One should never trust an elf whose mouth one cannot see, like it says in the Bible.

Nativity scene #3, this one courtesy of me! Bought this for momma in Buenos Aires.

Why did this Christmas angel steal Mrs. Clause's magic Christmas dildo? Christmas is supposed to be about giving, not taking, Christmas angel!

Nativity scene #4.

Dieter the Christmas duck.

I wonder if Mom has noticed that her lovely tree is being eated by that angel's dress.

Nativity scene #5, about to be eated by that angel's dress.

The angel and her ravenous dress.

Lillybit the dog is creeped out by that elf, too.