BS: More stuff you just can't live without!

Subject: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 May 08 - 10:14 PM

Check this out!

Available for a limited time only!!!

There are two houses in my area which actually have this stuff on their front lawns. The cow, the fat lady bending over, the cowboy...they've got 'em all. Wow, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 May 08 - 11:41 AM

That's cute. But I provide my own gardener butt bent over pulling weeks moving around the front lawn, I don't need immovable yard art.

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 May 08 - 11:48 AM

Gimmee a time Maggie so I can get pictures................

Already laughed over that one as I am, pathetic as it may be, a Family Guy junkie.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: gnu
Date: 20 May 08 - 12:57 PM

What about the foot wide butterflies on the house?

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 20 May 08 - 03:02 PM

I haven't seen the butterflies for some years now. Of course, there's always the ceramic cat climbing the house face towards the roof.

I have to admit to a couple tasteful flamingoes (since, try as I might, I just can't seem to find any yard squid) ... and a couple not so tasteful flamingoes (thanks, Sinsull).

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: frogprince
Date: 20 May 08 - 03:23 PM

We were "trailer trash" the first few months we were married. One of our neighbors had a yard just chuck full of faux critters; plastic squirrels in the little trees, "classic" flamingoes, God knows now just what all. Finally my wife caught the husband mowing the lawn one day, pulling up all the stuff, cussing a blue streak, and flinging it. Now we have a neighbor two lots away who puts out a completely new theme presentation of stuff fairly frequently; right now he has a small army of gnomes out.

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 May 08 - 03:29 PM

I think the concrete geese are up there somewhere. I see several places where the people have than all costumed up and one house we pass changes the outfit monthly to coincide with holidays or times of the year......Santa Goose, Uncle Sam Goose, Cupid Goose (a real winner), Pilgrim Goose.......you get the idea.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 May 08 - 03:50 PM

That's a hell of an idea, Spaw. I hope it catches on around here soon. Seasonally costumed concrete geese! Wow.

It's right up there with Crudely-Painted-Not-So-Funny-Cut-Out-Plywood-Folk-Art....dontcha love how he says that over and over again in the ad?

Man, I just can't get enough of Family Guy. It's like a disease.

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 May 08 - 04:50 PM

I have 2 pink flamingoes, but one is kinda quirky and won't stand up... I call that one Flink and the other one Pam (get it? Flink Pamingoes?)... and the real hippie down the street has one but it's way taller than mine.

I like them!

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 May 08 - 05:13 PM

I read that they stopped making pink flamingos a few years ago, so now they must be collectors' items.

I think the concrete geese are up there somewhere. I see several places where the people have than all costumed up

I was at the next door neighbor's house one day and had the pitbull on her leash with me. They have a resin goose on the porch and my dog was startled by it and ended up knocking the thing over. It's head fell off. I told my neighbor I was sorry about that, but she said it wasn't worth paying anything to replace. The next time I was over I noticed the goose was wearing a faux feather boa to hide the repair.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: RangerSteve
Date: 20 May 08 - 06:53 PM

There was a plywood dog at the foot of a driveway I passed on my way to work. He was positioned so it looked as if he was running out onto the road. I hit my brakes quite a few times before I finally got used to it.

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 20 May 08 - 07:00 PM

The "fat lady bending over" was so popular a few years ago that my wife and I started calling them "yard butts." I can't remember where we got that term. Did one of us make it up?

My wife is a connoisseur of bad taste. She wouldn't allow any of this stuff in our yard, mind you, but she LOVES to see it when we go driving around in the countryside—never fails to remark gleefully when she sees it: "There's one!"

Funny thing—I have NEVER seen a yard butt in the city, only in rural areas. I wonder why? Maybe they get stolen. I'll bet that's it!

On one of our spring-break trips, around Easter, we started noticing Easter-egg trees—trees with plastic Easter-eggs tied to the branches with little bits of yarn or string.

More things we like to notice, when we travel:

&'s—Businesses, especially convenience stores, with an "&", or better yet, the word 'n' in the middle—Stop & Shop—Pump 'n' Dump (OK, I made that up)—Kum & Go (that's for real). I wish I had kept a list of all the good ones we've seen.

Here's a visual pun that I've seen several examples of. Another example.

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 May 08 - 07:16 PM

Pump 'n' Dump is a great idea. Place little porta-potties right near the gas pumps so people can fill up and lighten up all at one stop!

Hey, anyone seen the ad for Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man? It's a TV ad by the same enthusiastically hollering guy that's selling the Crudely-Painted-Not-So-Funny-Cut-Out-Plywood-Folk-Art. The Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man is a delightful conversation piece that can be used for a variety of handy purposes both at home and on the job. Be sure and get your Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man soon! That's **** Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man ****, only available at the Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man Emporium and Warehouse Store!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 May 08 - 07:28 PM

Rural eastern Ohio has always had more than their fair share of yards in tune with god knows what. I think it starts with white painted tractor tires as flower beds and then grows. First up after that is a bird bath followed by a sundial. You need gourd birdhouses on a pole and another pole with hummingbird feeders or better yet, hang them on shepherd hooks. There are windmills, lighthouses, oil derricks, and all maner of little gnomey dudes. Many still have jockey hitching posts although the "boys" are now white (mostly). I think the feature piece in most yards is always the "Gazing Ball." A mirror finished glass ball about a foot or more across in a variety of colors---blue, red, green, orange, purple, silver---Usually set in the middle of a large and featured flower bed, the idea I guess is to see your yard and flowers reflected back at you in a funhouse manor.

I could go on and on......Much of this stuff is made of clay pottery as eastern Ohio is mainly clay laden soil, good for pottery and sewr pipe. The little towns where I grew up had 21 operating sewer pipe plants back before plastics came along.........All gone now pretty much and most of the brick plants also. They still have a "Clay Festival" though! That's something else we're big on...festivals.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: GUEST,Jim Dixon
Date: 21 May 08 - 02:25 PM

Driving through rural Wisconsin, as I often do, the most commonly seen lawn decoration is probably rusting obsolete farm machinery. I've seen old steam-powered threshing machines, horse-pulled corn planters and hay rakes and the like, and some stuff I don't know the functions or names of. I guess the farmers are proud of having been in business long enough to have accumulated the stuff, and want to show it off.

Some people weld together old stuff to make whimsical new stuff. I've seen oil tanks and milk cans made into cows and pigs, and the funniest thing I ever saw was a bicycle where the front wheel had been replaced by a push-lawnmower. I don't think it would work, but I don't think it was meant to--probably just a joke, and a good one. I wish I had a picture.

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 May 08 - 02:57 PM

I have noticed that when junk is around long enough it becomes an artifact, and then you're not allowed to touch it.

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Becca72
Date: 21 May 08 - 03:02 PM

Around here we get a lot of what my sister and I call "Mary on the halfshell"...a statue of The Virgin Mary in a half-sunk bathtube or other such structure.

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: JennieG
Date: 21 May 08 - 07:08 PM

Becca, there is a Mary in her bathtub not far from me, she is known in Oz too. And something that used to be seen a lot here is the large car tyre, slit and somehow pulled inside itself so that it forms a swan shape, painted white (of course!), usually placed in pairs one each side of the front steps.

Very tasteful.

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: GUEST,Seiri Omaar
Date: 21 May 08 - 08:29 PM

St. Bridget's, Ottawa, has one of those Mary-in-a-tubs I believe. The tub is blue vs a stone statue of her... kind of strange contrast.

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 May 08 - 12:06 PM

I would like to set up one of those Mary-in-the-halfshell things up at my place, only with Winona Ryder in it. Well, an effigy of Winona Ryder, I mean.

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: gnu
Date: 22 May 08 - 07:18 PM

But, only during the day? You would bring her in at night, I would expect?

Subject: RE: BS: More stuff you just can't live without!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 May 08 - 08:27 PM

Well, naturally. I would not want her getting cold and uncomfortable or being bothered by prowlers, heaven forbid! And I'd bring her in if it was raining too.