Cookies for Luke

I don't know why I'm fascinated by people's grocery lists. Maybe because you find contradictions like this-- rice milk (eeww!) & tofu, along with chicken fingers and sausage.

To my sister Edy

I found this picture on the ground when I was in Jr. high school; it was one of the first random things I saved back in the fledgling stages of my compulsive collecting crap days. Back then, this school picture, with its faux-venetian blind background was pleasantly tacky. Now, having withstood the test of time even worse than the cheesy cloudy sky backdrop that all my school pics had (the default no-frills one), it looks really funny. poor Mary's sweater (which undoubtedly came almost down to her knees as was the style back then) looks like an ancient relic. Ah, the school school-picture experience memories come flooding back-- the carefully placed hand on face, the vacant smile that one only contorts their face into for pictures of this nature... I Recently dug out of a box of random crap I found, the best part of this picture is the note on the back of the picture, which is signed "from LOVE Mary." I didn't know either Edy or Mary; I assume they went to different schools from me.

The Monkees Go Mod

OK, this isn't exactly a salvage; I actually paid 10 cents for this at a garage sale, but I like it for the same weird, voyeuristic reasons.

Let me introduce a little slice of cultural history in paperback form:



What makes this book awesome is the former owner's apparent dislike of Peter Tork. I mean, it's not funny that he or she didn't like Peter; he was always my favorite. It's funny how thorough he or she was at defacing Peter's picture and even his name thoroughout the pages.

Let's start with angrily scratched X's on the cover:


Open the book and it is filled with crossed out pictures of Mr. Tork, ranging from a lazy "Peter kinda stinks"




to full-on PETER TORK ATE MY BABY!!!


Note how Peter's name is also crossed out on his chair. This person's hatred of the man who wrote the closing theme to the Monkees TV show spared nothing, including Peter's own biography pages:





Oddly, the book owner has circled the word "Chicago." Chicago. What could it mean? Is the book's owner (I'm sick of writing "the book's former owner" all the time, so from here on, I will refer to him or her as Spanky.) from Chicago? Does Spanky like to listen to the band Chicago? Did he or she take a really nice vacaion there once? Alas, we shall never have more insight into Spanky's psyche.

We do, know, however, that Spanky doesn't approve of smoking, as evidenced by this annotation of Davy Jones:


Here's a close-up of that lightly-pencilled in X:



This small declaration of anti-smoking is nothing compared to the streams of snot, horns and moustaches that poor Peter got in ballpoint pen. The defacing of Peter's images were done with such vigor that the pages were dented 3 pages later.



What did Peter Tork ever do to Spanky? What?!?!?