Lamprey Snowman in Blue Beret

Who is also the sheriff

Sometimes I am Rigid About Details

Anatomy lesson! The white part of the eye is called the sclera.

It's the fibrous protective layer that keeps all of your eye goo safe and free of dirt and lint and stuff. It's typically white, unless you have jaundice. What it typically isn't, is blue. Now, this is the second character we've seen this year with an azure gaze: Admonitory Santa had Blue Sclera Disease, too.
By the way, it's called Osteogenesis imperfecta, it's a horrible disease and I'm not making fun of people who have it. 

Sure, ok, these things are mass-produced, generally in factories in countries where Christmas isn't even celebrated. I get that. But I've also got to imagine that regardless of whether you know who Frosty is or not, you've seen human eyes before.

And yes, Frosty isn't a human being, granted, but he isn't from Arrakis, either. He's meant to be human-like. Human-ish. Human-esque.

He is also supposed to have two eyes made of coal, and any other interpretation is clearly diverging from the originating song. I blame the 1969 animated version for this blatant use of artistic license.  Frosty originally had two coal eyes, but when he came to life, they got all googly. More expressive! the animators cried. Heresy, says I. Two eyes made of coal.

Is that a mandolin he's holding? What is that?

+1 for the ceramic Joseph photobomb, too.

Snowmoebas!

Are they carrot-nosed bacteria?

Do single-celled organisms have (five) eyes made out of coal?

Even Escherichia coli love Christmas!

Día de los Snowman

My assumption is that this little fella is supposed to appear as though he is made of stained glass. My first reaction was that there's something inherently wrong with the concept of stained glass snowmen to begin with. 

 

Oh how wrong I was.

 

Apparently stained glass snowmen are a thing.

 

They're generally in the form of lamps.

 

This snowman, however, is not a lamp, nor is he made of stained glass. He's made of wood. Balsa, by the weight of him.

 

And no matter how much my brain reassures me that he's holding a broom, I see him holding an alto saxophone.

Christmas Awesome is dead. Long live Christmas Awesome.

 

Life gets in the way.

 

Mrs. Elfenstein and I have had, admittedly, a tough year. So when I received a notice that my domain renewal for christmas-awesome.com was up, I declined to renew, thinking, I just don't have the time and there wasn't that much interest anyway.

 

We've continued, of course, collecting ornaments and assorted holiday nightmares for our personal collection over the summer. It's an expensive hobby, though, and this year was tighter than past years.

 

I thought my blogging days were over.

 

But I also upgraded to a smartphone over the summer. I recently realized that I don't have to buy every freaky thing I see . . . I can just take pictures of them.

 

So here we are, December 2012. It's unseasonably warm, it's rumored to be the end of the world, I can't stop now.

 

I've moved the 2011 posts to Blogger, rounded up the summer's bounty, downloaded all of the pictures on my phone, and am ready to do it Elfenstein style.

 

On to the awesome!

 

This side-of-the-road farm decided to festive up their chain-link fence for the season. And around these parts, the way to scream: we love Xmas!! is to hang a snowman by his neck until dead.  

 

Festive

Snowmen of the Damned

We think these are supposed to be snowmen. The kind of snowmen Nathaniel Hawthorne would have made.

What I do know about them is that I find them unsettling. At initial glance, they seem to be merry enough, despite being Puritans. They’re smiling. What’s not to love?

But then you hang them on the tree and really start looking at them.

You start looking at their eyes. 

Their eyes.

Go into the kitchen. 

It’s ok. 

Everything is fine. 

Go. 

Go now.

That’s it. Get the knife. In the drawer. Get the knife.

No! No! I defy you! Get thee behind me, felt demons . . .