News Of the Weird - Show and Tell

[bort]

C'mon Joe, my "past" is not going to be a secret if everyone knows it. Not to mention the secrets of time travel -- again, sshhh! -- since my parents hadn't even met yet in the late 1960s.

The weirdest thing I own?

Probably a large wall tapestry from the early 1970s shows 2 tigers in a jungle. My dad was in the Air Force, and bought it during a trip to Libya. It's sort of like this:


It's packed away in storage quasi-permanently. It's too kitschy and weird to get rid of, but it hung on the wall in my grandparents' house for about 20 years... and they were very heavy smokers. It smells absolutely horrendous. I tried airing it out for an entire summer, and everything possible to get the cigarette smell out of it, but no luck.

[bisontuba]

A large oil painting I bought at a flea market years back for $10....

[Tubajug]

Being a WWII airplane buff, I'd be glad to let you "discard" that Corsair my way when the Mrs. would no longer be mad about it bloke

As for my weird stuff, I have an old clay ocarina that came from my grandpa's house. My mom picked it up for me after my grandma passed away and grandpa was cleaning house (literally). It was something musical, so my mom thought I would want it. It mostly just sits on my shelf. I might have some other odd stuff. I'll have to look when I get home.

[Donn]

Being a WWII airplane buff, I'd be glad to let you "discard" that Corsair my way when the Mrs. would no longer be mad about it bloke

I guess they were a pretty hot airplane, if you had the chops to land it on the carrier without being able to see where you're going.

[The Big Ben]

I can't think of anything very weird around here, but - just to start - I'll post this thing that I foolishly bought yesterday: a mahogany model of a WWII Corsair fighter airplane.



how it came into my possession? me: being foolish
why not yet discarded? Mrs. bloke saw me buy it, and would be p.o.'ed if I discarded it this soon after acquiring it.

Hang it from the ceiling over your bench and look at it every once and awhile. It's cool!

[The Big Ben]

I have a real ranch branding iron with my initials "JB" on it. Made from hand-forged iron. I don't know who "JB" was but I found it in my grandfather's barn when I was six. He did blacksmithing work and it was left behind by a customer who didn't/wouldn't pay. Still have it.

[tubeast]

A MIDGARD miniature microscope.
Click link to find not MINE, but a quite complete coverage of one just like it:
http://images.google.de/imgres?imgurl=h ... 4Q9QEIJDAE
I even recognise the handwriting on the object carriers, so the same person must have prepared those on the pics as well as mine.
Only I have a fly´s wing and some leaf prepared to look at the cells.

Story behind it:
in 1991 our youth band went on a trip to Russia to visit the City of Nishnij-Novgorod, named "Gorkij" during true soviet times.
Boris Jeltzin had just taken his office as first democratically elected president of what had been the USSR until a year before.

One day, looking for places to spend Money (hard task such a short time after the fall of the Iron Curtain), we went to this antique shop and I bumped into this. It just HAD to come along:
1) It was cute and interesting in its own right.
2) How on earth did it make its way from 1925, Leipzig, Germany to 1991, Nishnij-Novgorod, Russia ?
Token of war ? Brought there as a gift ? There´s no telling.
For both reasons, I guess I better Keep it.