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Anybody who knows me well enough to have been to my house or met my mother will know about my mom and her asian fetish. Her house is more or less a museum of antique asian art that has taken more than forty years to build. Our office, naturally, is similarly themed. I mention all of this to explain why it is that I happen to have put my hands on an auction preview catalogue from a local auctionhouse this afternoon as I was trying to make sense of the mountains of paper on my desk.
See, it seems that there's an auction taking place here soon, so this auction house has kindly distributed a catalogue of the big ticket items they're planning on featuring in the auction to... you know, pretty much anyone who has ever driven past their store. I've seen some Really Cool Shit(tm) in the previews before... I remember the auction they did a few months back actually featured a vintage 'Vampire Hunting Kit', which contained, among other things, a Bible, a cross, and a crossbow loaded with what was apparently a silver syringe full of holy water, no lie...(no, really. You can't make this shit up, and yes, I desperately wanted it.) But this one? Oh, this one takes the cake.
In this auction, they're selling three heads.
Yeah, I said heads.
Here, I'll transcribe the descriptions for you.
A rare collection of 3 museum quality heads from different parts of the world.
1) An elongated skull from the Van Watu Tribes in the New Hebrides. It is partially covered with a husk material which bears some of the original coloring. The head was likely used by a native Shaman to honor a revered person who passed on, as well as protect and cure his people through contact with the spirit world. Circa 1800's to early 1900's.
[...Yeah. The unnecessary apostrophes bothered me, too, but I'm just transcribing here...]
2) A shrunken head from the tribes of South America. All of its original features are intact and perfectly preserved right down to the facial hair and eyelashes. The forehead is banded with a primitively decorated animal skin, and the lips are sewn closed with string.
3) An amazingly well preserved Egyptian Mummy of a younger person. They were most likely of noble decent[sic], and the skin as well as the eyelashes are fully intact. So much so that the imprint of the wrap is still visible. It is estimated to be 2000 years old.
...And yes. There are pictures. And I just... wow.
The description for #2 in particular kills me (haha) -- they're so proud of the fact that the head has bushy eyebrows and a big ass mustache (this one is not a "they", my friends). And it's just like... wtf? I mean, seriously. As far as such things go, I'm a pretty fucking morbid girl. I love me some bats and spiders and whatnot, and I have a whole collection of random skully things. I'm all about decorating in a skull or skeleton motif -- if you've been to my house, you know the truth of that--but real, actual... heads?
What the hell are you supposed to do with them? Set them up on your coffee table, name them Alfred, Joe and Bob? Instant party guests? Head #1 is missing most of its teeth...party game? Head #2, as described above, has his mouth sewn shut with twine that dangles a good five or six inches away from his (highly mustachioed) mouth... cat toy? (God, for those of you who know him, can't you just picture Lumen dragging it all around the house by its string...tying himself up with it the way our dear Bondage Kitty (tm) has a tendency to do with all things string like?)
...I mean, seriously. If someone gave you a head, (...there was an A in that sentence, kids...) what would you do with it?
Inquiring minds want to know.
And for the inquiring among you, ( a picture )
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