Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
The Sharpshooter 3: Blood Bath
Author: Bruno Rossi
Date: 1973
Publisher: Leisure Books, New York
Discovered at: Half Price Books, Westport
The Cover Promises: When you eat here, you're family.
Representative Quotes:
"He could hear Luci Sordi's terrifying screams as another spatter of tearing slugs stitched down Milano's back, almost cutting his body in half down to his blood soaked buttocks." (page 132)
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Spirit Controlled Family Living
Author: Tim & Bev LaHaye
Date: 1978
Publisher: Fleming H. Revell Company, Old Tappan, New Jersey
Discovered at: Goodwill in Independence, Missouri
The Cover Promises: "When Tim and Bev LaHaye discovered the joy of living under the direction of God's spirit, they transformed their mediocre marriage into a rich and fulfilling family life." Also, family life has a low pixel rate.
Representative Quotes:
"In fact, Bev and I have come to the conclusion that the most common mistake Christian parents of teenagers make is letting them pick their own friends. It is fatal!" (page 63)
"Even though the secular world of psychology commonly suggests that sexual fantasies are normal (the everyone's doing it routine), they are wrong." (page 72)
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Decorating & Craft Ideas and other craft magazines & patterns from the early '70s
Discovered at: Methodist Thrift Shop, Cortez, Colorado
The Cover Promises: When you look in the mirror, you see a sad, bloated beast pretending to be merry with a mouth crammed full of Christmas.
Just like the Native Americans with the buffalo, suburban housewives of the 1970s used all parts of the egg-carton. They lived in the golden age of American crafting, an era shaped by two key economic factors:
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Three Godawful Coloring Books
The coloring book industry now profits thousands of dollars per year and stands as the most reliable method for transmitting sketches from bar napkins and slush piles directly into the hands of America's children. Nowhere in publishing are the expectations more agreeably low.
How else to explain this thing to the right? In the name of drawing Iron Man or somebody, the talents behind The Avengers Coloring & Activity Book instead invite kids to dedicate themselves to the memorialization of Lionel Richie's face -- an artistic task we all know is best left to sculptors.
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Unicorn Vengeance
Author: Claire Delacroix
Date: 1995
Publisher: Harlequin Historical, because unicorns are historical
Discovered at: Salvation Army
The Cover Promises: "The Stirring Conclusion to the Unicorn Trilogy." Also, true passion means not caring if your lovemaking smashes your lute or sets your hair on fire.
Representative Quotes:
"Aye, this night Wolfram would know the fullness of mating." (page 226)
"This then was what lovemaking was about? Indeed, Genevieve was quite surprised. No fool was she, for livestock had her family always kept, but this was a revelation." (page 177)
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets.
Boys' Life, September, 1968
Publisher: Boy Scouts of America
Discovered at: Liberty Antique Mall, Liberty, MO
The Cover Promises: In the future, ghostly kids will don aluminum-foil PJs to attend school in that stupid hatch from Lost.
Representative Quotes:
"A generation or so from now a truly modern school will have a room, or perhaps several rooms, filled with equipment of the type shown on the cover of this issue." (page 24)
"Whether you pick one aftershave that becomes your trademark or whether you collect lotions and colognes for every mood and occasion, the men's toiletries industry is ready with the variety to add spice to your life." (page 20)
Each Thursday your Crap Archivist has brought you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap discovered in the thrift stores, estate sales, and antique malls of America. 
Today, as we reflect on this nation and its great bounty, let's tip our gravy boats to the one industry that can never be outsourced: our tireless production of the useless, the senseless, and the utterly crappy.
So here's 10 slices to be thankful for, straight from the first two and a half years of Crap Archiving.
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Am I Normal?
Author: Jeanne Betancourt, but based on a film by Debra Franc and David Shepard
Date: 1983
Publisher: Avon Flare
The Back Cover Promises: "All of a sudden I have hair growing where it never grew before and sometimes I get an erection for no reason at all."
Representative Quote:
Before I even sit down, Barry's asking me, "Where've you been? We were looking all over for you.""I've been learning things," I tell him.
"What kinda things?"
I glance at Tony. "About my body." I take a deep breath. "About the penis."
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Miscellaneous clown and circus-related ephemera
Discovered at: Crap shops across this great nation
Representative Quote:
"The clowns are funny men. They do funny tricks. The people laugh. People like clowns."
Your Crap Archivist counts four lies in the above statements. And that's not just some kneejerk conclusion based on the old standby that clowns are beings of pure grease and whiskers and nightmares, a comic observation that should suffer ignoble death in the first week of your community improv workshop, right along with "This Chinese buffet smells like Petco" and "Monkeys make projectiles of their waste."
No, after a careful review of a great stack of clown-related Crap, I demand we adjust our clownophobia alert system, downgrading from "Defcon-Red Horror" to something more like "Elevated Uneasiness." Let's check the evidence.
Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
A Man's Pictorial Guide to Feminine Hygiene
Author: None listed
Date: 1969
Publisher: Pendulum Pictorials, Los Angeles
Discovered at: KCMO estate sale
The Cover Promises: "Some men go through their entire life without ever seeing a woman douche."
Representative Quotes:
"In subsequent intercourse, the penis of her partners rammed the long-forgotten tampon into the vaginal wall so often an irritation developed." (page 82).
Maria G.:'I douche after every guy, use all the nice smelling stuff and go back out with a complete clothing change. I know there are some gals who don't even change their panties after a screwin', but they're dying out, thank goodness.' (page 40)
KCPD will breathalyze patrons at Tanner's tonight
Parisi's Pete Licata is a World Barista Championship semifinalist
Don't mess with the Army, feds remind two local businesspeople
Soundgarden's sludgy sound, last night at the Midland (review)
Homer's Drive-In: the oldest drive-through in the metro
Yo La Tengo is at Grinders tonight
Voltaire - the saloon, not the philosopher - opens tonight
Story celebrates with a pig roast and other weekend possibilities