Monday, September 6, 2021

Mission Find-the-Cards: Failure is NOT an option.

Would this really be the best first (other) place to put the following? No choice but to scour until these cursed little bitches are back where they belong and the universe is semi-okay again. Dammit all to fuck.

Bumping this thread because it's the only thing I've found so far that's anywhere close to what I'm desperately looking for...and my noble quest shan't end until its mission statement is fulfilled. My family has been keeping a precious cabinet of exchanged greeting cards since my early childhood (born '87.) I've always taken pride in our ability to select the perfect card for each recipient and personalize them to boot. Just recently I was devastated to realize that three of the all-time best ones have somehow simply vanished into thin air. This was never supposed to be possible and cannot happen. Knowing that I absolutely must find them somehow, I immediately contacted Hallmark and American Greetings--praying that there'd be card designers from the 90s/00s who might be able to remember and identify certain ones, or artists with portfolios containing them, or an archive of past years' designs. Willing to pay for the time of the person who can help if it takes a bit to hunt for them. I've never had to put much thought into this before...have I hit on the one thing too weird to actually exist? Are there people who could be considered greeting-card enthusiasts, fans, admirers, collectors, experts? That everybody regards them as purely disposable ephemera when some are true works of art, and that the companies don't keep a database of the past decades' designs, is striking me as tragic.
   Anyway. Best describe the bloody cards if there's to be any chance, eh...and hope I don't think of any more missing ones.

1) Christmas card, multistory Victorian-type house on cover with glittery snowfall. Interior visible through cutout windows. Folds open to reveal full rooms, then again to the greeting page. Could add further detail if that's been done more than once, but it'd be instantly recognizable. Really great artwork that I've always loved a lot. It's one of our unique, special, beautiful, happifying, dearly beloved ones and I *will* find it, or at the very least the exact image. *,-,*
2) Accordion-folding white card addressed to a mom (could be Mother's Day or a mom's birthday.) Poem about animal moms with cartoon illustrations. Innermost spread features pop-up clam (final line is "I'm just as happy as a clam to have a mom like you" or something.) Ex. "penguin mothers always dress their little ones real cool," fish mothers sending theirs to school, a pink+purple Poodle scolding "Who said you were old enough to shave your legs, young lady?" (I doodled that last one once.) And suchlike.
3) Another accordion-style funny poem with cartoons. Periwinkle/powder blue sort of color I think, maybe just light blue. From mom to dad, so probably anniversary. Pair of anthropomorphic white bunnies and their various funny marital escapades and issues and whatnot...ends with them kissing. Best picture is them watching TV in bed. Illustrations are puffy.

   Hope those grandparents' collection got scanned; I'm sure it's lovely. ;; I could never consider getting rid of anything like that without at least taking a picture or recording a flip-through. And I'll never be able to understand people who don't get deeply attached to things. For roughly the past decade I've maintained a "Missing List" of priceless stuff that, despite my extreme sense of organization and neatness, has defied all known laws of physics to disappear on me just like the cards (but it's already a proven fact that the universe exists purely to torture me, as I witness absolutely-impossible-and-impossibly-infuriating occurrences on a regular basis.) The knowledge that absolutely anything at all, and extremely beloved things in particular, can literally dematerialize at any moment tempts me to just give up on everything. What's the point? Fiercely stubborn defiance of the universe's many savagely cruel, deliberate, constant, trolling tactics is what prevents total apathy. I started a couple of infinite documents for writing everything I remember, and as muuuch incredible awesomeness as I've kept since childhood, every day I think about how I'd do anything to have it *all* back, and to loop endlessly from 1987 through some point a while ago. And just have a big she-shed/Sheseum/Fortress of Infinitude/holy sacred blessed pilgrimage site. To go back and ensure that I'm taking clearly necessary photos/video of absolutely everything, including the interiors of all the places that never should've gone out of business or now look totally different...to be able to walk through them only in memory, and to probably inadequately describe them since a picture's worth a thousand words...I find it almost unbearably sad and frustrating. Being unable to find any images of or info about something or someplace--same. It just really gets me; I can't take anything good becoming only a memory.
   In some cases it kinda makes sense if the thing's pretty old and obscure and lacks a specific name or brand or anything to go on, no matter how specific my description/search terms. When it seems as if you ought to have been able to locate it somewhere somehow, that's beyond lousy and baffling. Just utterly unbelievable sometimes. Real wanna-shoot-yourself levels of impossibility. }8~@ (E.g. a recent one--Artgame gonna tell me they can't identify the Royce McClure coral reef image wrapped around a large plastic tumbler cup (c) 2009 Motion Imaging Inc./IGH Solutions 6805/Technimark/anything else written on the other cup I've got here, that I'm describing? Honestly? *rages*) There oughta be a "Anybody out there maybe remember/have an image of these zillion-jillion amazing-yet-unfindable things?" site. Success is naturally joyous, and can also remind you of something else, and something else, and easily lead you down a rabbit hole of overwhelming nostalgia-wallowing. Which tbf has felt like my default state for some time. This has turned into a long diary entry or something, but whatever--the important bit is the card stuff.

8 comments:

  1. Oct 2021: Tragedy continues to unfold… Our black hole continues to absorb. Since I discovered the greeting card debacle, the crazeraser teapot has likewise vanished into thin air. Unless it and the cider-jug tart burner are in PA, which I doubt. So those get added to the Missing List, along with Ma’s greatest sweatshirt (the bunch of kitties celebrating autumn…my favorite being the white one on the pumpkin…omfg we need to find that fucking thing and/or a picture of it. The need to obsessively photograph/record everything becomes more evident daily. Ma tossed the fishy silicone jar opener and the old ghost-in-pumpkin toy—not without reason, but nonetheless it’s a damn good thing that I obviously have photos with those. Just took the potholder/oven mitt/dishtowel one with the openers super-recently. [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ud0yHoi0f9JAgVKkNdJmDqQ1ZhAEcD6w/view?usp=drivesdk]

    Jar openers+crazerasers [https://flic.kr/p/HraqjJ]+contact cases (have the “dark chocolate” one): pin.it/6l2Jag9

    The cider jug we've had forever and it was always on the counter where the salt+pepper are now, and I can picture it in the bg of older developed photos...
    The ghostie poppin' outta the pumpkin, which apparently came from Gran, has to be in my Halloween recordings and is in the 2020 pumpkin-patch pic (the one I made a pc folder of under Videos to make the vids and IG slideshow...one video is still pix only, other is pix+clips...pinned those too.) Oy.

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  2. There needs to be a site for matching descriptions of sought-after things to people who might also remember and/or have (pics of) them...

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  3. Aw shit. Just finally thought of another card that I don't think I recall seeing in the cabinet when I went through it twice in late Aug/early Sep and reorganized. 'Twas like...no idea of the exact text on the front but something to the effect of "Hope (your birthday?) brings you more blessings than there are (somethings in the something), fish in the sea..." Opens to a spread with "...or clothes in your closet!" One of the more appropriate ones I received. ;} Perhaps not as beloved or as old as the others but still really cool and worthy of inclusion in the mission that I will accomplish if it's the last thing that happens before the heat death of the universe.

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  4. This board's impotant: https://pin.it/6ePyhvL
    Just remembered another card...Father's Day, the "wild animals playing poker" one from that bookshop in Honesdale. Didn't think that picture would be too difficult to turn up though, and sho' 'nuff. The board's got loads of cute ones, incl. the great macaron one I gave Grammy...

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  5. It just makes no sense to think that *SOME*body couldn't identify some of the artists who've done the best work for the primary card companies over the years, and that the artists wouldn't have retained that beautiful work for their portfolios and/or personal pride, and that you wouldn't be able to track down a specific design fairly quickly...
    And I just constantly weep thinking about all the places that have gone out of business or moved from their previous locations or devolved into something vastly inferior to their former selves (as named throughout the miscellaneyinsaney "nostalgia" tag/comments)...like somewhere there must be someone with photos/video of the old interiors of a lotta these that we sadly lack except they're in me 'ead and I want to be able to just project them for their glory to be beheld once more...so why isn't there someplace to seek out shit like this, even just descriptions where you can totally be like "Yeah I remember that too" and shit.

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  6. Somebody literally kill me. I've come up with another favored card that impossibly vanished into thin air:
    A thick one. Nighttime scene of a snowy, hilly pine tree forest...a big tree along the side and a die-cut window in the center...opens like pop-up book with big Xmas tree I believe. Think it's addressed to Dad. Looks like the first and best tree farm we used to go to.

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  7. All the cards/envelopes featured in old Photobucket pics/vids (so, now the whole huge drives w/ the 27-min scrollthru video, and everything covered in the 'revolting saga' section of the linkage entry...) Probably the best one being the tool bench from Rite Aid, but many other exceptional choices of note (pies, dogs, mice, macarons, etc. etc.) Also now have a greeting card 1drive folder. And noting, that big thick one with the dancing dogs...you can kiiinda see a lil' in the #poodlepower pic.

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  8. Obtained irrefutable, indisputable evidence that something not of this world is going on with that cabinet and those cards. Sorted them by occasion, made it perfect as can be. What might well be the next-favorite after the missing crown jewel decided to dematerialize from the top of its pile and rematerialize inside of another one--one it never touched, never was anywhere near, never made contact with, had nothing to do with. There was no natural way for it to have gotten inside of the one it was in. And this happened before my eyes. At first I was half-panicking going back through the entire thing looking for it, pinching myself, looking around doubting the reality and solidity and existence of everything and everyone, accepting that none of it is a certainty...yet also, feeling half-satisfied with the sense of vindication...here was further proof of what was already obvious...and we did have a picture of that one...so before your very eyes another top favorite disappears, and bam, you've witnessed the impossible. This time though, we had rematerialization, which is what's required for the others that vanished when I wasn't right there with them. They're obviously there, just invisible and intangible--because the least possible thing in either existence or nonexistence is for them to not be. In any universe, ever. There is no reality in which I don't have them at my fingertits. Which means that I've been in this twilight zone for some time and absolutely nothing is real, nothing matters. And that fits with how everything is generally. So now I must become the founding member of the HELP I'M TRAPPED IN AN INESCAPABLE NIGHTMARE HELL THAT ISN'T REAL AND MAKES IMPOSSIBLE THINGS HAPPEN Club, or HITiaINHTIRaMITH. Hitiainh Tiramith. There must be others, right? It can't be only me stuck in this fucked dimension. Is it just me, or also everything around me...am I out of sync with the dimension despite being here, or is it all just an impossible upside-down fucked-up version of the actual universe...this is what the club must discover, and correct.
    So yes. Suspicion confirmed: The universe exists primarily to torment me. Everything else is coincidental. It's just too perfectly designed to this one clear end to possibly have any other priorities.
    And also...#HumanExtinctionNOW. It is as Sweeney Todd decreed. You don't deserve to have to suffer the cruel, relentlessly torturous curse that is life. At the same time, humans make everything a zillion times worse than it needs to be or was. There is simply no good way for them to exist on this planet.

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