Written by Jonathan Wojcik
Horrors of Hobby Lobby
I did not buy anything at Hobby Lobby. I'm not going to go on a whole spiel here, mostly because I don't like to discuss horrible, wretched people in my Halloween posts, but Hobby Lobby is a business I only really know about because of horrible, wretched people whose horrible wretchidity you might have heard something about on the telenews or something. Though they lost their battle this time, I still felt a creeping feeling in my spine as I set foot into a Hobby Lobby last week for one of the first times in my life, still compelled to document the most interesting Halloween offerings wherever they may reside, whether or not it's a business I'm willing to throw money at.
Yes, I do know it's impossible to live, breathe and eat in this country without funding diabolical evil of some sort, but as you shall soon see, there are darker things at work in this lobby of hobbies than we ever could have imagined...
The first thing I stumbled upon was innocent enough. Enticingly adorable, too. These purple, metal bats are quite large, with saucer eyes more like an owl and interesting, printed burlap material for wing membranes - not a gimmick I've actually ever seen before, curiously. Think of all the prime decorative space we've been wasting, all these years, right between bat phalanges.
These nondescript, trick-or-treating monsters are a nice try. If they were a little stranger I'd be tempted to get one. You don't get a whole lot of little figurines modeled after non-specific monstrous creatures. Perhaps a tad too generic for my tastes, but not bad.
These figures are moderately amusing for their resemblance to the M&M's characters, and it's fairly cute how the spider wears a garland of other, smaller spiders. Assuming they are alive, she may be their mom, since a lot of spiders do cart their young around.
These other spiders are almost pathetic, in a heart-tugging, lovable way, with their expressionless bulging eyeballs and rather cheap paint jobs with a messy, sloppy application of glitter. They look like little children made them. Possibly against their will.
A ghost with a haunted house on it is a new one on me. What does it mean? Is it just a sweet-ass body tat? Let's go with that.
There were so many kinds of pumpkins available, I couldn't keep track of them all. Definitely a point in this chain's favor. The finest pumpkin on offer was the owl pumpkin. As you know, I am partial to Halloween owls that are also other things, like ghost owls, or spider owls, or in this case freaky vegetable witch owls.
Oh no you don't, Hobby Lobby. Your mummy candy bowl may be one of the cutest mummies I've ever seen, but I've got lots of cute mummies, and I'm going to use that plus your villainy as a solid excuse not to spend $20 on one of these. Close, but no cigar, BUSTER.
Now, that more or less completes our first two aisles of Halloween merchandise. Moving on to their third seasonal aisle, we...have...
...These?
...Things?
Huh. This stuff doesn't especially scream Halloween, but okay, you could hang these shiny doo-dads from a spider web or something's rib cage, sure. What else would they be for?
ANOTHER aisle down, they've got these Hallowee-
...Wait...wait a minute.........
...I'm seeing red and white in the same place but I'm not seeing either bleeding skulls OR bleeding ghosts. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. That's never happened to me before.
...Trees? Indoors? I...what are these for? Bats? Are they for bats? They have to be for bats. Haha, they dressed one up all like a spooky mummy but they forgot the other one's costumes!! What an embarrassing mistake!!! Right?...RIGHT?
One...two..five...s...SEVEN!? SEVEN more aisles of whatever this is!? That's TEN so far. TEN. WHAT'S GOING ON!?!
N..no...
Not ten.
Not ten aisles.
More aisles.
More and more.
All the way to the back of the place.
...People, I don't know what a "Hobby Lobby" is anymore, but I'm pretty sure a part of it functions as the activity hub for something...not well. I don't know what. I know that I've seen iconography like this before. It recalls a shadow of an echo of a memory a past me must have buried deep in the dusty crypts of my subconscious for a reason, but I am certain I have never seen these patterns and symbols collected with such flagrant, debauched excess by only the good lord Jack's August 25th. Do not allow Hobby Lobby's owl pumpkins and purple bats get your guard down; there are unwholesome forces at work here. Their disregard for the health, safety and freedom of a majority of their employees was but a foreshadowing of the darkness they are preparing even now to unleash upon an innocent public, a darkness that goes by a name we cannot, must not utter in polite circles.
Stay safe.
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