SEE UPDATE BELOW:
This week my friend (Seana) saw something on the side of the road and slowed down to take a picture out of her car window because it was fucked-up and she was pretty sure I needed it. And she was right. We all need this:
And at first I was just happy knowing that a random unicorn is cheerily hanging out with a smiling lion on the side of the road, but then I started thinking about how nice it would be to own that taxidermied unicorn and then Victor said that I couldn’t have it because I already had a taxidermied pegasus and then I just shook my head at him because the man obviously doesn’t understand anything about “matched sets”. For example, I could use them as book-ends and put stuff between them. Stuff like the other antique taxidermied animals I don’t currently have room for.
So I called the shop that was keeping my unicorn and said, “Hey. Weird question, but I heard you have a dead unicorn in the street and I’m interested in bringing it into my life,” but turns out I dialed the wrong number and the woman on the other line was very confused, but she was also elderly and seemed a little lonely so I ended up talking to her for ten minutes about dead unicorns (Hi, Edna!) and it was quite nice. She was very supportive of the idea. Or afraid to hang up. Difficult to tell.
Regardless, I called the right number the second time and the guy on the line was like “Oh, yeah. You mean Pat.” The dead unicorn’s name was Pat. Pat the Unicorn. It was like that bunny in the toddler book, but less alive. Or more alive, since the unicorn was once real. Sort of.
Turns out that Pat was once a beloved, old family pet who eventually died of an irritable bowel problem in Alabama in the 60’s. The grieving family was sad and so the father (a taxidermist) decided to surprise them with a unicorn made out of their dead, diarrhea pony. It might have been the worst present ever. Or best. Hard to tell with taxidermist’s children. We’re a weird bunch.
The bad thing though, is that Pat was an heirloom and an Alabaman (Alabamanian?) treasure and so he is fucking expensive. I still briefly considered it (because it would be fun to write “diarrhea unicorn corpse” as a business expense on my taxes) but Victor yelled “SPENDING REAL MONEY ON A DIARRHEA PONY IS CRAZY EVEN FOR YOU” and he had a point. So I called my sister to see if she wanted to go halfsies on it, because then it would be more justifiable. She said she’d pass, but pointed out that it was close to the same amount of money to get a fancy gym membership for a year, and that I could just put some wheels on Pat and then put a harness around my shoulders and drag Pat up steep neighborhood hills, like some sort of magical, princess resistance-training. And I’m pretty sure that’s a great idea because PAT IS ALREADY ON CASTERS, so I can take him for walks, or drag him behind the riding lawn mower when I go to pick up Hailey from sleepovers.
I was totally in. “UNICORNS ARE THE NEW KETTLE-CORN” I yelled at Victor. He looked at me strangely and I explained that they were weights, and he said “Wait. Do you mean “kettle bells”? God. You can’t even debate this properly.” Then he told me that I could buy Pat just as soon as I could justify spending money on a dead diarrhea pony that I probably would never exercise with at all. And he was right. I can’t justify that kind of money. So I decided that I should sell shares of the unicorn to try to raise the money. It’ll be a communal unicorn. A communalcorn. I’ve tried kickstarter several times and they never approve my stuff, so instead I’m going to sell shares of Pat on my shop. All I need to do is sell a shitload of Double Unicorn Success Club certificates before Pat is sold off to someone else. Impossible? Probably. But I sort of specialize in impossible. And also in “incredibly stupid and somewhat dangerous.” We play to our talents.
So what do you get out of this? Not much. Plus, you’re buying shares of a communalcorn that I haven’t even bought yet, which I think might be considered “illegal speculation” on my part. So you get to say that you’re part of a unicorn crime ring, for one. And if this actually manages to happen, you will also get to see pictures of me and Pat on various adventures, and I’ve even gotten a small town to agree to let me show our communalcorn in their yearly parade and you can come and be on the float, which will probably just be me dragging Pat around behind the lawnmower while I scream “UNICORN SUCCESS CLUB FOR THE WIN!” and throw candy corn and glitter at baffled strangers.
Now, it’s more than possible that Pat will be sold before we can ever raise this money, and so if that happens all profits from the certificates will be donated to Project Night Night, because that’s what Pat would want. That unicorn corpse is doing God’s work and he’s not even ours yet.
PS. Do you have any thoughts on what you’d like to see Pat doing? Leave them in the comments, people. We may not have a unicorn, but we do have hope, imagination, and a series of questionable decisions that have brought us here. And I, for one, think that’s a very good thing.
UPDATED: In the two hours that this post has been live we’ve raised almost $500 toward buying Pat the Unicorn, which is both awesome and frightening at the same time. Sadly, I called to check on Pat and was told that he was just sold. It was a very dark moment in the Lawson household and I think I’ve learned that the time to buy a dead, diarrhea communalcorn is when you see a dead, diarrhea communalcorn. These are the tough life lessons you learn on the streets. I’d like to think that Victor went out and bought him as a surprise, but when I asked him, Victor looked at me like I was insane. The upside is that the $500 will now go to helping homeless kids, and that’s kind of awesome, although selfishly not as awesome as getting a unicorn that you can use to stage a liquor store robbery. The good news though is that this has inspired me, and so I will now be taking my taxidermied pegasus (Flyza Minnelli), finding the perfect unicorn horn for her (please send links if you see any) and attaching wheels to her feet because THIS COMMUNALCORN THING IS GOING TO HAPPEN, YOU GUYS. It’s just too bad-ass not to. All further Pat fundraising will go toward buying a horn, foot-wheels, a bad-ass leash and enough giant helium balloons to float Flyza Minnelli around the neighborhood like the magical, flying communalcorn we all need in 2014.
PS.:
UPDATED AGAIN: An artist’s conception:
