Wednesday WTF: Behold, the Thanksgiving Garbage Clam

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garbage clam

Oh, you will want to be reading this (photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

I thought for sure I’d have a hard time finding a Thanksgiving-ish Wednesday WTF because let’s face it — gratitude and weird stuff don’t exactly always go together.

But then Ivanka Trump Headquarters (I do not know what that is — her business? Her social media account? The thing I do when I refer to this specific spot on my couch as my office?) gave me bounty from the heavens. Or at least bounty from Twitter.

Yeah, here you go. What is ostensibly a Thanksgiving centerpiece for what I presume is for Thanksgiving dinner where you don’t want to be able to see anyone you’re dining with and you also don’t actually eat food because none of it would fit on the table.

Behold Ivanka’s Garbage Clam. 

garbage clam

And before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, I’d like to point out that I’d be writing about the Garbage Clam even if it was Chelsea’s Garbage Clam. The lure of the Garbage Clam transcends partisan politics.

We live in a country where you can say, “Yeah, I made this, and I don’t care that you can’t see me during Thanksgiving dinner because of my giant Garbage Clam. My giant Garbage Clam is here, it’s out here on the table, and I’m proud of it. Deal.”

garbage clam

I’ve been staring at it for several days now, and so has the rest of the Internet. Nobody quite knows what to make of it. It’s like what would happen if Martha Stewart went on a 15-day bender and then wandered out behind a Stuckey’s and picked up whatever was dropped around the dumpster and that tiny wooded area where people drop things on their way to drop things.

garbage clam

I was curious as to what it takes to make something um, like this, so I created a Garbage Clam Vision Board.

See?

It costs almost $1,200 to make a Garbage Clam. Mine tried to emulate Ivanka HQ, but I added a little more like moose and squirrel and maybe a few other animals. I think I nailed it.

Overall, Twitter was not impressed. Some were more flummoxed than unimpressed. I mean, should we read something into the protruding tree limbs, the random pumpkins inexplicably nestled in a giant clamshell?

What does it meaaaaan?

Anyway, maybe it’s totally bougie to put, IDK, a turkey on your table. Maybe some candlesticks. Coupla cute thematic salt and pepper shakers. Maybe this is how the better 1/8th lives — avoiding each other with a Giant Garbage Clam and not eating.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go out on the porch and wait for Amazon to deliver my $300 giant clam. Have a Happy Thanksgiving, y’all, Garbage Clam or no.

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Bethany Erickson lives in a 1961 Fox and Jacobs home with her husband, a second-grader, and Conrad Bain the dog. If she won the lottery, she'd by an E. Faye Jones home.
She's taken home a few awards for her writing, including a Gold award for Best Series at the 2018 National Association of Real Estate Editors journalism awards, a 2018 Hugh Aynesworth Award for Editorial Opinion from the Dallas Press Club, and a 2019 award from NAREE for a piece linking Medicaid expansion with housing insecurity.
She is a member of the Online News Association, the Education Writers Association, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, and the Society of Professional Journalists.
She doesn't like lima beans or the word moist.

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