So Bad It's Good

Welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool, where we trade you entertainment for your personal anecdotes and observations on a subject we choose. The entertainment is above.

It is a clock for sale on eBay. It is also the ugliest clock I have ever seen, and I am a lifelong clock watcher. It is a Victorian era boudoir porcelain cherub table clock grunted out by the New Haven clock company in 1880 or so. Yes, people put this ostentatiously saccharine, vomitous thing in their bedrooms. It also chimes so you get to look at it more often. It is in near perfect physical shape, and it runs!

I am considering buying it to display it ironically, in a place of honor, so appalled guests will ask what it is, and I will get to tell them that it is the ugliest clock ever made.

And that is today’s challenge. It’s a hard challenge, but I am confident you all will come through, because you always do.

What is something you have seen — an object, or a building, or something else non-human (no Trump jokes today) — that is so awful it is ironic and/or funny, and therefore of value? Maybe you bought it, maybe you didn’t, maybe you couldn’t. Include a photo if you can, but that is not necessary.

I will accept, for discussion, things that are not funny but are awful because they are awful. For years I had this photo framed in my house, a photo taken on Whitehall Street in Atlanta in 1864, because it filled me with displaced guilt, and I valued the feeling. It disturbed some guests, so I took it down:

But, back to the clock. I am hoping you all appreciate the horror of it, but maybe you don’t, and that’s fine. To help you, though, I will show you this timepiece from above, so you can see the full extent of the pink wings. I’d love to give it as a prize for the best response, but, alas, it costs $165. If I buy it, I’m going to have to keep it.

Okay, that’s it. As always, send your questions and observations to the perhaps equally ugly orange button, but NOT to Comments, where fewer people will read it. Send it here:

And finally, our Gene Pool Gene Poll:

See you all on Tuesday.

ALERT: There seems to be no way to send images through the Google Form orange button. If you have an image, send it separately to me at weingarten102@gmail.com. Make sure to tell me which post it refers to.