Object No. 41 of 50 - Significant Objects v2
[The auction for this item, with story by Carl Wilson, has ended. Original price: $3.00. Final price: $20.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds of this auction to 826 National.]
Wetnet Constitutional Group: Auratic Object Background Report
1
Archive fragment: John Forsythe (voice) as Charles “Charlie” Townsend; Farrah Fawcett-Majors as Jill Munroe (1976-77, recurring 1978-80); Kate Jackson as Sabrina Duncan (1976-79); Jaclyn Smith as Kelly Garrett; Cheryl Ladd as Kris Munroe (1977-81); Shelley Hack as Tiffany Welles (1979-80); Tanya Roberts as Julie Rogers (1980-81); David Doyle as John Bosley.
2
Limbic archive trace data: At public school in Lansing, Mich., 1978, subject Derek F. is made to carry the Object to lunch every day by his mother, who dresses him in over-tight velour sweaters and corduroy “floods” [no trans. available] and has misread her ten-year-old son’s interest in a popular show. As the larger boys daily thwap his tailbone and head with its milk-swooshing bulk, they bark out “Sabrina! Sabrina!” and laugh.
The term catches on so robustly that in schoolyard argot it long remains an all-purpose insult, more androgynous than “gaylord,” as subject’s younger sibling Krissy F. finds out to her cost after frugal Mom hands-her-down the Object in 1983. This despite there being a Kris on it too.
Aural trace clip, semi-musical (folkloric): “Sabrina, Sabrina — chipmunk cheeks suckin’ on a weena!”
3
Academic archive, Popular Culture Studies, vol. 45, no. 1, y. 2012, contents page: Kristoph Finkel, U. Mich., “I Was Kate Jackson When Kate Jackson Wasn’t Kept Cool: Gender Trouble, Thermality and Referent Disposability in Promotional Ephemera of the Jiggle Age,” p. 87. Text missing. Journal archive ceases with this number, as do records of all cross-indexed journals after this year.
Mass media of the period contain multiple refs.; typical heading: “Prop. 11: Palin gives humanities funds electoral wedgie.”
4
Network1 archive, kitschisthenakedtruth.com, Jan. 13, 2018, 11:17 a.m.: Repulsive developments today in the saga of packrat D.A. Finkel, whose death I reported Friday. When they found his body it seemed a sad reminder how the hunter-gatherer joys of our pastime risk blurring into pathological hoarding. The truth is much worse.
You’ll recall how Angels collectors flocked around when word leaked he owned one of only three existing “Sabrina’s Snot” irregulars among C.A.’s lunchbox beverage collectibles. The Dubai-scale bidding enabled him to retreat completely into his Spellingesque Malibu-Barbie estate in New England till it collapsed around him. But now water-damaged diaries recovered from the infested heap reveal the item was NEVER an authentic misprint. Finkel wrote in graphic detail of employing his collectibles in acts of self-abuse; the smears on Sabrina’s nose were a side-effect — which by opportunistic coincidence matched the patterns of the prized irregular LBCs.
My own nose smells a lawsuit. But in fact his treatment of his treasures is an affront to all preservationists. Leave your votes for best way to perpetrate a Finkel on the creep’s own corpse in the Comments.
5
Archival gap, standard causes.
6
Archive fragment, Age of Service Outage, scan of hand-copied “Grauman’s Guide to Salvation”: Angels were worshiped by 20th-century Americans who followed Charlie Christ. Deities included Sabrina, a young witch of beauty and renown whose parables were told in brightly colored illustrated scriptures. … One ritual object was a blue chalice from which was drunk consecrated liquid, which celebrants believed physically became the blood of Charlie, who wore a black hat, oversized shoes, mustache and cane, and manifested primarily by “speaker phone.” The last known such relic was reclaimed by Shanghai as part of Greater Chinese patrimony prior to the Errancy, the Correction and the Second Errancy.
7
Archival void, standard causes.
8
Proposed wording for constitutional passage: After votes are counted and confirmed, the Auratic Object shall be conveyed by drones to the bio tank of the successful candidate for Chief Admin. As confirmation an image shall be uploaded to Reality during Inauguration. Satisfied of its authenticity, the Regulator General shall recite: “As in every transfer of power since the Wetnet went omni, the Auratic Object has been transported to rest at the side of the new Admin’s bio tank. This repository of history, the sole surviving physical artifact of human culture, represents both the humility of our origins and the tenacity of our purpose, as coded to be so preserved by the founding Admin, Finkel the First.”
This amendment to add “and confirmed” (to avoid repetition of the recent Hanging Sabrina electoral irregularity) is recommended by consensus of the Regulatory Group.
(End Report.)
