The Tintinnabulum
Where all of this wonderful craziness started
“It’s really hard to hate someone for being different when you’re too busy laughing together.”
—George Takei
Way back in the mists of prehistory, in the “before times” before Covid, a marvelous creature floated up out of my algorithm on some feed or another. It was a tintinnabulum—an ancient Roman wind chime in the shape of a winged bipedal penis, which possessed its own penis, and was given an additional penis for a tail just for extra penis-ness, in case you missed the whole penis thing the first time around. I was amused, charmed, and flabbergasted in equal measure. What the fuck WAS this thing?
Jingle jangle, motherfucker!
Apparently it was an apotropaic device, an object designed to turn aside the evil eye and bring good luck to the household. One was hung outside every villa. I knew the ancients had a thing for phalluses, but really? Wow. And instantly: I HAD TO HAVE ONE.
But guess what? In 2019 nobody was making them. Well, I found ONE guy in the Ukraine who made a pretty good bronze replica, and I made an order. Two weeks later war broke out, and I never heard from him again. Hope he’s okay…
Then there was Covid, and there was all sorts of other drama going on in my life. I still wanted a tintinnabulum and it eventually became obvious that I’d have to make one myself. I started researching tintinnabulae (? is that the proper plural?) and found that they were a subtype of the fascinum, which is just a plain old winged penis without the tinkle-bells.
Amulets like this were hung around the necks of infants to keep them safe from envy and bad magic.
Well.
I made my tintinnabulum, out of gold leafed epoxy clay, and oh my word. Seemed like everyone who saw it wanted one. I could not, however, make that many out of epoxy clay—it took me too many hours to make my own, and there’s just no way to mass produce. So I started to play around with making smaller versions, and versions out of different materials, interpreting the winged penis in many, many different ways.
You want one, but you can’t have this one. This one is mine.
Eventually I realized: this needs to be a tee shirt.
Oh dude, does this EVER need to be a tee shirt.
So, here we are. I created a pretty-pretty butterfly-like design that aaaaalmost sneaks under the radar. When you first glance at it, is that a lace doily? Oh, wait a second…
Some people never clock what it is, and that’s fine.
A lot of people just don’t notice much about what’s going on around them.
But the ones that do…
See, the intention here is to provoke laughter. That moment when the realization hits, when you actually see what’s in front of you…and you crack up. The original Roman tintinnabulae functioned because they were ridiculous—the silliest critter you could imagine—and you’d see one and laugh, and it’s the human laughter that turns aside the evil eye.
How observant are the people around you? Buy the shirt and find out…
