The Thing

This item has been hanging around the NeighborGoodies table all week long, but it took me until this morning to realize it is, in fact, a giveaway.

The problem is that it's not actually on the Official NeighborGoodies Table...just kinda near it, which is probably why no one has taken it yet:


Ok, maybe that's not the problem. Perhaps the problem is that no one knows what the hell this thing is. In fact, I'm not sure that this item has a real function.

It's got the base of a lamp. . .


....and has hanger-like arms coming out of it. . .


The top portion looks like it was removed from a sturdy wooden hanger, and the bottom, metal contraption spins for some inexplicable reason.

And the whole mess is capped off with what seems to be . . .an ash tray?


This Frankenstein of furniture begs the question: What is it?

I started thinking that maybe it's a coat rack, but it only stands about four and a half feet high total, and the two sets of arms are way too low to the ground to hang anything of length on them. Plus, it would only really work if you used the two sets of arms as hangers...so why bother?

It really does seem lamp-like in its structure, but there is no place for a bulb. Or a lampshade, for that matter.

That metal set of arms beneath the wooden hanger is kind of like a paper towel dispenser, but I couldn't find a way to separate it from the rest of the body to install a roll.

And as an ashtray, it seems pretty inconvenient. You certainly couldn't sit around it and smoke, unless you were on a pretty high barstool, or a bunch of chairs stacked upon one another. And that just seems like a lot of effort.

But the fact that the metal dish on top is pretty clean (for a NeighborGoodie) indicates that it probably wasn't ever used as an ash tray.

And so, dear reader(s)...i just have no idea what the hell this is.

Any thoughts?