The apple doesn't fall far enough from the...

My mom came to visit me. Yes, I do have a mother. She was, in her day, far more sexy and adventurous than me: she looked like a combination of Kim Novak in "Bell, Book and Candle" and that chic from the Avengers (which one? the more sexy, powerful looking one of course) and took a tour of the iron curtain countries in the early 1960's. Well, anyways, everyone loves her, because she is so sweet and giving and eccentric, but of course, she is very hard to endure--I mean live with, for those of us close to her.
I won't go into the bamboo incident or the thistle crisis here, but I have often wished I was her neighbor, rather than her daughter, so I could appreciate her like everyone else does.
Anyway, she collects ugly things in her home: skulls of animals, cheap and ugly busts of witches, long-armed monkey tie racks. In fact, itwas the purchase of the long-armed brass monkey tie rack with plastic emerald eyes that I first questioned. My mom hung it up at eye level on a door molding about 22 years ago--and I asked her why she bought it--not why she hung it there, for every square inch of her home was covered with other ugly stuff-- and she turned to me and said in a drunken roar, "I bought it because it was ugly."
I never understood what she was going after until today, when I almost bought an ugly clock with a red rooster on the face. I almost bought it because it was ugly--and the most interesting thing in the store.