Museum Shenanigans

Well, I'm back at the museum. I've waited a whole year for this, and hot damn if it doesn't feel good to be back in my element. Now, for those of you who think museum work is stuffy or technical or just plain boring, allow me to enlighten you as to the reality. Working in a museum (or at least working at my museum) is like an episode of mythbusters on some serious crack. As per example, on my first day all those many months ago, my boss took me into the collections and showed me some of the highlights. The first thing he pulled out? A shrunken head. No I am not kidding. I later found out that there are, in fact, three shrunken heads in our collection, one of which is clearly european, suggesting that somebody's expedition/missionary work/vacation didn't end the way they planned.

At the moment, however, I'm getting down and dirty with a collection of very strange weaponry that looks like someone Frankensteined together Indian (as in the country of India) and Japanese fighting tools with some very messed up results. The brightly colored and ornate style of Indian art and the sleek lines of the Japanese aesthetic do not mesh well, if at all. So it's up to me to figure out what the hell happened with these items and, if possible, return them to constituent parts. I'll also be working on dating the various pieces of a suit of samurai armor that was apparently cobbled together at some point. And in between all of that I'll be filing away donut shaped rocks and mummy hands in glass cases, or even wearing a mask and gloves while transporting taxidermied animals that may or may not have mercury in their fur/feathers.

It's gonna be a hell of a summer.

The World Steam Expo, or 'Is there an elder god right behind me?

Pics! Pics galore!


First shot, taken while waiting for my friend - who will appear later and who I affectionately refer to as Red - to get through the registration line.


I love my elder god!


Cthulu is either about to eat my soul or commit tentacle rape. Take your pick.


Athena and yours truly


Athena and Steampunk Bobba Fett


Steampunk manly men doing steampunk manly things!


Red trying on a corset


A pretty pair of steampunk lassies


Steampunk pinup!


Harpnotic


A battle of wrenches


You feelin' lucky, punk?


Bartitsu!


The amazing Terrance Zdunich and myself


The bikes of yester-year


The line waiting for Abney Park


Culture Clash


A pic snapped by someone else on the second day while I was still in my first outfit.

The long awaited day is almost upon us

The Steam Expo begins tomorrow. I'm not sure what to say, beyond that. It's been long in the coming - I've been anticipating the Expo since AUGUST - and finally, all the work, preparation, and saving of money will pay off. Tomorrow I don one of the five outfits I've prepped exclusively for the event and march - Parasol in hand, hat at a jaunty angle - off to amaze and be amazed by my fellow gear-heads. I will try to vlog after each day of this gigantic con, and I intend to take an airship load of pictures. I do have to say, however, that I'm most excited about the masquerade ball, where, when all are hidden behind visages of their choosing, people's true nature - and wild side - tend to come out a little more.

If any of you, dear readers, happen to be at the Expo, just keep an eye out for my hat - you know the one - and feel free to say hello. I don't bite....or at least not enough to leave marks.

Back into the dating pool. Hiyo!

As my twitter and the title of this post suggests, I have a potential guy on the line. And I'm more than a little nervous about it. I've been gradually climbing back into th skin of the unflappable, invincible woman I used to be, but my train wreck of a last relationship has me biting my nails. Said relationship went belly up when it became abundantly clear that my lover and I, while we made great friends, could not tolerate each other as BF and GF. He and I loved to spar verbally, teasing, debating, and arguing, but once we became a couple the rules changed. I didn't want to stop being able to criticize him, but he expected me to support him all the time. Even when he was flagrantly wrong. This I refused to do, and, as consequence, there were long periods of snapping and sulking and general unpleasantness. Words were exchanged (and now our debate skills, honed with each other's help, became the weapons we turned on each other. Oh, irony, you sick and twisted bitch). The relatonship ended in shambles, and it deffinitely hurt my pride and shook my confidence.


But now Cupid is sidling up to me at the bar of Life, offering me a drink, and I'm not sure whether I should accept it or toss it into a potted plant to see if the leaves whither. I've been forced to play the game of love with my cards held so close to my chest for fear of being hurt or losing that I'm unsure what to do. Of course, however, to continue in my vein of ridiculous, over-used metaphors, it's often easier to get into a pool by diving head first than sliding in inch by painful inch. Heh, now all I need is a 'Confucius say' maxim and this paragraph is completely cliche.

Oh well. It's once more into the breach for me, dear friends. Grab some popcorn and watch the show.

Pitfalls

Being a steampunk aristocrat is a full time job. As such, it also has a tendency to be difficult to manage and sometimes can run me into the ground, or else I make the mistake of letting something slide once and suddenly all my self-discipline has rolled over and died and I'm left realizing that I've lost sight of what I aim to be.

And that, frankly, drives me more than a little insane.

It is so easy to loosen my grip and say 'that doesn't matter' or, 'why should I bother, there's no one who cares', and slide back into what some people refer to as 'normalcy' and I refer to as 'a stinking hell'. Trying to maintain the constant glittery exterior of an aristocrat may require endless effort, but, as I once told my freshman roomie (also known as the room-mate from the black lagoon) when she asked me why I didn't just try to 'stop being strange and act normal': 'I'd be unbearably miserable without my oddness.' The facade of a well-heeled lady from a sci-fi 1890s may be just that for me, a facade, but to take it off, to confront life bare without the glam and pomp my bustles and parasols afford, would be intolerable. It may drive some people crazy, and it may piss people off - I know it weirded my aforementioned roomie out - but that's who I am. I treasure the manners and the class and the decadence of the aristocrat. I may be only their pale shadow, but it is what I have to offer, and it is the shield I wear against people who have no interest in beauty, elegance, or etiquette. I won't or can't descend to their level, so instead I'll always aim at the highest spot on the ladder, and no matter how many times I fall off, I'll doggedly climb my way back up.

Restablishing Routine and the Importance of Black Coats

I'm home. After a good but utterly wearying year, I am home. Back to beds with springs, pillows that actually support my neck, and food that's been cooked by means other than dunking it in grease. Already I'm looking better, my skin ceasing to break out like I have some horrible plague, and my hair no longs frizzes so much I have to question whether or not I am, in fact, the bride of Frankenstein's monster. I'll soon be back to looking and acting like my self-imposed title demands, rather than a battered, bitter husk of it. Step one: Tomorrow I repaint my nails. They're currently atrocious, my manicure having worn off a week prior to my return, but my need for study prevented me from clipping, repainting, filing, and generally attending to them as I usually do. And how can I think to call myself an aristocrat with ragged nails and chipped polish? It's just not done! (For those interested, I wear Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Trading Post nail polish, in the shade 'Destroying Angel'.)

Moving on. Something I came to contemplate towards the end of term was the usefulness of long black coats. My own, a black velveteen greatcoat, has served me well and faithfully without fail since the onset of winter all the way through the schizophrenic weather of April, as it did the year before. Such coats prove their worthiness in that, for a hard-pressed steampunk, they can cover a multitude of sins (literally), permitting one to cut a stylish figure even when the clothes one wears beneath it are less than up to one's preferred standard. I cannot count the numerous early mornings when I threw that coat on over a tshirt and sweatpants and traipsed off to purchase food from the college cafe, secure in my appearance thanks to the elegant bearing of that coat. But wait, there's more! Long coats (color irrelevant) can also double as handy blankets. I have had several occasions where I was either without a blanket or the available blankets were unsuitable for my needs (as was the case a few days ago when the dorm was too damn hot but they wouldn't turn the air on, and all my normal covers were far too hot). Faced with that predicament, I just drew my trusty coat overmyslf and went to sleep.

Finally, I was overjoyed to discover that Terrence Zdunich, the creator of Repo! The Genetic Opera, will be coming to the Steam Expo! I've been longing to review Repo!, but have waffled back and forth on the issue as the movie, being as weird and awesome as it is, is hard to class as overtly steampunk. Now it's creator's presence at the Expo finally gives me an excuse to review it, exact parameters of Steampunk be damned!

Spring cometh and it bringeth Sandman and cotton skirts

Well I'm post spring break and feeling pretty good about life at the moment. Spring has arrived, and though generally I dislike both spring and summer this time I'm actually eager to see both. The winter has been long, hard, and face-pressed-to-a-belt-sander grueling. The weather was brutal and the sun seemed to shine about once a week, if I was lucky. Now the weather is mild, the flowers are in bloom, trees are budding, and I can shuck off my thick winter hide of heavy black greatcoats, worn corduroys, and battered leather boots in favor of brightly colored skirts, light jackets, and sandals/clogs. I'm particularly happy about the skirts, as I haven't worn one in ages. They just aren't suitable for winter, what with vicious updrafts freezing my legs and bitter winds whipping the hem around my ankles to trip me up.

The spring has also brought with it a new obsession for me: Neil Gaiman's Sandman. I'd been meaning to read it since time immemorial, but only now have I had an excuse to do so, as I'm in a course on comic books and the first four books of Sandman are part of our syllabus. I read the first one, got hooked, and have proceeded to buy two more, namely A Game of You and Fables and Reflections. I've even gone so far as to develop a little bit of a crush on Morpheus, pathetic though that may be. And in the 'something trying to tell me somebody' tradition, I also recently ran across a brass ankh necklace in one of the many dusty little shops I frequent. Y'know the kind, where you quietly think they've got a mummy in the back room and a shoggoth under the sink. Anyway, I bought the necklace, am wearing it as I type, and feel a strong compulsion to screw around with my eyemakeup to see if the 'wadjet eye' look suits me.

In more steampunk news, I'm now registered for the Steam Expo, and you can expect to see me there. Just look for the aristocrat in the leather hat with the ridiculous feather plumage. Indeed, I'll most likely be too ostentatiously dressed for you to miss. So is anyone else going? Tell me in the comments!