Copper and guns

by phill

Yesterday was Timothy’s steampunk-themed birthday party, something I’d been looking forward to for quite a long time. Unfortunately, looking forward to something and actually being prepared for something are two entirely different things. Though I’d bought all the bits and pieces for my costume weeks before, it was only on the day of the party that I actually got down to the dirty and put it all together. In doing so, I’ve learned a few things:

  1. If you are going to incorporate a dust mask into your costume, spraypaint it a few days before you are going to use it, or else you are basically breathing through a thin piece of cloth soaked with paint;
  2. Epoxy glue can stick any two pieces of anything together, including your fingers, your pants, two pairs of scissors, and your hair;
  3. What epoxy glue can’t stick together, super glue can, and it will do it incredibly quickly;
  4. Anything looks better with bronze spraypaint on it, with the one exception of your face

in any case, between getting incredibly high onpaint fumes, and fuming over getting bits of wood to stick together with small pieces of metal, I managed to put something halfway decent together. Here it is in action:

I am coming to kill you. No fucking joke.

With me doing my best impersonation of the Pale Man. The wooden faceplate that went over my eyes there can be lifted up by way of hinges, however I didn’t get the time to affix the hook-and-eye so that it would stay up, so I was either blind, or walking around lifting it up and trying not to bump into things.

Louise went to a lot of effort, and showed her ability to make a costume out of stuff she finds around the house, in the photo below you can see the goggles, scarf, and hat that she made, with the ray-gun/water hose attachment unfortunately out of shot.

Drunken pilot? Check.

(Side note: there is no party that cannot be improved by a big ol’ bowl of punch)

Funnily enough, the story whose character I based my costume off is going to be published! In issue #73 of the young Australian literary magazine, ‘Voiceworks‘ I’ll have my story, ‘The Teal Girl’ featured in the short story section. This is the first time I’ve sent something in to try and get published, so to get in is really encouraging. I have no illusions that further submissions to other magazines/e-zines will be less than 100% successful, but hell, so far, so good.

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