I spend too much time on Etsy.com and eBay.com just lookin’, and for a while now I’ve noticed that when I find something I think is particularly cool, it has the search tag of “steampunk” attached to it. Finally, last night, I got curious enough to google the word. What is this thing that I so obviously like?
I found a wikipedia entry first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk
This partially explained my attraction, but then I stumbled across a list of words and phrases that encapsulate the steampunk alternate world:
Airships
Goggles
Pocket watches
Gears and clogs
Wilson Safety Glasses
Neo Victorian dresses
Steam trains
Brass and copper
Mad scientists
Monocles
Tesla
Unusual inventions
This may be a sign of how truly (happily) strange I am, but I love all those things (except for the Wilson Safety Glasses…and that’s probably because I’ve never heard of them – another thing to google). And then I discovered that people actually create fabulous costumes based on the above things! At that point, I was officially lost.
It’s too late to make my own steampunk costume for Halloween – it’s going to take some serious magpie collecting to do this new culture right, but for next year? Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes! And worse still, since I enter Jacks (my dog) in the Petco Halloween Costume Contest every year, and pets can only win first place if their owners show ‘participation’ by dressing in a matching costume, Jacks is going to have her own steampunk costume as well. I visualize goggles, a pair of ‘Da Vinci’ canvas and wire and gear wings strapped to her back, and just perhaps…a little battery-operated propellor that actually propels.
Out of Eden 