Crafty Looks

Which has to be the most obscure and yet oddly hillarious quote from Buffy ever, but totally appropriate to the situation, namely that I am currently in school.

Urgh.

But I changed my schedule again--this time dropping gym as it was BYO-yoga ball and how the fuck they expect me to get it on a bus even deflated I dunno--so my day is beautifully short and succint. I have a class. And then I have another class. And then I have a nap until I can go catch the bus home. It is, in a word, awesome.

Tomorrow, when I have to get up at the asscrack of dawn for math of all things, will not be quite this awesome.

Ukulele Loki's Gadabout Orchestra=best. thing. ever. They are an amazing band comprised of actually very nice people. You should all go to their myspace page and tell them how awesome they are because they deserved to be worshipped a little, for being very nice if nothing else.

http://www.myspace.com/ukuleleloki


(am alive, btw. Or undead, at least. No guarentees made beyond this.)

Did my spooty student loans today and I must say--Palau IS NOT A FUCKING STATE. My geography class may not have been the best, and I'm not always 100% certain how many states we have, but PALAU ISN'T ONE OF THEM. So kindly keep it off the Select State tab, because Pennsylvania is the ONLY FUCKING STATE THAT STARTS WITH P and I dislike having to remember to click twice.

Also, will be getting my teeth out very early tomorrow and I do not know when I will be back on the internets.

Any adventurer who trucks with magic knows angry mages are the worst sort to stumble upon as they are often of the decidedly invisible pursuasion. However, that need not be a problem anymore with this!

Recently, while somewhere south of Prague and east of 1712, I stumbled upon this most curious device. An “Adventurer’s Eye” the paper touted it, able to steer a blind man from the swampy thickets of the West Indies and spot anything cloaked in magic of any kind. This artifact sees the world as it is in a way no human eye can replicate.

The center of the device appears to be something of a magnifying glass, though how or why it took on such an emerald tint is anyone’s guess. At the peak of the circle, wrapped in copper wire, is a shard of aventurine meant to aid and guide explorers while enhancing their luck. The two copper wrapped quartz crystals at the base of the circle fuel and energize the aventurine, while providing a circle of protection for the holder of the item.

A long, sturdy strip of cording has been attached to the device by way of a scrap of leather. So far as I can tell, it is meant to be worn like a messenger bag, coming to a safe rest on the adventurer’s hip where it can be easily reached in time of need. The Adventurer’s Eye measures 5 inches in diameter while the strap measures about 52 inches.

I think it would look good on an explorer character (which mine is not) or someone who needs a different looking sort of compass-like-instrument. I've put it up for sale HERE

if anyone's interested. And, as always, if shipping turns out to be too high, I refund.

I've got a pistol for the working class, Mother's little helper and a lot of glass. ^.^ (Because I couldn't help rhyming a little)


First up is The Tulip's Gent Stopper



Society’s all well and good for those who can afford it, but not all ladies of the world spend their days meandering through teashops and haberdasheries. And while the working girls may not all be blushing roses, they’re pretty as tulips at any rate. But the unfortunate thing about tulips is they don’t have navy boys or bloody huge thorns to keep that certain type of gent from trodding all over them come Spring.

It's for sale HERE and comes with its own little bag to keep the paint from denting on keys and such in purses. The bag is made from the same material as...




The Subtle-Tea for Curious Brews Flask.



This is for all those burdened by society’s demand for endless teas, parties, soirees and multitude of fancy to-dos, the Subtle-Tea for Curious Brews Flask is guaranteed to hide a lady’s little pick-me-up from prying eyes and nosy neighbors. Or for those with a... less than angelic character who'd still like to look nice in public, even whilst becoming quietly drunk. xD

The Subtle-Tea for Curious Brews Flask isn't just a tiny purse though. It comes with the bag and flask...



...and is for sale HERE.




And unrelated save for being Steampunk--for anyone who covets bottles, I have a few I'm not using. The shipping is only so high because I don't know what they'll cost to ship and I figure I can always issue refunds, but asking for more money after the fact is a little tricky. ^.^;



If you want them, they're HERE.

I've been told this creature exists in the Flying Libraries. A small, elegant bird, it supposedly roosts amongst the shelves, eating dust and any bookworms that may emerge. So long has it and its kind spent amongst the books, that the words and stories have begun to absorb into their skin. Now, rather than attend the latest masquerade dressed as an ordinary semi-mythical creature, you can become for a night the beautiful and intriguing Libellus Aquiline.




This is a one-size-fits-most mask made of light weight paperclay and suitably frivolous copy of Phantom of the Opera. The mask, including feathers, is about 12 x 12 inches. The ribbon that holds it up is over 22 inches long and easily shortened for preference.

For sale, like everything, here.

Okay, so I went to the flea market today and stumbled upon a neat and extraordinarly confusing find and purchased it because it always makes me sad when people don't want (or have already sold several times over) pictures of their family.



But this particular collection makes no sense. On the back of the photo you see, it reads (and it pains me not to edit his grammer):

To BeBe,
A person whom I think alot of as a friend. If the world had more people like you in it it would be a wiser one to live in. May God Bless You and those you love, forever.
Love, Bobby [weird squiggle beneath].

This is not strange. Especially as under Bobby's picture (I'm assuming it's Bobby's?) there is this picture which says nothing on the back.



No, this is the strange part.



Tucked into the corner flap--an Air Force Association card for an ENTERLY SEPERATE third party about which I can find nothing. >.> And, unrelated but neat...


A blank Identification Card.

Why, I would like to know, do I have John Joseph Nowak's AFA card and a picture of a second man? A second man who makes sure to mention (in pretty cursive) how much he thinks of his Friend. A second man whose jaw bears a striking resemblance to the jaw of the girl in the picture. I suspect they're related maybe, and it's a sweet note he sent to his sister. Look at me at the awesome airforce base sort of thing, maybe. (And I covet his jacket, damnit.)

...So maybe Nowak is her husband? But why would she have a school picture of herself? Taken the same year John Joseph Nowak entered into the Air Force Association? Is it her father, maybe? I have no idea. Why is it that the internet fails me in finding these people? You'd figure there should be a military record I could access somewhere. xD

There's this. http://www.zodiacal.com/barbarowa/trees/getperson.php?personID=I254&tree=barbarowa But this doesn't especially make sense either. Why the airforce thing for a man in his 60s? I thought they were for the younger boys. Did you still fly when you were 60? They didn't retire you? Also, I cannot find a Bobby or BeBe related to this man. >.>

Unless the BeBe in question is not a girl. John Novak had a son named Benjamin Bernard. BeBe. >.o This BeBe in turn had a son named Robert. And as you wouldn't go back in time to give your father a picture calling him a friend, I think maybe this son is named after Bobby. Huh. Interesting.

And also, totally unrelated, the red thing you see there is a date planner from 1914 made by S. W. Straus and Co. to advertise their First Morgage Real Estate Bonds and Loans -- So Intrinsically Good and Thoroughly Safeguarded as to be Sound Beyond Question--and Securities of the Highest Type.

Inside is a Largest Cities of the United States Latest Official Census 1910. Pittsburgh, according to this very modern and up-to-date census, has 533,905 people. There is also a Canada census--Niagra Falls, Ontario has 10,000 people. It goes on to list Digestion Times for different foods, the remedies for certain posions and the Wedding Anniversaries.

First - Cotton
Second - Paper
Third - Leather (kinkeh)
Fifth - Wooden
Seventh - Wollen
Tenth - Tin
Twelfth - silk and linen
Fifteenth - crystal
Twentieth - china
25th - silver
30th - pearl
40 - ruby
fiftieth - golden
75 - diamond

(And that's my weird typing, not the book's. Also, the book does not think leather is kinky.)

...are often overlooked as being the appropriate venue for steampunk.





I propose to remedy this situation with a few Victorian inspired compacts. Each one measures a little over 2.5 inches in either direction and has a height of 6/16 of an inch when closed. Each comes with it's own bag (different colors depending on the compact) and can be bought for a pittance here, here and here. (And they ship overseas!)
 
~~!~~ 

 

I do not know where this box came from, nor can I tell you what the key inside unlocks. It was in Haiti the music box came into my possession—1850, I believe, though my airship has never read the time-streams correctly. My obliging captain had taken me there in search of an obscure cure for consumption I had heard rumor of, though I suspect it was the promise of beautiful women more than my request that moved him. We were directed by the locals to a particular village near the center of the island—he to the throng of dancing bodies by men with knowing looks and piecemeal uniforms and myself to the house in the trees. The witch woman there, they said, could help me.

 

We traded trinkets for knowledge, back and forth for hours until finally she passed this box to me over lukewarm tea with a gold flecked smile. “It is time,” she told me with absolute certainty, “the key moves on.”

 

I have never found the lock this key will open, nor the name for the tune the box plays. But the picture inside on the tiny wooden card bothers me. The Wheel, it calls itself—a bastardization of the Wheel of Fortune—and represents, as far as I can tell, some element of both Fate and Chance.

 

Strange then, that the card should be painted with a machine.





When I got the box, it was in pretty bad shape. The top was splintering and cracking in nearly every place it could crack and two of the little light-wood inlays were missing. I sanded the top down a little and rather than stain it and lose the wood's natural color, I sealed it with beeswax (which the wood drank up like a drowning man. xD) I've repaired the crack by the music-box housing (the mechanical bits) and painted the inside lid to make it look like reddish-brown leather. I also handpainted the little tarot card that hides the mechanical bits. :)

The music box, by the way, plays Torna a Surriento and can be purchased here, though for slightly more than a pittance.

One day, a Pirate and a naval Captain sat down to tea. The Pirate brought a model 216 Bonaparte, jerry-rigged to shoot pressurized blasts of electricity through use of a very illegal ionized steam containment system. Once the maid had come and gone with biscuits, the pirate smiled and pulled his gun from the hidden holster in the lining of his coat.

           
“I heard you could spot a pirate a fathom’s reach away,” he said, sliding tinted goggles over his eyes. “Must be getting old, eh Captain?”

           
But the Captain only smiled and sipped at his tea.

          
  “The Commodore will be joining us shortly,” he said pleasantly, admiring the shade of white the pirate’s face had taken on. “And I doubt that patchwork mélange of yours will even fire. Do try the butter pecans; they’re quite delicious.”

          
  As it turned out, the Pirate was not altogether certain his Bonaparte would fire. He’d purchased it from a rather shady character in the eastern reaches with a number of such altered guns and the woman hadn’t been especially forthcoming with assurances. Watching the manor grounds for any sign of approaching naval personage, the Pirate slipped a hand into his coat, found his Matter Atomizer and Transporter and promptly disappeared.

           
The Captain smiled into his tea at the performance and unclipped his gun from where it had been making a painful nuisance of itself at his side. Written on the cream and mahogany barrel in flowing gold script were the words:
 

The Commodore.

                  

(The commodore doesn't actually have Commodore written on it. But both guns are for sale. The Commodore. Bonaparte. And if you're interested in the tea service, let me know. It's all marked W.M. Rodgers, if I remember right. All four peices are tarnished, especially the tray and the kettle has a dent in the bottom, but they're in generally good condition. Also, I think the dent can be un-dented.)

I'm rather proud of these.

 

~~~~~*~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~*~~~~~~

It was only at the estate sale that I heard Professor Elderbridge had died. The widow Elderbridge was not particularly upset by this development, however. Indeed, not only had she been expecting it for years, but she and the Professor had not been on the best of terms since his jaunts to newer and exciting reaches of the globe began. Still, she told us between sips of Earl Gray tea she made sure to point out had been purchased fresh from the airship India; it was her duty as his wife to dole out his small army of apparatuses to those of us amongst the scientific community who would gain the most use from them. I had, being a nartheciumolgist and sometimes librarian, assumed I would receive a few unwieldy, ancient tombs from the Professor’s private collection that had, no doubt, been obtained in some unpronounceable, foreign temple.

           
This was not the case. Perhaps the widow Elderbridge or whomever else had been placed in charge of the Professor’s last will and testament was unable to read his tiny chicken scrawl. Or perhaps, and I suspect this is more likely the case, my bequeathal is simply the Professor’s notoriously obtuse sense of humor at work, for he has left to me, and I quote: Lot 74, Portable Insect Containment Unit and Terrarium.

           
Perhaps it is a play on “bookworm”. Or else the Professor believes the hitherto undocumented moss rattling about the bottom of the jar to have some sort of medical properties I might be interested in. However, as I am not at all keen on accidentally encountering an equally hitherto undocumented species of stinging insect inside, it is with regret that I must leave the stained and scrawled upon paper where it is.

           
A pity, really. I am told the Professor was carrying the Terrarium with him upon his death. I would expect the paper inside is likely one of his last remaining journal entries. Though, knowing the Professor, it could just as likely be a recipe for tea.

 

(nartheciumology – the study of other people’s medicine cabinets.)

~~~~~*~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~*~~~~~~


 

I made this pistol because as an airship librarian, I absolutely cannot imagine keeping one of those unwieldy steam flintlocks on my hip. But then, pirate attacks do happen... 

(Both are on my etsy page as well. X3)

THE GOVERNMENT IS GIVING ME MONEY FOR COLLEGE THIS YEAR. I WILL ONLY NEED TO COUGH UP $9386 FOR TUITION. THAT'S ONLY $4693 A SEMESTER.

HOW FUCKING AWESOME IS THAT?

WHY IS THERE NOBODY ON GOOGLE CHAT RIGHT AT THIS EXACT SECOND IN TIME? WHY? I AM SO BEHIND ON GENERAL GHOULISH AFFAIRS AND DRAMA IS HAPPENING AND THERE IS NO ONE THAT CAN BRING ME UPTODATE ONLINE.

WHY IS THIS?

I am back. I am exhausted, my back hurts from six hours in that goddamned truck but I am semi-conscious which I assume is a good thing. I may or may not be on to talk to anyone tonight. My plan for the day runs as follows:

1. Sleep.
2. Eat General Tso (the whole dude. not just the chicken.)
3. Swim (pool's finally up to 80 and I want to submerge myself SO BAD.)
4. Sleep
5. Swim
6. Eat some left over bits off the General
7. Shower
8. Sleep

...there may or may not be approximately 3.5 minutes between 7 and 8 in which I am online and coherant. Also, I may or may not have Autumn/Charon to share which may or may not be the only thing I got done during the trip as I may or may not have spent the majority of those twelve hours in the truck sleeping contorted in a seat made for circus midgets.

I make no promises. >.>

THEY'RE OFFICALLY DATING WHICH MAKES. MY. LIFE.


How cool is that, srsly? This has to be the supernova of all geeky coolness right now. They make such a cute couple too. I feel the urge to squee over their relationship as one would squee over a small puppy.

THIS IS SO AWESOME.

And my geek level has risen exponentially.

Because I like to wait until I'm absolutely last at everything before giving it a shot. xD

http://www.myspace.com/440869412

Ya'll should totally rape my account friend me.

(Also, I will be mysteriously absent from the interwebz for the next three days.)

Who does Vance's voicework anyway? It's not Sechler (when in doubt, bet on Sechler) and I'm pretty sure it's not who ever does the other generic males in the game. Someone on a board somewhere said it might be Michael Bell, but he's not even listed on IMDB. o.O This is really bothersome.  

Okay. So you know in those Stephen King type novels where one by one the entire world population either dies or turns into a flesh-nomming zombie?

WELL IT'S HAPPENING.

Sparrow was the first. But it wasn't so very suspicious when Sparrow fell off the face of the earth because hey, she thinks camping is a totally legitimate pastime which is weird, but not at all zombie-ish. So we just went on our merry way, occasionally saying to each other, "Oh my dear heavens, I do wonder where dear Sparrow has gone off to. She hasn't come to tea in weeks now." But like the poor misguided fools we were, we still suspected nothing. AND THEN--Lawlietxlight discovered a suspicious looking mammalian type creature in the middle of an eight lane intersection and believing it to be an innocent kitten, took the Alien Virus Containment Unit home where it then infected her, turning her brains to a cottage cheese like consistency. AND STILL WE FAILED TO NOTICE, commenting every so often to each other, "Isn't it odd that Lawlietxlight and Sparrow both are missing tea? Oh quite, my good chap--it does seem as though they've dropped off the face of the earth! Jolly good quip!" BUT YET we still failed to connect the dots. AND NOW KAYLA HAS BEEN DEVOURED AS WELL.

<.<

>.>

I'm the only one left now. I can hear the zombie hoards approaching in the distance and I do not know if I have enough canned beans to last out the apocalypse. This may be the last you ever hear from me...  

(And if I should die before I wake, those goddamned zombies ate my face.)

So I was thinking that "OMG LOOKIT YOUR HEAD IN THAT PICTURE. IT'S LIKE THREE TIMES THE SIZE OF YOUR BODY. HOLY SHIT, YOU FREAK OF NATURE!" is probably not considered socially acceptable.
 
<.<

I didn't say it. But I wanted to so bad. XD

(When considering posting a "sexy picture" of yourself to the internet, you should probably make sure you do indeed look sexy.)

So you know how I really really wanted an Encyclopedia Dramatica page? Well it turns out I've got my own page on Fan History Wiki. Only whoever made it got tired and didn't post links to all 80-some of my stories. XD Can't say I blame 'em. Even I wouldn't sit there and link those babies up.

Though I'm really not sure why anyone went to the trouble of linking the 60 they put up there. They didn't write anything about me. Not even to insult my face and parentage. XD That would have been great.


Kayla has one here http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/DDG but surprisingly Sparrow does not. XD

(Also, mine's listed under Kytten. Which sucks because I hate that name and want to change it. But some asshole stole Cyprith so I can't. >.>)

(EDIT: Some idiot that is apparently me. XD OMG. I checked it and apparently in '06 I decided I might want the name later so I reserved it. LOLZ. I'm such a dork.)