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| Blue Lobster-Octopus thing..... |
As I try to get ready for the next big sci-fi Expo, with one eye on getting ready for xmas too, panic is setting in that I'm not making enough. So as I work later, the music is getting louder and faster! Amongst this I'm playing alot of 'Rob Zombie' and many of the songs have lots of sound dubs from old horror films, all of which takes me back to when I was young, and was allowed to stay up on Friday or Saturday nights to watch horror films - of which I thought at the time the Hammer horrors were the best!
This also reminded me of the great school playground debate of 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' I thought I wanted to be a scientist, but part of me knew that still wasn't quite right.
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| Different angle of 'Blue Thing' |
Modern scientists wear white coats, work in big bright clean laboratories, and work in big teams on complex little bits of science written up in learned publications no-one can understand. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at the time, but I knew that wasn't the type of scientist that I wanted to be. I wanted to be more like my hero's at the time; Peter Cushing or one of the 50's black and white scientists dashing around in the dead of night. I wanted to be the sort of scientist that works in a tweed waistcoat and cravat, whose laboratory is a dark dusty basement of a castle, whose colleague is called 'Igor' and helps dig up supplies from the graveyard next door, and communicates discoveries by wildly shouting 'It's alive! It's aliiiiivvvee!!!!' Yes, I wanted to be a mad scientist.
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| Body parts or the blue lobster before being grafted onto the body |
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| seroastrumare duotripodes, which means 'two legged star-seaweed' all mounted up ready to go to the Expo |
Of course most people don't then grow up to be firemen, policemen etc, and certainly not to be a mad Victorian scientist, and so I went and did more (mostly) sensible things. I guess this is what drew me originally to the SteamPunk genre, but it's only now that I am starting to really fulfil my childhood ambitions of creating insane creatures.
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A new Red Star Spiral
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I do indeed have frock coat, cravat, waistcoat etc, but tend not to wear them whilst working as they are rather hot to work in! However if I was in a draughty farmhouse, castle, lighthouse, windmill etc, then it might well be worth me taking that up as work attire. Of course, what I really lack right now, is an abandoned castle/lighthouse/farmhouse/windmill to continue my experiments creating life from glass, re-creating creatures that may have swum alien seas or ancient Martian canals.
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Queue mad laughter.... a sneak preview of some new limbs I have made for an even larger, even madder creation...
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So, if you have a property that matches this description, ideally in Suffolk or North Essex, and it's at a very, very, very low rent, then I'd be delighted to hear from you! Of course if it's not too close to any villages with pitchfork totting locals who could rally into a lynch mob that would be even better.....
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| Isolated lighthouse at Orford Ness, an ideal location? |
