We are getting closer and closer to that time of the year where it is no longer so much this year as it is next year… or perhaps that this year has become last year… you follow?
Well, people like to attach ritual to these things and from where I’m standing there sure as heck isn’t anything wrong with that.
The Melbourne Zombie Shuffle was last Saturday so the better part of last week was spent putting the final touches on the costumes.
This year we got a small group together, cosplaying characters from the web comic Maggot Boy. Being about zombies it seemed appropriate- not to mention how much fun MaEmon and I had cosplaying two of the characters (Davey and Owen respectively) at Manifest back in August.
This is a metaphor.
What up, losers? Insulting people is an appropriate way to begin a blog entry, yes?
Well, even in the event that it isn’t, I’ve made my choices and am committed to them, for better or for worse. Mostly worse.
Speaking of poor life choices that I’m committed to, Separation Anxiety, is still a thing that is somehow managing to still be happening! The prologue reached its conclusion some weeks ago and first chapter has since commenced.
Updates are still on Thursdays.
But that isn’t really why I’m here today.
Next month is October. At the end of October is Halloween. If there’s one pseudo-holiday I get needlessly excited for, it’s Halloween.
As a child I never got particularly excited for it. If I recall correctly we went trick-or-treating maybe two or three times, but it just isn’t a terribly big event in Australia (despite the marketing attempts of many stores; but I don’t know, maybe times have changed since I was a kid).
Personally I think it’s kind of a shame, coming from a family that regularly celebrated mid-winter along with Christmas and Easter, that one of the seasonal holidays was more or less left out (and also a little confusing that everything is seasonally backwards in Australia; seriously, fertility in autumn and death in spring? Come on, guys).
On Saturday the 5th of May, 2012, I, along with some friends- and a few hundred other people, wandered on over to Federation Square in Melbourne, in full costume, in the rain, in order to partake in AiE‘s attempt to set the world record for “Largest Crowd Dressed as Video Game Characters”.
With 470 participants things were looking promising (the previous record being around 425), however, the rules set by Guinness were quite strict so it would take some time for them to go through and validate all of the evidence. In the mean time they left us with showbags of goodies for our efforts.
Fast-forward one year later and we finally received the good news we’d been waiting for; despite the dreary weather driving many would-be participants away, our attempt had been successful!
Manifest was a full on weekend this year and after working so hard on costumes everything ended up coming together with barely a hitch in the road… barely…
On Friday I headed over relatively early, arriving somewhere in the vicinity of 10am. More or less I was simply there to get my bearings, see where everything was, pick up a show bag (mostly for the timetable) and do some minor shopping (which resulted in some DVDs and a cute alpaca toy for my mother who recently spent some time in hospital).
It’s one of the small sized “AlPacasso” toys. So cute!
Being in costume that day also involved a couple of hugs and photos (but not too many, since Fridays at Manifest tend to be pretty quiet).
So you know my Schrödinger costume and how I sat on that fucking shirt for about eight months or something stupid like that?
Well it’s finally finished now, so there!
Costume progress.
After some thought on the matter I decided to slip a couple of (very small) shoulder-pads into the Junior Warrant Officer Schrödinger shirt.
Some people have strong opinions on shoulder-pads, saying that they should not be used if you are feminine or have poor posture because all they really do is end up drawing attention to the fact, but if that were true then only male body-builders would ever bother getting a nicely tailored suit.
If you can’t guess this happy little dude’s name:
I’ll give you a hint: It starts with “The” and ends with “Man”.
Then you’re a far less insensitive person than me (and that’s probably a good thing)!