Showing posts with label Steampunk Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steampunk Blog. Show all posts

Tuesday, 30 April 2013

Rare Aquatic Cornish Pasty Victorian Museum Specimen Find



Tiny part of Boffins Bunker 'Cabinet of Curiosities ' Collection
Rare Aquatic Cornish Pasty Victorian Species Specimen
found in Scandinavian Museum Cabinet

Dear Boffins laboratory journal reader

Living in social & geographical isolation as the Boffin does (like you had not noticed) it was my various medication, meanderings, collections & tinkering's which drew me to the steampunk aesthetic.  Boffins own 'Cabinet of Curiosities' being various & peculiar, the steampunk objects & gadgets just nestle right in there alongside occult & natural history specimens.

The Boffin recently read on Brass Goggles forum that Steampunk is not just about Victorian-esque cloths!? 

For me it has never been about the cloths.  Heresy for some SP's, well yes, Boffin concurs there is something both airy & convenient about wearing nothing but an open back surgical frock gown, prosthetic assisted & converted elbow length rubber acid proof gauntlets, surgical face mask & multiple magnified optical lens apparatus in the laboratory (Health & Safety would approve). 

However this is apparently not a good look or socially acceptable day wear to answer the front door for receiving eBay parcels from the man of the postal service.  It's the bending to put the parcel down exposing lower nether region buttock cleavage due to wearing nothing but the open back surgical gown that clinched it, or should that be clenched it. Who knew?

The point being Steampunk is for some adherents to the genre/aesthetic other than cloths.  For the Boffin it revolves around my ever growing 'Cabinet of Curiosities'.

Which is why I was delighted to learn that an exceedingly rare example of the believed to have been lost 'Aquatic Cornish Pasty'  Pasty aquaticus had been located in a Scandinavian Museum Cabinet.


 Genuine specimen Finnish Museum Natural History;
 said by Prof. BB may be of the extremely rare 'Aquatic Cornish Pasty'

A little research quickly established no records whatsoever of a Victorian captive breeding programme of these strange & rather bizarre frilly tentacle creatures. Despite now being rumoured to have been used by the Bodmin Moor fishing fleet to herd towards nets,  the equally rare Cornish double winged flying pilchard as used to be caught off the East coast of Cornwall.

Now the geographically inclined will say 'Hang on , there is no East coast of Cornwall, that's called Devon' .  Exactly!  That is what makes these 'Aquatic Cornish Pasty' beasties so damn rare!

Both of the exceptional Cornish species said to be rarer than even a live specimen of the Scottish Haggis. 

Boffins Bunker has secured initial research funding from the Brass Ministry of Pointless Experimental Exercises, a micro small steampunk budgetary section of the Treasury Dept.  If the Boffin can procure a tissue sample from the Scandinavian museum pickled wet specimen, then Cornish Pasty, Jellyfish & Sculpey *TM cross breeding programme can be eventually begun in the Bunker early last year.

Boffins Bunker experiments cannot be any weirder than fish genetic DNA being used in tomatoes?

Boffin will let you know how we get on in time. (In time for what I'm not sure)

NB: NOT FOR THE SENSITIVE or WEAK OF STOMACH: 
For many more examples of 'Cabinet of Curiosities' Wet Specimens both real & faux visit Boffins Bunker research page on Pinterst  'Get Wet & Pickled' 






Friday, 12 April 2013

Barking Mad Kernow Laboratory Punk Event Virgin Getting up a head of Steam in Cornwall

Barking Mad Kernow Laboratory Punk Event Virgin Getting up a head of Steam in Cornwall

Well its a little over a week (or so) since I took the plunge to stick my head over the blast door parapet of Boffins Bunker Laboratory to blink in the sunlight & enter the outside Aether Steampunk world. I burst forth (stumbled, damn the absinthe) as a complete newbie into the world of Steampunk!


Steampunk Cornwall : Boffins Bunker


However, I have quietly been a steampunker all my life & just not known it.  When I did find out that my little foible laboratory art/sculpture creations fitted in a sub-culture genre all of their own called STEAMPUNK I decided to bide my time before taking over the world, letting my creations & 'Cabinet of Curiosities' objects & artefacts lose upon an unsuspecting public.

I first tried 'Brass Goggles', a Steampunk UK based forum, but for some strange reason their clanking machinery had a wooden 'sabot' tossed in it & would not accept my UK email address (hmmm, still will not?).

Therefore my real 1st port & contact with the Steampunk world  was through the nice people at  'Steampunk Empire' forum,

...from there I began my plan for world domination building a profile web image of
'BOFFINS BUNKER' with a view to further advance Steampunk in Cornwall, UK

So far in a week Boffins Bunker has a presence through:-
(If you haven't visited them yet please do)

1.  Google blog (that's this website)
2.  Youtube video channel
3.  Pinterest
4.  Twitter
5.  Flickr 

I welcome positive & constructive contact from other steampunkers, be they in Cornwall UK or further a field.

I am most happy & keen to promote through my blog Steampunk enterprise in/from Cornwall.

Kind regards

Boffins Bunker

Below a Boffins Windows 8 rant!

(NB: Whilst setting up all these various new points of website interface, I have to deal with an internet connection WiFi (joy of rural Cornwall) that has the speed of an arthritic snail in death throws, plus I have been fighting, battling, struggling in coming to terms & trying to get my almost month old new fangled desk top computer which came installed with (for me utterly loathsome) Windows 8 to actually do what I want. 

I am singularly unimpressed with the Windows 8 roundabout nonsense, & things jumping out at me un-expectedly & disappearing again (with large squares of primary colours clearly designed to entertain pre-school children ), of the Microsoft Metro Tiles format. 

Personally (an opinion), if one has a desk top computer with a mouse & do not have a touch screen and only use your comp for nothing much more than buying merely as a consumer from commercial websites or posting 'likes' on social media like facebook, then Windows 8 will probably be fine. 

If however as in my personal experience you use a desk top comp for more than mundane & consumer purpose I would now avoid Windows 8 like a typhoid Mary. A Typhoid Mary that is that has a severe case of small pox & the black death plague & the clap combined.  My experience of the new W8 OS has been most negative in the extreme  & not much good for low/mid end creative &/or business use of my endeavours. 

Don't believe me? 
 
Do a google search (I did) under 'I hate Windows 8' and visit some of the computer tech geek & nerd forums & websites to see just how many small/medium business people & those who use their desk top comp creatively and/or for business purposes really loath Windows 8. 

There is seemingly a small cottage industry booming for computer IT techie types to reinstall the absent start buttons, practically disable (as much as possible the Metro tiles App interface) & for others re-grading desk top computers to back  install Windows 7 or a different OS provider altogether instead! 

What were Microsoft thinking about alienating so many small business people?  

I've had Windows 8 almost a month & I still despise. loath & hate it!) 

RANT over, I needed to vent & now desperately require to sip a cup of sweet Lady Grey tea!