GalacticMu

Recently an Etsy artist by the name of OctopusME made the internet rounds for her tentacle-rings cast from a real octopus tentacles. This was a huge hit with the steampunk and Cthulupunk crowds, as you can well imagine, but it wasn’t until today that I actually looked at her shop.

What made me shake my fist at my sucking wound of a bank account was the “Dragon Slayer” pendant, a single talon in silver, equal parts Awesome Metal Chick to D&D nerdess. Smaug-tastic! I’d advise against wearing with denim, though, unless you want to be solicited for crank all night.

For those still enamored of her tentacle jewelry, though, I myself prefer her line of small tentacle earrings, like this double-tentacle pair. Even though I know I’d be tugging knots of my hair out of them all day long, I still prefer their spindly, creepy articulation over the rings.

OctopusME’s shop.

“Dragon Slayer” pendant ($78).

“Double Tentacle Earrings” ($85).

My future husband Nathan Fillion has been keepin’ himself busy via Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, etc.)- and I ask of you, what finer sentence has ever been written?

Whedon nerds have been breathlessly following (and by breathlessly, I mean loudly chatterboxing each other to death) the announcement of Whedon’s web-only musical short titled Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. The three-part series stars Neil Patrick Harris as the villain Dr. Horrible, and Nathan Fillion as the hero Captain Hammer. Music and humor ensue.

Oh, and Fillion - can we set the wedding date, please? I’ve got about 20 pounds to lose and I don’t see any reason to start losing it too early.

Things have been busy here at the Mu, and we can say with ultra-rare excitement that only good things have been keeping us in this state.

I myself got my first all-time-hysterical-awesome job on a real film set. I mean, it was for a television commercial, but we don’t nitpick about these things. There was still real film spinning through real big cameras and people yelling “Check the gate!” and “That’s our martini!” And yes, I was a production assistant (You know the lowest rung on the ladder? Below that.) but still: see that blurry jar in the background? I placed that jar there! It’s a breed of satisfaction that cannot be described. Besides, the crew was suspiciously friendly and professional and apologized whenever I was used for something as simple as fetching water - even though “fetches water” is clearly listed in the job description of “Groveling Yes-Girl”.

I can’t really boast what great things have happened to Leesa and Halcyon, but they’ll come out soon enough. Suffice to say they are good and we shall all bask in the glow of this rareness for as long as the nature of this particular chaos spins out.

I’m in a little bit of shock right now. I’ve been staring at this WordPress draft page trying to decide between some long-ass dedication and a short-n-sweet send off. Neither is particularly satisfactory when one of your heroes has died.

Stan Winston, easily the greatest special effects artists ever to live, has died at the young age of 62.

Stan - can I call you Stan, Stan?- won his first Oscar for creating one of the most complicated puppets ever constructed, the alien Queen of the seminal Aliens. Busting out pretty much every single great movie monster over the next 20+ years (right up until Iron Man’s scene-stealing suit, which you’ve surely seen by now).

When I was a kid, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I guess I still don’t. On any given day I wanted to be a storm chaser, an astronaut, an epidemiologist, a horse trainer, a comic book artist, a pagan priestess, a writer, a movie star and a special effects artist. As my 30’s approach with gaining speed, I find that the one career I think most often about is the special effects artist - namely, practical effects. Monster masks, elf-ears and bloody intestines. Any DVD watched at my home means watching the special features hoping for behind-the-scenes peeks. The giant Alien box set I own (thanks dad!) gets play time as much for the voluminous documentaries as it does for the films - and in particular, my favorite part: Stan Winston and his crew, mocking up a giant, absurd, nearly-impossible puppet parts while seeing the possibilities behind the cruddy black-painted foam and the rubber tubing - the Queen. Who cares if someone is standing by with an industrial-size tube of KY Jelly to string from the Queen’s jaws? Me, that’s who! I want to be that someone!

Of course he had other achievements, undoubtedly ones he was more proud of. His stories of trying to keep the damn tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic Park from shaking as though plagued with some kind of palsy would crack me up (the rain would soak into the latex and overload the motors, which would then violently shudder). You know, another frustrating day at work.

Anyway, thanks Stan. I’m getting choked up thinking about you fighting cancer for 7 years, and I wish I’d had a chance to meet you. Lightspeed.

Sometimes I nerd out so hard I embarrass the shit out of myself. Getting a tear over Orbital’s live Dr. Who blowout is one of those times. Then again: I’d not change myself for the world.

Leesa asked why I hadn’t cross-posted my Death of a Spaceman series here at Mu (my Flickr account is crawling with them, and if by crawling you mean 5), and since I didn’t have a good answer, here is the first one.

The Sound From Wind by designer Joseph Kim is an awesome handle bar accessory for your bike that produces sound by funneling the air as you ride. You can control the notes by pressing keys on the device.

Wouldn’t it be great if it produced anything even resembling the creepy tones of this thing?

photo by StewieD on Flickr

You’d either delight or terrify the neighborhood.

via Yanko

For those times when you can’t be there to hug baby: the Facehugger plushie.

Available at Amazon, believe it or not. Via Lost in Brittany

PADDY (VIA TEXT): Im at star treck resternt!

SUBSPACE: Awesome! Order a warp core breach!

PADDY: Done and done

I just adore finding fantastic tidbits of unknown origin - and while I wish I knew who was really responsible for this video so that I might hand them some well-deserved credit, I also like this new era of free-range art.

Quagmire sent this one to me and pointed out that something of note occurs at around :44 seconds in, and even with this warning the aforementioned “something” still made me bark out the embarrassing, overloud Julia Roberts-esque guffaw that I am infamous for. Busy bars on Saturday nights have quieted when this laugh is deployed.