Archives: Mecha Spats
10/20/02
I wonder how much richer the world would be, had Kipling, Austen, and Giger
been born the same person.
wintermute: You're not planning to move in the next month or two, though, right?
Brunnen_G: Just as soon as I know what date you're arriving. I was planning on leaving the key under the doormat for you and sticking a note on the fridge.
Brunnen_G: "Moved overseas. Please feed the cat."
wintermute: Well, that'll do I suppose. So long as the bailiffs don't also turn up while I'm there.
* wintermute is now NEARLY in Prince George!
Sundragyn: You know what I wish I could see but I'm probably going to miss? When you step outside one beautiful, foggy autumn morning and get your FIRST WONDERFUL WHIFF of Prince George.
wintermute: Well, if you want to meet me at the bus station, feel free.
Sundragyn: Yeah, but that smell is only around in the morning. At least, I only ever smell it in the morning. I'm acclimatized.
wintermute: Oh. Well.
Sundragyn: It's beautiful. It's home. It smells like rotten eggs. Ahhh.
* wintermute is looking forward to it already.
Sundragyn: Actually, I exaggerate some. It's mostly only smellable on foggy mornings.
Brunnen_G: You live in a geothermal area? I didn't know there were any up there.
Sundragyn: No, it's the local pulp mills, actually.
Brunnen_G: Ohhhhh. "Rotten eggs" smell means active geothermal zone to me.
Brunnen_G: Ew. From a factory, I wouldn't like it half as much.
Brunnen_G: I really like the smell in thermal areas here, though. It's the wonderful smell of being on holiday, ever since my childhood when Rotorua was pretty much the only place we ever went ;-)
Sundragyn: Seven pulp mills, and I don't know how many sawmills. Forest industry. Whee.
* Brunnen_G still wants to go to Dunedin some day and smell the famous Dunedin Factory Air Mixture.
Brunnen_G: Whisky factory, chocolate factory and coffee factory all in one town.
Sundragyn: Wow.
wintermute: OOhhh... that sounds like my kind of air.
Brunnen_G: When you stand in the middle and the wind blows right, I hear there's nothing better this side of heaven.
wintermute: Although I'd be nervous of any whisky made in a "factory."
Brunnen_G: Well, distillery then, or whatever they call it.
wintermute: And isn't Dunedin somewhere in Middle-Earth?
Sundragyn: New Zealand is Middle-Earth.
Brunnen_G: It's the Scotland of the South, if that means anything to you. A mostly Scottish-settled town way down the bottom of the South Island. It has a castle built by a 19th century lunatic and everything.
Sundragyn: British Columbia is also home to a castle built by a 19th century Scottish lunatic. :)
* Brunnen_G thinks the Scottish do "eccentric" so very well.
wintermute: Yeah. Starting with the whole "wearing skirts into battle" thing.
Brunnen_G: I love the 19th century.
codeman38: http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/watch/web_shows/happyhiro/ - Cal Worthington meets anime. Hilarity ensues.
codeman38: (And it has mechas, BG. ;-))
* Brunnen_G should probably, some day, actually watch some anime with mechas and see what it's all about.
* Brunnen_G seems to have acquired a reputation as a mecha fan without ever having actually seen one.
* Brunnen_G likes the idea, though.
Mia: Weren't we going to get Mrs. Pas to build us a giant mecha and have Liface pilot it?
Brunnen_G: Yes, that's right.
Mia: Whatever happened to THAT idea?
* Nyperold wonders what riding in a mecha the folex way would involve.
Brunnen_G: Like I told him. Screeching away in third gear with the handbrake on.
* Brunnen_G has been trying to get to the exhibition of great Victorian painting at the Auckland Art Gallery for like two months now and hasn't had the time.
Brunnen_G: I bet his parents would ground him for using the mecha without permission and ramming it into the garage wall.
RinkChat: The chat room topic has been changed to 'Brunnen-G talks about mechas and great Victorian art with no sense of incongruity.' by Brunnen_G.
Brunnen_G: I think I'm sort of weird.
wintermute: Heh. I was just picturing a Mecha as built by James Watt, too.
Brunnen_G: Oooooooooooh.
Brunnen_G: YES
Sundragyn: RULE.
wintermute: A huge clacky thing, with steam coming out of everywhere :)
Brunnen_G: With interior design by William Morris.
* codeman38 thinks it would be hilarious if someone could do a painting of a mecha in Victorian style.
Brunnen_G: "Have no mecha in your home which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful"
Aragh: And velvet gloves on it's large hammerlike fists.
* Cynthia would prefer an M.C. Escher mecha.
Sundragyn: Picasso.
wintermute: Geiger?
RinkChat: The chat room topic has been changed to 'Giant mechas and the Aestheticism Movement of the late 19th century' by Brunnen_G.
Brunnen_G: Now *that's* a topic I can get seriously into.
Cynthia: Instead of overpowering your opponent with all that tacky gunfire, force him/her to concentrate on which way is up.
wintermute: LOL.
* Mia just put her hair in two braids. It's mecha-sexy.
Mia: Now I just need the freckles.
Brunnen_G: Mechas have braids and freckles? This is news to me.
Mia: Well, no, but it is way sexy, I'm telling you.
Mia: Like mechas. Mechas are way sexy.
Brunnen_G: Are we talking about giant killer LITTLE GIRL mechas or what?
Mia: That would be COOL.
* Aragh has a nightmare about Shirley Temple becoming a mecha....
* Brunnen_G wants a giant mecha with wallpaper by William Morris and some Alma-Tadema paintings in the interior.
wintermute: No, I'd still go for a classic Watt design.
Brunnen_G: But that's only for the exterior and the mechanism.
wintermute: Well, yes.
Aragh: This conversation has officially gone off the weirdometer.
Brunnen_G: No it hasn't. I haven't even got started on the furniture yet.
wintermute: You'd want lots of couches, and wrought iron railings.
Sundragyn: Maybe a nice bean-bag chair.
Brunnen_G: Beanbags are neither beautiful nor useful.
Aragh: Maybe if you were surrounded by beanbags.... but then you couldn't appreciate the artwork as you blew things into shreds.
Brunnen_G: Well, I suppose they can be considered useful if you're comfortable in a beanbag. I'm not.
Sundragyn: But for piloting a mecha, they might be nice.
wintermute: Ohhh... and a Difference Engine in the corner.
Sundragyn: AIEE.
Brunnen_G: With organic design for the wrought iron. Sunflowers, lilies and green carnations. And Aubrey Beardsley ink drawings, but they have to be in a different room from the Alma-Tadema paintings or it wouldn't go.
wintermute: Naturally.
Aragh: Where are you going to fit the steam powered weapons of mass destruction?
Brunnen_G: Where they look best.
Aragh: Oh, above the mezzanine. I see.
wintermute: More levers! We need more levers!
Brunnen_G: Brass ones. With big crystal faceted knobs on the end.
wintermute: Yes!
Brunnen_G: I *LOVE* industrial-age engineering.
wintermute: Me too. We ought to do more of it.
Brunnen_G: Especially futuristic evil industrial-age engineering.
Sundragyn: As far as light fixtures go, I think a beautiful lead crystal and gold chandelier would be nice.
Aragh: Are we going to put gold plating in the bathrooms?
wintermute: Of course.
wintermute: Gold taps are a must.
Aragh: And what about the galley?
Brunnen_G: Did you ever see "Mystery Men"? If I was a male supervillain, I would be Casanova Frankenstein.
wintermute: Casanova Frankenstein ruled.
* Brunnen_G thinks the only drawback with being Casanova Frankenstein is that folex and Liface would probably be the Disco Boys.
wintermute: Fot the galley, we'll have 200 square feet of cooking surfaces, and plenty of goose in the larder.
wintermute: Oh, and lark's tongues. Can't pilot a mecha without a plate of lark's tongues.
Sundragyn: Lark tongues.
Brunnen_G: I need a quotes page for lines like that.
wintermute: Me too. But I'm not going to start one for a while.
Brunnen_G: If Matthew was available, he could do rat curry for us.
Brunnen_G: With larks' tongues as a side order.
Brunnen_G: Anyway, the mecha will have japanned or lacquered parlour furniture and maybe a folding screen or two.
Brunnen_G: And some peacock feathers and an elephant saddle representing the glory days of the Raj.
wintermute: And a couple of hunting-rifles up on the wall.
Brunnen_G: Man, you are going to love my flat when you get here.
wintermute: Your interior decorater is a Victorian?
Brunnen_G: No, just somebody who lives in the past a bit too much, i.e., me.
wintermute: Ah, well. Much the same :)
* Brunnen_G notes that the tiger pelt on the floor with stuffed head and feet still attached will, in fact, be vatgrown cloned tissue, since we DO live in the modern world after all.
wintermute: Ivory caps on the bannisters.
* Brunnen_G also notes that all this stuff is going to have to be WAY stuck down for when the mecha flies around, right?
wintermute: Of couse. Especially the chinaware.
wintermute: Porcelain teacups are a must.
Brunnen_G: Except for the porcelain teaset it fires at enemies out of the special Fit Of Petulance Arm.
Brunnen_G: I also think it should have Condescension Capability and a small, downtrodden Indian houseboy.
wintermute: Well, I was taking that as read.
wintermute: I mean what Mecha doesn't have a houseboy?
Brunnen_G: He could be called Ranjit Singh, I think.
Brunnen_G: Although we would call him "boy."
wintermute: As long as he's not called Kahn Noonien Singh.
Brunnen_G: Or "punkah-wallah."
wintermute: And he should call everyone "memsahib".
Sundragyn: Ooooh. I'd love to be called memsahib.
Brunnen_G: You want him to call YOU memsahib? Well, whatever.
* wintermute forgets the exact terms. You know what I mean, though.
* Brunnen_G defends wintermute's right to wear a pith helmet with a veil, and carry a lace parasol.
wintermute: Hey!
Brunnen_G: "Sahib" is more what you were thinking of, I imagine.
wintermute: Most likely, yes.
warlock has entered.
Brunnen_G: Put me somewhere east of Suez, Where the best is like the worst, Where there ain't no Ten Commandments, and a man can live in a flying giant mecha with William Morris wallpaper and a small Indian houseboy called Jaspreet.
* warlock backs away slowly
* Brunnen_G is so sure that's how Kipling *would* have ended that line, with a little more thought.
wintermute: Kipling always avoided giant flying mechas, for some reason.
Nyperold: Bad childhood memories, I'm sure.
wintermute: Except in that one "Just So" story.
wintermute: "How Tokyo got it's radioactive ash-pits", I believe.
* Brunnen_G just got the most fantastic idea for a website feature.
* Aragh leaves before Brunnen_G can tell him about it.
Brunnen_G: I thought it should have been obvious.
wintermute: There are three or four things it might be.
Brunnen_G: However, I can rewrite the Just So Stories later. Right now I think I should see about some dinner.
* Brunnen_G goes to tell Ranjit Singh to hurry up with the rat curry.
Brunnen_G: Sorry, I meant larks' tongues.
Brunnen_G: Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Brunnen_G has left.
Brunnen_G has entered.
* Brunnen_G comes back and takes the porcelain teaset.
Brunnen_G has left.
Back to the RinkChat Archives.