From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Tue Feb 13 2001 - 15:33:15 MST
Or... Costumes as PR.
From: Spike Jones <spike66@attglobal.net>
>Oh, yes, the costume contest. The "Sisters" of Perpetual
>Motion showed up, one of which is said to be an actual
>woman, but no one knows which.
>A woman in a white dress had every favorite thing physically
>attached to her person: door bells and sleigh bells, wild geese,
>cream colored ponies, even schnitzel with noodles.
>A group of men and women dressed in curtains.
[...]
The great thing about costumes, is that it's a humorous way to
introduce radical ideas. People can think about it, while they
are also laughing at it. No one is scowling, you see. Great PR.
So choosing a costume: 1) Obscure/Educational or 2) Silly ?
1) If you choose one that is obscure and abstract, it's sort of a
hassle to need to explain it to those folks you meet.
On the other hand, with obscure costumes, you then have the other(s)
attention to tell them what it's about.
In October 1997, I dressed up as a Cassini RTG unit for my Halloween
costume. As you may remember, Cassini was launched that month, amid
huge demonstrations about the safety of the RTG units.
My costume was a bit abstract because I was unsuccessful in finding
a large silver cylinder in the Stanford trash bins to fit around a
human body. The largest I could find was one that I fit over my arm.
Then I painted radioactive-glowing-blue on my face and colored my
hair green and put sparkly things all over the rest of me.
(http://galileo.mpi-hd.mpg.de/~graps/rtg_33.jpg)
Even with the words: "RTG" on the aluminum tube and "Cassini"
written in big letters acrosss my torso, folks _still_ couldn't
figure out what I supposed to be. They thought that I was some sort
of space fairy.
However this was a hip crowd (cypherpunks) who had a good grasp of
the scientific issues and risk factors regarding the RTGs and, as
soon as I told them what I was, they had a good laugh about my
politically incorrect costume. I needed to give very little
explanation after that.
2) Or you can go for the big and obvious and silly shock option,
which is simply fun.
Spike, I see you decided to go for the ......
>So I was in the costume shop and they had an SNL
>conehead thing, and I got an idea. Take some pine
>cones, cut off the, um, thingies that pine cones have
>on em, put on the conehead getup and glue these thingies
>all over it and all over my face. Hang a sign around
>my neck with arrows pointing upwards and the words
>^ MARIA SIT HERE ^
Silly option. :-)
Amara
who's getting ready for Fasching celebrations in 1-2 weeks.
(Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Carnival in Rio de Janiero, Carnival
in Venice, etc. etc. It's that time of year, you know.)
********************************************************************
Amara Graps email: amara@amara.com
Computational Physics vita: finger agraps@shell5.ba.best.com
Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/
********************************************************************
"Sometimes I think I understand everything. Then I regain
consciousness." --Ashleigh Brilliant
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