kung fu grippe

M4W: Goggle’d, valve’d and care-fully embroider’d.

STEAMPUNK SINGLES ADS are printed by hand on authentic parchment or linen rag of the period, using hand-mixed blue-black squid ink and a puckity-puck steam-powered letterpress that’s attached by eight quarter-inch hemp ropes to an aubergine- and salmon-striped 20-foot-high zeppelin bearing a whimsical mustache and top hat made of real silk. Over 14 hours every Saturday, the grudgingly candid ad is drafted, corrected, re-edited, press-printed, duplicated via fake steam-powered mimeograph, dried, cured, re-dried, brass-cured, antiqued, and then carefully sealed with ruby-colored wax, which is impressed by the personal signet crest embossed in reverse on the ring of the be-goggled steampunker’s hammy right paw. The new ad is then carefully laid into a hand-stitched calfskin correspondence jacket which has been monogrammed in gold using a single strand of deceased stallion’s hair, then fitted with tiny, handmade brass hinges, a non-functional isinglass view screen, fine lace bookmarks with parti-colored appliques of Jules Verne and a longhand index page displaying a line drawing of a bicycle made of vintage plumbing supplies and six kerosene lamps wearing monocles or pinces nez. Once the week’s new singles ad has been installed in its lambskin jacket, it is covered by a satin lambskin-jacket jacket. Then, using a set of fantastical nickel and tin “correspondence tongs” — which have recently been retrofitted with crushed velvet, embroidered “tong handle pads” — the jacketed jacket is carefully placed in an extraordinary handmade commander’s chest, made of mirror-shiny interleaved exotic hardwoods and lined — child’s casket-like — with the finest chinoiserie tapestry linens and button-embroidered correspondence padding and correspondence padding case goggles. The chest’s wondrous exterior features a fully-functional pendulum-driven clock, more brass hinges, and more kerosene lamps, as well as a surprisingly un-jolly band of 4 mechanized chimps wearing fezzes and dinner jackets, biting unlit meerschaum pipes and, “playing” terrifying brass violins via a jerky series of armatures whose nearly non-functional steam-driven valves produce billows of dense black smoke and a deafening cacophony of thuds, hisses, and claps that gratefully drowns out the simians’ automatonically screeching quartet; still the steamchimps keep playing, eternally, joylessly, endlessly — staring, coal-black doll-eyed at nothing in particular, and compelled by steam and lonely ingenuities to perform, unheard and unapplauded, for no one in particular. After the massive rounded lid is lowered and bolted by 23 brass clasps — and taking extraordinary care to work around the wheezing chimp violinists and their barren, ironically un-smoking pipes — the chest is wrapped repeatedly in rounds of authentic maritime chains (which have been padded with the same materials as the chest’s exquisite lining and highlighted with thumb-sized silhouettes of Queen Victoria made of the same material as the tong handle pads) so as to avoid damaging the pristine exterior of the chest. At last, the chest is secured by a series of over 200 locks and lock-like lock facsimiles made variously of valves, valve cases, tubes, steam, steam tubes, glass, strong tea, velvet, tin whistles, magnifying glasses, wool, ivory, chutney, armatures, anglicanism, scones, fountain pens, fountain pen valves, fountain pen valve armatures, dictionary stands, goggles, goggle cases, goggle case cases, goggle pens, velvet goggle valve wipes, parchment cylinder case valves, port wine, white chapel, granite, goggle tubes, Yeats, stone sharpeners, eyepatch boxes, snuff lamps, magnifying glass shelf rod holder bins, a broken sextant, and much, much, much, much more brass.

Because, let’s be honest; That’s kind of where they belong.