STEAMPUNK IS "IN"

Have you heard of it? I hadn't, so I looked it up.

"Steampunk is a nostalgia for a time when technology had some relationship to the human scale." Scott Westerfield, author of a new novel in what he calls a steampunk setting, Levithan." [Oct. 09]

" (Steampunk) ...a subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time- traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and now fashion, all inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives, brass diving bells and jar-shaped protosubmarines." New York Times, [May 09]

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia says:
"Steampunk ... works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne ..."

What is it?

It's wood, brass, and leather, hand-made -- you can take it apart and put it back together -- the opposite of the Iphone with its shiny, impenetrable, exterior -- it's impregnable interior with all its microscopic elements permanently encased plastic square-beads that can't be opened.

It increasing popular -- there are steampunk housewares, music, fashion, steampunk apps for Itunes, "Steampunk Magazine," blogs, steampunk conventions in San Diego, and Seattle -- a museum in Oxford with an exhibition devoted to steampunk.

Have a look:

Will it affect you and me?

Golly, my clothes, shoes, hat, coats -- jewelry -- everything in my closets, in my home and offices -- furniture, dishes, appliances, window shades, wall and floor coverings -- phones, clocks, radios – I never thought of it as steampunk, but now that I know the definition ... that's what it is!

Goody, I'd rather think of myself as "steampunked than old-fashioned."