Costume Chaos

It's that time of year; my company's annual Halloween extravaganza is approaching and many of us employees are scrambling to get our costumes done in time.  I had another ambitious plan for this year; I was going to be a meat grinder, complete with working crank which would push more 'ground meat' out when turned.

Despite once again being an over the top costume, I was excited about the idea.  I brainstormed the plan, bought materials, and dove in.

Much of this thing was going to be paper mache, which I've never used before, but I looked up some tutorials on YouTube and off I went.

The first thing I needed was a central tube for the grinding chamber.  I wanted the end to flare bigger than the inside end so I grabbed a metal trash barrel, wrapped it in chicken wire...

What a pain in the balls this was, cuttin the wire, wrapping each cut piece around its accompanying connection point, tucking all the sharp ends inside so they wouldn't keep jabbing me.

Apparently I did a great job of wrapping it very tightly.  It was so tight, it took me almost half an hour to slide it off of the trash barrel.

After that, I molded another chamber to house the crank, for opposite of the grinding chamber.

Next was to cut some cardboard circles to tuck inside to give the chambers structural integrity...

The circles on the end kept sliding inside the tube so I cut some spacer shims to keep the circles in place.  But the shims kept falling over so I tied them into place with thread (if you open the pic you can see the thread).

Lastly was the center of the costume.  I wanted it to be a bit rounded to give more of a chamber effect, rather than just a straighht tube.  I bought an inflatable exercise ball and then se the tubes against it.

(In this pic, just the smaller tube on top was splayed open to mold it better to the ball, but after I took this pic, I splayed the bottom tube as well, for a muc better fit.

 Next up; the paper mache!  Glue, water, and a bit of salt which apparently keeps the paper from molding.

Ta da  Wait...no "ta da"...it's not done!  When I started to apply the paper, I found that while it stuck great to the ball, it wasn't sticking to the chicken wire at all.  This meant I had to do the middle section first, then I'd have to lay it on its side to apply some paper on its top, let it dry, then roll it a bit, put more paper on the top, let dry, etc.

 And messy?  Man, just look at that tarp.  This stuff was dripping all over the place.  But, I had knocked some of the project out and it was time to let stuff dry.  I turned on the ceiling fan, set up a floor fan to help, and kicked back for a while.

When it was dry (many hours later), I went up and checked it for strength.

And that's when it hit me...

This costume required me to be inside of it to achieve the effect of me being ground up - I was aware of that.  But I'd assumed I'd be able to cut a section out of the ball and have the remainder of it held firmly in place by the paper mache.   But what I found was the ball was still very flexible, meaning that as soon as I cut into it, relieving the internal pressure, the costume would lose all structural integrity.  This meant the costume would flop around on both sides, most likely resulting in the whole thing tearing in half.  Definitly not what I wanted - and with only 5 days left until go-time, I was out of luck.

So I cut/tore/dismantled the entire thing and it all went out in yesterday's trash.

This left me without a costume for what is the biggest event at my work, all year.  But that'd be sacrilege.  I've been competing in the costume contest for almost as long as I've been here.  For weeks, folks have been coming up and asking me what I was going to be (I never tell beforehand), and saying they couldn't wait to see what I came up with for this year.

But I was out of time and to be honest; out of motivation.  I just wasn't feeling it.  I figured what the hell, I'll take a year off and sit this one out.

But then yesterday, as I was washing my hands after using the bathroom, I was hit with inspiration; I'm going to go as a commercial hand soap dispenser.  (Huh?)

That's right; a commercial hand soap dispenser, complete with PURELL (C) labels on it and everything.

Anyone that's daring enough to hold their hands under the dispensing part - which will conveniently be located at my crotch level - will get a handful of cream.  Shaving cream, that is.  I'll be holding a can of it inside the box I'm building.

I may not place in the winning group, but I plan on getting a shitload of laughs.

Maybe I'll try the meat grinder thing again next year.

Ride Hard, Take Chances