Does your loved one have The Steampunk?
Are they suddenly significantly taller, due to the addition of a top-hat with a clock nailed to it?
Do they possess goggles which, for no particular reason, never seem to be found on their eyes?
Do they suddenly insist on drinking tea? Oh, sure, I’ve heard that normal people drink tea, but I don’t believe it. Have you ever tried the stuff? Horrible muck. Give me coffee any ol’ day.
Do they often forget to pay the rent or mail a letter, than walk into a large blue box, and emerge a few minutes later having dramatically altered the Universe by forbidden travel through the space-time continuum?
Have they begun gluing gears to things?
Do you find them disappearing on certain weekends weekends to odd and distant places, like Piscataway, New Jersey, and reappearing on Sunday night, exhausted, happy, and babbling vaguely about being overwhelmed by dancing, music, art, games, fun, and ballpits?
Good heavens! Who knows what peculiar things will happen next if we don’t put a stop to all this?
Friends, we must be ever-vigilant. Your neighbors, your friends, even your loved ones may have The Steampunk! The dangers are incalculable, mostly because almost all of them are imaginary. I mean, have you ever read something Steampunk? The most frequent Steampunk deaths are falling out of dueling airships, being struck by lightning by Thomas Edison’s evil death-ray, and accidentally forgetting to eat anything that isn’t a crumpet. It’s pretty hard to calculate how likely any of those things is to happen, but I suspect the odds are 22,079,460,347 to one against.
And I have left out a secret: It’s actually impossible to stop The Steampunk. It keeps re-creating itself in new and wonderful ways, as more and more people bring their far-flying imaginations to it. It’s incurable.
You might as well enjoy it.