Muad’Dibbler

Okay, so my costumes are usually stupid, but this one also is both obscure and stupid!

Karval Kon is a small (12 attendees this year) invite-only convention run by our friend Rose Beetem, that she has been holding for decades (we’ve been attending for something like 25 years now, and it had already been running for 20 years then!).

Every attendee is required to create art for the art show, and also to create a costume for the costume contest. Costumes tend to be thrown together–often a few minutes before the contest. So, they are generally not the greatest costumes ever created (although sometimes a lot of work goes into them, particularly if they are then used for a bigger event).

That is my excuse for the thrown-together nature of the costume. Now for the explanation of the obscure and stupid…

This year’s theme was Discworld–the world created by Terry Pratchett, that is a flat disc sitting on the back of four elephants riding on a giant space turtle. If you haven’t read them, you should–they are brilliant (the first few in the series are kinda silly, but they get much better as the series progresses).

One of the recurring characters is Cut-Me-Own-Throat-Dibbler, who is a semi-con-man who, when times are tough, resorts to selling sausages-in-a-bun (you pay extra for a named meat). His name comes from his willingness to strike a bargain (I’ll sell that to you for $20, and that’s cutting-me-own-throat).

Muad’Dib is the god-emperor of Dune, based on the Frank Herbert books. I’d explain all the details, but I’d run out of bytes on the Internet.

So, is that enough boring background? The costume is Cut-Me-Own-Throat Muad’Dibbler. He is selling spice melange, crysknives, water of life, and, of course, sandworm-in-a-bun. Sadly, I don’t have a picture, but Anna played my customer. We won the “Wine-Gum Jabbar” award for the costume.

And, yes, that is a 1kg gummy worm in a French loaf cut as a bun. It took me more than a week to finally eat the thing after the convention.

Oh, and here’s my artwork from the art show (It’s the Death of Rats, also a character from Discworld):