ooh, you *should* get twin anchor tattoos! muy sexy. ksenia will loooove it. ;)
I like the flaming sousaphone. I don't know what it is about our instrument of choice that begs for modifications.
A few years back I rigged mine to blow bubbles out of the bell (via a mechanical linkage and a battery-powered bubble gun that was just out of site down the throat of the bell). Worked pretty well for how jerry-rigged it was.
A little while ago, I learned that Popeye's massive forearms had some basis in fact. Despite the wishes of every sailor and no doubt many officers, the shipyards wouldn't produce a ship without painting it, and considering that the paint they used at the time was inflammable and could permit a very hot flame to run as far as it wanted along painted bulkheads and such, sailors were put to the work of scraping the paint off of every surface they could manage, and developed unnaturally large forearms as a result.
Historically, peacetime Navies are encouraged to engage in "brightwork," which is to say painting the sides grey and polishing the brass to a gleam, while wartime Navies train like the devil and make their ships hard to see. Generally speaking, some of the best Admirals afloat or ashore were the ones who recognized that an existing brightwork navy is unprepared for war and spent the effort and political capital to convert former to a battle-ready force, paint or no paint.