catsbymoo

Eek, I've certainly been delaying my FC 2010 photo post! I'll keep it quick. FurCon 2010 was a lot of fun, even if I didn't really attend any Con events. The Klingon room party was interesting (and had strong mighty booze), but the real gem was the Communist Party (which turned out to be more of a Soviet Party). Good vodka, raw potatoes, cabbage, and beets for all! We were invaded by U.N. soldiers partway through, but they turned out to just be supplying us with U.N. Relief -- in the form of beer! Huzzah! Plenty of friends made a brief appearance. Khaiel told me that I was belligerently forcing him to eat a potato... but I'm perfectly sober and I still think it's hilarious. Sorry about that! (Pictures below :)

The hotel was great, and the staff was very nice. The animal ears some of them wore were a nice touch. The food nearby was a bit pricey, though, and the in-hotel Chinese restaurant had no duck. No duck! Fershame.

Happy at-con birthday to my lovable meerkat!

[Photos behind the cut]

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Joe, Fuzzy and I watched Benjamin Button, played some video games, and generally had a wild time at my place tonight. Good times. Fun was had.

Hey buddy, nice tail!

Nom nom, snowmew.

You've probably heard about the now-infamous Tyra Banks episode on "furry" by now. Here's a link to the whole 5min debacle!

http://www.megavideo.com/?v=X2YF6EKF

http://www.megavideo.com/?v=X2YF6EKF (Sorry for it being MegaVideo... just close any porn popups)

What happened is that this person, Chewfox, and her mate took it upon themselves to go on national TV, as furries, and tell everyone that all furries have sex in suit, and are therians. Of course, a major dramastorm started, and the predictable /b/-tards came in "for the lulz, yeeerrr".

I think the problem that everyone had was not that she said that she had sex in suit... rather, it was worded so as to strongly imply that every single furry has a suit, has sex in said suit, and is a therian. Also, she strongly implied that every single fursuit has an SPH and is used for sexual purposes. She gleefully ascribed her very marginalized fetish to the entire fandom at large, and is that going to piss people off? Of course it is!

I feel the worst for the people who suit mostly for public events, birthday parties, etc. Tyra Banks' biggest audience is the stay-at-home mom, and I'm sure that's going to fly real well when Sally Homemaker calls up the suiter she had at her kid's park birthday party last month and asks him why he tried to spread his filth, because "I saw it on Tyra".

I don't buy the whole "it's inevitable so she can say whatever the hell she wants" line, either. That's like the people who think it's inevitable that they'll catch HIV so they actually seek out infected people to have unprotected sex with. It's ridiculous, and it truly happens - why seek out the bottom level?

I've already been stopped by strangers while I wore a tail in public, and asked, "Hey, are you furries? ... do you have sex in your fursuit? I saw it on CSI/MTV". It does happen. It will happen more now due to backlash from this show.

As for the ban... FA ToS reserves for admins the right to ban without notice or reason. I'm sure a lot of professional suiters are going to lose out on gigs over this show, and most of those people will not be into fursuit sex, so that could even be considered slander!.. which is also against the FA ToS.

Not everyone who has a suit has sex in it... remember that the people that are into that are likely to stick together, so the numbers would seem inflated to people that already do it. Regardless, I don't want some jerk going before a national audience of tens of millions and telling them all who *I* am. Maybe she was taken out of context somehow (it doesn't seem like it), but her wording almost seemed [i]designed[/i] to try and define all furries at once.

Furry is an incredibly personal thing, and it means something different to everyone, and is certainly not about sex to everyone. Why should people be alright with being lumped together with people whom they have a huge ideological chasm? This is about as helpful for helping people understand the furry fandom as the gay pride parades where everyone wears nothing but leather chaps and has sex in the streets. Is it fun? Sure. Do I want to be associated with it? Absolutely not.

Walking into the cinema to see "9", I was hoping for a post-apocalyptic journey into the tortured soul of humanity. Instead, I got a Stuart Little clone meets Little Big World, with even more action chase sequences and less character development. Yawn. None of the characters were fleshed out, and the final resolution to the story rang hollow, and didn't really follow through to any satisfactory climax. The story was just one cliche pasted onto another, and felt even emptier than Harry Potter, which is the granddaddy of cliche whoring.

What was I hoping for? One of my all time favorite movies is "The Seventh Seal", by Ingmar Bergman. It's a slow, thoughtful movie that drifts through a tortured, dreamlike world, and probes the darkest depths of what it means to be a human. This is what I wanted from 9. I sure as hell didn't get it. Ingmar Bergman sure as hell didn't direct it. I wish he had.

Most of the movie's failings can be explained away as the mistakes of a newbie, as this is director Shane Acker's first real project. He was an animator for Weta Digital before this, and had otherwise only produced very short films. Obviously, short films can subsist on style without the need for substance. A glossy crème brûlée, which is a thin shell over fluff, cannot be stretched to over an hour without showing the cracks in its foundation.

Director Len Wiseman made a similarly hollow movie with "Underworld", and he comes form a similar background - that was his first movie after a short, unsuccessful career in several film art departments. Is too much power being handed over to these people that only know how to make a pretty shell of a movie without the substance I crave? I think so.

If you like pretty things, watch this movie, but don't look too close - the texturing of the main characters' faces is glaringly amateur looking at best. Burlap doesn't stretch that way, and I definitely wasn't the only one to notice it.

This review is about the movie "9". For the record, I thought "District 9" was pretty bad-ass.  :)

I sure have been busy! It took a lot longer to get around to posting my photos than I expected... Please forgive the rambling nature of this post 3:o)

This is a roundup of my trip to Frankfurt, Germany, then Berlin, and off to Suhl for Eurofurence 2009. I traveled with Zotcoon, Rathiel, and Icewolf, and our trip took place from the Sunday before EF to the Monday directly following EF.

If you just want to skip to the photo galleries, click below:

http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y99/Catsby/Berlin2009/
http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y99/Catsby/EF2009/

Pics and description behind the cut!

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After several years of trepidation, I finally told my parents that I am gay, and have a boyfriend. My mom took it fairly well, I suppose, and said she was "shocked, and just glad that I had someone, because she had always worried about that". My dad snorted, "You think I didn't know!?" and stormed off to water the garden. I don't think the tulips have ever gotten that much water. All in all, though, they both took it fairly well, and my dad better than I expected.

I'm still processing all of the information, and won't really know how I feel about the whole ordeal for some time. Growing up, my father made it abundantly clear that "cocksuckers" were not welcome in the family. He's certainly mellowed out at least somewhat since then, but it's not clear to even my mother how he really feels about anything.

I personally feel that my love life isn't a very big deal. In the real world, though, it seems that everyone is only too eager to ascribe additional meaning to whom I choose to share my time and love with. If it weren't such a big deal to everyone else, I wouldn't feel the need to even mention it.

As for how my parents really feel about me? I guess I just have to wait and see if I'm invited to Thanksgiving :)

Califur 2009... better than Califur 2008, but no thanks to the Con itself - hanging out with friends and at room parties is where it's at! Had a great time hanging out with Mr. Meerkat and everyone, glad to be there ^.^

Pics behind the cut! Click HERE to just see the photos as a normal list!

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It's official - I'm going to Eurofurence! I'm going with Zotcoon, Rathiel, and Icewolf to Berlin for several days before heading to Suhl for the conference itself. "Domestic" beer that doesn't suck awaits!

What a great weekend! Went down to the Deep Creek Hot Springs with Fuzzy, Khaiel, Haze, Ice, and Turk. Lots of naked people, as usual, but no saggy 100-year-olds this time. The water was great, the weather was nice and overcast, and no leeches in unmentionable areas! Finish the day getting stuffed silly, then hanging out playing video games at Fuzzy's, and you've got yourself a pretty good Saturday!

Sunday was blissfully lazy.

Photos behind the cut!

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So, after much consternation, I told my eldest brother that I was gay a bit over a year ago. That went well enough, I suppose. He told my voted-yes-on-prop-8-hell-yeah! brother a bit later. Things were already awkward between the two of us, so I suppose there wasn't much that was going to change that.

Those two brothers kept pestering me to add them to my Facebook, even after I flatly told them "no" several times. Isn't it rude not to take a hint? There are just some things I prefer to keep private. I finally relented and added them a few weeks ago, after sprucing up my profile and photo albums a bit. And tonight, just now, I added my final brother. That will probably make it nearly certain that I'll have to tell my parents *something*, soon enough. Oh well. I don't mind too much... I just haven't gotten a good opportunity to talk to them, what with a death in the family and then my brother in and out of jail and rehab every few weeks. No point in worrying them unnecessarily, right?

I guess the ball is rolling, and I'll just have to wait and see what happens...