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You’ll have to forgive your self-indulgent author, today. Every year, around this time, I get very maudlin. Part of it is the big change in my life around work that happened a while back, part of it is that lasting sense of “this is when the school year begins”, and part of it is grief.

In my Kaddish article these many years ago, I talk about the Mourner’s Kaddish, a prayer said after the death of one’s parents. It’s spoken daily for eleven months, and then yearly on the anniversary of the death. It’s said in order to ease the burden of grief over time so that it does not remain an overwhelming force in life.

Would that I had the faith to let go. Still, no harm in trying.

So, in that vein, on this anniversary, yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba…

Five years ago, on September 6th, a friend of mine passed away.

I’d not really had all that much exposure to death before that, if I’m honest. My step-adoptive-grandfather died when I was fairly young, and all I really remember out of that was the funeral, and inheriting a small medal he’d won from Colorado State University, something about soil science and geology. After that, I had dream after dream about what winning that medal must’ve been like, walking through some grand oaken hall to receive a pewter medal on a velvet pillow. That I later attended CSU, and that CSU had no oaken halls as in my dreams, always left me vaguely disappointed.

Other than that, my brush with mortality was limited to my grandmother, who passed some time later. The unfortunate part of her passing was that, for years before, she had been deep in a mire of dementia that left her a pallid shadow of her former self. From her, I remember that a lot of our final interactions were beset by confusion, frustration, and tears. “You’re [my mom]’s son, right?” she asked in the airport. She repeated the question seven or eight times, being sure, each time, to comfort herself that the person pushing her wheelchair was someone known to her.

My mom and I had flown out to see her as she got settled into a final stage of her life in Charlotte, North Carolina. My mom flew out to see her one more time before she died, but, after a long talk, it was decided that I would stay home. “I can’t handle it. I can’t be in that role again,” I pleaded, and my mom let me stay with my dad while she flew out of town.

Margaras died in an automobile accident on the base on which he was stationed. We, the group of friends that had congregated on FurryMUCK since long before I’d first appeared on the scene in 2001, learned about this from a close friend of his five years ago today, as I write this on September 12th. The friend slipped quietly into the room, confirmed that Margs had been a regular there, passed along the news through an article, and then slipped just as quietly from the room.

We all sat basically dumbfounded.

The news came the day before I was scheduled to fly to Canada, to Montreal. I had just started my job at Canonical the week before along with another coworker, and the team had decided that the best way to onboard us new folk was to schedule a week of us working together with a few previously defined goals.

My attention was divided that whole week. It was only my second week at work, and yet I felt as though I was dealing with a death in the family. I think all of us there on FM were going through something similar, to some extent or another. Some rejoiced in memories, some were crushed. I felt torn – Margs had been there as I was growing up. All through high school, through college, and into my first job.

Most of all, I remembered all of the times, upon performing “I’ve got a gal in Kalamazoo” during my senior year of high school, that I sang to him about “knowing a lynx in Kalamazoo”, where he’d lived. I couldn’t get that silly song out of my head for days after learning of his passing. He grumbled every time I quoted that to him, too – he was always a grouchy lynx.

He didn’t even live in Michigan anymore. Hadn’t in years.

I made it through the week okay. I think all of us found our ways to cope, and for me, that was in solidarity. I left myself logged in to FurryMUCK in a terminal on my laptop even as I worked, peeking back every now and then to see little tendrils of normalcy creeping back into the lives of those impacted by the loss. When I went to sleep, I left myself logged in so that I could wake up to a few hours of chatter before I had been disconnected for inactivity.

Me and a few others, some of whom also grew up knowing the grouchy lynx, still remember those days with a sort of clarity that eludes other, seemingly important moments in life. Every year, a few waves of memory wash through my days, carrying along bits of detritus. Memories of my first few days at Canonical, falling in love all over again with people, leaving a screen session running with the MUCK connected to wake up to.

When our lynx friend passed five years ago, I was left wondering what he’d say to me. I think this is a fairly common thought among those who have lost someone close to them. “Would I be making them proud?” “Would they tell me off for the bad decisions that I’ve made?” “Did they leave this world having a good impression of me?”

If Margaras were alive today, what would he say to me? When he left, I was just on my way out of a bout of self destruction – would he be proud that I had pulled through that, and several others in the intervening years? When he left, I was still figuring out some very basic aspects of myself: my gender identity and the whole open relationship thing – would he understand all of my halting forays into these territories, the backtracking and endless refining? Would that all become part of the story that we’d laugh about after the fact? Would we still laugh about knowing a lynx in Kalamazoo? What words of ours would we remember best?

I’ll never know, obviously.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot, this time around the sun. What words did we share that made it so that I felt so strongly about his passing? We never met in person, so words were about all we had between us, maybe the occasional *hug* or something to go with it it, but other than that, we were friends through the letters that showed up on each other’s screens.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that this is very much the norm within furry. I found myself thinking about the sheer number of people that I know primarily, or even only through words. Words that we have the chance to edit, words that we pick carefully. This is the face we present to each other, more than just a drawing or two of our character. Its relatively rare, in fact, that the image is what we know, more than the words: I can think of only a handful of examples of people that I know primarily through their likeness rather than through their words, and in almost every case, I am totally unknown to them – it’s a purely unidirectional relationship.

Our words, though, is how we truly know each other. It’s one of those things that sounds stupidly obvious when set down plainly like that, but all the same, I’ve been spending some time going over my words and thinking, “Who is it that the people around me know? Am I being earnest, am I constructing an artificial personality, or is it a bit of both?”

I know that I’ve said some stupid things in my life, and there is a part of me that regrets saying them. I’ve yelled when I shouldn’t have, and I’ve not spoken up enough when I should have. I’ve wound up in relationships and friendships that weren’t very healthy for me or for the other person, and I’ve left relationships that were truly good for me for reasons I still don’t understand to this day. I regret them, yes, but I can’t help but ask myself what I would be without them? Would I have matured into someone I would like to be friends with? Would I have matured at all, if I hadn’t, at some points in my life, done the wrong thing and actually made that mistake, felt the hot flush of shame?

Brené Brown talks about much of this in her 2012 talk at TED. She describes having a “vulnerability hangover” after admitting to a large audience that she had a breakdown, and goes on to describe the fact that vulnerability is essential to our lives. I think it’s fairly obvious that I agree, given the tone of this article.

More than that, however, Brown talks about how important it is that we have a conversation about shame. “Shame”, she says, “is not guilt. Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is “I am bad.” Guilt is “I did something bad.””

There are things that I am ashamed about with my friendship with Margaras. I didn’t talk to him enough, foremost. I didn’t reach out to him more, and when he was around, I too often was comfortable not engaging more fully. I probably also could’ve done without making that dumb Kalamazoo joke quite as many times as I did, too.

But again, I have to question what I would be feeling now without that shame. Would my pain have lingered for five years now if I had only perfect interactions with him? Would I miss him so deeply if there were no words left unsaid between us? Would I feel so glad about the time we spent together if I hadn’t also gone through rough times while knowing him, and hadn’t needed the comfort of a friend?

Now that I know the feeling of loss – how it tastes, how it aches, the weight of it – I think I better understand the way that my own words work, and the importance of shame to me. I have better control over the way that I interact with others, because I’ve gone through the process of learning how (and how not to). This has changed the way I use words, those most important things within the furry subculture, whether that be on twitter or here through [a][s], talking with friends on Slack or even chatting in person.

I’ll still make mistakes, of course, but I’ll feel better about them. Hopefully they won’t be so deeply stupid, and I’ll have a little less to be ashamed of as time goes on. I’ll feel guilt about the dumb thing that I did, but maybe a bit less shame about myself. Even so, I’ll still have reasons to feel strongly about the ways I interact with people through the words I choose. Maturation’s a hell of a task to undertake, but coming out through the other side, it feels much better.

So. To Margaras. To grouchy lynxes. To shame, to mistakes, and to maturity. And hey, until next time,

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I knew a lynx in Kalamazoo…

Everything’s O.K-A-L-A-M-A-Z-O-Oh what a lynx in Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo”

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

The Art of Racing in the Rain; A Novel, by Garth Stein
NYC, HarperCollinsPublishers/Harper, May 2008, hardcover $23.95 (321 [+ 1] pages), Kindle $9.99.

“Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. And when I occasionally step over the line and into the world of the melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively. In order to make my point understood without question. I have no words I can rely on because, much to my dismay, my tongue was designed long and flat and loose, and therefore, is a horribly ineffective tool for pushing food around my mouth while chewing, and an even less effective tool for making clever and complicated polysyllabic sounds that can be linked together to form sentences. And that’s why I’m here now waiting for Denny to come home – he should be here soon – lying on the cool tiles of the kitchen floor in a puddle of my own urine.” (p. 1)

The narrator is Enzo, a mixed-breed retriever, the pet dog of Denny Swift, a human retired racecar driver. Enzo is dying of canine old age, but he is looking forward eagerly to his death. He has educated himself by watching television with Denny, and has accepted a documentary on Mongolian belief in reincarnation as reality. He believes that when he dies as a dog, he will be reborn as a human and will become Denny’s best friend.

The novel is Enzo’s autobiography.

“I remember the heat on the day I left the farm. Every day was hot in Spangle, and I thought the world was just a hot place because I never knew what cold was about. I had never seen rain, didn’t know much about water. Water was the stuff in the buckets that the older dogs drank, and it was the stuff the alpha man sprayed out of the hose and into the faces of dogs who might want to pick a fight. But the day Denny arrived was exceptionally hot. My littermates and I were tussling around like we always did, and a hand reached into the pile and found my scruff and suddenly I was dangling high in the air.

‘This one,’ a man said.” (p. 11)

Denny and Enzo have always watched the television together. At first it was videos associated with Denny’s auto racing, and Denny provided a running commentary for Enzo. One of the first things Enzo learned was where this title is from.

“‘Very gently. Like there are eggshells on your pedals,’ Denny always says, ‘and you don’t want to break them. That’s how you drive in the rain.’” (p. 13)

The novel is a rambling mixture of Enzo’s thoughts about what he sees on TV with Denny, his philosophies, and the years of Denny’s marriage and his having a daughter. Enzo is jealous of thumbs:

“The platypus is horribly stupid, but is only slightly dumber than a monkey. Yet monkeys have thumbs. These monkey-thumbs were meant for dogs. Give me my thumbs, you fucking monkeys!” (p. 17)

When Denny meets Eve and marries her, Enzo doesn’t resent her as much for coming between the two of them as he’s jealous because she has thumbs.

Denny always leaves the TV on for Enzo to watch while he’s out racing. The TV is usually on the Speed Channel.

“The classic races are the best, and I especially like Formula One. I like NASCAR, too, but I prefer it when they race on the road circuits. While racing is my favorite, Denny told me it was good for me to have variety in my life, so he often puts on other channels, which I enjoy very much as well.” (pgs. 17-18)

Enzo rambles about his life with Denny, and Eve, and later their daughter Zoë, interrupted by his obsession on monkeys and thumbs and the superiority of canines; seeing them through a dog’s perspective:

“Case-in-Pont #2: The Werewolf.

The full moon rises. The fog clings to the lowest branches of the spruce trees. The man steps out of the darkest corner of the forest and finds himself transformed into …

A monkey?

I think not.” (p. 20)

The reader sees them through a human’s eyes. When Denny gets the chance to race at Daytona, in the 24 Hours of Daytona which he has spent a year lobbying in the racing world for, he and Enzo are ecstatic. But it’s just when Zoë is born. Eve is happy for him, but she can’t help resenting that he puts his racing ahead of his daughter.

Denny’s situation is worsened by Eve’s parents, Maxwell and Trish, who move into their home to help Eve while Denny is away. Their help becomes an active dominance over their daughter and granddaughter; always badmouthing Denny for caring more for his racing than for his family. Enzo thinks of them as the Twins because they are so much alike in their appearance and their nagging.

“From the moment they arrived, the Twins had been admonishing Eve for having her baby at home. They told her she was endangering her baby’s welfare and that in these modern times, it was irresponsible to give birth anywhere but in the most prestigious of all hospitals with the most expensive of all doctors.” (p. 27)

Eve stands up to them, and for the first few years of Zoë’s life they are happy. Denny stays home as much as he can, and Enzo takes his role as Zoë’s protector and big brother seriously. Denny and Eve move from an apartment to a house to give Zoë a real home, and Enzo has a grassy yard to run around in. But Enzo, having a dog’s senses, is the first to know when Eve develops cancer.

Eve’s long bout with cancer ruins their lives. Denny can’t afford to race any more. And as soon as Eve dies, Maxwell and Trish go to court for custody of Zoë on the grounds that Denny can’t raise her by himself. That he’s not fit to raise a child. That he shouldn’t be allowed to see her.

The Art of Racing in the Rain (cover by Archie Ferguson) is a melodramatic soap opera as seen by a dog. It’s funny in places, and a real tearjerker in others. Enzo’s constant description of everything in a mixture of a canine viewpoint and in racing car terms keeps your interest. This is not a furry novel, but it is of interest to furry fans.

Garth Stein has written, not a sequel, but a series of young children’s picture books about Enzo: Enzo Races in the Rain!, Enzo and the Christmas Tree Hunt, Enzo’s Very Scary Halloween, and Enzo and the Fourth of July Races. It’s also worth noting that the adult novel is available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle; and that each cover shows another view of Enzo. A 2010 paperback edition has an amusing different cover.

– Fred Patten

• Buy on Amazon
• Author’s site

This is the story of young girl and a trapped giraffe during a rainstorm ...
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Poor Texas. I can’t wrap my mind around the extent of devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey.  It’s taught me a few things I never knew, like, most of Texas has no fire codes.  That’s how you get to see a chemical plant blowing up worse than a bunch of MFF gas attacks. I think the lack of safety precautions is caused by political lobbying, and in a way it’s all about putting short-term profit ahead of preparedness for the future. It makes as much sense to me as inviting Godzilla to stomp in.  OK, enough silliness though. I just needed a mental image to make you click for a good cause.

Things are easier to understand when they’re personal. I wanted to see a furry side to the hurricane, so last week I posted about donating to animal rescues.  And I kept wondering, what happened to friends of the fandom in the hurricane’s path?

The answer hit closer than anything I expected.  Andre “Dracokon” Kon, friend of Dogpatch Press and syndicated furry news contributor, had his house and creative studio flattened.  And speaking of politics and profits (there was a reason) – Dracokon is getting double-stuffed by insurance and FEMA. (Is this another weird Texas thing?)

FEMA has informed me that they will be covering a grand total of $0 in property damages. This is because the building was zoned as commercial even though I fucking lived there. Between FEMA and insurance I literally have nothing, rebuilding will come 100% OUT OF POCKET.

He had insurance but they won’t cover it for absurd reasons. In my professional estimation as an amateur newsdog – arrgh!

The wrecked studio is where Dracokon made his Youtube content (Gatorbox and What’s Yiffin’) that we share.  He has been wonderfully generous with his time and talent. Every month he put exceptional effort into writeups to go with the videos just for readers here.  I hope that he’s entertained some of you as much as me with these posts:

February – March – April – May – June – July – August

To help him rebuild and get back to work, I have a favor to ask. Dracokon says there won’t be a What’s Yiffin’ for at least a couple of months, but if you can send a few bucks to his Patreon, even a little goes a long way.  It will get my thanks and his. Here’s what else he said:

As for what’s lost, my family as a whole was hit the hardest.  My father and I lost our workshop (we are self-employed), my parents’ home was damaged, and our insurance company just informed us that our mobile home (which my father and brother are currently staying in) will need to be totaled. I also live at the workshop. What’s left of it is the section that I live in, but the roof was partially torn off and water got in, so carpet will need to be replaced, roof fixed, furniture probably replaced, appliances replaced, etc.  Right now I’m staying out of town until Friday, after which I have to go back to Rockport and just hope that power/water is restored.

I have the Patreon page for Gatorbox, but I also have a direct PayPal link.  (It doesn’t have my name associated because it’s the business account of the company that pays for Gatorbox.)

We were at least a little fortunate because the walls of the workshop collapsed like dominoes and sort of “shielded” what contents inside didn’t get broken outright. Everything along the back wall that got ripped away was lost though. It was mostly just appliances on that wall, but it was also where the breaker box was kept and where some of the larger tools like air compressors were placed. Getting power back to the workshop will likely require completely rebuilding the circuit. Supposedly my computers are okay, but I haven’t been down there to check so I can’t confirm. Fingers crossed.

We've confirmed that the @gatorbox set/studio has been demolished. We are now on indefinite hiatus until further notice. Thanks for 5 years.

— Gatorbox (@gatorbox) August 28, 2017

I'VE DECIDED TO LEAVE GATORBOX'S PATREON PAGE OPEN. If you'd like to contribute to the "relief fund", please pledge: https://t.co/3vzhZLOcPl

— Dracokon / André Kon (@Dracokon) August 28, 2017

Look, I'd like to imagine I'm above begging for money, but I'm completely fucked. If I've EVER entertained you in some form, please help me.

— Dracokon / André Kon (@Dracokon) August 31, 2017

Just wanted to make another public thank you post to everyone who has donated to help cover the recovery costs of my property. <3

— Dracokon / André Kon (@Dracokon) September 2, 2017

Also at San Diego Comic Con we came across Silver Sprocket, a publishing house with several funny-animal titles under their banner. Among them is Please Keep Warm, a funny animal web-comic written and illustrated by Michael Sweater. Here’s what he says: “Please Keep Warm is a comic about friendship, overcoming depression, finding your place in the world, and also sometimes black metal. Please Keep Warm covers exciting subjects like not having an idea for a novel, showing a child how to play DOOM II, and not knowing what day of the week Silicon Valley comes on. Please Keep Warm is essentially the television show Friends but with references to The Cure.” What he said. The first paperback collection of Please Keep Warm is called This Must Be The Place, and it’s available now through Silver Sprocket.

image c. 2017 Silver Sprocket

ep. 174 - Boozefruit Mating by Xander & Alkali ep. 174 - Boozefruit Mating - ep. 174 - Boozefruit Mating by Xander & Alkali

This is it - PART 2! The end of Season 6 is upon us! This episode had so much awesome, we broke it into two parts! Listen to the best parts of Season 6 with Roo and Tugs, and laugh at the things you might have missed! We have new Space News, Get Psyched, and something you won't expect! Season 7 starts later this month!





NOW LISTEN!

Show Notes

Special Thanks

Alec T Kit
Simone Parker
Anonymous
Bevcalter
Skylos

Music

Opening Theme: Husky In Denial – Cloud Fields (Century Mix). USA: Unpublished, 2015. ©2015 Fur What It’s Worth and Husky in Denial. Based on Fredrik Miller– Cloud Fields (Radio Mix). USA: Bandcamp, 2011. ©2011 Fur What It’s Worth. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!)
Some music was provided by Kevin MacLeod at Incompetech.com. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. We used the following pieces:

Spy Glass
Fun in a Bottle
Hero Down
Waltz of Treachery FX


Space News Music: Fredrik Miller – Orbit. USA: Bandcamp, 2013. Used with permission. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!)
Mystery Skulls – Ghost. USA: Warner Bros Records, 2011. Used with permission.
Closing Theme: Husky In Denial – Cloud Fields (Headnodic Mix). USA: Unpublished, 2015. ©2015 Fur What It’s Worth and Husky in Denial. Based on Fredrik Miller – Cloud Fields (Chill Out Mix). USA: Bandcamp, 2011. ©2011 Fur What It’s Worth. (Buy a copy here – support your fellow furs!)
Our interstitial bumpers were all from the Bedfellows Frenzy Original Soundtrack by Husky in Denial. You can buy a copy as a bundled item on Steam with the game or purchase it separately at Bandcamp. The music we used was Fools of Destruction.

Patreon Love

The following people have decided this month’s Fur What It’s Worth is worth actual cash! THANK YOU!

Uber Supporters

Fido



Premium Supporters – None :c

Bride of Pinbot Supporters

Docos (Picture coming soon…when he has one! Any artists out there wanna hook him up? 🙂 )
Bowler Hat Supporters

Rifka 

Deluxe Supporter

Lokimut
Guardian Lion

Plus Tier Supporters

Skylos

McRib Tier Supporters

Snares
Kyoto Koyote
Hachi Shibaru
Ilya / EpicRive

Want to be on this list? Donate on our Patreon page! THANK YOU to our supporters once again!

Next episode: We'll announce it soon! S6 Episode 20: Finale – Part 2 - This is it - PART 2! The end of Season 6 is upon us! This episode had so much awesome, we broke it into two parts! Listen to the best parts of Season 6 with Roo and Tugs, and laugh at the things you might have missed! We h

Todaybor day is labor day. I think I owe Homestar $5.
View Video

Join the full cast of UnFurled in this episode. There is one minor issue that occurred during the recording, listen in to see what ghosts haunt the cast! Episode 8 - Shark Scare

You may recall we previously mentioned Jed Henry and Dave Bull and their proposed video game Edo Superstar, with an art style based on the ancient art of Japanese wood-block prints. Well now their web site tells us they got the game completed, and they’re also making and selling their own line of wood-block prints (copied as giclees). A close look at many of the prints will reveal some subtle (or not-so-subtle) comic book, animation, and video game subjects depicted in a new and stylized manner.

image c. 2017 Ukiyo-e Heroes

Lady writers, werewolves, hot and steamy romance… What can we say? It’s a thing. At Comic Con we discovered G.L. Carriger and her new work The Sumage Solution, the first book in the San Andreas Shifters series. “Max fails everything – magic, relationships, life. So he works for DURPS (the DMV for supernatural creatures) as a sumage, cleaning up other mages’ messes. The job sucks and he’s in no mood to cope with redneck biker werewolves. Unfortunately, there’s something oddly appealing about the huge, muscled Beta visiting his office for processing. Bryan AKA Biff (yeah, he knows) is gay but he’s not out. There’s a good chance Max might be reason enough to leave the closet, if he can only get the man to go on a date. Everyone knows werewolves hate mages, but Bryan is determined to prove everyone wrong, even the mage in question.” Her official web site has more on how to order this book and the new prequel Marine Biology.

image c. 2017 Gail Carriger LLC

With CJ still being a bad dog and not joining us, our fan Gaia joins us for lengthy discussion heavy episode.

Download MP3

Watch Video Link Roundup:

• Not My Job: ‘BoJack Horseman’ Creator Gets Quizzed On Centaurs
• Size Comparison of modern & extinct animals
• Canada has gender neutral passports
• Vice Canada tweets more clips from their furry documentary
• BCR News does a furry piece
• Harvey crashes furry convention Mephit Fur Meet
• Army soldier lives double life as furry character called Mark the Husky
• FurSquared mocks MFF for hotel reservation timing
• Washington Post: “My girlfriend and I meow at each other. It’s not as unusual as it sounds.”
• Scientists Find Bizarre Brain-Like Blob In Vancouver’s Lost Lagoon
• Vore Is Hiring

News:

• Weird Blobs in Vancouver Canada
• Scientists have spiders producing enhanced web that can hold a human
• Scientists Think They Have Found The Maximum Human Lifespan
• Cyclist Shows Off For Google’s Street View Camera, Becomes Online Hero
• Florida woman drunkenly bites man’s fishing line, swims away with lure
• Florida Couple Hauling Propane Grill in Their Kia Light Cigarette, Blow Up Car
• Facebook Friends Aren’t Your Real Friends
  • Link 2

Emails:

• Gadget – Reviving a Group Advice
• Rhayn – Do you remember… …Darth Faytaur
• Kaz – Life Dreams

FC-276 Good Dragon - With CJ still being a bad dog and not joining us, our fan Gaia joins us for lengthy discussion heavy episode.

With CJ still being a bad dog and not joining us, our fan Gaia joins us for lengthy discussion heavy episode.

Download MP3

Watch Video Link Roundup:

• Not My Job: ‘BoJack Horseman’ Creator Gets Quizzed On Centaurs
• Size Comparison of modern & extinct animals
• Canada has gender neutral passports
• Vice Canada tweets more clips from their furry documentary
• BCR News does a furry piece
• Harvey crashes furry convention Mephit Fur Meet
• Army soldier lives double life as furry character called Mark the Husky
• FurSquared mocks MFF for hotel reservation timing
• Washington Post: “My girlfriend and I meow at each other. It’s not as unusual as it sounds.”
• Scientists Find Bizarre Brain-Like Blob In Vancouver’s Lost Lagoon
• Vore Is Hiring

News:

• Weird Blobs in Vancouver Canada
• Scientists have spiders producing enhanced web that can hold a human
• Scientists Think They Have Found The Maximum Human Lifespan
• Cyclist Shows Off For Google’s Street View Camera, Becomes Online Hero
• Florida woman drunkenly bites man’s fishing line, swims away with lure
• Florida Couple Hauling Propane Grill in Their Kia Light Cigarette, Blow Up Car
• Facebook Friends Aren’t Your Real Friends
  • Link 2

Emails:

• Gadget – Reviving a Group Advice
• Rhayn – Do you remember… …Darth Faytaur
• Kaz – Life Dreams

FC-276 Good Dragon - With CJ still being a bad dog and not joining us, our fan Gaia joins us for lengthy discussion heavy episode.

With CJ still being a bad dog and not joining us, our fan Gaia joins us for lengthy discussion heavy episode.

Download MP3

Link Roundup:

• Not My Job: ‘BoJack Horseman’ Creator Gets Quizzed On Centaurs
• Size Comparison of modern & extinct animals
• Canada has gender neutral passports
• Vice Canada tweets more clips from their furry documentary
• BCR News does a furry piece
• Harvey crashes furry convention Mephit Fur Meet
• Army soldier lives double life as furry character called Mark the Husky
• FurSquared mocks MFF for hotel reservation timing
• Washington Post: “My girlfriend and I meow at each other. It’s not as unusual as it sounds.”
• Scientists Find Bizarre Brain-Like Blob In Vancouver’s Lost Lagoon
• Vore Is Hiring

News:

• Weird Blobs in Vancouver Canada
• Scientists have spiders producing enhanced web that can hold a human
• Scientists Think They Have Found The Maximum Human Lifespan
• Cyclist Shows Off For Google’s Street View Camera, Becomes Online Hero
• Florida woman drunkenly bites man’s fishing line, swims away with lure
• Florida Couple Hauling Propane Grill in Their Kia Light Cigarette, Blow Up Car
• Facebook Friends Aren’t Your Real Friends
  • Link 2

Emails:

• Gadget – Reviving a Group Advice
• Rhayn – Do you remember… …Darth Faytaur
• Kaz – Life Dreams

[Live] Good Dragon

I never have any of this kind of luck in the woods.
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Here’s a followup to previous coverage of the tiny alt-right fringe of furry fandom (Altfurry).  See: 1) Altfurry supports neo-nazi violence, with member Nathan Gate on camera in Charlottesville. And 2) Furries resist hate, Altfurry Discord logs go public, Casey Hoerth removed by employers. Hate isn’t being welcomed, and this is the third furry name in a headline about it here. There are more to come.

Andrew Dodson in Charlottesville, August 11-12

It turns out that a well circulated photo from the Charlottesville “Unite The Right” hate rally is of a known furry.  Andrew Dodson is (or used to be) a furry going by the names GoldenZoltan and Flukepup. This is his former FA page. (archive) More on that below. First let’s look at how he came to be pictured.

The photo circulated with the events in this story: Arkansas-linked Charlottesville marcher identified, apologizes to those misidentified.

In a telephone interview with the Arkansas Times, Dodson apologized for the trouble he caused the state and, specifically, an Engineering professor at the University of Arkansas who was misidentified as the person carrying a torch at a march last Friday night. The professor became the target of social media vitriol.

In the article, Dodson explains that he went to Charlottesville because he wanted to “see who these alt-right people were.” He denies being “a Nazi, or a KKK, or a white supremacist.” The story depicts him as pleading innocence.

But it reports “Dodson lost his job, he said, because of participation in the rally.” That explains why the denial is a dubious about-face. Read his white supremacist remarks in this prior article in The Atlantic, by Daniel Lombroso:

White nationalists who gathered for the Unite the Right rally blame those who turned out to stop them. They’re “damn communists,” says Andrew Dodson, a 33-year-old inventor who calls himself a “racial realist” and says he is fighting to save white America.

Charlottesville is now the epicenter of the struggle for white America, Dodson told me. And just because Saturday’s violence seemed to have been contained, the alt-right will continue to “give them hell” in the city.

“This is a phenomenal victory,” he said.

“Our ideas are so powerful, that the cops have to break the law and use violence against us to shut us down,” he said in a text message after our initial conversation. “This shows just what an unbelievable threat we are to the system.”

Andrew Dodson sounds like a pretty radicalized believer, wouldn’t you say?

If you aren’t sure, watch this video I found from August 11 in Charlottesville. At the Confederate statue at the center of the hate rally, students chant “Black Lives Matter” while they are swarmed, violently beaten, and driven away. At 0:33, Dodson leaps on the statue’s pedestal and raises a torch like he’s won a game. At 1:22, the crowd chants “White Lives Matter” while Dodson hugs a bro who throws a Nazi salute. Beside them is a flag of the Vanguard America hate group.  

Fight breaks out between racist group #UniteTheRight and decent folks opposing their hate. #WeGotThis #AltRight pic.twitter.com/iBiEa78AeY

— Thinker (@areta) August 12, 2017

The person who shared the video, Emily G, reports: “Damn I got punched a lot – I can see where I was when I got maced, too.”

So how does one journey from furry fandom to neo-nazi hate? 

Is it just random chance?  Let’s start with his Flukepup page on FurAffinity. His photo posted there (archive) has 9-year-old comments by his friend Naskatan, AKA “Kekkus of Akkad” or “Kekus Lupus”.  That’s the altfurry whose behavior after the Charlottesville rally got his twitter account banned.  Kekkus mocked the murder of Heather Heyer (his post was seen in the Flayrah article “‘Alt-Furry’ suffers blowback after Alt-Right rally leads to death of citizen”.)

It’s one hint about hate festering for a long time.  Let’s look at many more.

Andrew’s account was banned from Furaffinity. That doesn’t make it clear if he is still active in the fandom.  According to tips I received, he moved from Arkansas to New England after the time it was active.

In Arkansas, Andrew was in a relationship with a fursuit maker named White Wolf, maker of FurAffinity’s mascot. (In the 3rd commission on this page you’ll see in the tags where she used Andrew’s real name.)  When they broke up she reported that he physically abused her and stole from her, as described in her post on Livejournal. She obtained an order of protection because of his abusive behavior.

This info is supported by tips from two more furries who visually identified his Charlottesville photo: one who used to live in Arkansas at the time, and this one who posted the photo with a public comment:

This guy. I know him. I know a lot about him. He poisoned a friend of mine, and talked at length about wanting to kill cops. pic.twitter.com/HHdkGkJ6YW

— Ambien (@AskMrOwlAgain) August 17, 2017

Ambien is White Wolf’s ex-husband. He shared details about Andrew:

“Goldenzoltan” Fursona

I knew him fairly well, he dated my ex and she complained about him all the time. I kinda considered him a casual friend before that. When the restraining order was filed against him in late 2009, that was the end of me speaking to him.

He went by the name “goldenzoltan”. I think he still has a LiveJournal. He was partially responsible for one of the big FA password leaks sometime around 2006(?). He’s dated men and women in the fandom.

Andrew is, at best as I can describe, a sociopath. I’d say he has some limited ability to feel empathy, but NO impulse control. I spoke up about it on Twitter and contacted the reporter that interviewed him at the Atlantic because the facade that Drew maintains is completely fake. He’s really good at getting people to trust him, and that makes him dangerous.

I sent questions and Ambien continued:

1) I had to force Andrew out of my house in 2009 because he wouldn’t stop ranting about how much he hated cops and a bunch of crazy conspiracy theory shit. I brought that up at the order of protection trial.

2) I don’t have any details about the leak from FA, I don’t know how he acquired the passwords, he’s an electrical engineering major but not really the coding type… if I remember correctly.

3) I’ve been told that he attends conventions, I was informed about a year ago about him attending Furpocalypse. He lives in or near Boston, last I heard.

4) There are dangerous people in the fandom and they can appear to be your friend. Andrew has sort of a frat boy kind of thing going on. Fun at parties until he poisons someone with nightshade tea or sexually assaults someone (both are things that have actually occurred).

Let’s dig more. Here’s an old photobucket account for Goldenzoltan that has pics of a young skinny Andrew, furry costuming, and a racist meme.

In 2010, he asked to be removed from his Wikifur page. He was listed as a member of Livejournal trolling group Gayfaggotinc around 2005.  The bottom of this Wikifur page says he was involved with hacking of Furaffinity that released a lot of passwords around then:

LJ user Golden Zoltan was banned from LJ for cross-posting said passwords. He was the one FA shit a brick about, if I’m not mistaken. – Leam, March 2007

An archive of his banned Livejournal from 2005 confirms connections; his real name, school, and furry friends.

In 2006, Nitrogen the Cat posted to Livejournal about rooming with GoldenZoltan at Anthrocon. (I wonder if Nitrogen ever got his $115 back?)

Comments on the post show the banned Goldenzoltan Livejournal account was replaced by Andrew’s new one, dog0fwar.  Here’s dog0fwar posting about being banned from the Nazi Furs community. Andrew’s LJ account was active until 2014, and the ID links him to a lot more than trolling.

Organizing with other neo-nazis.

Googling “dog0fwar” gets a hit for the neo-nazi website that was taken down in the aftermath of the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville.

Here’s a comment by dog0fwar on the Livejournal of Weev, notorious neo-nazi hacker.

Andrew mentions his professional work in nuclear energy – and hanging out with Weev, who is now the system administrator for The Daily Stormer.

Oh really… that’s nice. Oh wait. I thought it said “FLOWERS”.

Google has Daily Stormer comments by dog0fwar. Andrew jokes about the murder here, and invites nazis to hang out with him in Dorchester MA in July 2017.  And here, he helped plan alt-right marching in Boston in May 2017, including discussing violence. It starts under “Evidently, someone from 8Chan attended a pre-planning meeting by the leftist’s, and recorded, took notes of their strategy” … “Funny thing is I played innocent and they just let me stay in the meeting and take notes.”

Notice skype ID and meeting Sam Hyde (who funded Daily Stormer’s legal defense.) The Skype ID is verifiably Andrew’s (1)(2).  Here’s a different comment with it asking to meet Sam Hyde in Boston.

I guess it was a lie when Andrew said he was in Charlottesville to “see who these alt-right people were”. I hope this leaves no doubt about the real Andrew Dodson – and hints about who altfurry is friends with, and how incompatible they are with the furry community.

Imagine if a smart guy who works with nuclear power had taken the positive fork in the road, and was planning conventions and fursuit parades instead of hate marches. That’s you in the fandom.

One of the furries who sent tips gave a final thought:

I mainly share this since none of us are sure if he’s still active in the fandom, due to the possibility that he could have fully changed identities in the fandom after the move to New England. So we really would like to know if he’s still in our midst or not so others can be made aware.

UPDATE 9/2/17:

Personal stories about knowing “Goldenzoltan” came in, and readers made repeated comparison to Foxler of the Furry Raiders joining a neo-nazi group and saying “I just wanted to see what they were about.”

He used to flash his abs at me and challenge me to math for some reason.

— Zilch Woofs (@ZilchWoofs) September 2, 2017

Check out this article about general alt-right activity. The author labeled it “How white supremacists talk to each other when they think no one’s watching.” They match tactics you can see in the altfurry Discord dumps:

• They obscure their most racist elements from public view, but won’t repudiate it internally.
• They provoke reaction to depict opponents as aggressors.

The tactics are in Andrew’s planning for alt-right marching in Boston in May 2017, when he said “DO NOT STRIKE FIRST. BUT, IF YOU’RE HIT, FINISH THE FIGHT WITH YOUR FRIENDS.” You can see it in practice with the video of people surrounded with torches and beaten – then the man speaking to the camera says: “they’re attacking us!”

Look, Andrew’s current twitter.

Hello xydexx it's goldenzoltan back from the grave to troll you booooooo

— Dog0fWar88 (@Dog0fWar88) August 10, 2017

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Somehow we missed the book Catstronauts: Mission Moon, written and illustrated by Drew Brockington. But now he’s back with a brand new hardcover graphic novel for young readers called Catstronauts: Race to Mars. “Fresh off of their heroic mission to save the world, the CatStronauts — Major Meowser, Pom Pom, Blanket and Waffles — are taking a well deserved victory lap. Parades and fancy awards dinners are the new norm! But around the world, other cat space programs are watching–in particular the CosmoCats, the first cats to go to space! With national pride and scientific research on the line, the world’s space programs rush to be the first cats to Mars, and the CatStronauts are starting months behind! Can they catch up and prove their first mission was no fluke?” It’s available now in full color from Little, Brown Books.

image c. 2017 Little, Brown

Here is one for the early 90s! I made recuts from the 70s and 80s so I had to buckle down and make one form the 90s for my Zootopia remix trilogy. I'm going to go lie down now ... editing is hard. "Claw & Order is a Zootopia police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Byron Howard and part of the Claw & Order franchise. It originally aired on NBC and, in syndication, on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24, 2010. At the time of its cancellation, Claw & Order was the longest-running crime drama on Zootopia primetime."
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Dear Papabear,

Weed will be legal July 1st next your for recreation all across Canada, and this terrifies me. What if the economy fails in Canada because people will no longer work and will be unmotivated degenerates sitting in front of their TV screens becoming living 10 pin bowling balls. Because I know very little about weed and what it does other then it's a very bad drug based on what an OPP constable told me in the DARE program in my old public school.

Sergie

* * *

Dear Sergie,

Thanks for your letter. So, yes, Canada already has legalized medicinal marijuana, and it will be legal for recreational use on July 1, 2018. Marijuana has gotten a bad rap since the early 1900s, when Mexican immigrants started coming in droves to the United States to work, bringing with them "marihuana." (Pardon me for mostly talking about the USA here, but it is still relevant to Canada).

Now, America had a long history of growing hemp to make rope and textiles, but taking it orally was limited to medicinal uses, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, for such things as increasing appetite and libido. When immigration came in from the South, a backlash against Mexicans began, and marihuana use was said to make Mexicans violent and dangerous (just another expression of racism in America). By the 1930s, there were all kinds of crazy exaggerations about marijuana as epitomized in the hysterical 1936 movie Reefer Madness, which portrayed weed use as if it were a mixture of LSD and cocaine. By 1970, the passage of the Controlled Substance Act had classified weed (cannabis) as a Schedule I drug, meaning it had no medicinal value (incorrect) and making it a crime eligible for long prison sentences. Bad propaganda was also spread, saying that weed was a "gateway drug" that led to harder drugs like heroine and crack.

About two decades later, however, the medical community began to recognize that cannabinoids in the plant did have helpful properties, especially regarding pain management, treatment of glaucoma, and for increasing the appetite of people on chemotherapy, but also for epilepsy, cancer, and Alzheimer's. While cannabis remained federally illegal, several states (California, Oregon, Washington, Maine, Arizona, and Alaska) passed their own legislation making medical marijuana use legal.

Recreational use has been approved in five U.S. states: Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, and, this year, in California.

Neither the medicinal nor the recreational use of cannabis in these states has resulted in increased crime or any other serious legal or social problems. In the meantime, money from sales has benefited these states. Also, since it is now legal, there is no reason to fill prisons with people who have been caught with a few ounces of Mary Jane in their pockets, so this stands to help reduce prison crowding.

So, who is still against marijuana? Well, liquor and cigarette companies who stand to see a reduction in sales, pharmaceutical companies that will lose sales on their expensive medications for which weed is just as effective, and private prison corporations and their employees (this is more of an American thing than Canadian) that stand to lose money if they lose population. Finally, a lot of old school law enforcement people (like your constable) still believe the hype about marijuana.

As a drug, cannabis use is no worse than alcohol, which is legal, and no worse for your health than cigarettes and e-cigs, which are also legal. So, my Canadian furiend, you are not going to see your fellow countrymen and countrywomen become a bunch of "unmotivated degenerates."

That all said, Papabear is against heavy use of drugs and alcohol because they are, bottom line, not healthy for you. So, avoid them if you can, but there is nothing morally wrong or evil or mind-destroying about weed. Remember, all things in moderation.

Oh, and there is another problem with cannabis cultivation: pollution. In California, marijuana farms in the north overuse fertilizers and pesticides that are damaging water supplies and killing endangered animals such as fishers.

These are all things to bear in mind when it comes to the controversial production and use of Cannabis sativa.

Hope that calms your fears but also gives you something to think about.

Hugs,
Papabear