Since my new fursuit has different markings than my "character," I have to decide if that means he's someone different, or change my markings to match the suit.

My character's always been sorta ill-defined in my mind. "Generic wolf" has been basically it - I don't even have a ref sheet. Every time I've commissioned something, I have to go back through my art to figure out what my own markings are.

Suffice to say I'm not too attached to my super-generic grey wolf design. So I'm kinda leaning towards making the suit "me" now, and having a design that's a little less generic. But I've been the same generic wolf for literally half my life! So I'm waffling.

Boy, I've had an angry FurFright rant at the top of my page for like two years now. I'm gonna replace it with something happy. Here goes:

Furpocalypse was awesome. Somehow, even though some people thought it impossible, their private security managed to do a great job. They were way more useful and organized than past years' security at handling the fire alarm that went off, and at catching a couple of troublemakers.

So hats off to FP! First time in a while that I've actually had fun at a con other than FAU.

(Originally posted as comment in Dragoneer's journal on the same topic - http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3969859/)

I'm really sorry it's come to this, FurFright. You were my favorite con. Hell, I was FAU staff for a couple of years (though I am not anymore), and FurFright was still my favorite con. I have attended literally every FurFright ever, since the first one 10 years ago in 2003. But after what happened to me, my friends, and innocent people around me this year at the hands of the Dorsai, I cannot go back to FurFright again. Not until they stop allowing an unprofessional, incompetent, and downright hostile group of so-called professionals to represent them.

I witnessed the Dorsai member Renegade assault that attendee during the Fursuit Parade. Make no mistake, it was assault. I saw the poor guy turn away in disgust, and a moment later I saw he was gone. "Unacceptable" doesn't even come close to describing what Renegade did. He needs to be banned from ever returning to FurFright. This is not the first time I have seen him use force on a guest, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I cannot feel safe with Renegade around.

I also had an issue with "Sergeant" Steve (who incidentally is not a Sergeant in any legitimate police, security, or military organization by the way - he is a UNIX systems administrator). I was entering the hotel at around 1:30 or 2:00am, not passing through any convention space, when he stopped me from returning to my room. I asked why he had the right to stop me outside of convention space, and he told me - exact quote - "I am the hotel manager." Since I have never seen a hotel manager wear a blaze orange "Security" t-shirt and a Dorsai beret, I told Steve we should go talk to the hotel front desk. Once there he backed off his claim, first stating the hotel told him to say he's the manager, then backing down again to say the hotel was allowing him to stop people. I proved to the hotel front desk that I was a guest - since I did not feel comfortable giving my information to Steve - and they informed Steve that I was allowed to be there. Steve then left. (I will add - because I do not want to be too lopsided in my depiction - that I was certainly angry and impatient with Steve through my entire interaction with him. I had no politeness in me. This is no way excuses Steve's actions.)

Let me make this clear - I was no in convention space for any of this time. While the FurFright code of conduct never defines the term, I was in areas of the hotel which any non-furry paying guest would be allowed to occupy.

On going to my room, I realized I was being followed by another Dorsai, whose badge identified him as Crimson. As I turned around, I noticed one of them at the end of the hallway pretending to text someone. I walked past him to the vending machine, and he left. I again walked towards my room, turned around a few doors short of it, and saw he was back. I approached him and told him I felt like I was being followed - he said "That's because you are." I said to him "I don't appreciate that," and he had the audacity to respond by asking "Why not?" When I informed him that nobody who has done nothing wrong would appreciate being followed by someone whose intentions they do not know, he had no response. In order to get him to leave (so as not to reveal to him which room I was staying in), I had to show him my attendee badge and a hotel room key, despite moments ago having proven myself to both Steve and the hotel staff.

This is clear and blatant harassment, and is beyond unacceptable. I graduated high school over 13 years ago, I am done with presenting a hall pass to anyone.

I went to the hotel front desk again, without Steve present, and went over what happened with Hal (the real hotel manager). He was apologetic but I do not believe he took my complaint seriously. His idea of an apology was a free voucher for the breakfast buffet. Scrambled eggs and waffles do not say "I am concerned about what happened."

I went to the Security desk the next day with a friend who is an actual, licensed, Connecticut state security officer to ask about the incident. Unfortunately Steve was manning the desk. Steve told my friend that he felt threatened by me, because I had told him "we're about to have a problem" and we should "take this outside." This is such a blatant lie that I do not even know how to properly respond. Anyone who knows me will pick that out as a lie, because unlike the Dorsai, I never resort to threats of violence against others. It makes me literally nauseous, physically ill, to have a member of FurFright Security who is trusted with a position of authority tell such a blatant lie about me, to my face and no doubt to FurFright and Dorsai staff as well, to make himself and his actions look better when confronted about them.

Those are the worst incidents, but there were several others that were less severe, but still unprofessional. While speaking at a normal volume with one other person in my guest room, a Dorsai member knocked on my door and told me I needed to be quiet. On another night, while admittedly being loud, they interrupted again to say there was a "curfew" and we needed to quiet down, despite deliberately being in a room that was part of the "party block" where late night noise was to be expected. I have also been rudely yelled at by Dorsai members to move out of hallways, sidewalks, and other public areas.

As a final insult, when the hotel fire alarm went off at about 4:00am, I actually watched Steve leaning back in his chair at the Security desk, doing absolutely nothing to help evacuate the building or assist the guests. It wasn't until another attendee started telling people we needed to evacuate that I even saw him stand up.

My 10-year run is at an end, as is my vocal support of this convention. I cannot and will not return to FurFright so long as the Dorsai are allowed to be present, and I cannot recommend that anyone else go either.

I always feel weird when someone I've met IRL follows me on FA. It's like, hey, now that we've met, here's a bunch of porn I like. Go ahead and look through that.

Of course, the reason I feel like they do that to me is because I do that to them.

This journal is really meant for one person specifically, because Twitter's 140 character limit is not a good way to express most opinions.

Don't be so quick to accept someone's claims just because they are believable. Is it possible this story is true? Yes, of course it's possible. But it would be really shitty to go through life accepting every remotely believable story as fact, wouldn't it? You'd end up believing all sorts of things that aren't true.

This entire debacle rests on one man's claims - a city councilman (I wish I knew the name) who claims to have stumbled upon two fursuiters engaging in some sort "inappropriate behavior" that has never been defined, though it's implied it was sexual. He supposedly had his children with him, and supposedly took a picture.

He will not show the picture to anyone involved, nor will he describe the people in the picture. There is no explanation as to why his children were with him at a municipal complex (which holds only a court house and a police station) on a Saturday evening during a holiday weekend. Despite claiming to see - and have evidence of - criminal behavior, the police were not called or involved in any way. And while I don't know the facts of this part, there is some talk of evidence that he was not even there.

He claims the incident happened in "broad daylight." Sunset happened at 8pm that night, and the party continued until past midnight. That's several hours that passed where the councilman could have had the police or another official confront Tony/Razor or someone from the squad, or have the party shut down. Instead, nobody even heard about this happening until days later.

Meanwhile, according to the squad leader (via Tony/Razor), the town council has been putting pressure on the Twin W squad, looking for any reason to cut their budget or deny them equipment, to save the town money.

The only part of his claim that is remotely credible is that, yes, sometimes fursuiters hump each other. Are you willing to believe that two fursuiters snuck off to do this under the hot sun in 90+ degree heat, and do it on top of a hunk of metal that's been sitting in that sun? I've seen furries do a lot of stupid shit. The majority of it has been either alcohol-related, or just plain juvenile. Very, very little of it has involved inappropriate fursuit sex.

I find it far, far more likely that this councilman is either mistaken or lying. None of the story adds up.

Unfortunately I have no idea what the truth might be. But I'm not willing to take the word of someone who claims to have super-secret evidence that he won't show anyone but seriously it exists, no foolin'.

...has been a wonderful reminder of why I don't read news sites' comments.

So at some point overnight, work's email server (hosted in-office, behind their Comcast connection) stopped getting email. Everything else on the Internet connection worked just fine - all web surfing, sending outgoing email, other servers hosted behind the firewall. But the email server just would *not* take connections from outside. My boss and I spent two hours trying to diagnose the problem. Eventually we were down to only one possible cause - Comcast.

So we call Comcast. Apparently the account was suspended due to a past-due balance. A combination of needing to cancel a credit card, and a recent change in accountants. No big deal, it was paid immediately and won't be a problem again.

The end result, though? Two hours of my Monday morning wasted because Comcast thinks this is a good way to get someone's attention, apparently. Look, I appreciate them not shutting down the whole connection (it was nice being able to log in to their site to pay the bill, for one thing, and at least our business could continue). But really - shut down *one* service and hope we notice?

I wish I could get away with sending them a bill for the two hours of my time that took.

I finished reading Out of Position a couple of weeks ago, actually, but hadn't posted about it. It is, in all honesty, a good story and a good book. The author actually works the characters' furryness into the story - ears and tails and antlers and scents and other animal characteristics all come into play in the story. Some furry authors don't do that, they just offhandedly mention "oh btw he's a fox" at the beginning, and for the rest of the story he could be a human or an alien or whatever, it just doesn't matter.

Aside from that, the story is well-told and you actually get a feel for the characters' personalities and motivations, something else which is often lacking in furry stories, and in a fair amount of non-furry fiction as well. Kyell has actually gotten good reviews of his stories outside of the furry fandom, and it's well deserved.

I've also started on the next book in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I'm about halfway through it or so. With some personal plans and things at work that have come up, I haven't found as much time to read in the last two weeks as I did in the previous two. I'm keeping an eye on fixing that though. Going to read a few more chapters after I finish writing this, in fact.

After Restaurant, I'm not sure if I want to continue on to the next Hitchhiker's book, or something else. We'll see how I feel at the end of it.

Finished reading Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde the other day. It's actually a bit of a difficult read, because I'm not used to reading 125 year old stories. There's a lot of language and phrasing used in the story that just isn't used anymore, at least not commonly. It's not as bad as reading Shakespeare, but you do have to pay a little more attention to it.

"Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr. Hyde, who had once visited her master and for whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth."

Despite the language, though, I thought the story was very well told, and despite knowing the basics of the plot (since it's such a well-known part of popular culture) it was still really engaging, because there's a lot more to the story than what most people would know of it. The plot twist at the end is ruined for anyone who's heard of the story, but the way you get there is still entertaining.

READING NEXT:

Out of Position by Kyell Gold [started 01-14-2011]

Yup. It's a furry novel, and it's erotica (not porn - there's sex, but it's not explicit). But  kyell has been nominated for fiction awards outside the furry fandom, and has won several Ursa Major awards. Not to mention he's had several books published and they all seem to get good reviews, even from the non-furs who've read them. So, here we go.

(I think I'll be using my FA journal to keep track of my reading. So as not to flood, I've put updates to my reading list after the review, and updated the original journal.)

Oogy: The Dog Only a Family Could Love by Larry Levin

So if you read my previous journal about my reading list, you probably noticed that I called this a terrible book. Fortunately, it didn't stay that way, but the first chapter nearly changed my mind about reading it. Why? Let me show you.

"The alarm seems to go off again in about fifteen seconds. I force myself to sit up. It feels as if I’m underwater, struggling to surface. I wriggle my toes and fingers, which I once read helps to keep you awake; I run my hands over my face and rub the sleep from my eyes. I nudge Jennifer, who without turning over asks for another fifteen minutes of sleep. Groggily, I push aside the comforter on my side; I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and drop to the floor. Stumbling around and over barely visible mounds of towels, sweats, T-shirts, socks, and athletic wear, I pass through the laundry room into the bathroom. There, I turn on the light, brush my teeth, and throw cold water on my face. Back in the laundry room, I pull off the T-shirt I slept in and put on a clean one from among the piles of clothing stacked up everywhere — on the built-in bench, atop the radiator cover, along both windowsills, and in front of the radiator. After a bit of a search, I pull out a pair of clean socks and sweatpants and lean against the dryer to pull them on."

The entire first chapter is like this. I swear I am not making this up. It is a minute-by-minute account of this guy's morning routine. It is the most dreadfully boring thing I have read recently.

After that, the story picks up. It's actually a very heartwarming story. Oogy was used as a "bait dog" to train pitbulls for dog fighting. When he was found, he was missing almost half his face. It's a miracle he lived. But the story is not so much about the dog, as it is about the family (including the dog) and how they come together.

Unfortunately, the author isn't a good writer. You have to slog through a lot of extraneous stuff -- the author spends many paragraphs just going on about how muscular the dog is, how broad his shoulders are, the shape of his profile. There is a lot of self-important and self-congratulatory talk about how great a person he is for adopting two boys and giving them everything they need and sending them on vacations and how they're never wanted for anything, and now they get to do it for a dog too. And, as above, a whole lot of just plain unnecessary cruft.

But overall I'm glad I read it, and if you like slightly sad but really heartwarming stories about people rescuing animals, you should pick this up. But be aware that the author isn't an experienced writer, and that really comes across.

NEW TO MY READING LIST

The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
I have never read these books, but I saw the movie, and I like how it's described as the "anti-Narnia". Plus my ex took one of his character's names from the book (Pantalaimon) so I've been wanting to check it out for years.

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
A Sci-Fi classic, I figure I should give it a chance since it's one of my favorite genres.

WHAT I'M READING NEXT

I have the next four books in the Hitchhiker's Guide series waiting, but I'm tempted to break it up a bit. I may go for one of the classics I have waiting, like The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

UPDATE 1/13/2011: Added links to My GoodReads Profile where I've decided to keep track of this, post ratings/reviews, etc. For books I've read, click on the star rating to see my review.
______________________________________________________________

I used to read a lot. Up through high school, at least. Since then I've gradually let other things take over my time and attention, and I've been reading less and less, to the point where I think I had read one book cover-to-cover in the past 4-5 years. At the same time, though, I've had a constant nagging thought in the back of my head that I really should get back to reading. I never got up the motivation to actually go to the bookstore or a library and pick something up, though.

Then I was gifted a Kindle for Christmas.

I've already completed a couple of books, and I've loaded up a few more in a sort of "to read later" list. Amazon lets you load a sample of the book - usually the first couple of chapters or so - and I've been using that as a way of keeping track of what I want to read, without buying them yet.

Here's where I stand so far:

READ: (click the stars to see my review)

1. [***__] 2600: The Hacker Digest - Volume 26 (More of a compilation of articles than a book, but hey)
2. [*****] The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
3. [**___] Oogy: The Dog Only a Family Could Love - Larry Levin [finished 01-09-2011] (not as poorly written as I first thought, first chapter is a slog but it gets better)
4. [****_] The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson [finished 01-11-2011]

READING NOW:

5. Out of Position - Kyell Gold [started 01-14-2011]

TO BE READ (not necessarily in this order):

6. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams
7. Life, The Universe, and Everything - Douglas Adams
8. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish - Douglas Adams
9. Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams
10. Waterways - Kyell Gold (yup, it's gay furry erotica)
11. Lightning - Dean Koontz
12. Mr. Murder - Dean Koontz
13. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K Dick
14. The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett (first book of the Discworld series)
15. It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News - Drew Curtis
16. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
17. The Definitive HP Lovecraft: 67 Tales of Horror in One Volume (Halcyon Classics) - H. P. Lovecraft
18. The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman [added 01-09-2011] (saw the movie, figure I'll read the book)
19. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card [added 01-09-2011]

I'm open to suggestions for anything else I should add! :)

I also started following the MobileRead forums, which are all about e-readers and what you can do with them. Someone started a "100 books in 2011" challenge, which I was tempted to try until I realized that's about 2 books a week. I'm not sure I can find that sort of time. But I'd like to try for at least 25 - that's 2 books a month.