Something I've often thought of as being a good point to start a conversation is people's different stances on animal rights and welfare, In particular the areas of the meat trade, hunting, experimentation, fur-farming, etc.

I personally believe that human society cannot survive without animals, and there's not enough food to go around if everyone was to turn vegetarian. But animals have a right to be treated with love and respect and deserve the best lives we can give them and the most immediate and merciful euthanasia if they're exploited for our benefit. I personally try to avoid meat because I am disgusted by the big corporations who put on a good image for the media couldn't care less about ethics as long as the public doesn't know and they're making money out of it, just like KFC, to me factory farms are the greatest of the breaches of animal welfare out there

Hunting for food and sport is something I have mixed feeling about. I personally believe that it's not right to kill for pleasure, while some humans may just love firing guns, surely it is much better for both your conscience and the animals to just shoot targets. On the other hand hunting for food because of the area you live in, searching for a kind of expensive or exotic meat, or for your own survival is perfectly forgiveable. Like, it's the lesser of two evils to kill an animal with a single well placed shot while they've had time to live and enjoy life in the wild rather than being raised in the cruel confines of a meat factory. Especially if the hunter makes sure he or she doesn't waste anything of his or her prey and puts it to good use. I am however worried about the genuinely sadistic people out there who would purposely make an animal suffer for their own sick enjoyment.

My stance on experimentation all depends on the necessity of the testing and the welfare of the animals involved. It raises one of those 'kill one to save a thousand' moral dilemmas in the case of researching cures for diseases that will benefit both humans and animals. Cosmetics on the other hand I am very cynical about, people look fugly to me no matter how well they pretty themselves up, it's who they are inside that matters :P

For Fur farming I think it all depends on the nature of the actual industry. I've seen the horrific videos PETA has distributed but I have also read the evidence to suggest it was one of those 'snuff films' they have used in the past to get money (this is the one with the animals getting skinned alive, I swear there is nothing crueler than that if it's true). However if the animals are raised and have their needs tended to and are euthanised humanely (preferably through anesthesia) then it's not so evil. But is it really necessary to kill 50 minks for a nice fur coat? In some countries it could be a necessity because fur retains a lot more heat than synthetic fibers but if someone gets it to just look good when they don't really need it then what's the point?

Anyway, I'm interested in hearing your opinions

As you might know I had some drama recently with tikkykitty from DA and posted a rather nasty journal about her. As much as I'd like to keep it on here to spread the lulz I'm going about it the wrong way and just going to ignore him or her. If you don't know it was about my inquiries on my commission once during every conversation I had with her. She got upset and cancelled everything and completely blocked me. Anyway neither of us are innocent and I said some hurtful things so I'm sorry. Maybe she'll have the decency to say she's sorry too, but I from what I've seen I honestly aren't expecting anything

Just as the title says, if I'm allowed to make a wikifurry article for my upcoming book - do you think anyone would be interested in reading it? I'd include things like the world design technology, species, vehicle, and weapon descriptions etc. and the like. I'm not well known so I probably won't get any comments or suggestions but I thought it might be worth a try :P

I know Halo 3 is getting a little old now, but it's a game I still play and thoroughly enjoy online. Although there are a few things I really think Bungie needs to fix in some of the maps

First of all I can never understand the 'spiker', it's very inconsistent, sometimes it deals just as much damage as the Assault Rifle (able to kill in one clip) while for some reason Dual Wielding it doesn't seem to deal any extra damage even though you're pumping twice as many bullets into them. The same goes for the SMG. Overall it doesn't seem like there's much of a point in dual wielding weapons at all unless you're using the plasma rifle and a spiker/smg

Another thing I can't stand about playlists that involve attaining a score by killing other players is the vehicles. Time and time again on a team game I'v seen someone score at least about 3 or 4 kills with ease because they picked up the Ghost and started running people down. I can understand the need for vehicles on objective based maps however.

Another thing I can't stand is the Rocket Launcher, and because of it I absolutely loathe playing The Pit or any other maps which have it. Not only can any inexperienced player score at least 3+ kills out of it with ease, it grossly outclasses every other weapon out there. In my opinion the Missile Pod is a much more balanced weapon, it's difficult to use, has a very small blast radius, but will still kill on a direct hit.

Finally, there isn't much more annoying than bashing someone at the same time they bash you after you've emptied a whole clip into them and for some reason they miraculously survive. It's probably lag but I really can't stand the strength of the melee attack, especially the ridiculous distance some people will lunge when doing a melee attack.

Well that's my little opinion :p

Just after little Sooty died a few months ago, and we were still getting over the loss - we decided to purchase two baby bunnies and have them grow up together as friends. One we named Honey, she's a rambunctious, energetic, and hyperactive fatty who never stops moving and loves to skiddle across the floor, and the next day my parents brought home the most beautiful baby bunny I had ever seen. She was tiny, with moderately sized ears, grey fur with lots of lovely shades, reddish black eyes, a pushed-in face, and by far the most sweetest personality I have ever seen in a rabbit. She was cuddly, lovable, heck she didn't even mind when you turned her on her back, she'd usually just fall asleep in your arms...

It seems life has a funny way of getting to you, just when things seem perfect - the two bunnies got along like best friends and we'd bring them in and watch them run around the kitchen and give them cuddles, it has a way of destroying things in the cruelest of ways. Snuggles wasn't looking too good last week, and was starting to develop some kind of weird growth on her mouth. Taking her to the vet, we found she had been born with a malformed tooth, which had dug into the side of her mouth causing a wound which became infected and it formed into a thick, cheesy, pussy abscess. In turn this abscess blocked her tear duct which irritated her eye, caused dermatitus from her excess salivating around her chin, and caused a sinus infection that could also prove fatal. She's in a lot of pain, and while still her cuddly self is in a mess... She can't eat, she has trouble drinking, she can't clean herself because the abscess is hurting her...

We're using this day to say goodbye and spend what time we have left with her. She will most likely be euthanized at the vet tomorrow...

Hello there to anyone who reads this journal, as you can tell from the title of this journal I'm in need of artists to commission. Unfortunately everyone I've noted is either too busy with schoolwork or just won't reply back :(

Does anyone here know any good affordable artists currently offering commissions? Any links would be very much appreciated.

In my later years I have become extremely cynical of our law system, whether it be cases dismissed for mere technical reasons completely bypassing moral judgment or to the just plain ridiculous such as what is classified as on offensive weapon or grounds for assault, apparently there's a new level of stupidity that has been recently thrown into the mix of loopholes.

Some fat bastard almost killed a guy when he and his friends assaulted a guy who brushed past them in a pub by shattering a glass pane over the poor guy's head, causing a wound dangerously close to his vital artery. The guy got off because he was too fat... wtf... o____o

So remember kids, if you want to kill someone, get super fat and the law can't touch you. God if that isn't a screwed up message I don't know what is :|

Today is a very special day, we attended a very small bunny show and bought a beautiful little grey furred rabbit with short ears and white fur markings on her tummy, paws, and defining facial features. We're thinking of a name and I would personally like to call her Sniffy since she sniffs a lot xP

We got her at nine months old but you can hardly tell because she is quite possibly the tiniest full grown bunny I've seen yet, she's settling into the family really nicely. The breeder only sold her to us on one condition though: she has to make some babies with another bunny the breeder had lined up, so then we'll get to keep the bunny and one of her kits! :D

One particular genre of gaming I've never really understood has to be the "Social" genre - something which presents to the player a world with no real story or plot unlike most other MMORPGS like World of Warcraft, yet even worse featuring no gameplay element whatsoever. SecondLife might be interesting to the budding programmer who is interested in setting up a business assuming they have the money and can guarantee someone is actually going to pay attention to whatever they've set up assuming it even properly loads by the time a player passes it but for the ordinary player like me who's just looking for a few fellow furries to talk to you'll be sorely disappointed. While it's quite an effective gimmick to play as a furry skunk like I was with a shotgun from gears of war (which cost me about $10 US all up) the thing that really gets me about SecondLife is just how unbelievably lonely it is. I remember spending about half an hour teleporting to different places that looked interesting and flying about looking for other players and I thought myself lucky when I finally found ONE and only ONE person to talk to. Also there's another thing, I was originally spurred to get into SecondLife because many of my favorite furry artists are on there but I was sorely disappointed when I discovered that most of them are only really willing to talk among close friends they already know either online or in real life. I may just be sensitive but I really think it's rather silly how someone plays a MMO and isn't willing to meet new people it totally defeats the purpose! In fact if it weren't for a kindly furry on my watch list named Ashton Chapman online I probably would've quit within the first hour of playing, I can't thank her enough for helping me around the interface (of which you are given no indication of how to use). Unfortunately when friends go offline it was so boring I was practically forcing myself from entering a state of rigor mortise while clinging on to the feeble hope that there had to be at least some kind of redeeming feature to this that makes people pay so much and spend so much time playing it. I guess there was Pure Combat which I was shown yesterday and enjoyed for awhile (which is essentially like an fps) but not only were there no players other than my friend who was showing me around the place, you might as well be on Xbox Live somewhere playing Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 and imagine yourself as a skunk with a shotgun that looks like it's almost two meters long. If only there were more players like Ashton Chapman, she was kind enough to teach me the things the game wasn't prepared to teach me and for such a talented artist wasn't bigoted or ignorant in any way. Oh yeah, and I suppose there are night clubs which offer 'yiff' roleplaying and poledancing hermaphrodites and enormous dildos sticking out on the floor which might attract the attention of some players but in all seriousness your time would be better spent chatting with someone over MSN or AIM.

So that's my little rant for today about SecondLife, and the story of the $10US I'll never get back :cries:

P.S Ashton, you were a great friend and if there's anything of mine you want like the Gnasher shotgun I can give it to you if it allows transfers or if you can copy it.

Today our family lost one of its finest soldiers. Sooty, ten years old, who hadn't been feeling well for the past few weeks was taken to the animal medics who found she had ovarian tumors, and respiratory and stomach problems... She was euthanized by anesthesia, where we spent those last minutes talking to her as she eventually fell asleep in our arms... She was a strong bunny, slipped off the balcony thrice and recovered every time, and it took over five minutes for her heart to stop beating as the anesthesia put her to sleep.

Rest well little Sooty, we will never forget you..

Hello everyone, I just started up a new account from https://www.furaffinity.net/user/talesofempyrean/ since I couldn't stand my name xP I'll be uploading and commenting on things more often that I used to. I really like it here