I only just heard the news, a full day late.
I'm shocked, and distraught, and infuriated at how he seems to have passed.
My deepest condolences to his family and close friends.
He was an OG, and a wildly important person in this community. He built a platform that has endured literal decades, and will be remembered fondly for many more to come.

Hey folks, so last november I got let go from my company, along with 45% of the company, because some coked-out sales jocks tried to fake our sales numbers, which scared off investors and curbstomped our finances. I hope those sales guys rot.

But it's been 2 months of looking for work, and I've only had 2 responses so far, with dozens of applications sent out. I'm at the end of my finances, with only a few bucks left. Bills have thankfully been paid, but I'm left with nothing to get food for myself.
I'm going to be trying to file taxes early to get my refund asap, as well as see if i can just liquidate any 401K's i have out there (fuck accruing interest, I need food). But in the interim, any help would be immensely appreciated.
My paypal is @bscannell87, if you're able to help out at all.

[update]
due to the aid from some very good friends, I was able to get groceries sorted out. my thanks to you all, the help is immensely appreciated <3<3<3 ;w;
as o f this writing, i have an in-person interview not too far away, so here's hoping that goes well, but i'm still quite nervous and anxious af with all of this. It's been a long time since i was in this situation, and it's especially frustrating considering it's not even my fault i'm unemployed in the first place.

So this was my first time going to ANE proper, Boston's premier furry convention. My housemates n local friends were almost all staff members, and they did a goddamn helluva job running the whole thing with effectively a skeleton crew. They managed to bring in 2500+ attendees, 27,000$usd for charity, did so all despite the numerous problems with the hotel.
The Boston Park Plaza hotel was picked a few years ago by previous con staff, who then left after the rest of staff voted to switch from the previously problematic 'k9 officer bulletproof vest' charity.
The hotel is very old, and very 'historic', with a prime location a literal block fromt he Boston Commons (tldr Bostons' Central Park). but on top of management clearly not investing in properly updating and renovating their hotel, they skimped out.
-a part of the ballroom ceiling fucking collapsed on Thursday night from an effectively ignored sewage pipe leak, thankfully when nobodywas underneath or nearby.
-hotel staff were overheard telling non-furry guests 'we're not letting these freaks back'
-my constaff friends were trapped in an elevator for 20 minutes, with no communication from hotel staff. Upon being freed, hotel staff accused them of breaking the elevator. My friends stormed down to the front desk demanding to speak to the General Manager, and ended up in an encounter with this one fuckwit employee, Marco (and yes i will namedrop this fuckwit, cuz fuck him), who proceeded to call my friends homophobic slurs. The General Manager was away for the weekend, and never heard a word of the incident until the Sunday morning of the con.also the food fucking sucked. Eggs out of Carton awful.
Fuck Park Plaza.
BUT YOOOOO ANE 2023 IS GONNA BE FUCKING RAD
especially since i'm prolly coming onto staff for logistics >:3c

I made it!
caught covid, it sucked.
moved to outside of Boston. It's neat.
I'm so, so, so exhausted from the covids and the antivaxxxers and the constant dread of climate change and the utter lack of any major forward progress.
I'm also trying to not be so lonely. it is very slow going, between work, holidays, covid spikes, and everything else, it feels like a constant uphill struggle to become part of the group. My brain has been very very mean to me during this time. I do not like it.
I just wanna have that one person in my corner, that I know is right there within arms reach, and not multiple states/countries away. I feel like a big dummy for trying to in any way force a friendship, and I feel like a bigger dummy for posting this here, but I also have nobody to really talk to about this.
2022 is gonna be more of me tryign to be less lonely, and to just...survive I guess. all my hopes n dreams are actively burning, so I kinda just wanna survive at this point.

So uh, covid was a thang.
somehow did not catch it, despite lots of idiocy surrounding me.
got vaxx'd kinda early on.
since about December 2019 covid has killed like, 600,000+/- people (for when you read this months/years later and need some reference point)
there's still lotsa stupid people out in the MidWest of the USA utright refusing to get vaxx'd cuz donald said the vaccine would actually microchip you, and i cannot believe that is a real, actual thing that has to be typed, and be true. ugh.
Brighton was Not Good. friendo who got me in left for Texas a few months in. the house was fucking gross.
moved back to parents house proper in January 2021 after sleeping in the basement since about mid-November, after not paying rent in Brighton since march 2020. whoops.
turns out, oh well, since the landlord Donnah, passed away at th age of 87 a couple months after I moved out. She had gone into hospice pretty much right as I was packing my stuff up, unbeknownst to me.
Parents house was okay at first, and then Ma refused to stop shopping in person during the pandemic, before any of us were vaccinated.
After much careful explanation of how this is a risk and hurts/stresses/scares the entire family, plenty of shouting, and a couple outright freakouts, I now speak to Ma as little as possible, with plans to essentially cease all contact once I am free of this house.

I am, as of this writing, trying to move into to Northern Boston metro area, into some sort of furry household.
tldr, the cosmos are making things difficult.

<3
-Ell

So the big things!
I moved to Brighton, just outside of Boston! It was crazy and nearly killed my truck, but I got it done!
I got a job beforehand atta water delivery place. I thought it was fine until a few days in, and now I frequently wanna see the business go up in literal flames! I’ve already started the job hunt.
I need to draw more!
I’ve been on Mastodon, for those who’ve missed me on the hellsite. Hmu if you want my account c;
You should really switch to Mastodon if you haven’t already. It’s just that much better. It just needs more people like you.
Those politics, huh? Still would love to see like 95% of our gov’t executed for crimes against humanity yada yada seize the means blah blah
I need to draw more!

Love you all,
Ell

I’ve tried to get back in, but it seems twatter has flagged my phone number.
I’ve been looking into ways to get around this, but all the methods either don’t work or are super sketchy to use.
I’ve tried Google Voice and tje app Talkatone, neither worked, but suggestions are welcome.

I fucking hate twitter for this nonsense.
All before my birthday no less.

In other news I’m stupid broke yet again because fulltime job has decided to fucking ghost me. I am quite pissed off at this.
I’ve had to take on hours at the pizza shop but i fucking hate it here too.

I need 200$ in 2 weeks for rent, and another 200$ for phone and cell.

Fuck my life.

Yup! Second time this year, and right before my birthday, lil. There was zero notice given, and zero reason given.
Either way I’m stuck at work as of this writing, but i’ll eventually get around to making ANOTHER account.

I’m fucking furious right now. This is yet another notch in my life getting that much more stupid and pointless, and hopefully it doesn’t get worse.

Life has decided that this would be when Everything Goes Wrong.

It started over a month ago, when I was in the midst of transitioning from one fulltime job to another, the 1st fucked up payroll, and temporarily deprived me of half a months pay (temporarily cuz they caught the mistake after a month, but the damage had been done.)

Then, on 4th of July, I was on my way up to New Hampshire when my engine exploded oil all over the hengine bay while on the highway.
Turns out I blew the motor, and repairing it would cost more than a new engine, which would already be around 4-6k$. Bear in mind that I’ve had this Honda for less than a year, spent 2k on it, and sunk another 6 into it.

Sunday, the 7th, I found out from my new FT job that all work was cancelled for the week, for reasons. And that boss is 2months behind on the shop rent, and is inna disagreement with the landlord. Oh joy.

And then yesterday, the 9th, I went to the dentists to see about getting my fucked up tooth pulled, cuz i thought it was pushing in and hurting my front teeth.
Not only did the dentist fail at pulling the tooth, he also fucked it up further, so it’s now in agony, on top of the front tooth pain.
I went to an oral surgeon consultation this morning, and now hafta wait till next monday to get the tooth extracted. On top of finding out that no, the fucked up tooth/my wisdom teeth could not be causing my front tooth pain, so there’s another potentially expensive and painful mystery to solve.
While I have dental and health insurance cuzza my Dad, I still hafta pay 25% of the anaesthesia costs, to the tune of 740$.

Now, the parents have said they are willing to pay for the dental costs, and that they would help with tryna get my old truck back to working condition, that still means that a LOT needs to be fixed on it.

I have no work/income coming in, i have no vehicle to get around to work, and i am in quite a bit of pain.

I’ve set up a gofundme, and while the details on the page are out of date at this point, I still need quite a bit to make sure I don’t lose my apartment the coming month. If anybody can help, it’d be massively appreciated.
I def will be doing gift art for donors eventually when i’m not freaking the fuck out.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-ell.....homelessstarve

I gave up on hearing back from twatter.
my old account, L_McKenna87 is dead. If you followed it, and wanna continue following me, hit up notLMcKenna87 for the time being. I may change the @ eventually, once things calm down and I'm not scared of getting permabanned again.

I also went and made a new mastodon, EllMcKenna[at]gulp.cafe

Not sure how many will see this or if this is even needed, but I just found out i’ve been suspended from twitter? No reason given, just a link to the twitter home page.
Full disclosure, mildly distressing to find on the eve of my ‘weekend’.
I’m not sure why this coulda happened. It could be either an old email i never updated, or maybe jack dorsey got pissy that i called him a malnourished terf. Ugh.
This is annoying.
But uhhhhhh yeah, pass it around if you don’t see me posting weird shit inna couple days I guess?

I dunno if somehow some of my journals got deleted, but I'm surprised I never said anything here about a lotta shit.

Moved out from Massachusetts to Colorado into a furry house

Moved back a yearish later to join a Boston labor union

Lasted 2 years before leaving that, but moved into my own place in Salem

Those're the big beats, I'd say? I've been doin pizza delivery in the meantime, generally depressed and lonely and tryna figure out how to change that while looking for better work. Not the greatest report card, but eh.

Some of ya may be wondering about my recent change from Luke to 'Ell". When I have a clearer answer for what it means for me in real life, I'll letcha know. But for now, Ell is Me, I guess is the most simplified answer?

I don't think there's much else at the moment, and i wanna go make breakfast.

I only have Destiny and GTAV, and I desperately need someone to play GTA with at this point other than the stupid randos. My PSN is on my front page if yer interested; just gimme a shout first so I know who's who if ya add me!

I'M NOT GOIN :D

SERIOUSLY GUYS THIS IS EXTREME CRUNCHTIME.

SOFT OTT AND BURGER SLIDER ARE LOOKIN FOR A PLACE TO STAY FOR THE SUMMER IN THE SEATTLE AREA
ANY LEADS ARE WELCOME
hit up animal_math or fleg_beeble on twatter guys c'mon

There's this otter and puffin couple who are quite adorable but they need a place to live for the summer in the Seattle area. They're not on FA, and I only have their twatters.
animal_math
fleg_bleebl

Hit me or them up if you can help these guys out!

Not me me, I mean Luke. Like, I've been refusing a twitter because it's basically a dumbed down version of facebook, which I already have, but I dunn use it for furry stuff at all. If I got a twitte,r it'd be for furry shit. I dunno; it's very tempting. There's a lotta good reasons why I would wanna get one, primarily to follow artists and friends better. I dunnoooooo

There is a lot of fucking snow, dammit. I'm at work right now, and spent the morning hucking server blades and shitty desktop pc's into acold dumpster in the cold snow. Some of those servers were 2'x2'x3' and about 100lbs each too, which I single-handedly triple stacked them. So that's why I'm at work pretending to work for a bit before actually working.
I haven't been that active with the furry side of my life as of late. Plenty of thoughts and ideas, but not much interaction with folks. Mostly just been busy, and work now highly frowns on us having our phones on us ever since we moved to the new warehouse.
So yeah, to all the people I used to talk to slash eat on a regular basis and whatnot, sorry I haven't been around lately. I rarely have time or are in the mood to RP, so yah.

I could use a nap right now.

Oh! Also, I started up Skyrim on my Mac. I'm cheating a fuckton, doin the mawdz, and just havin fun with it. Though right now I'm lookin for good heavy armors for my dude. I'm already a member of Skyrim Nexus and whatnot. Anybody got some good mod suggestions?

So today has been filled with film for me.
Saw The Interview, which was hilarious.

Then i got home, and ended up downloading "Arashi no Yoru ni", which is quite good. It's total furry bait from Japan, but still heartwarming.

Then I got around to watching "Ernest and Celestine", a french animated flick about a bear and mouse becomin pals. It's so utterly delightful, and Ernest makes me squee. If you can get your paws on a subbed version, watch it.

Now though, I'm interested in trying to find more animooted "furry" films. Not necessarily toony stuff, because the States have plenty of kidsy animated stuff. I'm talkin more european or Japanese stuffs. So, any recommendations, guys?

So I just got my comp back from the shop for the fourth time; hopefully this was the last time. I've been workin at a new jahb where I take apart server blades all day errday, and it's pretty shway. That said, the company just took on a huge contract, and the conditions of said contract requires all employees to pee in a cup, and then worry about random drug tests for the indefinite future. This...is a rather sore point for 90% of the staff, as most people smoke there. Hopefully, we'll see compensation for having to give up smoking in our paychecks.
I finally got rid of a shitload of my old toys and model cars; I donated them to Savers (a thrift store).

Also, to those of you who I haven't talked to in awhile, I've been hella busy running around and being a social dude. So hit me up on Skype; I'm almost always online on my phone!

I have a few doodles I'll prolly be uploading, so yeah, expect a few of those soon. I wanna try and get a full color roo-drawing done soonish, so I can solidify Luke's color scheme and stuff.

I totally thought i had more to say, but i guess not?

...at least I'm pretty sure that's the cause. It'll freeze and close, then the rest of my computer crashes. I have a Mac Mini with 500gb and 4gb of ram. I've already brought it to the apple shop, checked it in, had it wiped and everything, and then as soon as I had skype back in, it started fucking up once again. So, I'm either gonna hafta find some sorta chat client for Mac that supports skype, orrrrrrrr try and convince everyone to switch to something better. I'm sick of having to hard reboot my computer because of shitty software. At worst, I'd wanna try out GoogleTalk or something else. I'm just really sick of this.

So, After getting let go from Nordstrom, I proceeded to half a month full of interviews, which was very unusual. What wasn't unusual was the lack of replies from those interviews. Some of them went well, and a couple were just ghastly (I was at Toyota for an hour, and inly talked to the guy ten minutes between him running off to take care of customers. And then after one of the girls there said that positiom was better for girls, he said the same thing.).
But finally, I'm gainfully employed once more, with a local Moving company. The work is hard, long, and sweaty, but I fookin love it. The people are strange and varied, but helpful and cool, and I've already made a fantastic impression.

Sadly, my Macbook has finally bit the dust afyer seven years. Thd RAM is outright fried. Hopefully I can make enough to get a new conputer asap, as I really dunn feel like racking up a huge data bill on my phone.

In the meantime, I'm still lookin for people to play GTAV online with me, so if ya have it on ps3, hit me up!

I got fired.

Last month I came in and one of the camera servers was down. I tried to fix it, didn't work, texted boss about it, and never got a response. So then the next day I had off, and my boss and coworker were like, Oh Shit. So I got chewed out about that a couple weeks ago, and I swore not to do it again. Life continued.

Yesterday my boss unexpectedly shows up, says we need to talk, and informs me that in those sorts of situations, he has to report it to his boss. Having the servers down for two days is a huge breach in security, and the fact that I didn't make a further effort to get a response from my boss put me at fault. So this,plus slackage from earlier in the year meant they had to can me. I was told that a LP Manager at another store once forgot to lock one of the outside doors at closing, and when they discovered the fuck up the next morning, they fired him on the spot. So they really have no tolerance for those sorts of fuckups.

This all sucks ass.

I proceed to throw a bitchin party at my house, where I get hammered, my brand new bowl fell of the roof (yes, at one point we were drunk on my roof), and I had to put out a fire in my barn. But over the course of the night and talking with people, I ended up getting 4 possible job leads, which is pretty sweet. And, y'know, I got to have a sweet fuckin party. Also, my boss was like, despite your goof ups, you can totes count on me for a reference, which was cool. I'll miss workin at Nordstroms, cuz most of the people there were really chill.

...But that's apparently not the case here in the North Shore. Found out yesterday that my truck got broken into. No smashed glass or anything like that, because like a naiive derp, I leave my doors unlocked, and just keep anything of possible value tucked away. But nope, somebody went in and took my bowl, grinder, $60 worth of weed, and my switchblade comb. I'm pretty miffed, and I'm pretty sure they took other stuff, and just haven't realized it yet. Certainly a jading experience.