Hey y'all! So, my test batch of commissions have finished, to great success! So, I'm opening up for commissions again, and for way more than scarves. Wonder what I can do? Check out this link:

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5214109/

Please also refer to the above link for average prices, and how to correctly get in touch with me for commissions.

So! I'm bad at giving slot numbers mostly because depending on what the commissions are, I may take more or fewer, so I don't have people half-paid and waiting forever. I'm going to start out with five, but that number may change depending on what people ask for. Thank you in advance, from the Knit-Eating Grin.

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1.  atariotter for a dice bag.
2.  gothpanda for a pair of glittens.
3.  dosner for a thing!
4. Bel Lion for a thing!
5. BradNpx for fingerless gloves.

Welcome to this commissioning guide for my knitting. I'm going to be as comprehensive as possible on different kinds of things I can knit, and how pricing will be broken down. If you have any questions, please, don't hesitate to ask me--either by note, or you can email me at lunostophiles [at] gmail [dot] com.

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PRICING

NOTE: Quoted prices do not include PayPal fees. Please include an extra $1-$3 dollars in the final total depending on price to offset PayPal fees.

Phone Sleeves

x2 the price of materials, a minimum price of $20

Phone sleeves can either be open-topped or closed with a flap and a toggle. Toggle will be of my choice unless otherwise requested; specific toggles/clasps may incur an extra charge.


Wrist Bands

x2 the price of materials, a minimum price of $20

Wrist bands come in sets of two.


Hats

x2 the price of materials, a minimum price of $30

This price reflects my making a standard beanie/toque.


Dice Bags

x2 the price of materials, a minimum price of $30

Bags can either be drawstring or button-close; either form is included in the price. Buttons will be of my choice unless otherwise requested; specific toggles/buttons may incur an extra charge.


Tablet Sleeves

x2 the price of materials, a minimum price of $35

Tablet sleeves will close with toggles of my choice unless otherwise requested; specific toggles/buttons may incur an extra charge.


Fingerless Gloves/Arm Warmers

x2 the price of materials, a minimum price of $40

These come in pairs (of course).


Cowls/Neck Warmers

x2 the price of materials, a minimum price of $40

These can either be a solid loop of knitting (cowl), or a "short scarf" with a toggle to clasp it around your neck. Toggles will be of my choice unless otherwise requested; specific toggles/buttons may incur an extra charge.


House Socks

x2 the price of materials, a minimum price of $40

House socks include traction pads on the bottom; the fabric used is included in the price. These pads can be any shape/design desired, though bulkier shapes will proved better traction and a more stable seam onto the sock.

Also, think of a house sock as a different kind of slipper. This is a house sock: http://childsfamily.com/knitting/pi.....se%20Socks.jpg


Mittens

x2 the price of materials, a minimum price of $40


Leg Warmers

x2.5 the price of materials, a minimum price of $55

These come in pairs (of course).


Scarves

x2.5 the price of materials, a minimum price of $55


Socks

x2.5 the price of materials, a minimum price of $75

These are regular socks, knitted with regular sock yarn. These will fit in actual shoes, while the house socks above will probably not.


Gloves

x2.5 the price of materials, a minimum price of $75

These are gloves meant to fit your hands snugly. They will use thinner yarn, akin to sock yarn.


Tails

x3 the price of materials, a minimum price of $125

This includes the cost of polyfil. Note that knitting does not, in fact, have structure, so certain tail shapes may not come out as you may expect. Best for hanging tails (cats, for instance), less good for curlier tails.

Special pricing may be available for smaller tails.

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GENERAL NOTES

For all commission types, requested use of intricate stitchwork, colourwork, or detailing may incur additional charges. If I decide to use a stitch that is a bit more intricate, you will not be charged extra.

For items where length is variable (scarves, socks, tails, arm & leg warmers)--longer lengths may incur additional charges.

Yarn for all these items will be of a bulkier nature unless otherwise noted (socks and gloves). A request to use a finer yarn on other commission styles may incur additional charges.

I retain the right to deny commissions based on my judgement--but, more likely than not, I will work with you instead to figure out a way to make your commission idea work for both of us.

I will always discuss and show you possible yarns before any monetary transaction is made, unless you give me the right to pick whatever.

I will do my very best to not force you, the commissioner, into having to spend money on an outrageously expensive yarn. My goal is to make these affordable and durable, but if you wish to have a more expensive yarn for reasons of colour, content, or sheer "treat yo self"-ness, be my guest.

Special pricing may be available for "scrap commissions"--if I have leftover yarn from previous projects (or just yarn I've bought for myself lying around), I may be willing to discuss a lower price since the price of materials would not be a factor. This is more likely to happen with smaller commissions, as I probably won't have leftover yarn for a full scarf for some time.

Also, don't see something listed here that you may want me to knit? Just ask me! We can discuss feasibility and price.

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HOW TO COMMISSION

Feel free to message me at any time about commission ideas. If I am not open, at least it gives me an idea to think about for when I'm open again.

When I am open for commissions, I will post a new journal and Tweet it multiple times to my account, Lunostophiles. The floodgates are open now, and you are free to commission me.

I prefer not to have to sift through comments on each journal--and even if you do comment there, I'll ask you to send me an email at lunostophiles [at] gmail [dot] com.

I will post a list of the first X commissioners as they come in. When I have a full list, I will close commissions, and begin the process of consultations with the listed commissioners. If someone drops off the list, I will contact the next in line from those who emailed me.

Payment will be half of the final price upfront, to buy materials, and half upon completion. I do my best to post photos as quickly as possible after finishing, but some photos may be taken before blocking (a finishing technique for knitting). You may either pay the rest of the commission amount at this time, or after I have sent you a message saying the knitted item is mailed out.

All payments can be made to my PayPal, lunostophiles [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Well, that just about covers it! I hope this will be helpful when I am open, and you wish to have something hand-knit by the Knit Eating Grin himself.

Ciao!

Well! A few people stumbled out wildly to commission me, and I'm happy to put them on an actual list here. Like I said in my last journal, these are going to be very quick-to-knit scarves, so they shouldn't take too long. Between that and my need to not do anything fun because I'm poor, I'll have ample time to knit while watching Netflix.

So, for those of you who haven't commissioned yet, I'll have a few more slots open, but I'm not going to take more until I clear out most of this first list once it's complete. I want to actually finish these, plus I have one and a half projects to finish from last time--and they will be finished.

Stay warm~

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EDIT: I am going to just stick with these four people for now! Once I finish their commissions, I'll open up for more.

1.  enigmas
2.  makyo
3.  alteq
4.  cobaltmouse

Hey folks! So, it's getting into fall, and I'd like to offer my services to all you lovely lads and lasses. I'm hoping to get some people interested in a scarf (or maybe a hat, if we talk about it). I'll be doing all these in bulky or super-bulky yarn, because they knit up fast and I can get them made in just a few days.

So, send me a message or comment on this journal if you'd like to talk to me about something. We'll discuss colours and prices, and then you can get a nice scarf by the end of the year (at the latest!).

General Pricing Info: It's going to be roughly double the amount of materials--that is, you'll pay up-front for the yarn and whatnot, and then pay the same amount again when I've sent the scarf to you, plus shipping. Now, if I find good yarn on sale, I'm not going to undercut myself, so there's a general minimum to the price point. Either way, I'm open to a bit of price haggling if it makes sense.

- Lu

Hey all you marfers. We just wrapped up our first Bookmarfs! Live, discussing Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler. You can watch that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?featur.....;v=rVWSLtOZ9HQ

Also, we have announced our new book: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

Our post on the Bookmarfs website can be found here: http://bookmarfs.com/2013/06/julys-.....ruki-murakami/

Hey y'all! I'm happy to announce that a project I've been working on with a couple other furs is now getting to see the light of day.

http://www.bookmarfs.com

We are a book club for the fandom-at-large. We won't be reading "furry lit", but we'll be doing our best to read and discuss books that have thematic similarities to issues we come across in our fandom: sexuality, gender, identity, community, reality vs. fantasy, and more.

We really hope you'll all read along with us each month, participate in the end-of-month Google Hangouts and chatrooms, and help to foster a new community of readers.

Our first book is Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler, a sci-fi novel about bigotry, community, and vampires that don't sparkle. We promise, pinky-swear style.

Happy reading!

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Bookmarfs is myself and  makyo,  tabbiewolf,  forneus, and  peri.

http://thefadingverses.tumblr.com

I'm taking on a challenge. I want you, the people out there, to submit things to me on this Tumblr. Words, sentences, pictures, topics; anything. I will write a poem, or a piece of flash fiction (1000 words or less). It will be for nothing other than the satisfaction of me flexing my muscles.

Let me give you awesome things. No payment necessary; donations welcome, but not needed. I want to do this for the love of writing, and anything else is icing on the cake.

Thank you.

Hey all you sexy guys and gals out there in FA-land! I have a guest post up on [adjective][species]'s website. Go read it, why don't you?

http://adjectivespecies.com/2013/04...../whiskey-sour/

I am going to unfold upon you the secrets to listening to music. Be ready, my readers--this will be a mindblow.

How to Enjoy Music

It's strange, that I am writing this. You would think it would be far easier to enjoy music than it is--but no, I meet folks all the time who cannot fathom enjoyment. They say, "I like this because yes." And that is all, that is the finality of it.

It's sad, really.

Music is how we, as humans, have communicated nuanced and intense emotions for eons. We beat drums to send news before we could write. We danced to summon gods. We built spoken word songs of vast adventure to tell to our children and children's children.

And yet it's hard for some folk to really listen to music.

Listening to music is more than just hearing it. Anyone can hear music, can name its genre and whether it's positive or negative sounding. Anyone can do that. But listening to music? It's so much more than that. So much more, my beautiful ones.


1. Headphones

I don't care what any audiophile says to you. If they claim speakers are a more worthy listening style than headphones, they are wrong and have made horrible life decisions. You do not experience music by allowing outside distractions to interrupt your oneness with the songs. I do not mean to say you should not have speakers so you may share music with those around you, no no.

Just invest in a very good pair of headphones.

I don't care if they are earbuds or DJ cans. I don't care if they are wired or wireless. I don't care if they are ugly or match your music player. There are only two things that matter when it comes to choosing headphones:

1. Do they give you an immersive experience?
2. Do they allow you to hear everything?

The immersion factor is something I take very seriously. While on the computer, I do tend to use my speaker system. When I acquire a new piece of music, be it just one song or an entire album, that I am earnestly excited for, I put it onto my iPod, sit in my bed, and I listen to it with headphones.

Why?

There is a peace and fullness of headphones that you do not get with speakers. Speakers allow the white noise of your life seep through the music and poke you in the eye. The fan running; your roommates running about; the dishwasher; the mouse in your wall. Speakers are party devices, not personal ones.

If you spend money on a good pair of headphones, a decently-made set, you will shudder as each note comes off of your favourite album. They will expose you to little sounds in the song you never knew were there before. There are moments where I have been listening to a song I thought I knew in and out, and suddenly there is a woodblock beat I hadn't heard in all my other listenings.

If that isn't a holy experience, I am a heathen.


2. The Challenge

Complacency is the death of love. Becoming a stoic is going to stunt your emotional and personal growth far more than you might think it will. There will be genres you will be most fond of. I, for instance, love glam without a sliver of irony (as if irony is something worth bringing into music). This does not mean I listen to Bowie, Cooper, and Semi Precious Weapons all the time to no end.

I feel a little death when someone tells me they don't listen to a certain genre. Why? I ask this with real worry in my voice. Why would you ever do that to yourself, to deny an entire section of the broadest emotional expression system we as humans have ever created?

You don't like rap? Give me five minutes and Tyler, the Creator or Dessa. You hate country? Let me show you The Civil Wars or Neko Case.

There is a font of music in every genre, unless you hand me a sub-sub-sub-subgenre as if its something the populace listens to normally.

Denying an entire genre access to your pleasure centres will be the death of your musical enjoyment, so never quit. Never relent. Always give something a chance. You don't have to like it, just try it.

PROTIP: It's sometimes hard finding new music to listen to out of your comfort zone. I suggest www.allmusic.com's "New Releases" list and Grooveshark. Pick a few albums that look interesting, read the reviews, see if it sounds even akin to something you may want to give a chance. Do it whether or not you want to. The worst you'll lose is an hour of your life. The best you'll gain is a new band to listen to.


3. The Album as Art

There is a plague in modern society. It is called "the single". I deny nothing about finding and hooking your teeth into a song you love more than the rest. I do that all the time, I have playlists of songs like that. It's the point of music, finding pieces you resonate with emotionally.

But learn to listen to an album.

Before you jump to the well-known singles, or the song your friend told you to listen to while vehemently screaming about its inherent meaning...just take the album, and listen. Really listen. A good artist will organise their tracks on purpose, with a purpose. Even more schlocky flash-in-the-pan musical acts at least order their album with some amount of sense.

Artists know what they want to say. They want to say things in a specific order. It'd be like taking a book you love and reading the chapters out of order. Sure, you'd get the point of the story but would you get the same effect as if you read the book in order?

Then again, you might get a different effect, a more potent effect. But it will be dulled if you don't understand how it was first ordered. In a tangentical way, it's like people who re-cut movie trailers to seem like disparaging genres. A trailer for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days that plays like an assassin drama, for instance.

This is the art of the album. And not just concept albums (though this author has a serious hard-on for a good concept album), but any album by a competent musician. Later, you can pick out your favourite songs and play them on repeat forever. Later, when the time is right. Now? Put those headphones in and have an experience.


4. Two Worlds

There are people I have met who do not listen to lyrics. I suppose that is fine--those people tend to go for instrumental tracks anyway. Here is the issue--if you are listening to a song that has lyrics, and it is a band of any substance...why are you not listening to those lyrics?

This is akin to humming the meter of a poem and enjoying it. Sure, you could do it, but you're missing the point.

It is also wrong to listen to the lyrics, to read them as poetry and distance them from the music they are sung to. Yes, certain bands (The Decemberists, for one) read like poems at times, but this is a fallacy that they are as enjoyable in this form. They are not, no one can say otherwise and be right. A lyricist and a musician are partners in crime, and you must accept them as an entity--not as two statues facing away from one another that have some of the same symbols carved into them.

A musician worth their salt will match music and lyrics. Sometimes broadly, sometimes subtly. "But Lu!" I hear you cry from the depths of the Internet. "How am I to know? Not every musician is so intelligent!"

Hush, you silly children. I know. That is okay. But you will never know, you will never understand whether a musician is that intelligent, unless you listen. And really listen, in your headphones, with your cynicism for the moment put away and on a high shelf.

Be open. That is the key to music, beyond any of the bullet points. Be open, be ready to hear and experience and process and understand. Whatever the song means to you is correct, regardless of anyone saying it may or may not be about that. What it says to you is far more important than what it says to anyone else.

It is a mirror; look into it.


5. Sharing Is Caring

How do I know people don't really like music?

The never tell me what they're listening to.

Much like movies you love, or video games you really felt, music is a medium that screams to be shared. It is a series of emotions set on the backdrop of a key signature and notes. It is thoughts with a melody. Not sharing that should honestly be a real and true crime. It is heinous when people do not share.

This is not just a quality of hipsters. Yes, they are a set of people who do not share, for they want to keep the indie-ness, the underground attitude of their music intact. That is fine (but also wrong). It is just as wrong to be a lover of music and not actively try to give those you know the ability to enjoy what you enjoy. If you have an emotional connection with something, if you really feel a song in your guts, if it makes your heart turn over a few times in your chest--share that now. Even if you do not get the response you want, you have breathed more life into the music than you could have by keeping it to yourself, hidden away on your hard drive and iPod for the rest of eternity, only to be heard by your ears in your own magical unbreakable world.

Never. Ever. Hide your music.


6. The Old & the New

Literally, fuck you if you think music stopped being good ever. And don't give me those tired lines about what's on the radio. The radio, no matter what era, has always been the lowest of the low. While at times good music wiggles its way onto the airwaves, for the grand majority of "good" bands (and good is entirely subjective, I know) hit the top 40 maybe once? If they were lucky, twice. You don't hear The Velvet Underground on the radio, but they are more influential than most bands that were actually popular at that time.

That being said? Older music is highly important to at least have a passing knowledge in, if not doing the right thing and exploring it just as much. New music is a series of more complicated building blocks on the foundation of what came before it. Some may copy it too heavily, some may barely be related to it--but much like painters and writers, everyone owes at least a passing debt to those who came before.

The issue with this comes when the fans of one or the other side begin to butt heads. Wrong, you are all wrong and you should feel bad for this. There is no such thing as "the day the music died", and the very idea that music stopped being good at some point is laughable at best. If you aren't willing to do a little research, sure--but guess what? There are quite a few popular older bands who, at the time, were barely on the radio and were, for all intents and purposes, one-hit wonders.

Don't deny the old or the new. Appreciate it all, know your history and watch how new music unfolds and fractals itself into more and more intricate designs. The only bad music is that which is not made well.


7. In Conclusion?

At this very moment, at this second of me writing this sentence, Emilie Autumn's "Thank God I'm Pretty" is playing on my iTunes. I have my entire music collection on shuffle. Right before this was Lisa Miskovsky. After this? It could be anything. It may end up on Enya, it may end up on Devin Townsend. I don't know.

And fuck do I love that.

The eternal breadth of my musical tastes turns me on in a way only my boyfriend and certain images can. This is important, as music is humanity's most all-encompassing search and discussion of our lives, our ability to be, and the world we live in. Some may do it through frivolous means, some may sit and write lyrics more introspective than they have any right to be.

It's all okay.

Not enjoying something isn't a crime. Not knowing why you don't enjoy something is. The same goes for knowing why you enjoy what you do enjoy. Never settle on the answer "because", as that is the equivalent of saying 1 + 1 = 2 because "someone said so".

Never be content. Always be searching. And enjoy, my friends.

Enjoy.

I've worked in the hotel industry now for over two and a half years, and I feel it's finally time to write this journal. I want to say this upfront: most guests I interact with are at worst forgettable, and at best really awesome people--I don't deal with dicks too often. Still, I see recurring problems with the people I see or talk to, and while I dig this journal is going to be more rant than helpful primer, I still want to get this out. So.

A Few Simple Guidelines for a Positive Hotel Stay

Booking Your Stay

1) As tempting as it is, try your hardest not to book on third-party websites like Expedia. I understand saving money, especially in the current economic atmosphere, but two things happen when you book via a third party:

A) Bureaucracy takes hold. While there are one or two situations where third parties will still have you pay the hotel directly, for the most part you are about to engage in a series of red tape knots that will make it unendingly difficult to cancel or modify a reservation should the need arise. I have also seen more reservation screw-ups through third party bookings than if you call the hotel direct.

B) It becomes excruciatingly difficult to do anything to you reservations. When you book third party, your rate is set and you pay for it then. When you check in, and you suddenly want some other rate or a different room type or any of a multitude of reservation-changing things, it is hard to help you out. A lot of times third party websites also won't tell you what kind of room you're booking, and when you arrive and you only have one bed and you need two, everyone gets flustered when we can't accommodate that.

2) Have all necessary materials ready when you're booking with the front desk. I cannot count the number of times I have had someone call to book a room, and then I end up sitting with dead air as the booking guest rummages around their house for credit cards, rewards numbers, and who knows what else. If you are calling hotels, even just shopping around, you're likely to find a deal that will suit your needs. Just have anything you may need on-hand--the three major ones being credit card, pen & paper, and if you have one for the hotel chain you're booking at, a rewards card number. That's it, that's all you need. Calling a hotel's front desk means you're competing with real, live guests who may need help as well; taking up their time is unfair.

The most heinous offenders are people who call to book rooms from their car. I understand, sometimes you're calling last-minute to book a room. Still, if you need to book this room, pull your car the fuck over. I am going to be asking you for a credit card number to hold the room, so unless you know it by heart, you will be taking a short trip to the breakdown lane anyway. Save yourself the hassle, pull off at a McDonald's or Starbucks, get a drink and book the room.

3) Be reasonable with your request for directions over the phone. From the airport to the hotel? Fine. From a local college or business to the hotel? Also okay. From a different state entirely? We are not your bloody GPS. Even for hotels that have concierge desks, or help desks that are unattached to the front desk, we are not here to provide you turn-by-turn directions from New York City to Boston. You think I'm joking, but people have asked me to do this for them before. It is the goddamn 21st century, you can find your way to a computer (even at a public library!), and Google Maps your driving route, if nothing else.


Check-In

1) For the love of god and all that is holy, do not walk up to the front desk to check in while you are still on your cellphone. The hotel I work at is a business-oriented hotel, which means we receive a lot of busy business travelers. This is okay, I won't fault you for needing to do your job. The thing is, to do mine, I need to interact with you by speaking. If your iPhone 5 is surgically attached to your face, I can't do that. There are ample seating areas in hotel lobbies partially designed for this situation--sit down, finish your call, then walk up to the counter and I will gladly check you in.

I'm not sure if people realise how demoralising it is to be the guest service agent in this situation. I may not be your job, I may not be your boss or colleague, but I am a fellow human being and you can give me enough respect to tell the person on the other end you will call them back in five minutes while I run down the hotel's amenities info. Five minutes of your life, at most--if you get a competent guest service agent (and I consider myself one), we have our check-in speech down to a science, and will give you the most bang for your buck. Speaking of....

2) Try your best to not interrupt us when we're explaining things to you. Any desk clerk worth his or her salt will hit all the major points of a hotel: restaurant & bar hours, WiFi info, business centre location, gym and pool locations, elevators. After we have finished talking to you, you are free to ask any questions on these. Interrupting us not only comes off as a little rude (moreso depending on your tone), but a lot of times the question you ask will likely be the next thing we say. Also, don't start questioning us before we even get a chance to go into our spiel. I understand there are some unsavory desk clerks who just give you keys and say nothing, but most of us (especially at more well-regarded hotel brands) are going to give you a cursory rundown of the property. Your badgering us as we're attempting to check you in is doing no one any favours. Patience is a virtue, my friends.

3) Be ready. This is much like the booking bulletpoint--have your credit card, your ID, and perhaps your rewards card number handy upon check-in. At the very least have your wallet or purse ready. You may be at the desk talking with me, but if a line forms behind you not only are you stressing the GSA (guest service agent) out, but you're going to start making the people behind you irate, especially depending on time of day and type of guest. Take an extra moment in your car or outside to find all applicable check-in materials, then approach the desk. It makes everything smoother, and will guarantee you get an amazingly smile-filled check-in.

4) Sometimes, shit happens and either the way you booked gives you a room type you don't want (number of beds, possible handicapped shower, et cetera), or we at the hotel are overbooked in one type of room or another. We understand the inconvenience, and we don't expect folks to be happy (moreso if it's our fault versus a third-party booking site's fault), As GSAs, we do our best to keep you, the guest, happy. Our job is to not fuck up, and most of us take that with pride. That being said, while you can be perturbed, yelling at us or getting fist-slamming, desk-punching angry isn't going to help anyone. This is a point I'll be reiterating throughout this journal--there is no excuse for yelling at a front desk clerk, save if one insults you directly.

We do our damnedest to make sure you have the best experience possible. If you think you booked a room with two beds, but we have it as a room with one bed, we have no actual reason to lie to you about the reservation's change history saying anything otherwise. We don't gain much from giving you bad news--it's an easy fix to switch your room from one type to another if we have it available. The issue is if we have it available. There is one absolutely awesome way to minimize your chances of this happening to you: give the hotel a call maybe a week or so before your check-in date and confirm room type with us. It's far easier to move people around, even if it may put one room type negative, a week in advance--people are likely to cancel between now and then, and if we can't accommodate your request, you have at least a week to find something more suitable.


Your Stay

1) We are not magicians. We cannot make something you want just appear out of thin air. Bigger, fancier hotels may have concierges who can do that to a degree further than my hotel can, but even so, not every request is manageable. Time is a big factor: if you ask us to do something during daylight hours, it will probably be a little more likely than if you ask us at 11p. This goes for a specific amenity, a restaurant suggestion, or a place to go hang out outside of the hotel.

I think there's a misconception that, like the dead-eyed stock clerk at a grocery store, people who work at the front desk of hotels are there just to make a living. Not so--most people I have worked with went to college for hospitality, and want to become managers or sales department members or something in the inner-workings of a hotel, something that keeps everything moving smoothly. I suppose lower-class hotels than I (motels, if you will) may get a more transient group of employees, but for the most part we like our jobs a whole hell of a lot, and want to help. Do not take advantage of that--do not get mad when we do not have a very specific brand of coffee, or don't have food that fits the parameters of your diet. If you have a specific allergy or limits to your food intake, learn in life to bring a few essentials with you. We can accommodate diabetes and we can make sure your food allergies are avoided, but we do not keep stocks of diet-specific food waiting for the one person with ciliac, or that person who can only eat organic donuts.

2) Be nice. I can't believe I have to say this, but seriously, be nice. For all guests, most employees at a hotel will do enough to make your stay pleasant, but if you are nice to us--and being nice is as simple as smiling back, not speaking to us in rude or condescending tones, and being flexible--we are willing to go the extra mile. It is not required to go above and beyond, don't ever assume it is. Most of us are more than willing to do extra things for a guest, though, if they have been pleasant to deal with. It's a simple thing, but so few understand it.

3) There are other people at the hotel. As such, we will triage problems based on current severity. If there is a guest calling to say their toilet is clogged, or that their heat/AC isn't turning on, we are going to put that a little before a call about needing more towels. Your shower can a couple of minutes, and if it can't, what is wrong with the towels you may have used once? Do you burn every towel you use at home the minute you use them?

Understand, we want to make every guest comfortable. We will do our best to keep you informed of situations at our hotel, and if your request may be second or third in line, we will tell you that our houseman or engineer is currently busy on another call, but will be with you as soon as possible. It may be frustrating, but we don't like to have to make guests wait any more than you want to wait.

4) Housekeeping gains nothing from not cleaning your room. Each person in housekeeping is given a set of rooms in the hotel to clean each day. Some of these may be rooms that have checked out, so they do a full room servicing. Some may be stay over rooms, so they are going to do turn-down service, but depending on your stay length they are not going to replace sheets or other major things. Sheets are replaced every three days of a stay, at least at my properties.

If your room was not serviced, first make sure you didn't have a Do Not Disturb sign on your door handle. Once again, someone in housekeeping gains nothing if they don't clean your room. In fact, if a housekeeper finishes all her rooms early, she's merely sent home. They want to stay as long as possible, they want to be paid. We have houseman here all night, even after housekeeping leaves--if you were not restocked with towels, or you would like an extra blanket or your trash re-emptied or literally anything to do with keeping your room clean, we can have someone come up. Be aware that it may be your own damn fault your room wasn't serviced, and don't flip out at the front desk for supposed incompetence.


Mishaps, Mistakes, Unfortunate Incidents, and Miscellaneous

1) Walks. No one, no one with a soul who works at the front desk, likes doing walks. A walk occurs when the hotel, for whatever reason, is oversold. My main hotel has 119 rooms. If, via a high-level member booking or a room being unusable, we have more arriving guests than available rooms, we will have to walk someone to another property. Thankfully, since the hospitality company I work for runs two properties in the same parking lot, it's a little less horrid for us, but that doesn't stop people from becoming indignant.

This is one of those times I don't deny a certain amount of distress from the guest. You booked a room at Hotel X, thinking you would stay at Hotel X. Instead, you are being told that your room is at Hotel Y, and even if it's only two hundred feet from one front door to another, that is still a big jump in your expectations. Understand that no one working the front desk enjoys giving this news. We are not happy to kick you out of our hotel that you were more than willing to pay for, and we are genuinely sorry for having to do it. The first few times I had to walk someone, my stomach was in knots and my legs were physically shaking. I had to sit down in the back with some water afterward, because it is nerve-wracking to the point of being physically exhausting. We pick a small number of arriving guests who are potential walks, and as they filter in we cross names off the list until there is one left.

You being walked is purely luck of the draw. You being walked is not a slight against you as a person, nor do we think your business is lesser-than. But if a room has no working heat/AC unit, or there is a giant leak that is turning the carpet into a swamp, would you really to stay there? No.

We will do all that is possible to make your walk painless. Depending on the type of hotel we have versus the type we're walking you to, you may be comped the night, or at least a greatly-reduced rate. Our hotel doesn't have free breakfast, so we offer guests to come back the next morning and have breakfast on us. If you had a rewards number for our hotel, we will make sure you get issued the number of points you would have earned staying with us. We do not want to walk you--it sucks if we have to. We are sincerely apologetic, and all we ask in return is begrudging understanding that we are not taking pleasure in doing this.

2) First, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCqm4H3m3Ew I'll wait.

Your member level tells us how often you've stayed with our hotel brands, and how much money you spend with us. We appreciate that you stay at the same sort of hotels often, but just because you've spent half of the past year in Marriotts or InterContinental hotels does not give you the right to lord over people who work at the hotels. We understand your status, we are happy to do extra for you, but this is not a dick-swinging contest. Do not call down, angry, because your room didn't have a sparkling water fountain or a smattering of rare snacks from India. We could offer you nothing, but we do offer you certain perks.

These perks depend not just on your level, but on the type of property you're staying at and what we can offer you. In the Marriott chain, a Fairfield Inn is going to have less to offer than a J. W. Marriott property. A Courtyard by Marriott (the Marriott hotel I work for) is a stripped-down hotel in some senses, because we have amenities but not to the extent a full-scale Marriott (the next step up from us) would have. Yes, the gym is on the smaller side, but lower brands on the Marriott property ladder might have even smaller gyms, if they have them at all. No, our pool is not Olympic size, but at least we have one.

You are a Platinum/Diamond/Eridium guest, and that's fantastic. We are willing to give you some perks and do a little more for you as a baseline and generally make your stay that much more pleasant because you've spent so much of your life in hotels. This does not give you the right, or the privilege, to be a total douchenozzle thundercunt to those of us working at the hotel. We are all still humans, and your job/status gains you little in the long run. Once again, be nice. You may get more from the start, but that's all you'll get if you start demanding upgrades we don't have or free food we don't serve.

3) Hotels are expensive. They are more expensive than they were even just two years ago when I started working in the hospitality industry. The brand dictates a lot about the price of a hotel room, and if you want to stay in a hotel with a nicer brand image, you're going to pay for that. The more amenities we have, the higher the price as well--or, at the very least, the fewer of those amenities that will be included in the rate.

Do not become irate with us when we say the rate for the night is something you cannot afford. Do not keep the phone call going forever because you want to shop for a discount. A normal front desk agent has patience enough for three to four possible discounts to look up before it becomes painfully obvious you don't actually qualify for any of the preferred business rates, and you're just naming companies in the hopes that we'll give you some heavily-discounted rate. That is not how it works.

I understand that $279 maybe out of your price range. You need to understand that on a busier night, there are business people who are willing to pay that--either because their company is going to reimburse them, or because they're used to expensive stays. Discounts aren't always available--a hotel's reservation manger will close off or open up certain discounts based on daily availability. Your are not guaranteed a discount unless you know your company as a pre-set preferred rate with us, and even then don't get angry with us when that rate has a guest cap per night and you missed it because you're booking the day before.


In Conclusion

I love working in the hotel industry. I get to interact with people daily, most of whom are nice. I am able to chat with people with interesting backstories, I get to see this wonderful cross-section of world culture being a business-oriented hotel, and it fuels my creativity a bit.

I have rambled here about some do's and don't's, but the main thing to take away from the journal is this: don't be a dick to your hotel staff. We take care of your food, your lodging, your comfort. We want to help you, we want you to enjoy your stay and come back and stay with us again. Being an ass will get you nowhere in an industry called hospitality. We will bed you and feed you, but you'll get real extraordinary service if you'll just smile and be understanding.

If you have any questions about what I do, I'm happy to answer them in the comments! I really enjoy talking about this job, and getting people informed on how to make a stay better.

Hey there everyone. I'm not usually one for pity journals, and I really don't ask for your pity when it comes to my situation. Still, my situation is what my situation is--a money sink. A recent dental visit has slapped me with a looming $700's worth of forthcoming procedures, and I have already maxed out my dental insurance for the year due to crowns and having my wisdom teeth pulled.

I get it, this is sort of a grave I've dug myself in, right? Still, I'm hoping for a little help in return for services.

I am not asking for free money, gods no. What I'm asking for is you all to find it in your heart to want/need something. Yes, it's currently hot as balls out and no one's really thinking of winter wear, but it'll be cooling down soon enough. Wouldn't you want that nice hat or pair of gloves/mittens by then? A big, thick scarf?

Talk to me! Send me a message on here, or at my e-mail ( lunostophiles[at]gmail.com ), or on one of my many messengers, or on Twitter ( Lunostophiles ). We can work out what you'd want, and pricing.

Generally, for pricing, smaller items like hats and socks and gloves (fingerless or otherwise) will hover between $30 and $50, depending on intricacy and number of colours. Scarves can get more expensive than that due to the amount of yarn needed. For scarves, I would suggest wanting it in a thicker-weight yarn for a slightly faster turnaround.

Payment would occur in two phases: roughly half of the amount we settle one will be needed upfront, so I can buy the yarn (I won't charge anyone for needles I buy, I can reuse needles). The second half of the amount will be due when I finish.

So yes. Winter is coming and all that rot, but really I would like to just not be gouged horribly by my dentist. Once I make it to January my new years' worth of dental insurance will kick in and it'll cover some other stuff that has to be done.

Thank you in advance, everyone.

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1.  Skylos -- Liberty cap
2.  Vanvidum -- tiger-striped hat (status: paid materials)
3.  Kimor -- fursona-coloured scarf (status: paid materials)
4. Loyal_Wolf -- Hogwarts banner scarf
5.

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Still knitting through  aggrobadger's awesome scarf! Ongoing project, really.

Greetings and salutations again, folks. This is merely an update journal to let everyone know that I am still working on taking hat commissions. In general, pricing rules are on a hat-by-hat basis, but roughly:

Upfront Payment: cost of yarn (no cost to the commissioner if I buy new needles, I can re-use needles).
After Work is Completed: usually the same as the cost of materials, but this may change depending on the amount of work involved in the hat. I'm open to negotiations, and I want to work closely with each commissioner on what they would most want out of their hat.

Seriously, guys! I do good work, I promise! Now that I actually have some work up on FA, you can see it!

Commission List:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

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On-Going Commissions:
1.  aggrobadger, for a very awesomely long scarf.

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Examples of my Work:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8328846/
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c.....leBlackHat.jpg
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c.....hiles/Hat2.jpg

Greetings, you all! So I'm deciding to take a few commissions right now, as I am both in need of a little bit of extra income, and I really am bored not having any knitting to do (this is a sign of addiction, right?). So, general guidelines:

1. This is for hats only. Hats are quick turn-around for me, so I won't be sitting here spending years on your commission. I already have a big knitting commission from someone else, so i want something I can supplement time with if I need to take a break from that one.

2. Pattern: Hat patterns are pretty easy and mutable, so feel free to describe to me what you want, and we can work on something that'll make us both happy. I will say, if you want stripes, they will need to be horizontal because I am not comfortable enough with the knitting techniques needed to do vertical stripes yet. Aside from colour, the actual knitting pattern can be discussed as well, as those are pretty easy, too (and there are tons of pattern resources online).

3. Pricing: All hats start at $20, but if you want multiple colours the price may rise depending on projected cost of materials. No hat will go above $50, and that would only be for one with a massive number of colours.

4. Payment: The way I do commissions, I would like the money for materials (yarn) up-front, and you will pay the rest upon my completion. I will do my best to post progress pictures every so often so no one is left in the dark.

I don't want to open up too many slots right now because it's not as fast as drawing sketches, but I'm willing to open up five (the starry-eyed dreamer I am). Keep in mind, the first commissioner will have their hat worked on first...obviously.

Err...so...I guess, open for business!

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1.  Garoul
2.
3.
4.
5.

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Work Examples:
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c.....leBlackHat.jpg
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c.....hiles/Hat2.jpg

I realise, not the best pictures, but I promise all the hats I've made for folks have been absolutely loved...but it is my word against no one's.

I learned a lot over my couple-month stint running the Twitter account ShitFurriesSay. Nothing's happening there now, so don't go follow it, it'd be a moot point.

Now that there's over a month of distance between myself and the end of the account, I've had time to process not only what I learned from the comments people had, but from things I became more sensitive to and aware of over my time during.

First off, it's really touch and go what is and isn't "funny" in this fandom. I don't want to say furries don't have a good sense of humour, of course we do. We pretend we're big animals online and generally dork out, not having a sense of humour about it sort of kills part of the magic, I think. No, what happens more often is there is this invisible line drawn in the sand that you do not cross. Why don't you cross it? I don't know. It's not a line of offensiveness, or a line of over-sharing. There's some strange tipping point in self-deprecating humour that goes from funny to annoying.

I get it, I may not have been the best candidate to run a furry parody account. I'm no Tina Fey, I understand this. It was a simple parody account, too. And yet, I received a lot of "this is just trying too hard" or "it isn't funny, these parody accounts should just stop", but there was one brand of criticism that always disheartened me.

"I just don't like self-hating furries."

I had this said to me, or about the idea of what I and others were doing, a few times, in a few flavours. This was the criticism that always stuck with me. If you thought it was stale humour, that's okay, that's a valid opinion. I wasn't going to be the next Patton Oswalt with ShitFurriesSay. But this idea that there was something...wrong with poking fun at the community you belong to. It just didn't make sense to me. It still doesn't.

Who among us hasn't made a gay joke? Or for those straight and bisexual people, I'm sure you've made jokes about your sexual orientation. It's not an uncommon practise by any means. Same with race, same with certain groups that grew out of music genres (which means this isn't just groups you didn't choose to be in). And yet there was a mostly-quiet, but apparent opinion that making fun of furries was akin to punting kittens off of rooftops.

There is a far more visible line, though, when it comes to "making fun of" and "being hateful toward". I have seen some art and commentary labeled by the author as the former, when it was truly the latter, a precision attack on one or many people's character in a way that was vicious and rude. But comparing "lol derp fur" to "You are a horrible person and you have AIDS!" is like saying your pimple is as bad as that malignant tumor.

Maybe I'm looking at this all from a skewed perspective, being on the side of the situation that I am. I love being a furry, I do. I have met amazing people through this community, and wouldn't give up the friends and lovers I've had for the world. Some furs talk of leaving the fandom, or that furries suck while still attending cons and meets and generally being cancerous blobs of hate on the fandom. I don't think I did that. I think I said, "See how silly we all are sometimes?"

I may be wrong. I'm okay with being wrong, I really am. I just want everyone to know that there was no harm meant, it was all a loving jab. I've learned that, among other things, from running the account.

I'll just leave this here, though--a favourite quote by Lisa Lampinelli. If you don't know her, she's a fabulously abrasive insult comic. This is what she has to say on making fun of people: "If you don't love everyone, you can't make fun of anyone."

Lu out.

I will begin this journal by stating I have not played Mass Effect 3. I don't know the problems with the endings, but the hub bub has brought up a sore spot for me that today's culture doesn't seem to ever talk about, or if we do we talk about it in passing, spitting tones.

You can't always get what you want.

There are some things you don't put up with. You don't put up with violent bullying, discrimination, or active hatred toward your person. You don't put up with unadulterated rudeness, you don't put up with being treated as a lesser than.

What you do put up with his shitty endings to things in pop culture. Why? In the end, it's a movie, or a book, or a video game, and while an ending can wreck something of a shorter length, if you've invested years into something, a bad ending won't detract from all the good times you had playing or reading or watching whatever it was.

You are allowed to be upset that the ending is not what you want. I was upset at how J. K. Rowling ended Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and I voiced my opinions to other friends who had read the books. What I did not do is begin howling madly at Rowling, and Bloomsbury, and anyone else even vaguely involved in the process of creating and producing those books.

The current state of our culture not only allows, but fosters this sort of blatant self-centered bullshit. Yelling loud enough will get you what you want, that is what we're being taught not just by the uproar of Mass Effect 3, but by politics, and Wall Street, and other far bigger influences on our lives than the video game industry. Working yourself into such a tizzy that you feel the need to petition BioWare, and in some small and extreme cases sue the company and petition the FTC, that is a waste of your resources as a human being.

Deal with it being a shitty ending. Maybe send a quiet e-mail to BioWare expressing your distaste, go and bitch to friends. But do not become a violent mob wanting some retribution you are not entitled to. You have no throne to throw this lightning from.

Sometimes, the things you love don't end up the way you want them to. When companies and people cave because you're holding your breath until you turn blue in the face, you're not gaining anything. You're losing self-respect and losing the want for people to make things for you. Move on to something else. Enjoy the parts you loved, and fuck being so bratty and pouty.

It's just a fucking game, Veruca Salt. You don't get what you want.

Lu out.

I had two people ask me what my thoughts on open relationships were yesterday, so instead of repeating myself over and over, I figured I could just post a journal here. So, a fair warning that these are opinions!

First off, any relationship is all about communication. Forget the type we're talking about, if you don't have open and honest communication with your partner, it's destined to be a failure. Whether it's about things you like or don't like, or whether or not you want to fool around with other people from time to time, talking to your partner about whatever the problem may be is the only, and I do mean only way to find a solution.

As far as open, poly, and other "alternative" relationships go, there's ample argument that monoamory is no more "natural" for our species than any other form of relationship. If you find yourself being a person who enjoys monoamory, by all means pursue it. This is by no means an indictment of monoamory, it most definitely works for some people.

I am, as far as I know, not one of those people.

The problem our society has fallen into is that we equate love and sex as interconnected actions and feelings. If you really love someone, you'll have sex with them, and if you have sex with someone you're in love with them. While it's not to say this isn't true, it is not the golden, end-all be-all rule. It's also not exactly kosher to say that if you have sex with someone, you don't also love them, whether or not you're in a relationship with them. Sex is a carnal, animal connection. It may be dirty, kinky, sometimes plain wrong, but it is a connection. Whether that connection is used for pleasure or ill will is not up to my opinion, but to the people using it.

There is a fundamental difference between being in love with someone and wanting to have sex with someone, and that is a fact people shy away from. It's complex, it adds levels of intimacy to everything and some people are just plain scared of that. Others try to use ancient texts or rules (and not just the Bible, guys, not just religious groups--don't be that way) to tell us that sex is wrong, or that sex is sacred. Sex is sacred, it is a pathway to a higher power, be it just chemicals going crazy in your brain or a god or goddess, whatever your flavour.

I think love and lust are complex and wonderful things, and they intermingle all the time. But when you start making them inseparable, you alienate other groups. If sex and love were so intertwined, asexual people would never find love, and nymphos (in the most loving sense) would never find love. That's utter bullshit and we all know it.

The sexual revolution isn't quite done with us, and by once again putting rules on the way we love and fornicate, we shackle ourselves to old ideals that don't fit into everyone's worldview.

The idea of being in an honest, open relationship, where there have been discussions on play partners, times it's okay versus not okay, and how one goes about doing what they do, that sort of relationship is exciting to me. Maybe you have a fetish your partner isn't into--the idea that you compromise your own sexual happiness is silly. You also do not get to neglect the person you pledged loving allegiance to.

The name of the game is open forum communication and moderation, much like with anything else. Don't deny someone their own sexual happiness because you think the way they wish to live is wrong. There are horrible, broken monoamorous relationships just as often as there are horrible, broken polyamorous or open relationships. But in the end, everyone deserves the connection.

Lu out.

--

P.S.: If you want to read just an amazing book on the modern human sexuality, I suggest the book "Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships" by Christopher Ryan. Fascinating read, found it through one of my other favourite progressive sexual thinkers, Dan Savage. Link below.

http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Dawn-Stra.....796&sr=8-1

We live in a new age of reason, of enlightenment. Science grows and changes daily, faster than we are sometimes able to keep up with. We now can store data on mere atoms, we have the start of levitation technology in quantum locking, it's a fantastic time to be alive (despite the disparaging government problems).

And yet I'm a little sad.

It's stated that science is truth and truth is all, and I do believe the first half of that. It's a matter of fact that truth is not all, and not because lying is a positive trait. It's that art is not truth, not always truth. It is exaggerated, simple things turned into grand emotions, a balled fist becoming a fight sequence.

I get the feeling there's a lack of imagination these days. No, not a lack of imagination. A lack of its use. You can say that scientists, academics and the like, are creative in their ways of problem-solving, and that's true. But we live in a culture that is slowly losing its gods and monsters, it's heroes and villains of epic renown. Even urban legends are going by the wayside, as a world that thirsts for facts is going to experience.

There are vestiges of pure, unfettered imagination still left around. Doctor Who, countless bits of zombie media, video games. But even these are tainted, however small, with this air of finding out the truth. There was a time we could sit and wholeheartedly believe that the TARDIS would show up in our front yard. There was a time the plot of a video game did not end up being that it's all some giant government conspiracy.

Do I lament these things in context? No. They make great plots, they make topical plots. I lament the loss of wide-eyed wonder. We look at the flower, and we talk of the pollination, of the stamen and the seed. We no longer look at the flower and think of Narcissus, or of why the forget-me-not acquired its name. Today, we do not want to think of the myths, they don't concern us. We want the facts.

Facts are good.

Facts are all.

Facts kill romanticism.

Despite popular belief, you can, in fact, be a scientist and a romantic. You can both discover how the rain falls, and compare the rain to the tears of angels. You can both know why the ingredients in a dish work together to break down amino acids and proteins, and appreciate the artistry of a dish, with its colours and textures, like an edible Renoir.

I call for an age of wide-eyed scientists. Of artistic academics. Of romantic explorers. I call for the poetry of DNA to be exalted alongside the importance of it.

Once in a generation, there comes a show so culturally significant, so brilliant beyond comprehension, that it becomes more than just a cartoon. It becomes a force, a storm of comedy, sense, and intelligence.

...I don't know if this is that show.

"What show?" you may ask, fingernails bit to the cuticle from anticipation.

Your Face Is a Saxophone is that show.

 XerxesQados needs your help. Go to http://yfias.com. Watch his pilot episode (if you're on Fur Affinity, you're not doing anything better). Pledge what money you can. It won't come out of your coffer until March 25th. He needs a lot, but if everyone just gives a little, he'll reach his goal in no time.

Stop caring about Egypt, Tibet, Tunisia. Stop worrying about taxes and your job. What you need to worry about for thirty minutes is Your Face Is a Saxophone.

If you don't watch it, Glenn Beck will be elected President of the World, and make us all watch original Space Ghost cartoons until we also see how they were an allegory for the corruption inherent in Stalinist Russia.

I don't think you want that.

Go watch Your Face Is a Saxophone. Or I'll plague your dreams with Doug Winger art.

I quit, I'm done.

No, this isn't a "baw, I'm leaving the fandom" journal. This is a being fed up with myself, and everyone else journal.

I am sorry, beyond all you are comprehending, that I didn't spend more time with you. But saying what you think I mean would be a lie, because the inherent meaning behind that sentence would be "I do not like you", and that is false in every regard.

Sure, I have thought on many occasions that I didn't know where we stood in our friendship. Sometimes, people can be enigmatic, and while I was sure we were friends, every so often I'd get weird vibes from the situation that I couldn't read.

Am I proud of myself for acting like this? No. I'm not proud of a lot of things I did in October. In fact, I'm not proud of a lot of things that happened in 2010. It has been, by and large, a shitty year full of fake people, heavy disappointments, and some shining pinpoints of happiness.

I am more than happy to sit here and wait. It's worth it for a friendship I care to keep. There has been a lot of stuff these days that have made me want to throw in the towel, and the fact of the matter is, I'm not willing to let the division bell ring here. If you decide you want to cut ties, I'll respect your decision, hate it, and chalk it up to one more reason why this year has been immensely disappointing.

I hope you don't want to do that, though. I would really miss you.

Hello there, all you sexy people in FurAffinity land. I have an announcement.

Well, more of a situation.

I am happily housed in the top floor of a two-story house in Waltham, Massachusetts. I have three fun roommates, not furs, but awesome people nonetheless. We haven't had downstairs neighbors since before I lived here. Now you have all the backstory you need!

Here's the deal: my landlord (a cool, cool guy) is currently finishing up renovations to the downstairs of the house, looking to rent it out. I'm putting out an alert--if anyone's looking to possibly move to the area, or lives around here and needs to find a new place, well, I'm putting it out there.

Here are the stats!

- Three Bedrooms
- One Bathroom
- One Kitchen
- One Big-Ass Living Space
- Soon to Include Washer & Dryer

- Rent is about $1800 a month. We split it unevenly between four people.
- All utilities included except electricity (this means that the landlord is paying for oil heating, which is a deal you won't find in most places around here).
- Landlord is super-flexible about rent payment dates, as long as you don't abuse it.
- Great location: suburban enough to not be a city, but close enough to Boston proper that you aren't lost to the ages in Western Mass or anything.

On a side note, if we can get people to move in downstairs that we (the current upstairs roommates) know, we'd get a little kickback from our landlord. Call it slightly selfish, but there's an unselfish bit here--I'd love to have roommates downstairs that we could all hang out with. Have house parties, enjoy each other's company. It's much easier to deal with possible problems if everyone's friendly.

So, I'm just putting this out there. I'm not sure if this'll get any hits, but who cares! My roomies and I just want to have one big, happy, friendly household.

So! I'd like some people's help on this one. I have an idea for a series of pictures of m'self, and I need suggestions.

So...name patterns, something repeating in one way or another. Anything you might see on fabric, or any other material, that slightly iconic and recognizable.

A few examples to get you started:

- Argyle
- Paisley
- Luis Vuitton

Well, I went to FurFright. And now I am back from FurFright!

I finally have two badges to my name (though if you count the double-sided one as two, I have three). I really dug getting to see  RedCoatCat and her art in person. Also,  XerxesQados's fursuit is adorable.

Things happened at the con that also have put my emotions into a food processor and made a fine paste out of them, but if I forget about that for a moment, it was wonderful.

Also, hats off to the con for putting up Rocky Horror, and letting all of us crazy-ass furries scream obscenities at it. Slut indeed.

So, I caught this from the ever-wonderful  katmomma, so here goes!


30 Movies Meme

Think of 30 movies that you love, or that really stuck with you.
Fill out the meme as fast as you can.
Order doesn't count or anything, it's just 30 movies that you love.


Lu's Thirty Movie Midnight Madness

1) Pan's Labirynth
2) Audition
3) My Neighbor Totoro
4) Twelve Angry Men
5) Jacob's Ladder
6) Lo
7) The Brave Little Toaster
8) Cats Don't Dance
9) Away We Go
10) Ponyo
11) Psycho
12) Mean Girls
13) Stranger Than Fiction
14) The Hunchback of Notre Dame [Disney]
15) Repo! the Genetic Opera
16) Alice in Wonderland [Any and All Versions]
17) Frankenweenie
18) The Great Mouse Detective
19) Sweeney Todd
20) WALL-E
21) Monster House
22) Hellraiser
23) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
24) Read or Die
25) One Hour Photo
26) Grace
27) A Christmas Story
28) Drag Me to Hell
29) Evil Dead
30) This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Perhaps it's silly of me to post this all up here. I have no clue--I'm just doing it now. I've been divinely inspired by the great god of alternative music and writing, Nick Hornby, to put this out into the aether for anyone to read. And maybe Anyone (with a capital A), will read it, too. And maybe that'll change things.

Picture yourself standing one quarter of the way into a tunnel. It's a train tunnel, and while you might already be pulled out of this by the obvious lack of modernity, I don't give a rat's ass. The tunnel is cool and a good sort of damp, running through a good-sized mountain. Green lichen has, over the course of many years, slithered its way up the stone walls, naturally-occuring trellises. The ground below you is mostly gravel, save for the obvious scar running down the passageway, that of the train tracks.

You've been in this tunnel before--I know I have. It's full of silence most of the time, letting your mind wander to its most abounding thoughts, or its most absurd (depending on your preference). But no matter where you start, silence this profound usually leads you to contemplate that which is flawed or wrong in your life. You begin to muse on lost loves, lost chances, and just lost things.

Now, that's when the train comes.

You hear the horn first, these days somewhere between a whistle and a foghorn's bleat. It starts pretty far away, so at first your brain doesn't parse it. The sound dances around the wrinkles in your head, but nothing lands. You only begin to realize what's going on when you see the flash of the headlight come 'round the bend on the far side of the tunnel. You have three-fourths of a tunnel between you and that entrance, and that train is chugging along, ready to give you a very powerful kiss.

You are now faced with two choices, and your window of opportunity is very thin. The first choice: you can turn your ass right around and book it out of the tunnel. Because this is my hypothetical situation, if you do this and do not hesitate, you will make it out and live. You will dive off of the tracks and down into a small clearing of wildflowers, with enough time to situate yourself and watch the train go blazing by on the tracks.

The second choice is this: you can stand there and catch the train. I don't mean hope it stops at a platform in the tunnel and pay for a ticket. I mean you will hold your ground on the tracks and stare down that locomotive like it was your bratty younger sister who's threatening to tattle on you. You will give that Amtrak the stink-eye so hard, you believe you'll be able to stop it. Whether you do or not is really up to the conductor and your body's constitution, though I say the chances are slim (sorry).

So what do you do? Anyone who's reading this objectively, you are going to say run. That's a fair choice, and one I wouldn't keep anyone from making. It's all right to run--in this situation, I've made the choice to run many times. I watch that train go by from the meadow and thank my lucky stars that I ran fast enough.

These days, I've been staring down that train more often. It's the same train, and I do it because I know if I stop the train, sitting pretty in the dining car is the most glorious meal I could ever have. Food I don't even know exists yet. The food would be served by the most affable waiter, and during my meal I would be joined by someone whom I would have conversations about nothing with. I would enjoy every word that would drip from that person's mouth, and they would reciprocate that pleasure for me. We would talk until the train came to a stop, and we'd get off together, and we'd go into town and have a ball.

So here I am. I am facing down this train with no fear anymore. I know that this time, I'll stop this train. I will use my sheer force of will to grab that engine by its cowcatcher, and by the gods I will bring that monster to a screeching halt. Then I will board, have that dinner, have that conversation, and be happy.

Oh no--there is no train that will stop me.

Okay, I've been addicted to this guy for a good month and a half now. I want him to win America's Got Talent because he's amazing for so many reasons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQES.....eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUb3.....eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhI3.....eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaIeDBjfPYk

God, I love you. <3