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The Watchlist Is Trash
Posted a week agoOkay, I'm going to say it, did no one think it through before implementing this stupid ass "nickname" system? Because now my watchlist of furs is thrown completely out of order.
I needed to find a name of a furry artist, FaroreNightclaw. Should be simple, just go to my watchlist, find her name, go to her profile.
No. Can't fucking find her. She's not listed under "F" anymore, but I know I've seen her posting art pieces because I'm watching her.
The stupid ass system sorts the names by the legacy profile name, but now changes the watched name to be whatever their stupid shit nickname now is. So just skimming through the list there's a "C" name in the "W" section. "D" in the "V" section. "K" in the "F" section. The whole watchlist just...looks unorganized now. Sure I guess if you point over a suspect name the tooltip comes up showing the actual profile name, but jesus christ do you want to do this to every name you're looking for?
Granted, its not often I'm actually looking through the watchlist anymore, but when you do it sure would be nice to have things ordered right.
--Mozdoc
I needed to find a name of a furry artist, FaroreNightclaw. Should be simple, just go to my watchlist, find her name, go to her profile.
No. Can't fucking find her. She's not listed under "F" anymore, but I know I've seen her posting art pieces because I'm watching her.
The stupid ass system sorts the names by the legacy profile name, but now changes the watched name to be whatever their stupid shit nickname now is. So just skimming through the list there's a "C" name in the "W" section. "D" in the "V" section. "K" in the "F" section. The whole watchlist just...looks unorganized now. Sure I guess if you point over a suspect name the tooltip comes up showing the actual profile name, but jesus christ do you want to do this to every name you're looking for?
Granted, its not often I'm actually looking through the watchlist anymore, but when you do it sure would be nice to have things ordered right.
--Mozdoc
Tragedy In Kentucky
Posted 2 weeks agoReminder to not ever be complacent when driving.
My family in Kentucky almost suffered a tragedy this past Friday, August twenty-second.
My stepdad Leonard and his best friend Daniel do work with the volunteer fire department. They were responding together to a call with Daniel driving the fire truck. I say "fire truck", but it wasn't actually a fire truck, its a pickup truck with a utility bed on it.
Somewhere north of Raywick on Route 526 Daniel went off the road, over corrected, and ended up sideways and rolling the truck in a disastrous crash that separated the cab from the utility bed. Daniel wasn't wearing his seatbelt, and normally Leonard would say he would have done the same, but for some reason this time he was strapped in, and it saved his fucking life.
Daniel was ejected from the truck, Leonard stayed in the truck.
Daniel had broken ankles, broken ribs, broken collarbone, broken jaw, and a brain bleed.
Leonard had to be extracted from the truck and has a cut from his glasses on his head, broken ribs, some spine fractures, and a collapsed lung.
Daniel perished from his injuries two days later.
My stepdad is still in the hospital and last I heard the collapsed lung has been corrected through a chest tube, but the broken ribs and everything else will take time.
Don't ever be complacent in your surroundings on the road. Don't neglect to wear your seat belt either, which shocks me that I need to even say this. It would seem Daniel just got complacent, thinking it was just going to be another routine call along the country roads, racing along, and it cost him. You're not indestructible stepping into a car.
Had my stepdad decided to be the same way this journal would be on an entirely different subject and he'd be gone too or in worse shape than how he ended up. As it is, he's in good spirits, conscious, but has no real memory of the events leading up to the accident. He does know that his friend didn't make it though, which...I don't know how someone handles that sort of trauma after just being with them two days prior.
Does this affect me much? Yes and no. For as much as my stepdad liked doing the volunteer fire department work it was also a point of contention within my family out there because Leonard would selectively prioritize trouble calls over anything else relating to the house or his surroundings. Maybe this will just be that kick to make him give it up and not do it anymore.
But there's no way I can have much of an emotional response to the loss of a friend of my family when I didn't know them myself except from maybe seeing them in passing from a distance when I was at the fair events back in July. It really is a damn shame what happened because that opens up a lot of uncertainty for his family left behind.
Everything is always just so dicey over there in Kentucky, I hate to say it. The loss of one person upsets the whole delicate balance of things over there so that always just makes me happy to stay single as I am.
--Mozdoc
My family in Kentucky almost suffered a tragedy this past Friday, August twenty-second.
My stepdad Leonard and his best friend Daniel do work with the volunteer fire department. They were responding together to a call with Daniel driving the fire truck. I say "fire truck", but it wasn't actually a fire truck, its a pickup truck with a utility bed on it.
Somewhere north of Raywick on Route 526 Daniel went off the road, over corrected, and ended up sideways and rolling the truck in a disastrous crash that separated the cab from the utility bed. Daniel wasn't wearing his seatbelt, and normally Leonard would say he would have done the same, but for some reason this time he was strapped in, and it saved his fucking life.
Daniel was ejected from the truck, Leonard stayed in the truck.
Daniel had broken ankles, broken ribs, broken collarbone, broken jaw, and a brain bleed.
Leonard had to be extracted from the truck and has a cut from his glasses on his head, broken ribs, some spine fractures, and a collapsed lung.
Daniel perished from his injuries two days later.
My stepdad is still in the hospital and last I heard the collapsed lung has been corrected through a chest tube, but the broken ribs and everything else will take time.
Don't ever be complacent in your surroundings on the road. Don't neglect to wear your seat belt either, which shocks me that I need to even say this. It would seem Daniel just got complacent, thinking it was just going to be another routine call along the country roads, racing along, and it cost him. You're not indestructible stepping into a car.
Had my stepdad decided to be the same way this journal would be on an entirely different subject and he'd be gone too or in worse shape than how he ended up. As it is, he's in good spirits, conscious, but has no real memory of the events leading up to the accident. He does know that his friend didn't make it though, which...I don't know how someone handles that sort of trauma after just being with them two days prior.
Does this affect me much? Yes and no. For as much as my stepdad liked doing the volunteer fire department work it was also a point of contention within my family out there because Leonard would selectively prioritize trouble calls over anything else relating to the house or his surroundings. Maybe this will just be that kick to make him give it up and not do it anymore.
But there's no way I can have much of an emotional response to the loss of a friend of my family when I didn't know them myself except from maybe seeing them in passing from a distance when I was at the fair events back in July. It really is a damn shame what happened because that opens up a lot of uncertainty for his family left behind.
Everything is always just so dicey over there in Kentucky, I hate to say it. The loss of one person upsets the whole delicate balance of things over there so that always just makes me happy to stay single as I am.
--Mozdoc
Tragedy In Kentucky
Posted 2 weeks agoReminder to not ever be complacent when driving.
My family in Kentucky almost suffered a tragedy this past Friday, August twenty-second.
My stepdad Leonard and his best friend Daniel do work with the volunteer fire department. They were responding together to a call with Daniel driving the fire truck. I say "fire truck", but it wasn't actually a fire truck, its a pickup truck with a utility bed on it.
Somewhere north of Raywick on Route 526 Daniel went off the road, over corrected, and ended up sideways and rolling the truck in a disastrous crash that separated the cab from the utility bed. Daniel wasn't wearing his seatbelt, and normally Leonard would say he would have done the same, but for some reason this time he was strapped in, and it saved his fucking life.
Daniel was ejected from the truck, Leonard stayed in the truck.
Daniel had broken ankles, broken ribs, broken collarbone, broken jaw, and a brain bleed.
Leonard had to be extracted from the truck and has a cut from his glasses on his head, broken ribs, some spine fractures, and a collapsed lung.
Daniel perished from his injuries two days later.
My stepdad is still in the hospital and last I heard the collapsed lung has been corrected through a chest tube, but the broken ribs and everything else will take time.
Don't ever be complacent in your surroundings on the road. Don't neglect to wear your seat belt either, which shocks me that I need to even say this. It would seem Daniel just got complacent, thinking it was just going to be another routine call along the country roads, racing along, and it cost him. You're not indestructible stepping into a car.
Had my stepdad decided to be the same way this journal would be on an entirely different subject and he'd be gone too or in worse shape than how he ended up. As it is, he's in good spirits, conscious, but has no real memory of the events leading up to the accident. He does know that his friend didn't make it though, which...I don't know how someone handles that sort of trauma after just being with them two days prior.
--Mozdoc
My family in Kentucky almost suffered a tragedy this past Friday, August twenty-second.
My stepdad Leonard and his best friend Daniel do work with the volunteer fire department. They were responding together to a call with Daniel driving the fire truck. I say "fire truck", but it wasn't actually a fire truck, its a pickup truck with a utility bed on it.
Somewhere north of Raywick on Route 526 Daniel went off the road, over corrected, and ended up sideways and rolling the truck in a disastrous crash that separated the cab from the utility bed. Daniel wasn't wearing his seatbelt, and normally Leonard would say he would have done the same, but for some reason this time he was strapped in, and it saved his fucking life.
Daniel was ejected from the truck, Leonard stayed in the truck.
Daniel had broken ankles, broken ribs, broken collarbone, broken jaw, and a brain bleed.
Leonard had to be extracted from the truck and has a cut from his glasses on his head, broken ribs, some spine fractures, and a collapsed lung.
Daniel perished from his injuries two days later.
My stepdad is still in the hospital and last I heard the collapsed lung has been corrected through a chest tube, but the broken ribs and everything else will take time.
Don't ever be complacent in your surroundings on the road. Don't neglect to wear your seat belt either, which shocks me that I need to even say this. It would seem Daniel just got complacent, thinking it was just going to be another routine call along the country roads, racing along, and it cost him. You're not indestructible stepping into a car.
Had my stepdad decided to be the same way this journal would be on an entirely different subject and he'd be gone too or in worse shape than how he ended up. As it is, he's in good spirits, conscious, but has no real memory of the events leading up to the accident. He does know that his friend didn't make it though, which...I don't know how someone handles that sort of trauma after just being with them two days prior.
--Mozdoc
Escaping Chicago O'Hare
Posted 2 months agoI was watching Google Travel for the best opportune time to plan my trip to and from Kentucky to make the most of it, and the best time to do so was to leave July first and come back July twelfth, but the flight back would take off at six thirty-four in the morning.
So, that's what we did. Woke up stupidly stupidly early on Saturday at two-forty in the morning, and were out the door by three-thirty to make the one hour drive northward to Louisville International Airport where I could make my flight.
There were no tears shed this time in the goodbyes, which I'm thankful for. I've gotten used to making this type of hard separation as my family drives off and leaves me to make my own way back home. I'm kind of glad I arrived this early, because holy shit there was a fuckton of military recruits finished training and heading out. Military loaded up with double backpacks front and back plus duffels. The line for American Airlines was astronomical compared to the other carriers, so much so that they were calling out for people with pressing flights to skip the line and get processed to not miss them. I was one of those people because it took me an combined hour to get through the check in and drop my bag, and the security line.
But here I am, at the gate, ready to reverse my flight path that got me here. Louisville to Chicago O'Hare, Chicago O'Hare to Los Angeles. Simple.
The flight from Louisville to Chicago is always a funny one to me because it takes exactly one hour to do, but also traverses a time zone so on paper it appears that the flight arrives in Chicago at the same time its theoretically left Louisville and takes ten minutes to complete.
AA 4622 from Louisville to Chicago O'Hare left on time, 6:34a eastern time from gate B16A. Smooth and unremarkable, I soon found myself in Terminal 3 of Chicago O'Hare with a friendly reminder text on my phone at 6:53a central time.
"Your next flight to LAX leaves in 1hr 57min. American Airlines 2012 departs ORD at 8:50a from gate K13 in terminal 3."
Perfect. Enough time to get some food and get to the gate, which I do, because I always seem to be in boarding group nine so its not like getting there benefits me in any way.
And then the wheels come off...
I'm at K13 waiting to board, and boarding doesn't happen. Instead we get an announcement.
"This plane is being delayed because of a mechanical issue, there's a maintenance team checking the engines. As soon as we know more we'll let you know."
And so the whole gate waits. Eight-fifty comes and goes. I know this isn't good because aircraft have specific booking times to make their journeys and if you miss your time, well, thats it, the entire rest of the airport is going to continue on in operations because those flights are still going to keep their schedules and it'll take some juggling to recover.
And then the text message.
"American 2012 to LAX: Departure time has changed to 12:30p on Jul 12 from ORD gate K13, terminal 3."
Four hour delay waiting for this plane to leave. There's nothing I can do but wait to see if it will happen.
"American 2012 to LAX: Departure time has changed to 1:15p on Jul 12 from ORD gate K13, terminal 3."
Another delay. I've been in this airport since six this morning, and so now I need to call the shuttle service that would be waiting for me at Los Angeles and tell them that I'm not going to make it.
"American 2012 to LAX: Departure time has changed to 9:15p on Jul 12 from ORD gate K13, terminal 3."
My fucking god.
By now the customer service desk in the K gates is swamped with a line twenty people long and growing as people, including myself, seek answers and alternative means of getting to where we need to go.
The short answer?
There is nothing, with a capital NO, NOTHING, at all going to Los Angeles this Saturday.
Every flight to Los Angeles is fully booked.
There's no flights even to alternative airports.
The standby list for every flight is thirty people long.
The soonest open flight is tomorrow on Sunday.
I'm welcome to take my name off of the flight and put myself on standby though in the hopes and prayers that something could happen, but it became clear that there was no answer to those hopes at all as the one flight I waited for was indeed booked solid, boarded, and left.
"American 2012 to LAX: Departure time has changed to 11:00p on Jul 12 from ORD gate K13, terminal 3."
Mind you its still only in the afternoon, but for the first time in all my travels, I'm genuinely just...stranded. There is no possible way to get home Saturday. I'm fucking stuck in Chicago. Another passenger who was also on the plane told me in passing that there was little hope of the stupid plane ever leaving today anyway.
So I went back to the customer service desk and asked at what point do you give up on the flight and just admit there's no alternatives but to wait.
I got twenty-four dollars in food vouchers, and a hotel voucher to stay off sight on the airlines, and believe me I made the most of it buying a thick double burger from a Chili's in the terminal to take with me back to the hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn. An amusing choice knowing thats also one of the hotels that Midwest FurFest uses when it happens just down the road from the convention complex.
I would really love it if I could get my bag though to bring with me to the hotel, you know? The agent made that request when I got rebooked onto a new flight for Sunday morning but did warn me that the wait for retrieving bags from the locker was an extensive one.
And he wasn't lying.
I went down to bag claim and I waited...four...fucking...hours.
The request to pull my bag from the locker never happened. I'm just watching the carousels get unloaded and people claiming their stuff and leaving. I politely kept my distance and only inquired about every hour.
By now its SIX. AT. NIGHT. I've been in this airport for twelve...fucking hours. I've gone nowhere. I don't have my stuff. And then a final inquiry with the agent at the desk shows that...my bag is scheduled for a flight. That its making the journey to Los Angeles on an 8p flight without me in spare space on an aircraft so the request to pull it from the locker isn't likely to happen.
So my bag made it to Los Angeles on Saturday night, of all the things to happen. So I'm in Chicago with literally what I'm wearing on me and my backpack with my laptop and sketchbook in it and...thats...it.
Thankfully the hotel offered one time use items, and really, my mood was improved just taking a shower, and finally eating my burger I'd bought five hours ago with the promise that tomorrow I'd be on my way.
But fate would have OTHER PLANS... oh my fucking god.
Sunday almost screwed me because even though I'd set the hotel clock for waking up at five in the morning, oh, it was some stupid twenty-four hour clock, so it was twelve hours out of phase with what it should've been. I wondered why the alarm hadn't gone off yet and then looked over to see the clock was reading 17:20, not 05:20. Whatever. I gathered up my stuff and got on the shuttle back to my familiar grounds...Terminal 3.
Security check was a complete fucking madhouse, but the line was moving for ridiculously long as it appeared and being that my bag was nowhere near me now but waiting in a closet in Los Angeles, it wasn't like I needed to go to the check in desk anymore.
Somehow the flight that I'd gotten rebooked on ended up being the same flight number, and I didn't even realize this until I looked at my updated itinerary. Flight 2012 again, leaving from the same gate as yesterday, K13, and at 8:50a.
McDonalds for breakfast, because for some reason O'Hare has a massive concentration of McDonald's everywhere. There's like...four of them in Terminal 3, and exactly one hour before salvation...
"American 2012 to LAX: Departure time has changed to 1:00p on Jul 13 from ORD gate K13, terminal 3."
MY FUCKING GOD THIS PLANE IS NEVER GOING TO LEAVE.
I just got here at six in the morning and now its not going to leave for seven...fucking...hours!
I make the choice to bail on the flight. It never left yesterday, why should I have any hope in hell that its ever leaving today!?
The phone app for American Airlines let me change my flight, but its only showing ONE possible alternative, and its not great. Fly from Chicago O'Hare to Pittsburgh, wait an hour and a half layover, and then go to Los Angeles. Its not great, but its the only thing listed and it leaves from here roughly the same time as the delayed plane, so I rebook myself onto American Airlines 6348.
"American 6348 from ORD to PIT will depart 1:57p from gate L10A in terminal 3."
I'm in the freaking H and K gates. To change to any different gate concourse requires backtracking down the entire thing to the hub area and going down a different corridor. And L10A is near the ass end of the corridor. But there I am, I'm waiting for the plane.
And we wait. I've now been stranded in Chicago for twenty-four hours.
Needless to say there isn't a whole lot to do or look at in Chicago O'Hare. I just find some chairs with power outlets and plug in my phone from time to time because its my literal lifeline to anything right now, and the hours tick. tick. tick. tick. tick by.
Oh you got to be fucking kidding me...
"Gate change: Flight AA6348 from ORD to PIT departs at 1:57p out of gate G1A in terminal 3."
"Gate change: Flight AA6348 from ORD to PIT departs at 1:57p out of gate H1A in terminal 3."
Its now scheduled to arrive not where I am, but at the gate just behind security. So I go for another walk...but while I'm doing so I'm also looking at any other flight possibilities...
...why is Flight 2012 still listed as actually leaving? Wait...its ACTUALLY LEAVING!?
So I go back down the HK gate corridor and look to see. YES. The fucking plane is actually boarding to leave. No, I can't get on it because I already surrendered my damn seat on it, and the standby list is THIRTY PEOPLE LONG. There is no way I am on this plane and so the best option I have is what I already choose earlier. God this is so fucking frustrating.
What now...
"American 6348 to PIT: Departure time has changed to 2:38p on Jul 13 from ORD gate H1A, terminal 3."
"Gate change: Flight AA6348 from ORD to PIT departs at 2:38p out of gate G21 in terminal 3."
My flight to Pittsburgh is DELAYED. The fucking fuck is fucking going on. Why is nothing fucking working. Around the entire airport there's flights arriving, discharging passengers, boarding up, and departing. Detroit, Milwaukee, Quebec, you name it, there are flights happening that are on time and leaving, but everything I need is just turning to SHIT.
Not to mention now I have to go to an entirely DIFFERENT CONCOURSE again, and G21 is at the ASS END OF THE CORRIDOR. The last gate possible.
But this is promising. There's a plane arriving in. Even with this little delay, according to my phone itinerary, the connection in Pittsburgh is still possible to make.
But boarding doesn't start.
"Ladies and gentleman this plane has a mechanical delay. We're having a maintenance team look at the cabin lights, so we'll update you when we have more information."
You. Cannot. Be. Fucking. Serious.
How is this possible. Another plane gets here and breaks with a mechanical delay that the maintenance team is looking at!?
At this point its just becoming so fucking comical its absurd. I'm NEVER leaving this fucking airport.
"American 6348 to PIT: Departure time has changed to 3:20p on Jul 13 from ORD gate G21, terminal 3."
"American 6348 to PIT: Departure time has changed to 3:55p on Jul 13 from ORD gate G21, terminal 3."
I can't do it anymore. A bit of a mental crack as the constant failures and hours long delays are just pissing me off. How is everything failing this bad. But also a time constraint. The delays of this flight going to Pittsburgh now make it infeasible to even have a chance of making my connection to the Los Angeles flight. The connection time is a mere twelve minutes. I can't do it, I have to bail on this flight now or I'd go to Pittsburgh and be stuck there instead.
So I storm off away from the gate, and find another familiar place I've been at; the customer service desk. For some reason this one in the G gates only had a short line, whereas the HK gate desk had a line now consistently sixty people deep down the concourse like a queue for a miserable amusement park ride.
I don't remember the agents name here, but I plead my case that I am trying...so...hard...to leave this godforsaken airport and go home to Los Angeles. He sees I'm booked on the flight to Pittsburgh. I explain that its delayed and there is no way I have a hope of making my connection.
And we wait.
He tak-a-tak-a-taks away on his keyboard. What he was looking at on his screen I don't know. I stood there in defeated silence for easily three minutes.
And then he prints out a boarding pass for gate H9.
He found...ONE...surrendered seat, on ONE plane leaving nonstop for Los Angeles, that leaves TONIGHT.
But it leaves at eight fifty-five at night.
"American 3194 from ORD to LAX will depart at 8:55p from gate H16 in terminal 3."
Another...five...hours...of waiting.
But its the best shot I've had of anything right now, and I take the ticket and leave the G gates and go back to the Chili's I got that burger from, and this time dine in. I mean, where the fuck else am I going to go. What's another five hours on top of the thirty I've already spent here, thirty hours passed at noon and I live in the fucking airport now it seems. Its also around this time that I have to make a phone call to my manager about Monday at work because if this flight pulls through I'm now going to arrive at Los Angeles with no ride home, and get home so late that there's no way I can show up Monday.
"Gate change: Flight AA3194 from ORD to LAX departs at 8:55p out of gate H17 in terminal 3."
Okay, nothing to panic about there.
"Gate change: Flight AA3194 from ORD to LAX departs at 8:55p out of gate K8 in terminal 3."
Still nothing to panic about, at least its not at the ass end of a corridor. Midway down isn't too bad.
And you bet that I'm now sitting there hoping this pulls through. Nothing else has. But this gate has a plane at it. The status screen still shows a green 'ON TIME' mark.
You better not say there's another mechanical problem.
...
They're calling boarding groups.
People are getting on.
I'm in group eight.
I scan my boarding pass. Oops, come to find out I'm not in group eight, I was supposed to be in group nine because I changed my seat, but no big deal.
I'm on the bridge.
I'm ON THE PLANE.
It leaves the gate.
It takes off.
I'm finally free of fucking Chicago.
Forty...hours...later.
From six forty on Saturday morning until nine Sunday night.
And the flight went perfect.
Back in Chicago there was something worth mentioning. Next to me in the seating area there was a married couple, an older man and woman. For some reason the man got up, and there was a mild kerfluffle about this drink traveler mug. He didn't want it to spill and told his wife to prop his bag up against it to hold it upright. Nothing remarkable about that conversation at all, as I'm focused on charging my phone before the plane boards.
They must've been well paying fliers because they got up with boarding group one being called. Or at least I thought so. Its not like me to pay attention to random people, and this is an airport where people can sit anywhere and may not be at the correct gate of where they're ultimately going.
So when boarding group eight was called, I got up and put my stuff in my bag, and then I noticed this grey traveler mug next to me. The guy forget his cup.
So in a split second thought, I grabbed it in hand and carried it onto the plane. There may be a good chance that I recognize his face in passing on my way back to seat 25D if he boarded in that early. Hmmm, he's not in the first class rows. He's not even in the first dozen rows. No for some reason this guy and his wife were all the way back in row 20D and 20E and they were shocked surprised when I came up and said "sir, you forgot this outside" to give it back to him. He clearly was not expecting to ever get it back. I don't know if it was an expensive item, or just the stupid feeling you have forgetting something like that, but in passing he agreed to buy me a beer on the plane for that. And during the flight, a beer indeed showed up from the snack cart.
Alas, I never drank the beer. I kind of sort of wanted to keep it for later as a bit of a victory lap for fucking getting my trip over with, but I couldn't take it off the plane and it was taken from me. I should've just put it in my bag rather than carry it off in my hand. So, I'm sorry whoever that gentleman was that bought it for me but I never saw him again exiting the plane so as far as he knows, I enjoyed it and that's it.
On the flight it was if whatever god I'd angered had a delightful mood swing to be pleasant because everything went proper from here on.
We landed.
I found the baggage office and retrieved my bag where it'd been waiting for me for the last day in a closet locker.
Unfortunately I was without a ride home as the shuttle service to home makes its last run at ten at night and had already gone. I phoned in a favor to a fur friend Fleet who got off work late from close by and he offered to pick me up in exchange for fuel money.
It was well beyond midnight into Monday morning by the time we hit the 405 Freeway northward, listening to electroswing which certainly sets a particular mood when the freeway is dark, lightly traveled, in the dead of night before a work week starts.
And my travels home from Kentucky didn't end until I got through my door at exactly two in the freaking morning on Monday.
This was supposed to be a quick easy day trip that should've gotten me here by Saturday afternoon at the latest. All the while I was in Kentucky there was a risk of thunderstorms that never amounted to much of anything where I was, but I guess in Chicago and Dallas and other airports they wrecked havoc cancelling and delaying flights all over, so when I made my trip on that weekend I unknowingly flew into Chicago catching the tail end of a colossal shit storm that hadn't cleared yet.
Yeah there was absolutely no conceivable way I could even think to show up for a work shift at six in the morning.
I unpacked, took a shower, and crashed the fuck to sleep to handle all of this on Tuesday.
--Mozdoc
So, that's what we did. Woke up stupidly stupidly early on Saturday at two-forty in the morning, and were out the door by three-thirty to make the one hour drive northward to Louisville International Airport where I could make my flight.
There were no tears shed this time in the goodbyes, which I'm thankful for. I've gotten used to making this type of hard separation as my family drives off and leaves me to make my own way back home. I'm kind of glad I arrived this early, because holy shit there was a fuckton of military recruits finished training and heading out. Military loaded up with double backpacks front and back plus duffels. The line for American Airlines was astronomical compared to the other carriers, so much so that they were calling out for people with pressing flights to skip the line and get processed to not miss them. I was one of those people because it took me an combined hour to get through the check in and drop my bag, and the security line.
But here I am, at the gate, ready to reverse my flight path that got me here. Louisville to Chicago O'Hare, Chicago O'Hare to Los Angeles. Simple.
The flight from Louisville to Chicago is always a funny one to me because it takes exactly one hour to do, but also traverses a time zone so on paper it appears that the flight arrives in Chicago at the same time its theoretically left Louisville and takes ten minutes to complete.
AA 4622 from Louisville to Chicago O'Hare left on time, 6:34a eastern time from gate B16A. Smooth and unremarkable, I soon found myself in Terminal 3 of Chicago O'Hare with a friendly reminder text on my phone at 6:53a central time.
"Your next flight to LAX leaves in 1hr 57min. American Airlines 2012 departs ORD at 8:50a from gate K13 in terminal 3."
Perfect. Enough time to get some food and get to the gate, which I do, because I always seem to be in boarding group nine so its not like getting there benefits me in any way.
And then the wheels come off...
I'm at K13 waiting to board, and boarding doesn't happen. Instead we get an announcement.
"This plane is being delayed because of a mechanical issue, there's a maintenance team checking the engines. As soon as we know more we'll let you know."
And so the whole gate waits. Eight-fifty comes and goes. I know this isn't good because aircraft have specific booking times to make their journeys and if you miss your time, well, thats it, the entire rest of the airport is going to continue on in operations because those flights are still going to keep their schedules and it'll take some juggling to recover.
And then the text message.
"American 2012 to LAX: Departure time has changed to 12:30p on Jul 12 from ORD gate K13, terminal 3."
Four hour delay waiting for this plane to leave. There's nothing I can do but wait to see if it will happen.
"American 2012 to LAX: Departure time has changed to 1:15p on Jul 12 from ORD gate K13, terminal 3."
Another delay. I've been in this airport since six this morning, and so now I need to call the shuttle service that would be waiting for me at Los Angeles and tell them that I'm not going to make it.
"American 2012 to LAX: Departure time has changed to 9:15p on Jul 12 from ORD gate K13, terminal 3."
My fucking god.
By now the customer service desk in the K gates is swamped with a line twenty people long and growing as people, including myself, seek answers and alternative means of getting to where we need to go.
The short answer?
There is nothing, with a capital NO, NOTHING, at all going to Los Angeles this Saturday.
Every flight to Los Angeles is fully booked.
There's no flights even to alternative airports.
The standby list for every flight is thirty people long.
The soonest open flight is tomorrow on Sunday.
I'm welcome to take my name off of the flight and put myself on standby though in the hopes and prayers that something could happen, but it became clear that there was no answer to those hopes at all as the one flight I waited for was indeed booked solid, boarded, and left.
"American 2012 to LAX: Departure time has changed to 11:00p on Jul 12 from ORD gate K13, terminal 3."
Mind you its still only in the afternoon, but for the first time in all my travels, I'm genuinely just...stranded. There is no possible way to get home Saturday. I'm fucking stuck in Chicago. Another passenger who was also on the plane told me in passing that there was little hope of the stupid plane ever leaving today anyway.
So I went back to the customer service desk and asked at what point do you give up on the flight and just admit there's no alternatives but to wait.
I got twenty-four dollars in food vouchers, and a hotel voucher to stay off sight on the airlines, and believe me I made the most of it buying a thick double burger from a Chili's in the terminal to take with me back to the hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn. An amusing choice knowing thats also one of the hotels that Midwest FurFest uses when it happens just down the road from the convention complex.
I would really love it if I could get my bag though to bring with me to the hotel, you know? The agent made that request when I got rebooked onto a new flight for Sunday morning but did warn me that the wait for retrieving bags from the locker was an extensive one.
And he wasn't lying.
I went down to bag claim and I waited...four...fucking...hours.
The request to pull my bag from the locker never happened. I'm just watching the carousels get unloaded and people claiming their stuff and leaving. I politely kept my distance and only inquired about every hour.
By now its SIX. AT. NIGHT. I've been in this airport for twelve...fucking hours. I've gone nowhere. I don't have my stuff. And then a final inquiry with the agent at the desk shows that...my bag is scheduled for a flight. That its making the journey to Los Angeles on an 8p flight without me in spare space on an aircraft so the request to pull it from the locker isn't likely to happen.
So my bag made it to Los Angeles on Saturday night, of all the things to happen. So I'm in Chicago with literally what I'm wearing on me and my backpack with my laptop and sketchbook in it and...thats...it.
Thankfully the hotel offered one time use items, and really, my mood was improved just taking a shower, and finally eating my burger I'd bought five hours ago with the promise that tomorrow I'd be on my way.
But fate would have OTHER PLANS... oh my fucking god.
Sunday almost screwed me because even though I'd set the hotel clock for waking up at five in the morning, oh, it was some stupid twenty-four hour clock, so it was twelve hours out of phase with what it should've been. I wondered why the alarm hadn't gone off yet and then looked over to see the clock was reading 17:20, not 05:20. Whatever. I gathered up my stuff and got on the shuttle back to my familiar grounds...Terminal 3.
Security check was a complete fucking madhouse, but the line was moving for ridiculously long as it appeared and being that my bag was nowhere near me now but waiting in a closet in Los Angeles, it wasn't like I needed to go to the check in desk anymore.
Somehow the flight that I'd gotten rebooked on ended up being the same flight number, and I didn't even realize this until I looked at my updated itinerary. Flight 2012 again, leaving from the same gate as yesterday, K13, and at 8:50a.
McDonalds for breakfast, because for some reason O'Hare has a massive concentration of McDonald's everywhere. There's like...four of them in Terminal 3, and exactly one hour before salvation...
"American 2012 to LAX: Departure time has changed to 1:00p on Jul 13 from ORD gate K13, terminal 3."
MY FUCKING GOD THIS PLANE IS NEVER GOING TO LEAVE.
I just got here at six in the morning and now its not going to leave for seven...fucking...hours!
I make the choice to bail on the flight. It never left yesterday, why should I have any hope in hell that its ever leaving today!?
The phone app for American Airlines let me change my flight, but its only showing ONE possible alternative, and its not great. Fly from Chicago O'Hare to Pittsburgh, wait an hour and a half layover, and then go to Los Angeles. Its not great, but its the only thing listed and it leaves from here roughly the same time as the delayed plane, so I rebook myself onto American Airlines 6348.
"American 6348 from ORD to PIT will depart 1:57p from gate L10A in terminal 3."
I'm in the freaking H and K gates. To change to any different gate concourse requires backtracking down the entire thing to the hub area and going down a different corridor. And L10A is near the ass end of the corridor. But there I am, I'm waiting for the plane.
And we wait. I've now been stranded in Chicago for twenty-four hours.
Needless to say there isn't a whole lot to do or look at in Chicago O'Hare. I just find some chairs with power outlets and plug in my phone from time to time because its my literal lifeline to anything right now, and the hours tick. tick. tick. tick. tick by.
Oh you got to be fucking kidding me...
"Gate change: Flight AA6348 from ORD to PIT departs at 1:57p out of gate G1A in terminal 3."
"Gate change: Flight AA6348 from ORD to PIT departs at 1:57p out of gate H1A in terminal 3."
Its now scheduled to arrive not where I am, but at the gate just behind security. So I go for another walk...but while I'm doing so I'm also looking at any other flight possibilities...
...why is Flight 2012 still listed as actually leaving? Wait...its ACTUALLY LEAVING!?
So I go back down the HK gate corridor and look to see. YES. The fucking plane is actually boarding to leave. No, I can't get on it because I already surrendered my damn seat on it, and the standby list is THIRTY PEOPLE LONG. There is no way I am on this plane and so the best option I have is what I already choose earlier. God this is so fucking frustrating.
What now...
"American 6348 to PIT: Departure time has changed to 2:38p on Jul 13 from ORD gate H1A, terminal 3."
"Gate change: Flight AA6348 from ORD to PIT departs at 2:38p out of gate G21 in terminal 3."
My flight to Pittsburgh is DELAYED. The fucking fuck is fucking going on. Why is nothing fucking working. Around the entire airport there's flights arriving, discharging passengers, boarding up, and departing. Detroit, Milwaukee, Quebec, you name it, there are flights happening that are on time and leaving, but everything I need is just turning to SHIT.
Not to mention now I have to go to an entirely DIFFERENT CONCOURSE again, and G21 is at the ASS END OF THE CORRIDOR. The last gate possible.
But this is promising. There's a plane arriving in. Even with this little delay, according to my phone itinerary, the connection in Pittsburgh is still possible to make.
But boarding doesn't start.
"Ladies and gentleman this plane has a mechanical delay. We're having a maintenance team look at the cabin lights, so we'll update you when we have more information."
You. Cannot. Be. Fucking. Serious.
How is this possible. Another plane gets here and breaks with a mechanical delay that the maintenance team is looking at!?
At this point its just becoming so fucking comical its absurd. I'm NEVER leaving this fucking airport.
"American 6348 to PIT: Departure time has changed to 3:20p on Jul 13 from ORD gate G21, terminal 3."
"American 6348 to PIT: Departure time has changed to 3:55p on Jul 13 from ORD gate G21, terminal 3."
I can't do it anymore. A bit of a mental crack as the constant failures and hours long delays are just pissing me off. How is everything failing this bad. But also a time constraint. The delays of this flight going to Pittsburgh now make it infeasible to even have a chance of making my connection to the Los Angeles flight. The connection time is a mere twelve minutes. I can't do it, I have to bail on this flight now or I'd go to Pittsburgh and be stuck there instead.
So I storm off away from the gate, and find another familiar place I've been at; the customer service desk. For some reason this one in the G gates only had a short line, whereas the HK gate desk had a line now consistently sixty people deep down the concourse like a queue for a miserable amusement park ride.
I don't remember the agents name here, but I plead my case that I am trying...so...hard...to leave this godforsaken airport and go home to Los Angeles. He sees I'm booked on the flight to Pittsburgh. I explain that its delayed and there is no way I have a hope of making my connection.
And we wait.
He tak-a-tak-a-taks away on his keyboard. What he was looking at on his screen I don't know. I stood there in defeated silence for easily three minutes.
And then he prints out a boarding pass for gate H9.
He found...ONE...surrendered seat, on ONE plane leaving nonstop for Los Angeles, that leaves TONIGHT.
But it leaves at eight fifty-five at night.
"American 3194 from ORD to LAX will depart at 8:55p from gate H16 in terminal 3."
Another...five...hours...of waiting.
But its the best shot I've had of anything right now, and I take the ticket and leave the G gates and go back to the Chili's I got that burger from, and this time dine in. I mean, where the fuck else am I going to go. What's another five hours on top of the thirty I've already spent here, thirty hours passed at noon and I live in the fucking airport now it seems. Its also around this time that I have to make a phone call to my manager about Monday at work because if this flight pulls through I'm now going to arrive at Los Angeles with no ride home, and get home so late that there's no way I can show up Monday.
"Gate change: Flight AA3194 from ORD to LAX departs at 8:55p out of gate H17 in terminal 3."
Okay, nothing to panic about there.
"Gate change: Flight AA3194 from ORD to LAX departs at 8:55p out of gate K8 in terminal 3."
Still nothing to panic about, at least its not at the ass end of a corridor. Midway down isn't too bad.
And you bet that I'm now sitting there hoping this pulls through. Nothing else has. But this gate has a plane at it. The status screen still shows a green 'ON TIME' mark.
You better not say there's another mechanical problem.
...
They're calling boarding groups.
People are getting on.
I'm in group eight.
I scan my boarding pass. Oops, come to find out I'm not in group eight, I was supposed to be in group nine because I changed my seat, but no big deal.
I'm on the bridge.
I'm ON THE PLANE.
It leaves the gate.
It takes off.
I'm finally free of fucking Chicago.
Forty...hours...later.
From six forty on Saturday morning until nine Sunday night.
And the flight went perfect.
Back in Chicago there was something worth mentioning. Next to me in the seating area there was a married couple, an older man and woman. For some reason the man got up, and there was a mild kerfluffle about this drink traveler mug. He didn't want it to spill and told his wife to prop his bag up against it to hold it upright. Nothing remarkable about that conversation at all, as I'm focused on charging my phone before the plane boards.
They must've been well paying fliers because they got up with boarding group one being called. Or at least I thought so. Its not like me to pay attention to random people, and this is an airport where people can sit anywhere and may not be at the correct gate of where they're ultimately going.
So when boarding group eight was called, I got up and put my stuff in my bag, and then I noticed this grey traveler mug next to me. The guy forget his cup.
So in a split second thought, I grabbed it in hand and carried it onto the plane. There may be a good chance that I recognize his face in passing on my way back to seat 25D if he boarded in that early. Hmmm, he's not in the first class rows. He's not even in the first dozen rows. No for some reason this guy and his wife were all the way back in row 20D and 20E and they were shocked surprised when I came up and said "sir, you forgot this outside" to give it back to him. He clearly was not expecting to ever get it back. I don't know if it was an expensive item, or just the stupid feeling you have forgetting something like that, but in passing he agreed to buy me a beer on the plane for that. And during the flight, a beer indeed showed up from the snack cart.
Alas, I never drank the beer. I kind of sort of wanted to keep it for later as a bit of a victory lap for fucking getting my trip over with, but I couldn't take it off the plane and it was taken from me. I should've just put it in my bag rather than carry it off in my hand. So, I'm sorry whoever that gentleman was that bought it for me but I never saw him again exiting the plane so as far as he knows, I enjoyed it and that's it.
On the flight it was if whatever god I'd angered had a delightful mood swing to be pleasant because everything went proper from here on.
We landed.
I found the baggage office and retrieved my bag where it'd been waiting for me for the last day in a closet locker.
Unfortunately I was without a ride home as the shuttle service to home makes its last run at ten at night and had already gone. I phoned in a favor to a fur friend Fleet who got off work late from close by and he offered to pick me up in exchange for fuel money.
It was well beyond midnight into Monday morning by the time we hit the 405 Freeway northward, listening to electroswing which certainly sets a particular mood when the freeway is dark, lightly traveled, in the dead of night before a work week starts.
And my travels home from Kentucky didn't end until I got through my door at exactly two in the freaking morning on Monday.
This was supposed to be a quick easy day trip that should've gotten me here by Saturday afternoon at the latest. All the while I was in Kentucky there was a risk of thunderstorms that never amounted to much of anything where I was, but I guess in Chicago and Dallas and other airports they wrecked havoc cancelling and delaying flights all over, so when I made my trip on that weekend I unknowingly flew into Chicago catching the tail end of a colossal shit storm that hadn't cleared yet.
Yeah there was absolutely no conceivable way I could even think to show up for a work shift at six in the morning.
I unpacked, took a shower, and crashed the fuck to sleep to handle all of this on Tuesday.
--Mozdoc
Kentucky In July
Posted 2 months agoFrom July first to twelfth I was on vacation in Kentucky visiting my parents again; doing so for a change of pace since the previous times I'd coupled this with Midwest FurFest happening in winter to already be close by and just a short plane flight southward to Louisville. This time, I decided to experience what Kentucky is like in the summer months when it isn't so cold.
In a few words, fucking...humid. Holy shit I'd step outside and just immediately sweat so much that it would drip off of me like rain. This is a wet heat that makes you need to wash your face off when you come back inside to cool off and never want to go back outside again. Maybe if I lived out there I'd grow more used to it, but I'm used to humidity being less than fifteen percent around here in the deserts.
I was warned that there wouldn't be a whole lot to do while there, because I'd be coming at an odd time where my sister was just getting into the swing of her new job, and both my mother and stepfather are fully retired so aren't motivated to do much of anything on their own. They fully expect me to enjoy my own vacation also doing a blissful amount of nothing, but I'm sorry, that's not how I operate. I'm there, and if there's problems or something that needs addressing, I want to get up and fix it. Clean something. Move something. Tidy the place up and feel like I'm contributing.
At least when we rolled up to the house there wasn't as much detritus around the front as there had been previously, but still evidence that my stepdad gets things done halfway with good intentions but then never finishes them and leaves all the equipment out wherever it may fall. Its disappointing that's his whole mentality on stuff, so there's pressure washers left out, the trailer is full of chopped down foliage that's dried and dead, there's a ladder left out, garden hoses left out, a bottle of algaecide left out on the front porch for the siding of the house. Just things like that.
I wish I could explain or figure out what the relationship is like between my mother and stepdad, its like they live together out of principal of marriage but have come to really ultimately hate each other because of their differing personalities and I swear I feel like I have to be a mediator and councilor between them.
My stepdad is a retired military veteran whose stubborn and ill tempered. He's joined the volunteer fire department even though physical labor hurts him especially with his deteriorated knees, and he won't do shit around the house for anything because he always has the excuse that things hurt, but the second the radio chirps with a call to go out on he rushes out of the house and drop everything to play fireman and help someone.
My mother is a retired school bus driver who wishes that Leonard was more productive around the house and did things to completion, because there's always some shit of his that gets half done and abandoned and it sure seems like they're always cleaning up after his mess or mistakes.
My sister is just a hard working nurse whose the sole money earner of the entire house.
There were quite a few times where my mother would openly speak her mind or mumble out quips of displeasure about something Leonard would be doing and its within earshot of him to where she knows she's being heard, and yeah. I just get the feeling both of them are unhappy in some respects but neither of them will change their behaviors because both of them feels they're right in their own ways and so...there's that.
That said, there's times where Leonard and my mother Christi both get along great and actually for a time feel like they achieve some level of happiness though it sure seems short lived.
So what was accomplished?
Helped hang some more pictures on walls.
Hefted stuff in boxes upstairs.
Brushed their boxer mix dog Charlie, who may not be around much longer because of cancer, though really while he'll be missed he won't be because of his constant shedding making dust bunnies everywhere.
Cleaned three ceiling fans.
Pruned down trees that needed it, but especially in the backyard because they were obscuring the exterior stairway to the loft of the garage.
Flushed the rain gutters of the house because during a downpour I noticed one gutter overflowing not draining fast enough and of course Leonard had just not gotten back there to those two in particular yet.
Motivated Leonard to get the trailer hitched to the truck to offload all the dying brush off it into a burn pile.
Helped battle an ant invasion in the kitchen that had started just as I'd gotten there because ants had become attracted to a combination of some decayed fruit in a basket, sugar sprinkles in a cabinet, and some other things so it was a frantic cleanout of things.
Motivated my mother, stepdad and sister to clean the drinkware cabinet because they've come to realize they don't actually need so many drink cups.
Applied some antislip traction tape underneath the livingroom rug to keep it in place.
Applied antislip pads under my mothers chair to keep it in place better.
Finally made friends with my sisters terrier dog who always saw me as the most terrifying thing she'd ever seen, then one day she just warmed up to me in a tepid but friendly way that she'd actually come with her name called.
So all told, a fair amount of stuff got done, when I was motivated to act and got my parents support to not only be the push of encouragement, but also getting them involved so things got done how they wanted and everyone would be happy in the end.
I happened to be there when the Marion County Fair was ongoing and there were some track events happening that the volunteer fire department was called in to supervise. Kind of sucks having to pay for fair admission three days in a row at fifteen dollars per person for such a tiny event but, I mean, what else was I going to do, just sit at the house all by myself glued to my laptop screen?
So it was two nights of tractor pulling for entertainment far into the evening hours of Friday for amateur and Saturday for professional, with Sunday night being the dirt track action of the demolition enduro race around an oval in junker cars. Funnel cakes and elephant ear pastries were had each night as the sun made its way down past the horizon and the fairground lights would come on, with fireworks going off in the distance as this was July Fourth weekend, and there was really no better way or place to be at that moment.
The national anthem on Saturday though, holy shit that was...bad. Someone had the brilliant idea of having some stupid kid sing the anthem, and he not only didn't truly know the words, but also couldn't sustain enough breath to actually sing anything at all. The initial words made it sound like someone drunk was trying to sing it. You tried kid. You tried.
Perhaps the highlight of the entire trip was when three of us, my mother, sister, and myself departed Raywick and headed for Lynch in the extreme southeastern corner of Kentucky; my mother had is booked for a tour of a historic closed coal mine that gave tours of the portal, as well as a stay in a unique hotel in the area. It wasn't an easy drive, as the distance was three and a half hours away with the closer you got to the town the twistier the roads would get into the mountains.
This turned out to be a remarkable experience.
Between the communities of Cumberland, Benham, and Lynch, there's but a single two lane road deep in the canyon connecting all three in the mountains, and to even get here in or out takes effort. Definitely places that are remote and so far off the beaten path that not a whole lot happens there, except for coal. Lynch is a mining town and that's it, with the derelict remains of mine buildings made out of brick, limestone, glass, metal, and iron decaying where they stand since the place closed; hulking industrial monuments being consumed by nature and lime leeching from the stone the structures are built out of.
The Lamp House Coffee Shop is a building that straddles the river channel and is where the miners would maintain their headlamps. It was there that we found out why there's all these bear statues everywhere, as this county calls itself the Black Bear Capital Of The World, and also about Black Mountain which is a mere fifteen minute drive away. Sounded neat, so we took off to it. Didn't ever realize that we were that close to the state border of Kentucky and Virginia when we crested around this corner and made it to Kentucky's highest point at four thousand two hundred feet, overlooking a massive and expansive valley into Virginia. Just awe inspiring standing at that overlook that such a place can even exist like that.
After that we headed back to Benham where the Coal Mining Museum is. And impressive historical building that used to be the company store with four all dedicated to the story of coal industry and way of life surrounding it with a substantial collection of artifacts from blacksmithing, medical, mine topology, how miners families lived, industrial advancements, and personal artifacts. Really a good place to spend some time.
It still felt a little too early to just go to the hotel, and we had been seeing signs all this time for a Kingdom Come State Park in the area. Kind of really dismissed it as a joke because this area of southeastern Kentucky is heavily...heavily...devoutly religious. I can see where some creep factor could exist in places like this because there are crosses nailed to trees, implanted in the ground, draped with cloth, on peoples houses, and churches everywhere in this region so the name Kingdom Come kind of makes you roll your eyes a little.
But no, this is not what you think it is; the name Kingdom Come is from a civil war book "The Little Shepherd Of Kingdom Come" by a Kentuckian writer and the park is named in his honor. Since we were visiting on a weekday it was pretty quiet up here and we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves it seemed as there was minimal traffic or campers present anywhere. It seems that the highlight of this park is the Little Shepherd Trail Road which traverses the mountain range over thirty-eight miles if you want to do such a thing but its a primitive single lane road and passing another car would be tricky at best. The overlook viewpoints are definitely worth a look. The vistas are pretty spectacular out there.
Afterwards with darkness setting we finally went to our hotel, the Benham School House. Yes, its actually a school! Or was once a school, but now has been converted into a hotel with all the classrooms now turned into rooms. The character of this place is...just perfect. The halls have the epoxy concrete floor, the window glass is imperfect and you can see the wavy lines and distortion through it, the school lockers are still present embedded in the walls, the stairways have age to them, one of them has a small landing leading to a quiet nook reading library midway between the first and second floor, the gymnasium has been turned into a Great Room, though it was locked so I couldn't get any pictures of it. This place was really nice to stay in.
The following morning was our mine tour of Portal 32. My mother had intentionally booked us on the eleven AM but it would be slightly delayed as there was some entourage of dignitaries that had also decided to do the mine tour themselves. Weirdly, as we waited for our tour to start, it became apparent that no one else was really showing up to do this, so giving it a few more minutes, we departed, and it was just the three of us and no one else on the train heading into the mine for our own little private excursion through it which just made it even more special an experience. We must've picked the right time to go, for as we exited the portal the next tour at twelve PM had a ton of people waiting for it, there must've been twenty or so waiting to go in.
The rest of the afternoon was spent deeply diving into all the historic structures of Lynch taking pictures of all the industry possible before we simply had to call it a day and begin heading back home to Raywick. And that three and a half hour trip felt every bit of three and a half hours this time for some weird reason.
Before I had to leave, my mother also mentioned that there was a Bourbon Museum in Bardstown that she'd always wanted to go to but never had.
This too turned out to punch above its weight more than what would've been expected.
Housed in an old chapel, the museum is dedicated to all things bourbon, from its manufacture and bottling, to distillation, to prohibition, to barrel making and whatever else. Granted, if you've ever been on any distillery tour ever you'll hear and see just about this same level of information, but what really was the star of the show for me was the extensive display of antique bottles. All vintage brand names you've never heard of long since gone, some still taped over with their tax stamps and filled with liquid from when they were new, and somehow those artifacts have survived for over a hundred years. This museum is free to attend but they ask for a ten dollar donation and it sure felt appropriate to drop some cash into the barrel on the way out because that was really cool.
And unless I'm forgetting something, well, that was twelve days in Kentucky.
Kentucky is a beautiful state; worthy of its motto of "Unbridled Spirit" and worth a visit if you've never been to it. But don't stay in the city of Louisville or Lexington, get out into the countryside and really experience it somewhere.
Now my trip out of Kentucky...oh, that's going to be another completely separate journal.
--Mozdoc
In a few words, fucking...humid. Holy shit I'd step outside and just immediately sweat so much that it would drip off of me like rain. This is a wet heat that makes you need to wash your face off when you come back inside to cool off and never want to go back outside again. Maybe if I lived out there I'd grow more used to it, but I'm used to humidity being less than fifteen percent around here in the deserts.
I was warned that there wouldn't be a whole lot to do while there, because I'd be coming at an odd time where my sister was just getting into the swing of her new job, and both my mother and stepfather are fully retired so aren't motivated to do much of anything on their own. They fully expect me to enjoy my own vacation also doing a blissful amount of nothing, but I'm sorry, that's not how I operate. I'm there, and if there's problems or something that needs addressing, I want to get up and fix it. Clean something. Move something. Tidy the place up and feel like I'm contributing.
At least when we rolled up to the house there wasn't as much detritus around the front as there had been previously, but still evidence that my stepdad gets things done halfway with good intentions but then never finishes them and leaves all the equipment out wherever it may fall. Its disappointing that's his whole mentality on stuff, so there's pressure washers left out, the trailer is full of chopped down foliage that's dried and dead, there's a ladder left out, garden hoses left out, a bottle of algaecide left out on the front porch for the siding of the house. Just things like that.
I wish I could explain or figure out what the relationship is like between my mother and stepdad, its like they live together out of principal of marriage but have come to really ultimately hate each other because of their differing personalities and I swear I feel like I have to be a mediator and councilor between them.
My stepdad is a retired military veteran whose stubborn and ill tempered. He's joined the volunteer fire department even though physical labor hurts him especially with his deteriorated knees, and he won't do shit around the house for anything because he always has the excuse that things hurt, but the second the radio chirps with a call to go out on he rushes out of the house and drop everything to play fireman and help someone.
My mother is a retired school bus driver who wishes that Leonard was more productive around the house and did things to completion, because there's always some shit of his that gets half done and abandoned and it sure seems like they're always cleaning up after his mess or mistakes.
My sister is just a hard working nurse whose the sole money earner of the entire house.
There were quite a few times where my mother would openly speak her mind or mumble out quips of displeasure about something Leonard would be doing and its within earshot of him to where she knows she's being heard, and yeah. I just get the feeling both of them are unhappy in some respects but neither of them will change their behaviors because both of them feels they're right in their own ways and so...there's that.
That said, there's times where Leonard and my mother Christi both get along great and actually for a time feel like they achieve some level of happiness though it sure seems short lived.
So what was accomplished?
Helped hang some more pictures on walls.
Hefted stuff in boxes upstairs.
Brushed their boxer mix dog Charlie, who may not be around much longer because of cancer, though really while he'll be missed he won't be because of his constant shedding making dust bunnies everywhere.
Cleaned three ceiling fans.
Pruned down trees that needed it, but especially in the backyard because they were obscuring the exterior stairway to the loft of the garage.
Flushed the rain gutters of the house because during a downpour I noticed one gutter overflowing not draining fast enough and of course Leonard had just not gotten back there to those two in particular yet.
Motivated Leonard to get the trailer hitched to the truck to offload all the dying brush off it into a burn pile.
Helped battle an ant invasion in the kitchen that had started just as I'd gotten there because ants had become attracted to a combination of some decayed fruit in a basket, sugar sprinkles in a cabinet, and some other things so it was a frantic cleanout of things.
Motivated my mother, stepdad and sister to clean the drinkware cabinet because they've come to realize they don't actually need so many drink cups.
Applied some antislip traction tape underneath the livingroom rug to keep it in place.
Applied antislip pads under my mothers chair to keep it in place better.
Finally made friends with my sisters terrier dog who always saw me as the most terrifying thing she'd ever seen, then one day she just warmed up to me in a tepid but friendly way that she'd actually come with her name called.
So all told, a fair amount of stuff got done, when I was motivated to act and got my parents support to not only be the push of encouragement, but also getting them involved so things got done how they wanted and everyone would be happy in the end.
I happened to be there when the Marion County Fair was ongoing and there were some track events happening that the volunteer fire department was called in to supervise. Kind of sucks having to pay for fair admission three days in a row at fifteen dollars per person for such a tiny event but, I mean, what else was I going to do, just sit at the house all by myself glued to my laptop screen?
So it was two nights of tractor pulling for entertainment far into the evening hours of Friday for amateur and Saturday for professional, with Sunday night being the dirt track action of the demolition enduro race around an oval in junker cars. Funnel cakes and elephant ear pastries were had each night as the sun made its way down past the horizon and the fairground lights would come on, with fireworks going off in the distance as this was July Fourth weekend, and there was really no better way or place to be at that moment.
The national anthem on Saturday though, holy shit that was...bad. Someone had the brilliant idea of having some stupid kid sing the anthem, and he not only didn't truly know the words, but also couldn't sustain enough breath to actually sing anything at all. The initial words made it sound like someone drunk was trying to sing it. You tried kid. You tried.
Perhaps the highlight of the entire trip was when three of us, my mother, sister, and myself departed Raywick and headed for Lynch in the extreme southeastern corner of Kentucky; my mother had is booked for a tour of a historic closed coal mine that gave tours of the portal, as well as a stay in a unique hotel in the area. It wasn't an easy drive, as the distance was three and a half hours away with the closer you got to the town the twistier the roads would get into the mountains.
This turned out to be a remarkable experience.
Between the communities of Cumberland, Benham, and Lynch, there's but a single two lane road deep in the canyon connecting all three in the mountains, and to even get here in or out takes effort. Definitely places that are remote and so far off the beaten path that not a whole lot happens there, except for coal. Lynch is a mining town and that's it, with the derelict remains of mine buildings made out of brick, limestone, glass, metal, and iron decaying where they stand since the place closed; hulking industrial monuments being consumed by nature and lime leeching from the stone the structures are built out of.
The Lamp House Coffee Shop is a building that straddles the river channel and is where the miners would maintain their headlamps. It was there that we found out why there's all these bear statues everywhere, as this county calls itself the Black Bear Capital Of The World, and also about Black Mountain which is a mere fifteen minute drive away. Sounded neat, so we took off to it. Didn't ever realize that we were that close to the state border of Kentucky and Virginia when we crested around this corner and made it to Kentucky's highest point at four thousand two hundred feet, overlooking a massive and expansive valley into Virginia. Just awe inspiring standing at that overlook that such a place can even exist like that.
After that we headed back to Benham where the Coal Mining Museum is. And impressive historical building that used to be the company store with four all dedicated to the story of coal industry and way of life surrounding it with a substantial collection of artifacts from blacksmithing, medical, mine topology, how miners families lived, industrial advancements, and personal artifacts. Really a good place to spend some time.
It still felt a little too early to just go to the hotel, and we had been seeing signs all this time for a Kingdom Come State Park in the area. Kind of really dismissed it as a joke because this area of southeastern Kentucky is heavily...heavily...devoutly religious. I can see where some creep factor could exist in places like this because there are crosses nailed to trees, implanted in the ground, draped with cloth, on peoples houses, and churches everywhere in this region so the name Kingdom Come kind of makes you roll your eyes a little.
But no, this is not what you think it is; the name Kingdom Come is from a civil war book "The Little Shepherd Of Kingdom Come" by a Kentuckian writer and the park is named in his honor. Since we were visiting on a weekday it was pretty quiet up here and we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves it seemed as there was minimal traffic or campers present anywhere. It seems that the highlight of this park is the Little Shepherd Trail Road which traverses the mountain range over thirty-eight miles if you want to do such a thing but its a primitive single lane road and passing another car would be tricky at best. The overlook viewpoints are definitely worth a look. The vistas are pretty spectacular out there.
Afterwards with darkness setting we finally went to our hotel, the Benham School House. Yes, its actually a school! Or was once a school, but now has been converted into a hotel with all the classrooms now turned into rooms. The character of this place is...just perfect. The halls have the epoxy concrete floor, the window glass is imperfect and you can see the wavy lines and distortion through it, the school lockers are still present embedded in the walls, the stairways have age to them, one of them has a small landing leading to a quiet nook reading library midway between the first and second floor, the gymnasium has been turned into a Great Room, though it was locked so I couldn't get any pictures of it. This place was really nice to stay in.
The following morning was our mine tour of Portal 32. My mother had intentionally booked us on the eleven AM but it would be slightly delayed as there was some entourage of dignitaries that had also decided to do the mine tour themselves. Weirdly, as we waited for our tour to start, it became apparent that no one else was really showing up to do this, so giving it a few more minutes, we departed, and it was just the three of us and no one else on the train heading into the mine for our own little private excursion through it which just made it even more special an experience. We must've picked the right time to go, for as we exited the portal the next tour at twelve PM had a ton of people waiting for it, there must've been twenty or so waiting to go in.
The rest of the afternoon was spent deeply diving into all the historic structures of Lynch taking pictures of all the industry possible before we simply had to call it a day and begin heading back home to Raywick. And that three and a half hour trip felt every bit of three and a half hours this time for some weird reason.
Before I had to leave, my mother also mentioned that there was a Bourbon Museum in Bardstown that she'd always wanted to go to but never had.
This too turned out to punch above its weight more than what would've been expected.
Housed in an old chapel, the museum is dedicated to all things bourbon, from its manufacture and bottling, to distillation, to prohibition, to barrel making and whatever else. Granted, if you've ever been on any distillery tour ever you'll hear and see just about this same level of information, but what really was the star of the show for me was the extensive display of antique bottles. All vintage brand names you've never heard of long since gone, some still taped over with their tax stamps and filled with liquid from when they were new, and somehow those artifacts have survived for over a hundred years. This museum is free to attend but they ask for a ten dollar donation and it sure felt appropriate to drop some cash into the barrel on the way out because that was really cool.
And unless I'm forgetting something, well, that was twelve days in Kentucky.
Kentucky is a beautiful state; worthy of its motto of "Unbridled Spirit" and worth a visit if you've never been to it. But don't stay in the city of Louisville or Lexington, get out into the countryside and really experience it somewhere.
Now my trip out of Kentucky...oh, that's going to be another completely separate journal.
--Mozdoc
Las Vegas Fur Con 2025
Posted 3 months agoI wanted to write this journal a bit earlier after the con had concluded, but then FurAffinity sort of blew up for about a week and so I wasn't able to post any journals anyway.
Recently, as in, today,
MiaFillene MiaFillene posted her own journal expressing the absolute disgust at the current state of the fandom and how traditional media artists are just seemingly left by the wayside. Its short; its brief; its here. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11145200/ . But reading it really lit the fire under me to get me to write this journal before its memory grows anymore vague.
Las Vegas Fur Con left me with a lot of decidedly mixed to lackluster views that make me wonder if I should ever return to it because it just isn't...doing...anything for me. Where do I even begin here?
Hotel:
Because I didn't shell out the uber-bucks to buy into a "lifetime attendance sponsorship scholarship" it means I don't get first offer on the rooms at the Alexis Park main con hotel; instead I have to fight and scrap with the scum class to get into one of the overflow hotels and I wound up at The Serene. Honestly? Not too bad, a bit of a hidden gem if you will. In the grand context of travel The Serene put you CLOSER to the actual con event than the Alexis Park did because the convention space is located at the very front side of the Alexis Park. Staying in the Alexis Park itself you have to deal with that god damn annoying meandering walkway that snakes and curls its way around its three god damn swimming pools. It just feels like a lot of unnecessary travels to just get anywhere. Staying at The Serene, you just left the complex, went down the street, and you were in the con area.
The roomshares we had were
strega Strega , 
essynkardi Essynkardi and 
nutcasethegreat Bish and I got nothing negative to say about any of them. Fantastic roomshares all around and Essynkardi even is a multifur friendly artist that I managed to get a sketchbook art from towards the end of the con, because...come on, how could I not? :)
The con sort of bugs me because of the insistence on staying from Thursday to Monday; four nights mandatory. Why do we have to arrive early on Thursday when there's literally FUCK ALL happening with the con on that day? I feel its just a waste of time to stay in a hotel the day before a con event actually gets going. To me, I want to just get in and get out; keep the stay as brief as possible and that's just not possible with LVFC's format.
I've come to the conclusion that the Alexis Park is just not an idea place to hold a con like this.
The meandering walkway is fucking annoying having to loop around the first swimming pool all the time to get into the room buildings, to the Dealers Room, or through the hotel lobby to go outside to the Apollo Rooms at the front. The layout is fucking garbage. There's just no place to sit and chill at the con unless you retreat to your room it seems, for reasons I'll get into a bit.
Dealers And Panels:
Dealers Room let me down, hard. A backpack full of sketchbooks anticipating that there'll be dealers to take them, and I found...no one. There wasn't "no one", but there was only TWO in the entire room; Brian Reynolds and Recurrent both were able to take sketchbooks and do some arts and I have wanted to get something from Brian Reynolds for some time when I see him at MFF but I just never have so this was finally that time to do so.
But the rest of the Dealers Room? My fucking god.
Acrylic charms; bracelets; keychains; books; rugs; posters; wall tapestries; fursuits; fursuit parts; fursuit plush props; prints; leashes; collars; body harnesses; sex toys; FUCKING PINS; FUCKING STICKERS; wearable clothing merchandise; and probably other artifacts that you could imagine being created, and NOWHERE will you find people offering to take FUCKING SKETCHBOOKS. And if someone is taking traditional media it seems their way of going about it is to build a waiting list to take home from the con, to then do the art, and mail it back to you. This just defeats the whole aspect of bringing a sketchbook to a con. I live for getting an art piece, an idea, a fun creative thing drawn IN THAT MOMENT, IN THAT WEEKEND, as a lasting memory and this just doesn't happen as much anymore. More often than not my sketchbooks come home from con empty and I make a single tour of the Dealers Room because I just don't want any physical shit to bring home to stuff into my closet. Twenty-five years in this fandom and I just desire to take LESS shit home with me from the events.
So if Dealers Room was a bust, what was there else to do?
Well...not a whole lot of fuck all anything, because the panel schedule was lackluster at best. I skimmed the schedule and just...nothing. I found myself sitting in on a panel for an hour or so with the Guest Of Honor of the con talking about first person Japanese dungeon crawler games not because I was even interested in the topic but just because I wanted something to fucking do and it didn't matter what it was.
There was a Vore Meet put on by
tokenspanda Tokens that I walked through just because usually at these things I can find friends at the con and chat a bit.
Really, the only panel highlight was the Poker Tournament put on by
velliwolf Velli, because I stepped in as a dealer to a table, and had a hell of a fun time slinging cards and enjoying the build up of tension that seeds in between players the longer the tournament runs on.
I will say that the con had a marvelous idea in place for a massive "Zoo" room. The "Apollo 5" room at the end of the hallway was set up to be the mother of all meet up rooms. Eighteen tables, projector if needed, ALL of the meet up panels were hosted there, and this concept was fucking squandered to uselessness because they'd stake out a security guard in front of the hallway to shoo people away from utilizing these rooms until the first panel happened to warrant people going down there because they were...scared of someone thieving the projectors or some shit? So this meant that on Saturday when the con has already kicked off at 10am and its ACTIVELY IN OPERATION, oh no, this huge hangout meetup room is closed and off limits until the first panel happens at 1pm.
I'm sorry...what.
Like I said, there's no other places to just park yourself and chill unless you lurk back in your hotel room. This idea of blocking off the massive Zoo hangout room was asinine just knowing that space was not even being utilized. Because believe me, once the security guard got out of the fucking way people flowed into this hangout room to make use of the tables.
So okay, Dealers Room has nothing for me.
Panels schedule has really nothing of interest.
What else does that leave?
Meeting friends, room parties and the dances.
Ugh...
Look I love my friends, but there's only so many times I can pass by them and say hi or something across four days.
I popped in to a few room parties that were hosted by local furs from the Antelope Valley area, namely
khandor Khandor with his Deep Rock Galactic theme, and 
paperwolf Isaac with his always reliable Transformation themed party.
But you get more than thirteen people in these rooms and it becomes a crowd to where you're retreating outside onto the porch, and again I'm not really a party fur to where I desire to be smashed drunk at the con.
And I'm certainly not a dancer fur either to where I've ever found myself desiring to go to the dances.
So yeah...that's pretty much the con experience from Thursday night into Saturday night, but then there was this awkward kind of thing on Sunday...
The Mexican Sponsor Brunch:
So Las Vegas Fur Con actually put a Sponsor Brunch on the schedule this time, but it was relegated to the ass end of the schedule on Sunday morning.
This honestly was mildly entertaining because as I walked through the front of the Alexis Park it was pretty fucking quiet, even for being in the 9am hour and the Sponsor Brunch opened at 10am.
There was no one alive at the con.
Con staff were up and about a bit.
There were stanchions of worn brass forming a queue line for the expectation of a crowd that wasn't forming.
The Sponsor Brunch is set to open in five minutes at 10am and...I'm somehow the first person here?
Honestly this just felt like it was going to be forgotten, until it wasn't and the door opened and we were told to take a seat at a table at the far left of the room.
This was just super awkward to me. Because we have wait staff standing around by the food tables expecting people to dish up and go for it, but everyone thats filing in is just taking a seat at the tables and sitting there as if waiting to be told what to do next? Me, I just get up and start figuring out what we have for this Brunch, and its not what I would've chosen to be honest. Mexican tortilla chip salad, enchiladas, rice, beans, choice of meats, sour cream, guacamole, iced tea? Uh...okay definitely not what I was expecting, I was more or less thinking of something crossing breakfast with lunch here but whatever, food is food.
And it was clear that the entire purpose of this con is a party con; I swear everyone must've partied so hard into an all night bender because there was literally a half hour that went by before other furs started to trickle in, adding just more awkwardness to the whole atmosphere that you have this whole giant theater set up and no one is there.
I mean its none of my business but I sure hope the con didn't get hosed with any kind of wasted food charges and more furs appeared as the Sponsor Brunch ambled on in its duration.
Closing Ceremony:
Finally on Sunday its time for this con to wrap up and end. Thankfully the Closing Ceremony event was held on the rooftop this time instead of a giant theater like last time and it was extremely brief; like twenty minutes at most if I'm exaggerating. There was no frantic cult like chanting of "trans rights" this time around like there was last time, though some furs still tried to stir up such a reaction for a few times. Really this just tells me that maybe furs are coming back to their senses and knocking this shit off finally.
One of the notes that was mentioned at Closing Ceremony just doesn't sit well with me, and that was the con announcing how many free doses of "NARCAN" were handed out during the con.
I'm sorry...no. You don't brag about a statistic of how many furs wanted "NARCAN" as a means of staying safe during the event, what the fuck are we doing?!
So its really abundantly clear that the whole purpose and point of Las Vegas Fur Con isn't the con itself.
You register for a fur con at a resort park, but during the day its like you're supposed to outside of the con and do Vegas things, and then come back and do drugs and room parties and do dances into the night.
Sure doesn't seem like there's fuck all else to do at this event.
*
I did have high hopes to finally meet up with my longtime friend
theDARKWOLF TheDARKWOLF who I'd lost touch with for easily twelve or thirteen years at this point when he left California to go to other states east. A bit of time ago I got a message on FA that he'd moved back and was staying in Las Vegas now!
Thrilled I did reach out to say I'd be going to Las Vegas Fur Con and it'd be an ideal place to meet up, but...well, it never happened.
Darkwolf seemed to have other obligations come up and so he never showed up, and he doesn't keep an active presence on FA to answer notes in a timely fashion, and though he says he has a Discord he won't ever give me his name to keep in touch that way.
I honestly don't know if Las Vegas Fur Con is worth a return trip, despite it being close. Maybe if there's actual panels and Dealers present to keep my interest and to keep my sketchbooks in rotation I'd consider it, but really it just seems like a party con first, with a furry con on the side, and I need it to be the other way around.
--Mozdoc
Recently, as in, today,
MiaFillene MiaFillene posted her own journal expressing the absolute disgust at the current state of the fandom and how traditional media artists are just seemingly left by the wayside. Its short; its brief; its here. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11145200/ . But reading it really lit the fire under me to get me to write this journal before its memory grows anymore vague.Las Vegas Fur Con left me with a lot of decidedly mixed to lackluster views that make me wonder if I should ever return to it because it just isn't...doing...anything for me. Where do I even begin here?
Hotel:
Because I didn't shell out the uber-bucks to buy into a "lifetime attendance sponsorship scholarship" it means I don't get first offer on the rooms at the Alexis Park main con hotel; instead I have to fight and scrap with the scum class to get into one of the overflow hotels and I wound up at The Serene. Honestly? Not too bad, a bit of a hidden gem if you will. In the grand context of travel The Serene put you CLOSER to the actual con event than the Alexis Park did because the convention space is located at the very front side of the Alexis Park. Staying in the Alexis Park itself you have to deal with that god damn annoying meandering walkway that snakes and curls its way around its three god damn swimming pools. It just feels like a lot of unnecessary travels to just get anywhere. Staying at The Serene, you just left the complex, went down the street, and you were in the con area.
The roomshares we had were
strega Strega , 
essynkardi Essynkardi and 
nutcasethegreat Bish and I got nothing negative to say about any of them. Fantastic roomshares all around and Essynkardi even is a multifur friendly artist that I managed to get a sketchbook art from towards the end of the con, because...come on, how could I not? :)The con sort of bugs me because of the insistence on staying from Thursday to Monday; four nights mandatory. Why do we have to arrive early on Thursday when there's literally FUCK ALL happening with the con on that day? I feel its just a waste of time to stay in a hotel the day before a con event actually gets going. To me, I want to just get in and get out; keep the stay as brief as possible and that's just not possible with LVFC's format.
I've come to the conclusion that the Alexis Park is just not an idea place to hold a con like this.
The meandering walkway is fucking annoying having to loop around the first swimming pool all the time to get into the room buildings, to the Dealers Room, or through the hotel lobby to go outside to the Apollo Rooms at the front. The layout is fucking garbage. There's just no place to sit and chill at the con unless you retreat to your room it seems, for reasons I'll get into a bit.
Dealers And Panels:
Dealers Room let me down, hard. A backpack full of sketchbooks anticipating that there'll be dealers to take them, and I found...no one. There wasn't "no one", but there was only TWO in the entire room; Brian Reynolds and Recurrent both were able to take sketchbooks and do some arts and I have wanted to get something from Brian Reynolds for some time when I see him at MFF but I just never have so this was finally that time to do so.
But the rest of the Dealers Room? My fucking god.
Acrylic charms; bracelets; keychains; books; rugs; posters; wall tapestries; fursuits; fursuit parts; fursuit plush props; prints; leashes; collars; body harnesses; sex toys; FUCKING PINS; FUCKING STICKERS; wearable clothing merchandise; and probably other artifacts that you could imagine being created, and NOWHERE will you find people offering to take FUCKING SKETCHBOOKS. And if someone is taking traditional media it seems their way of going about it is to build a waiting list to take home from the con, to then do the art, and mail it back to you. This just defeats the whole aspect of bringing a sketchbook to a con. I live for getting an art piece, an idea, a fun creative thing drawn IN THAT MOMENT, IN THAT WEEKEND, as a lasting memory and this just doesn't happen as much anymore. More often than not my sketchbooks come home from con empty and I make a single tour of the Dealers Room because I just don't want any physical shit to bring home to stuff into my closet. Twenty-five years in this fandom and I just desire to take LESS shit home with me from the events.
So if Dealers Room was a bust, what was there else to do?
Well...not a whole lot of fuck all anything, because the panel schedule was lackluster at best. I skimmed the schedule and just...nothing. I found myself sitting in on a panel for an hour or so with the Guest Of Honor of the con talking about first person Japanese dungeon crawler games not because I was even interested in the topic but just because I wanted something to fucking do and it didn't matter what it was.
There was a Vore Meet put on by
tokenspanda Tokens that I walked through just because usually at these things I can find friends at the con and chat a bit.Really, the only panel highlight was the Poker Tournament put on by
velliwolf Velli, because I stepped in as a dealer to a table, and had a hell of a fun time slinging cards and enjoying the build up of tension that seeds in between players the longer the tournament runs on.I will say that the con had a marvelous idea in place for a massive "Zoo" room. The "Apollo 5" room at the end of the hallway was set up to be the mother of all meet up rooms. Eighteen tables, projector if needed, ALL of the meet up panels were hosted there, and this concept was fucking squandered to uselessness because they'd stake out a security guard in front of the hallway to shoo people away from utilizing these rooms until the first panel happened to warrant people going down there because they were...scared of someone thieving the projectors or some shit? So this meant that on Saturday when the con has already kicked off at 10am and its ACTIVELY IN OPERATION, oh no, this huge hangout meetup room is closed and off limits until the first panel happens at 1pm.
I'm sorry...what.
Like I said, there's no other places to just park yourself and chill unless you lurk back in your hotel room. This idea of blocking off the massive Zoo hangout room was asinine just knowing that space was not even being utilized. Because believe me, once the security guard got out of the fucking way people flowed into this hangout room to make use of the tables.
So okay, Dealers Room has nothing for me.
Panels schedule has really nothing of interest.
What else does that leave?
Meeting friends, room parties and the dances.
Ugh...
Look I love my friends, but there's only so many times I can pass by them and say hi or something across four days.
I popped in to a few room parties that were hosted by local furs from the Antelope Valley area, namely
khandor Khandor with his Deep Rock Galactic theme, and 
paperwolf Isaac with his always reliable Transformation themed party.But you get more than thirteen people in these rooms and it becomes a crowd to where you're retreating outside onto the porch, and again I'm not really a party fur to where I desire to be smashed drunk at the con.
And I'm certainly not a dancer fur either to where I've ever found myself desiring to go to the dances.
So yeah...that's pretty much the con experience from Thursday night into Saturday night, but then there was this awkward kind of thing on Sunday...
The Mexican Sponsor Brunch:
So Las Vegas Fur Con actually put a Sponsor Brunch on the schedule this time, but it was relegated to the ass end of the schedule on Sunday morning.
This honestly was mildly entertaining because as I walked through the front of the Alexis Park it was pretty fucking quiet, even for being in the 9am hour and the Sponsor Brunch opened at 10am.
There was no one alive at the con.
Con staff were up and about a bit.
There were stanchions of worn brass forming a queue line for the expectation of a crowd that wasn't forming.
The Sponsor Brunch is set to open in five minutes at 10am and...I'm somehow the first person here?
Honestly this just felt like it was going to be forgotten, until it wasn't and the door opened and we were told to take a seat at a table at the far left of the room.
This was just super awkward to me. Because we have wait staff standing around by the food tables expecting people to dish up and go for it, but everyone thats filing in is just taking a seat at the tables and sitting there as if waiting to be told what to do next? Me, I just get up and start figuring out what we have for this Brunch, and its not what I would've chosen to be honest. Mexican tortilla chip salad, enchiladas, rice, beans, choice of meats, sour cream, guacamole, iced tea? Uh...okay definitely not what I was expecting, I was more or less thinking of something crossing breakfast with lunch here but whatever, food is food.
And it was clear that the entire purpose of this con is a party con; I swear everyone must've partied so hard into an all night bender because there was literally a half hour that went by before other furs started to trickle in, adding just more awkwardness to the whole atmosphere that you have this whole giant theater set up and no one is there.
I mean its none of my business but I sure hope the con didn't get hosed with any kind of wasted food charges and more furs appeared as the Sponsor Brunch ambled on in its duration.
Closing Ceremony:
Finally on Sunday its time for this con to wrap up and end. Thankfully the Closing Ceremony event was held on the rooftop this time instead of a giant theater like last time and it was extremely brief; like twenty minutes at most if I'm exaggerating. There was no frantic cult like chanting of "trans rights" this time around like there was last time, though some furs still tried to stir up such a reaction for a few times. Really this just tells me that maybe furs are coming back to their senses and knocking this shit off finally.
One of the notes that was mentioned at Closing Ceremony just doesn't sit well with me, and that was the con announcing how many free doses of "NARCAN" were handed out during the con.
I'm sorry...no. You don't brag about a statistic of how many furs wanted "NARCAN" as a means of staying safe during the event, what the fuck are we doing?!
So its really abundantly clear that the whole purpose and point of Las Vegas Fur Con isn't the con itself.
You register for a fur con at a resort park, but during the day its like you're supposed to outside of the con and do Vegas things, and then come back and do drugs and room parties and do dances into the night.
Sure doesn't seem like there's fuck all else to do at this event.
*
I did have high hopes to finally meet up with my longtime friend
theDARKWOLF TheDARKWOLF who I'd lost touch with for easily twelve or thirteen years at this point when he left California to go to other states east. A bit of time ago I got a message on FA that he'd moved back and was staying in Las Vegas now!Thrilled I did reach out to say I'd be going to Las Vegas Fur Con and it'd be an ideal place to meet up, but...well, it never happened.
Darkwolf seemed to have other obligations come up and so he never showed up, and he doesn't keep an active presence on FA to answer notes in a timely fashion, and though he says he has a Discord he won't ever give me his name to keep in touch that way.
I honestly don't know if Las Vegas Fur Con is worth a return trip, despite it being close. Maybe if there's actual panels and Dealers present to keep my interest and to keep my sketchbooks in rotation I'd consider it, but really it just seems like a party con first, with a furry con on the side, and I need it to be the other way around.
--Mozdoc
Golden State Fur Con 2025
Posted 4 months agoNeed to get this journal out of my head before it gets too much later, because Golden State Fur Con two thousand twenty-five was actually a really really awesome event, though on paper and looking at the schedule you'd not really think so.
It was me and Strega Strega again being room hosts for two other furs that we'd not met before, at the Hilton Los Angeles International Airport on Century Boulevard. Being that we were arriving on Friday and knowing that the parking garage beneath this hotel is claustrophobicly compact I wanted to leave early to ensure that I got a parking spot in the place. Turns out, something must've been really different between last year and this one because the garage remained luxuriously spacious for the entire weekend.
Because I thought we'd get traffic on the freeway heading down by the airport we left early and got there early before the convention even thought about getting started so we just stayed in the lobby for several hours until things got going. Looking at the schedule I noticed that there wasn't really anything of interest going on, as per usual. Its disappointing how few panels I actually want to attend anymore at cons because no one bothers to host anything interesting. In fact the only two panels that I expressed interest in would've been the ones that *I* was host of; the 'Taur Meet and Poker Tournament panels, and those would be held back to back on the same day, Saturday.
In the meantime, I also noticed that supposedly upstairs on the second level there was a room dedicated to the Sponsor Lounge which should've already been open and went up to investigate it. Door was closed but undeterred I pulled it open anyway and...there was nothing but two carpet drying fans blowing opposite each other. Well that's a shame.
But my venturing up to the second floor brought me to the first interaction that would prove extremely memorable, I saw an older gentleman sitting there with a sketchbook, and a whole bundle of art supplies laid before him on the table. An honest to god old school furry from my era of this fandom and oh my god it was such a refreshing welcoming thing to see.
No concern about fucking pronouns.
No concern about being correct about anything.
No care at all about gender specifics.
Just here to draw, be creative, and be absolutely immersed with other enthusiasts of the same interest.
This is what furry means to me, and it really was awesome to just sit down opposite him and just chat.
Guys name is Jim and he isn't so much on FurAffinity but on SoFurry instead as "Radical-Gopher". https://radical-gopher.sofurry.com/ . This was also his first return to furry or any sort of convention in ten years and here he is at Golden State. First words from me were "Oh man, you're in for a drastic culture shock. Furry as you may have known it has changed quite a bit." and so the conversation went from there as I detailed all the things that now new furs seem to prize and pride themselves over.
But as we're discussing all this in the midst of asking what his battle history was with his frigate warship hat he wore and other life experiences, he offers to take my sketchbook and draw something in it, even though he's not ever really drawn a centaur before and that's not necessarily the type of creature he would do pinups of. But, what was drawn on paper was a very lightly four breasted centauress, just four legged, humorously wearing an "Uber" sash across her body; see she's not an Uber Driver, she's an Uber Rider. :)
See, that gentle play on words and sense of humor very much reminds me of how furry used to be and should be.
Meeting this guy was a treat, and he did say it might be his only day there if he didn't really find the vibe of furry to his appeal. Jim, I wish more of furry carried this type of mentality and approach to the fandom instead of where it is now, was such a pleasure to start off my con meeting you.
The rest of the Friday at the con kicked off with the Dealers Den opening and I was able to jump in there and hand out my sketchbooks again to two more artists to get various creatures done, as well as introducing myself to the animal charity of the convention, Wonky Hearts Animal Haven, because I was putting on the poker tournament on Saturday which would hopefully give them a jar of cash donations afterwards as a result. Really the Dealers Room was a nice pleasant mix of different talents and artistic flairs and anytime I can actually hand out a sketchbook, its a good time.
And then I got the second biggest surprise of my con, hearing that somewhere and somehow, Miafillene Miafillene (but its really Nynaeve) Nynaeve decided to show up to the con. Oh man this was awesome! I remember meeting Nynaeve ages and ages ago at my first furcons ever, and then was even more thrilled when going to the Prancing Skiltaire to find out that he's a native to SoCal, and a multifur being that his default fursona is a two headed anthro wolf. Sadly Nynaeve doesn't get to go to many cons anymore because of financial constraints, time constraints, just not being aware of when the call for dealer applications for a particular con open, or just not being high enough tier to get past the stupid ass selection committees that cons have in place now to select only artists that they want to have enter the event. Its the same story that explains the reason why 
Flinters Flinthoof has just disappeared from conventions even though he used to be at every con ever held for years and years.
It was even better when Jim and Nynaeve met and were chilling out at a table in one of the panel rooms drawing. Really this felt like how furry cons should be.
Saturday rolls around and I could collect some of my sketchbooks from the day before if I wanted to, but the afternoon was entirely spent on hosting my respective panels and setting them up. Because the 'Taur Meet and Poker Tournament occurred back to back from one another it meant that I could pack in all my stuff for both panels and set them up simultaneously. And how did they go?
Well the 'Taur Meet went about as well as you could expect. I have no clue why 'Taurs seem to be such an obscure subject at cons anymore, or species specific meet panels seem to just not happen anymore. To me these are the best places to get a common element or theme together into one room and see the interesting things people come up with.
All told, I had a table of myself and about five or six others to discuss things with 'taur forms being our common bond. Most of them that were there were of the 'Taur-curious persuasion so they had no 'taur characters yet, but were sure interested as to how it worked. About as well as you can hope for it to go honestly.
Poker Tournament on the other hand? Massive success; this went fantastic! Not only because
Tabbicus Tabbicus the poker playing cat was in attendance for his first go at Golden State Fur Con and he's the guy that's largely responsible for making me love the poker tournaments at cons and has allowed me to host my own events, but the tournament doubled in size over the prior year.
Before last year there were only twelve players in, but this year, twenty-two players were on the roster. We were running three tables this go around and I even had dedicated dealers for each one.
Future me at this con is really happy that past me decided to pick up and pack my little cheap-o portable projector on the off chance that I'd need it, because oh man, I sure did need it because the room didn't come equipped with a projector or screen of its own and yet I was prepared for it.
And who was it that won the tournament? Shouldn't be any surprise for it, but it was Tabbicus!
Poker Tournament raised four hundred-sixty for the con charity but because by the time the tournament ended it meant that Dealers Den was closed and so delivering the cash would have to wait until tomorrow.
Saturday night me and Nynaeve were chilling out in the meet and greet room where my events had occurred hours prior and the event that had just ended was something to do with Sparkledogs. I'm not entirely sure what a Sparkledog is, but it must be something for unrestrained uncontrolled chaos because that seemed to be what the tail end of the panel was with five really wild and scatterbrained kids in there; my guess would've been just around their mid-teens, because their guardian parent was seated in the room with them as they ran rampant.
Its clear these girls have a creative streak in them, one was particularly proud of a strange sort of obsession with drawing sharks hovering over landscapes while they were being ridden by pigeon birds. Odd, but okay, we all have our things, and I couldn't deny that she knew what she was doing even if it wasn't something I understood. It was when another different girl asked Nynaeve for an art trade of their character, and upon getting it completed then asked for a modification to include the trans-masculine scars on the characters chest, which he did.
This sparked the one girl with the land shark interest to say something that she wants to get a surgery, I honestly don't recall if she was specific as to "top" or "bottom". That really kind of put me into a bit of a silence because, god damn, these girls aren't that old and they're having this concept burned into their thoughts as its something fashionable to do!? I'm sorry no, that just strikes me as fucking wrong. These kids' brains are moving at two hundred miles an hour from one stray thought to the next with zero concept of the actual repercussions of effects afterwards that'll fuck up their lives forever and seem to just be latched onto it because "oh that's what people do now and its normal".
I think what started to cement this group was a little off kilter was yet another one of the girls that was quite decked out in a chain harness mentioned something about already being on anti-depressants and some other drug that she could say the name of, to me it was alphabet soup.
Wow, that really disheartens me about the potential future of what the furry fandom has to look forward to. Fuck me man I miss when this fandom wasn't this way, or that's how Saturday had to end.
Sunday it was pretty much the con winding down. There was one panel that I was curious about being for Hooved Furs though it seemed moreso focused on fursuiters of hooved animals, be it giraffes, cows, horses, goats, deer and the like. But that was kind of it.
Jim and Nynaeve both stuck through the entirety of the event, and after a bit it was just waiting around for the final numbers and any announcements pertaining to the next years event.
Numbers wise, the con attendance remained relatively static, one thousand nine hundred forty-two; a marginal increase of about twenty attendees, which is good, you like to see that for a local event that its keeping steady from year to year.
There was however no notice about the cons future year; and there's a bit of speculation that the hotel may be closing a time for renovations, or perhaps they're seeking a different place? Really don't quote me on that, I don't run the con so I can't say what is going on in the background.
And that was it. Golden State Fur Con done for this year.
On paper looking at the schedule it didn't seem like it would be a great time but the social aspects, Dealers Room interactions and actually hosting panels at it more than made up for it.
Honestly going forward I wonder if I should attach my name to more species specific meet up events besides just the 'taur meet. What about transformation? What about multifur? What about hybrids? I like all those things even though my characters aren't necessarily of those, I just enjoy seeing the creativity on display fitting of a theme and at least if those events are posted to the schedule it'd encourage more people to show up to them, and maybe take the ball and host it themselves at a future event. Something for future me to think about and start bringing back some life to cons.
In two weeks after Golden State Fur Con would be Las Vegas Fur Con.
--Mozdoc
It was me and
Strega Strega again being room hosts for two other furs that we'd not met before, at the Hilton Los Angeles International Airport on Century Boulevard. Being that we were arriving on Friday and knowing that the parking garage beneath this hotel is claustrophobicly compact I wanted to leave early to ensure that I got a parking spot in the place. Turns out, something must've been really different between last year and this one because the garage remained luxuriously spacious for the entire weekend.Because I thought we'd get traffic on the freeway heading down by the airport we left early and got there early before the convention even thought about getting started so we just stayed in the lobby for several hours until things got going. Looking at the schedule I noticed that there wasn't really anything of interest going on, as per usual. Its disappointing how few panels I actually want to attend anymore at cons because no one bothers to host anything interesting. In fact the only two panels that I expressed interest in would've been the ones that *I* was host of; the 'Taur Meet and Poker Tournament panels, and those would be held back to back on the same day, Saturday.
In the meantime, I also noticed that supposedly upstairs on the second level there was a room dedicated to the Sponsor Lounge which should've already been open and went up to investigate it. Door was closed but undeterred I pulled it open anyway and...there was nothing but two carpet drying fans blowing opposite each other. Well that's a shame.
But my venturing up to the second floor brought me to the first interaction that would prove extremely memorable, I saw an older gentleman sitting there with a sketchbook, and a whole bundle of art supplies laid before him on the table. An honest to god old school furry from my era of this fandom and oh my god it was such a refreshing welcoming thing to see.
No concern about fucking pronouns.
No concern about being correct about anything.
No care at all about gender specifics.
Just here to draw, be creative, and be absolutely immersed with other enthusiasts of the same interest.
This is what furry means to me, and it really was awesome to just sit down opposite him and just chat.
Guys name is Jim and he isn't so much on FurAffinity but on SoFurry instead as "Radical-Gopher". https://radical-gopher.sofurry.com/ . This was also his first return to furry or any sort of convention in ten years and here he is at Golden State. First words from me were "Oh man, you're in for a drastic culture shock. Furry as you may have known it has changed quite a bit." and so the conversation went from there as I detailed all the things that now new furs seem to prize and pride themselves over.
But as we're discussing all this in the midst of asking what his battle history was with his frigate warship hat he wore and other life experiences, he offers to take my sketchbook and draw something in it, even though he's not ever really drawn a centaur before and that's not necessarily the type of creature he would do pinups of. But, what was drawn on paper was a very lightly four breasted centauress, just four legged, humorously wearing an "Uber" sash across her body; see she's not an Uber Driver, she's an Uber Rider. :)
See, that gentle play on words and sense of humor very much reminds me of how furry used to be and should be.
Meeting this guy was a treat, and he did say it might be his only day there if he didn't really find the vibe of furry to his appeal. Jim, I wish more of furry carried this type of mentality and approach to the fandom instead of where it is now, was such a pleasure to start off my con meeting you.
The rest of the Friday at the con kicked off with the Dealers Den opening and I was able to jump in there and hand out my sketchbooks again to two more artists to get various creatures done, as well as introducing myself to the animal charity of the convention, Wonky Hearts Animal Haven, because I was putting on the poker tournament on Saturday which would hopefully give them a jar of cash donations afterwards as a result. Really the Dealers Room was a nice pleasant mix of different talents and artistic flairs and anytime I can actually hand out a sketchbook, its a good time.
And then I got the second biggest surprise of my con, hearing that somewhere and somehow,
Miafillene Miafillene (but its really Nynaeve) Nynaeve decided to show up to the con. Oh man this was awesome! I remember meeting Nynaeve ages and ages ago at my first furcons ever, and then was even more thrilled when going to the Prancing Skiltaire to find out that he's a native to SoCal, and a multifur being that his default fursona is a two headed anthro wolf. Sadly Nynaeve doesn't get to go to many cons anymore because of financial constraints, time constraints, just not being aware of when the call for dealer applications for a particular con open, or just not being high enough tier to get past the stupid ass selection committees that cons have in place now to select only artists that they want to have enter the event. Its the same story that explains the reason why 
Flinters Flinthoof has just disappeared from conventions even though he used to be at every con ever held for years and years.It was even better when Jim and Nynaeve met and were chilling out at a table in one of the panel rooms drawing. Really this felt like how furry cons should be.
Saturday rolls around and I could collect some of my sketchbooks from the day before if I wanted to, but the afternoon was entirely spent on hosting my respective panels and setting them up. Because the 'Taur Meet and Poker Tournament occurred back to back from one another it meant that I could pack in all my stuff for both panels and set them up simultaneously. And how did they go?
Well the 'Taur Meet went about as well as you could expect. I have no clue why 'Taurs seem to be such an obscure subject at cons anymore, or species specific meet panels seem to just not happen anymore. To me these are the best places to get a common element or theme together into one room and see the interesting things people come up with.
All told, I had a table of myself and about five or six others to discuss things with 'taur forms being our common bond. Most of them that were there were of the 'Taur-curious persuasion so they had no 'taur characters yet, but were sure interested as to how it worked. About as well as you can hope for it to go honestly.
Poker Tournament on the other hand? Massive success; this went fantastic! Not only because
Tabbicus Tabbicus the poker playing cat was in attendance for his first go at Golden State Fur Con and he's the guy that's largely responsible for making me love the poker tournaments at cons and has allowed me to host my own events, but the tournament doubled in size over the prior year.Before last year there were only twelve players in, but this year, twenty-two players were on the roster. We were running three tables this go around and I even had dedicated dealers for each one.
Future me at this con is really happy that past me decided to pick up and pack my little cheap-o portable projector on the off chance that I'd need it, because oh man, I sure did need it because the room didn't come equipped with a projector or screen of its own and yet I was prepared for it.
And who was it that won the tournament? Shouldn't be any surprise for it, but it was Tabbicus!
Poker Tournament raised four hundred-sixty for the con charity but because by the time the tournament ended it meant that Dealers Den was closed and so delivering the cash would have to wait until tomorrow.
Saturday night me and Nynaeve were chilling out in the meet and greet room where my events had occurred hours prior and the event that had just ended was something to do with Sparkledogs. I'm not entirely sure what a Sparkledog is, but it must be something for unrestrained uncontrolled chaos because that seemed to be what the tail end of the panel was with five really wild and scatterbrained kids in there; my guess would've been just around their mid-teens, because their guardian parent was seated in the room with them as they ran rampant.
Its clear these girls have a creative streak in them, one was particularly proud of a strange sort of obsession with drawing sharks hovering over landscapes while they were being ridden by pigeon birds. Odd, but okay, we all have our things, and I couldn't deny that she knew what she was doing even if it wasn't something I understood. It was when another different girl asked Nynaeve for an art trade of their character, and upon getting it completed then asked for a modification to include the trans-masculine scars on the characters chest, which he did.
This sparked the one girl with the land shark interest to say something that she wants to get a surgery, I honestly don't recall if she was specific as to "top" or "bottom". That really kind of put me into a bit of a silence because, god damn, these girls aren't that old and they're having this concept burned into their thoughts as its something fashionable to do!? I'm sorry no, that just strikes me as fucking wrong. These kids' brains are moving at two hundred miles an hour from one stray thought to the next with zero concept of the actual repercussions of effects afterwards that'll fuck up their lives forever and seem to just be latched onto it because "oh that's what people do now and its normal".
I think what started to cement this group was a little off kilter was yet another one of the girls that was quite decked out in a chain harness mentioned something about already being on anti-depressants and some other drug that she could say the name of, to me it was alphabet soup.
Wow, that really disheartens me about the potential future of what the furry fandom has to look forward to. Fuck me man I miss when this fandom wasn't this way, or that's how Saturday had to end.
Sunday it was pretty much the con winding down. There was one panel that I was curious about being for Hooved Furs though it seemed moreso focused on fursuiters of hooved animals, be it giraffes, cows, horses, goats, deer and the like. But that was kind of it.
Jim and Nynaeve both stuck through the entirety of the event, and after a bit it was just waiting around for the final numbers and any announcements pertaining to the next years event.
Numbers wise, the con attendance remained relatively static, one thousand nine hundred forty-two; a marginal increase of about twenty attendees, which is good, you like to see that for a local event that its keeping steady from year to year.
There was however no notice about the cons future year; and there's a bit of speculation that the hotel may be closing a time for renovations, or perhaps they're seeking a different place? Really don't quote me on that, I don't run the con so I can't say what is going on in the background.
And that was it. Golden State Fur Con done for this year.
On paper looking at the schedule it didn't seem like it would be a great time but the social aspects, Dealers Room interactions and actually hosting panels at it more than made up for it.
Honestly going forward I wonder if I should attach my name to more species specific meet up events besides just the 'taur meet. What about transformation? What about multifur? What about hybrids? I like all those things even though my characters aren't necessarily of those, I just enjoy seeing the creativity on display fitting of a theme and at least if those events are posted to the schedule it'd encourage more people to show up to them, and maybe take the ball and host it themselves at a future event. Something for future me to think about and start bringing back some life to cons.
In two weeks after Golden State Fur Con would be Las Vegas Fur Con.
--Mozdoc
No One In Washington Knows Whats Going On
Posted 6 months agoNo one in Washington knows whats going on.
Period.
Couldn't be more true right now.
Of course arriving to work today the topic of the email response was the first thing on everyones mind wondering what to do about it; and so we wait. Morning meetings happen, conferences happen, and I start glancing at my government email account waiting for some kind of guidance as to what to do, armed with the document that I wrote up Sunday with bullet points in it to justify why I am a federal employee.
And the document was sent, I'll say that, but over the course of Monday here I've felt more and more bitter and strung out on a fucking leash than before.
Through the course of the day I've heard:
-The Department Of Transportation says reply to the email as instructed.
-The managers say don't reply to it and ignore it.
-The PASS union guidance says do what the Department Of Transportation has asked.
-The FAA then chips in with a gigantic shrug of its shoulders saying do whatever you want with it.
-News articles saying that no one will fucking read the fucking emails and all that will happen is they'll be fed through an AI Language Learning algorithm coldly judging whats written to determine who keeps their jobs or not.
-And another email from PASS union with a link to TheHill.com saying that it was always a voluntary thing and a lack of an answer doesn't mean any resignation.
-And lastly, maybe, headlines hinting that the US President our lord and savior Trump is backing off from this email response meaning anything.
Motherfuckers. Which is it. What is it. Is anyone driving the bus.
More than likely my response to this stupid ass email will get tossed and discarded, because I guess one of the crippling limitations of the fucking AI scanner bullshit is that it isn't capable of reading attachments, and stupidly or fortunately, I just attached the document and sent it on its way; because, you know, I still trust that theres a god damn human person that's being tasked with reading this shit and not just giving a machine something to do.
Here at the end of the day I don't know what to think of it all. I still have a job for now. No telling for how long given all the fuckery going on.
--Mozdoc
Period.
Couldn't be more true right now.
Of course arriving to work today the topic of the email response was the first thing on everyones mind wondering what to do about it; and so we wait. Morning meetings happen, conferences happen, and I start glancing at my government email account waiting for some kind of guidance as to what to do, armed with the document that I wrote up Sunday with bullet points in it to justify why I am a federal employee.
And the document was sent, I'll say that, but over the course of Monday here I've felt more and more bitter and strung out on a fucking leash than before.
Through the course of the day I've heard:
-The Department Of Transportation says reply to the email as instructed.
-The managers say don't reply to it and ignore it.
-The PASS union guidance says do what the Department Of Transportation has asked.
-The FAA then chips in with a gigantic shrug of its shoulders saying do whatever you want with it.
-News articles saying that no one will fucking read the fucking emails and all that will happen is they'll be fed through an AI Language Learning algorithm coldly judging whats written to determine who keeps their jobs or not.
-And another email from PASS union with a link to TheHill.com saying that it was always a voluntary thing and a lack of an answer doesn't mean any resignation.
-And lastly, maybe, headlines hinting that the US President our lord and savior Trump is backing off from this email response meaning anything.
Motherfuckers. Which is it. What is it. Is anyone driving the bus.
More than likely my response to this stupid ass email will get tossed and discarded, because I guess one of the crippling limitations of the fucking AI scanner bullshit is that it isn't capable of reading attachments, and stupidly or fortunately, I just attached the document and sent it on its way; because, you know, I still trust that theres a god damn human person that's being tasked with reading this shit and not just giving a machine something to do.
Here at the end of the day I don't know what to think of it all. I still have a job for now. No telling for how long given all the fuckery going on.
--Mozdoc
Justifying My Job
Posted 6 months agoFurther governmental dickfuckery.
The PASS union sent an email to my personal account tonight. Usually I don't give these much attention; I read them, gloss over the message, and then delete it and move along. With the government basically being burnt to the fucking ground now in Washington I gave this a bit more of a look and it mentioned something about an email that everyone in the agency received.
Fat fucking load of good that does most government employees considering I don't work weekends anymore. Why would this be something that gets sent on SATURDAY?
Then another union email followed up containing a screen shot of the email in question.
"Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.
Please do not send any classified information, links or attachments.
Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pEST."
GoogleNews is equally a bit dire.
"Federal employees told to justify jobs in email or Musk says they face dismissal"
"Elon Musk says federal workers must justify their work — or resign"
There is no replacing this job if I lost it. There's no finding anything else that pays like this does. And there's certainly no ability to make staying in California a reality.
Guess I know what I get to look forward to come fucking Monday.
--Mozdoc
The PASS union sent an email to my personal account tonight. Usually I don't give these much attention; I read them, gloss over the message, and then delete it and move along. With the government basically being burnt to the fucking ground now in Washington I gave this a bit more of a look and it mentioned something about an email that everyone in the agency received.
Fat fucking load of good that does most government employees considering I don't work weekends anymore. Why would this be something that gets sent on SATURDAY?
Then another union email followed up containing a screen shot of the email in question.
"Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.
Please do not send any classified information, links or attachments.
Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pEST."
GoogleNews is equally a bit dire.
"Federal employees told to justify jobs in email or Musk says they face dismissal"
"Elon Musk says federal workers must justify their work — or resign"
There is no replacing this job if I lost it. There's no finding anything else that pays like this does. And there's certainly no ability to make staying in California a reality.
Guess I know what I get to look forward to come fucking Monday.
--Mozdoc
Ixion Lives
Posted 7 months agoWell, its been a bit. Long enough for me to have been using the rebuilt Ixion running Windows 10 now to have figured out some things and adjusted to the changes. It is a nice power upgrade; quite impressive to bring up the Task Manager and look at a sixteen core processor now instead of four or six like the last one, and even when running a full screen video one one of my two monitors the system just isn't taxed at all. Processor still literally idle at five percent usage with the 3060 video card anywhere from thirty to fifty percent use. Even restarting my system now is a trivial experience; as a cold start the system is up and running in forty seconds to the desktop, with startup programs included. Before with the old system I kept startup programs like Discord and Telegram at bay because having those wanting to start was a noticeable drag, but this new system just doesn't care.
But its not all smooth sailing here and its becoming obvious that some peripherals aren't going to be able to get taken along for the ride.
Problems that I've noticed so far.
Keyboard and mouse;
I have a wireless Logitech K350 keyboard and wireless Logitech M510 mouse. The mouse operates fine, and so does the keyboard, but Windows doesn't like it completely.
Example:
System is off.
Touching the keyboard or mouse wakes the system.
Enter into the desktop.
Push the calculator hotkey. Calculator starts.
Okay, keyboard seems to fully work.
Except then...no. It doesn't. Pressing the calculator hotkey doesn't do anything. Which means Windows has just dropped my keyboard and all the extra perimeter multimedia keys are no longer functional.
Keyboard needs to be switched off-on and then it fully works the remainder of the session until I put the system to sleep again.
After a few days of this, its growing annoying, and researching forums shows that there's a lot of other users with this same problem, but I haven't gotten a solution yet to resolving it.
Flatbed scanner;
Unfortunately I saw this one coming so it sort of doesn't make me surprised.
I have a secondhand Mustek A3 USB 1200 Pro large format flatbed scanner that I acquired from Strega some time ago and its served me well.
It doesn't seem that the software will install properly anymore, from both my storage hard drive or from the antiquated Mustek website, even though it lists as being Windows 10 compatible. The install proceeds to a certain point and then errors out and won't continue.
So to get a replacement large format scanner will be a future endeavor, and likely cost a few hundred dollars if I'm to continue scanning in my sketchbooks I get from cons.
And you wonder why I was so hard pressed to scan and post all my art pieces before rebuilding my system. For this very reason.
Speakers;
I wouldn't have expected this to be an issue, but the little 2.1 speaker setup may not be along for this system.
I got this 2.1 Altek Lansing speaker setup way back in high school, and its served great.
For some reason its not outputting anything to the bass channel anymore and I only noticed this when listening to a music track from Tenshio on Bluesky where he mentioned it should have "room shaking bass", and I wasn't getting that. I'm not even feeling any thumps from the speaker either. I thought I rectified this one time and actually got it working but now its not again.
There's only three audio ports on the back of this motherboard, so its not exactly possible to have it connected to the wrong one.
Strangely Windows audio panel doesn't even support things less than a 5.1 speaker system now? At least, that's the first option where a subwoofer can come into the picture.
Other niggling issues that I've encountered?
Well there was a software breaking thing straight out of the box, or maybe something I tinkered with and didn't realize it, where Microsoft Photos was just...broken. I'd try to view any picture files and it'd just give an error dialog saying "The parameter is incorrect." which, didn't help at all.
What finally fixed that was a hidden guide to a troubleshooter for Windows Applications and it found a fault that the Temporary Internet Files folder was incorrect somehow, and ever since then Windows Photos works as it should.
I'm sure I'll find other things as time goes on when things need to be installed again and I find that they don't work anymore.
It really does feel like the Internet as a whole is just far less useful than it was a few years ago.
Stuff has gotten to the point where its "well, we made this, it should just work, but if not, guess you're on your own", because wading through the Internet looking for your problem just opens you up to places that just latch onto your search terms to proclaim that they're the ones with the answer, and there's considerable doubt that anything you find online was actually put there with beneficial human intelligence behind it.
So if anyone out there has intellect to offer as with my freaking keyboard not working, let me know. Else it seems that seeking the most recent of hardware may be in my future for it.
--Mozdoc
But its not all smooth sailing here and its becoming obvious that some peripherals aren't going to be able to get taken along for the ride.
Problems that I've noticed so far.
Keyboard and mouse;
I have a wireless Logitech K350 keyboard and wireless Logitech M510 mouse. The mouse operates fine, and so does the keyboard, but Windows doesn't like it completely.
Example:
System is off.
Touching the keyboard or mouse wakes the system.
Enter into the desktop.
Push the calculator hotkey. Calculator starts.
Okay, keyboard seems to fully work.
Except then...no. It doesn't. Pressing the calculator hotkey doesn't do anything. Which means Windows has just dropped my keyboard and all the extra perimeter multimedia keys are no longer functional.
Keyboard needs to be switched off-on and then it fully works the remainder of the session until I put the system to sleep again.
After a few days of this, its growing annoying, and researching forums shows that there's a lot of other users with this same problem, but I haven't gotten a solution yet to resolving it.
Flatbed scanner;
Unfortunately I saw this one coming so it sort of doesn't make me surprised.
I have a secondhand Mustek A3 USB 1200 Pro large format flatbed scanner that I acquired from Strega some time ago and its served me well.
It doesn't seem that the software will install properly anymore, from both my storage hard drive or from the antiquated Mustek website, even though it lists as being Windows 10 compatible. The install proceeds to a certain point and then errors out and won't continue.
So to get a replacement large format scanner will be a future endeavor, and likely cost a few hundred dollars if I'm to continue scanning in my sketchbooks I get from cons.
And you wonder why I was so hard pressed to scan and post all my art pieces before rebuilding my system. For this very reason.
Speakers;
I wouldn't have expected this to be an issue, but the little 2.1 speaker setup may not be along for this system.
I got this 2.1 Altek Lansing speaker setup way back in high school, and its served great.
For some reason its not outputting anything to the bass channel anymore and I only noticed this when listening to a music track from Tenshio on Bluesky where he mentioned it should have "room shaking bass", and I wasn't getting that. I'm not even feeling any thumps from the speaker either. I thought I rectified this one time and actually got it working but now its not again.
There's only three audio ports on the back of this motherboard, so its not exactly possible to have it connected to the wrong one.
Strangely Windows audio panel doesn't even support things less than a 5.1 speaker system now? At least, that's the first option where a subwoofer can come into the picture.
Other niggling issues that I've encountered?
Well there was a software breaking thing straight out of the box, or maybe something I tinkered with and didn't realize it, where Microsoft Photos was just...broken. I'd try to view any picture files and it'd just give an error dialog saying "The parameter is incorrect." which, didn't help at all.
What finally fixed that was a hidden guide to a troubleshooter for Windows Applications and it found a fault that the Temporary Internet Files folder was incorrect somehow, and ever since then Windows Photos works as it should.
I'm sure I'll find other things as time goes on when things need to be installed again and I find that they don't work anymore.
It really does feel like the Internet as a whole is just far less useful than it was a few years ago.
Stuff has gotten to the point where its "well, we made this, it should just work, but if not, guess you're on your own", because wading through the Internet looking for your problem just opens you up to places that just latch onto your search terms to proclaim that they're the ones with the answer, and there's considerable doubt that anything you find online was actually put there with beneficial human intelligence behind it.
So if anyone out there has intellect to offer as with my freaking keyboard not working, let me know. Else it seems that seeking the most recent of hardware may be in my future for it.
--Mozdoc
The State Of Government
Posted 7 months agoI was with friends at the Monterey Aquarium over the weekend on Saturday on a nice little weekend excursion. Originally the plan was to do the aquarium and then do a fursuiting walk afterwards, but the NorCal furs in charge of it then changed plans to be an entirely different weekend and so the whole fursuiting thing fell apart yet we were up at the seaside anyway.
Being that I have my phone in my pocket I check emails a lot and there was a message from the union regarding something that I hadn't heard anything about, and really unsettles me a bit concerning my job.
That it seems our lord and savior Trump just randomly decided to axe a fuckton of people's jobs in the federal government if they were still on their probationary period of time. This doesn't sit well with me, because I was once one of those people thirteen years ago just getting myself in the door and being utterly terrified of being on a one year probationary period where I could've lost my job for any reason at all if someone didn't like me or what I did. Fortunately that was a long time ago, and I'm still here, but now I just feel like this prick is looking for any reason at all to take my job. I feel still relatively safe considering my job title, location, and the fact that I've been in for thirteen years should stand for something to make it more difficult for me to be removed.
But make no mistake, if I lost my federal job, staying in California is unthinkable and I honestly wouldn't know what I'd do afterwards to get something like this back or keep things in life on the course that they currently are.
As a federal employee, oh, I have recognized and felt the inefficiency of decision making that government is capable of and it pisses me off to no end, but just randomly axing the incoming new prospective employees is the wrong move. WE NEED THOSE PEOPLE. Those incoming people are fresh minds needed to take a stand on the front lines from any long time veteran in the workforce when they step down, carrying knowledge forward that comes with workplaces in order to keep things going.
The government right now just has completely lost its entire fucking mind.
--Mozdoc
Being that I have my phone in my pocket I check emails a lot and there was a message from the union regarding something that I hadn't heard anything about, and really unsettles me a bit concerning my job.
That it seems our lord and savior Trump just randomly decided to axe a fuckton of people's jobs in the federal government if they were still on their probationary period of time. This doesn't sit well with me, because I was once one of those people thirteen years ago just getting myself in the door and being utterly terrified of being on a one year probationary period where I could've lost my job for any reason at all if someone didn't like me or what I did. Fortunately that was a long time ago, and I'm still here, but now I just feel like this prick is looking for any reason at all to take my job. I feel still relatively safe considering my job title, location, and the fact that I've been in for thirteen years should stand for something to make it more difficult for me to be removed.
But make no mistake, if I lost my federal job, staying in California is unthinkable and I honestly wouldn't know what I'd do afterwards to get something like this back or keep things in life on the course that they currently are.
As a federal employee, oh, I have recognized and felt the inefficiency of decision making that government is capable of and it pisses me off to no end, but just randomly axing the incoming new prospective employees is the wrong move. WE NEED THOSE PEOPLE. Those incoming people are fresh minds needed to take a stand on the front lines from any long time veteran in the workforce when they step down, carrying knowledge forward that comes with workplaces in order to keep things going.
The government right now just has completely lost its entire fucking mind.
--Mozdoc
Desktop Upgrades
Posted 7 months agoFrom my phone, because my desktop rebuild isn't going as quick as I had hoped.
My fucking god this is such a pain in the ass. Does anyone remember when shit just 'worked' and it didn't matter how updated your system was? I do. And sadly that seems to no longer be the case.
I've been at this since January twenty-fifth, just decided to bite and get on with it and build Ixion back new. Backing up data, dismantling, cleaning every surface of the case, and then unboxing all the hardware took a while and it wasn't until midnight when I ran into a stupid problem with the install saying that it needed a driver of some kind but wouldn't say what for.
The solution according to the internet was to switch which USB port was being used. The fuck? Why would that be the solution!?
And sure enough the internet was right.
Here now January twenty-sixth it should have been smooth sailing with software.
Nope.
I think I had to dive into Plan D for ways to finally get Windows10 to install because there must be a scratch on the disk that stopped it at ninety-two percent and it would error to failure.
So I tried copying the disk to a USB. It won't copy past this fault on the disk.
So don't ask me why but sometime ago I happen to have an ISO of Windows10 just...on my storage drive...for some reason and using that got me around the problem.
We're done right? Windows10 will work?
Yes.
But no.
Can't get online to hunt for drivers because Windows doesn't even give a functional network adapter.
Have to use my supplimental laptop to get drivers because fuck all comes included in your hardware packages now. So thats great.
Can't install the graphics drivers. Everything says its incompatible with Windows10 yet thats what I fucking have!
Oh, but you don't have the "current" version; 10.0.586 isn't current now its 1806 or 22H2 for some stupid fucked logic reason.
So now I have to put that on my system.
And this is why I wanted to have all my other affairs in real and online life situated before delving into this. For just this reason theres not really any pressure to get it done with some pressing event or the likes. Doesn't make it any less stupidly frustrating though to have something which should be straightforward simple just keep kicking you in the face around every corner.
--Mozdoc
My fucking god this is such a pain in the ass. Does anyone remember when shit just 'worked' and it didn't matter how updated your system was? I do. And sadly that seems to no longer be the case.
I've been at this since January twenty-fifth, just decided to bite and get on with it and build Ixion back new. Backing up data, dismantling, cleaning every surface of the case, and then unboxing all the hardware took a while and it wasn't until midnight when I ran into a stupid problem with the install saying that it needed a driver of some kind but wouldn't say what for.
The solution according to the internet was to switch which USB port was being used. The fuck? Why would that be the solution!?
And sure enough the internet was right.
Here now January twenty-sixth it should have been smooth sailing with software.
Nope.
I think I had to dive into Plan D for ways to finally get Windows10 to install because there must be a scratch on the disk that stopped it at ninety-two percent and it would error to failure.
So I tried copying the disk to a USB. It won't copy past this fault on the disk.
So don't ask me why but sometime ago I happen to have an ISO of Windows10 just...on my storage drive...for some reason and using that got me around the problem.
We're done right? Windows10 will work?
Yes.
But no.
Can't get online to hunt for drivers because Windows doesn't even give a functional network adapter.
Have to use my supplimental laptop to get drivers because fuck all comes included in your hardware packages now. So thats great.
Can't install the graphics drivers. Everything says its incompatible with Windows10 yet thats what I fucking have!
Oh, but you don't have the "current" version; 10.0.586 isn't current now its 1806 or 22H2 for some stupid fucked logic reason.
So now I have to put that on my system.
And this is why I wanted to have all my other affairs in real and online life situated before delving into this. For just this reason theres not really any pressure to get it done with some pressing event or the likes. Doesn't make it any less stupidly frustrating though to have something which should be straightforward simple just keep kicking you in the face around every corner.
--Mozdoc
FurtherConfusion 2025 Journal
Posted 7 months agoFeeling like turning this out just so I don't forget about it.
FurtherConfusion for two thousand twenty-five is done and over, and again my overall impressions of the con are decidedly mixed. Where are all my fucking friends? :/ Used to be I'd wander the halls and just be able to pick out faces in the crowd that I'd see at the con all the time, and now that's no longer the case. I wander the hallways, I wander the dealers room, I pop in to a panel or two, and I could count the number of furs that are "friends" on both hands at the end of the weekend. That's deeply disappointing.
Friends off hand that I knew and saw:
HeiLeeJoe , 
Seriva , 
Shievina 
Cassidy , 
TrashCamell , 
Blazionite , 
Skyite , 
Onnanoko , 
Zhivago , 
Tabbicus , VelliWolf , Khandor , 
Isaac , 
JunkKnight , 
Jinx , Mario who doesn't have an FA name, Jim the Jaguartaur who doesn't use FA .
Maybe there were others and they just happened to be on staff and elsewhere when I wasn't around, but hell it sure seems like the list of friends is pretty god damn short for a con of this size.
I hate to say it, but touring the dealers room again nothing stands out. There's no artists that I've dealt with that I feel like I could confidently give my strange ideas to, and I really contemplated not going back in a second time yet I'm glad I did as the artist TrashCamell managed to find her way into the Artist Alley side of the room and that let me give out at least one of my sketchbooks for an art piece.
Can someone explain to me why the fucking fandom is so fucking obsessed with disposable trash stickers!? I don't god damn get it. People just dump this shit everywhere and then are surprised when I refuse to play the sticker game and that I'm not interested. I'm genuinely not. I couldn't give a single shit about anyones fucking stickers.
My takeaway from the con was that there was a packed schedule of events, none of which I found curious enough to even look in on except a few things.
Thursday
Picked up badge effortlessly in the registration queue.
Attended the panel demonstration of the Krita digital art program. I must say, its mighty impressive in its capabilities.
Briefly showed at the back of the room for a panel titled "The Banana Chronicles: How Appealing" and I quietly left because I honestly have no idea what that panel was about.
Attended the Opening Ceremony, which set the theme of the convention of "Animal Business" by being a poorly constructed slideshow with graphs and pie charts and then the CEO came on stage but her microphone was muted which made the audience have to yell "YOU'RE ON MUTE!" until it was corrected before everyone in attendance was promoted to Vice President in which the organizational chart of the company meant we all reported to the dog. Its furry logic, it doesn't make any sense. Actually was seated at a table with a fur who was coming to cons for her first time so I could explain this aspect of the fandom that every convention has a theme, and it ultimately means absolutely nothing unless you want it to guide your creativity.
Friday
Maybe its just me but I swear that I recall furcons opening and kicking things off earlier in the mornings with events happening at eight or nine in the morning. Shit getting going at ten or eleven just seems...off. I wake up and end up just lurking in my hotel room because there's absolutely no fucking reason to go to the con if nothings happening. Am I missing something here?
For as packed with events as the day was, nothing interested me.
Briefly popped in to the Twenty-Five Years Of Confusion panel before ducking out because it more or less was prior con staffers who had been with the con from the start detailing war stories rather than a social thing of long time con attendees.
Attended the very well presented "An Intro To Vore" panel mostly because I'm curious about it.
Had to only briefly show at the Protogen and Sergal meets because they started at the same time at opposite hotels.
The Transformation Meet happened afterwards hosted by Cassidy.
And...that was it.
Saturday
Again, the late freaking starts to the day. Nothing opens until ten in the morning.
The con fed the Sponsors and above with Sponsor Brunch.
Eat food in an effort to make it to The Compu-Taur Lab just so I could find out from the panelists why its called that, and come to find out Rogue is a 'taur shapeshifter. It was a panel about retro tech otherwise that had no relationship to 'taurs despite its name.
Then catching a single shot of the Fursuit Photo since the parade was cancelled for some reason.
And then the highlight of the con, the Charity Poker Tournament. I got set as a dealer at one of the tables to run the event and even though I didn't make it far past the first break, I still had fun in it. I kept my nerves settled this time and the number of mistakes was minimal this time around, unlike Painted Desert where I was a dealer and got frazzled a lot of the times and just kept kicking myself for doing dumb shit and having to apologize for it. I stuck around the entire duration of the event to assist in it, even though it meant that I'd miss the M*cro Meet that occurred over it. Oh well.
Saturday ended with me retreating to my room again, since FurtherConfusion has basically become the furry kink capital with its "Night Market" that consumes the night and I'm not interested in it.
Sunday
Again another day that on paper is full of panels, and nothing that I desire to actually look into.
I actually just idled in my room well through the afternoon on my laptop just waiting until it was time to head out to the 'Taur Meet, and then doing the FC: Unleashed! and Closing Announcements panel.
For the 'Taur Meet, a fair number of furs showed up into the room early before the event was set to start but when the time came, Blazionite was nowhere to be found. So, I took the initiative and stepped up to the front of the room to kick off the panel and start discussions, because that's the great thing about the Meet And Greet format for a panel, no actual presentations need to be made and all that is needed is someone to anchor their name to the panel to make it be on the schedule so someones accountable for it.
The 'Taur Meet was another small group, set in an equally small room which was nice because it made the setting feel appropriate for the amount of furs that were in attendance. Once the ice was broken it sure seemed like the conversations got flowing pretty nicely between all involved. Blazionite I hope you didn't mind the assistance.
But that's about all I can say happened on Sunday.
Monday
Leave the con and go home. Maybe someday there'll be reason to stay for all five days at FC again, but right now I just don't see why this thing stays being five days long. It should be one day of setup on Thursday, three con days, and be done with it. Dragging it out with a smattering of events through Monday just to drag people along to the actual Closing Ceremonies is just boggling to me.
There were a few things about FC that were just silly.
Like requiring damned masks again, but only if you were in the dealers rooms.
Some unspecified "threat" which was revealed mere days before the con was to kick off that required the event to hire an abundance of rent-a-cop security services and set up screening checkpoints for entry into the convention center hall between the Marriott, Hilton, and the outside plaza, and also nixed the Fursuit Parade.
The screening points were fine, except I kept having to get stopped because my metal pencil case tin for my drafting pencils kept setting off the detectors. It wasn't my steel toe work boots, because whenever I'd go through the convention center without my backpack with me nothing would happen.
Honestly there'd be times where I'd have to transition between the end point hotels and would rather just go the fuck outside than traverse the convention center concourse.
Other things that FC did well this time around I'd say were the execution of the theme, and the introduction of a memorial table for furs who are sadly no longer with us.
Aside from the shenanigans that occurred at Opening Ceremony, down in the Lower Level of the convention center was a whole business center set up. Someone brought with and assembled two cubicles which had everything in there from a vintage computer showing a FurCon logo in ASCII text, a hacked printer you could send pictures to print in dot matrix, mail slots stuffed full of ties, Post-It notes with all sorts of scribbles, motivational posters, a working phone setup between the two cubicles, a mock setup of a break room with a microwave and other assorted office products, a giant reconstruction of Clippy the paperclip, even a gigantic stapler and a coffee cup for fursuiters to get trapped under.
On the wall was a poster of the world, but it had a bunch of scribbles and notes on it further fitting the theme announcing the "Further Confusion Annual Company Meeting" as a reason for the conventions existence.
On main stage, there were two banners hung over the stage to make it seem like you were attending a professional televised exposition conference from the "Animal Business Stage" and the other banner had mock meme company logos on it as if companies had paid for platinum, gold, silver and bronze tiers of sponsorships. Overall, yeah, I'd say for theme it was well realized.
The memorial table laid to the side wall in the Lower Level was a new addition, and an unfortunate one. So many friends gone and along with them their creativity.
Dogbomb.
Konaroo.
Dragoneer.
They all attended FurtherConfusion in spirit.
Non-furs just will not understand the deep bond this fandom has amongst itself.
Was it just me or did anyone else imagine the eight hotdog cart vendors lurking outside the convention center plaza just sounded like barking seagulls? Everytime they'd start catcalling "hotdoghotdoghotdawwwwg" the only thing that I could picture in my head was the seagull scene from Finding Nemo.
"Mine!""MinemineMINE!""Mine!""MineMineMINEMINEmineMineMine!"
Seriously, there's eight of them all serving the same thing, none different from the other, all begging in the same catcall manner.
Dates for next year FurtherConfusion have already been announced. No doubt, I'll probably go again despite the con being a decidedly mixed event for me this time. Next year though, I'm planning on hosting a Multifur Meet, for there seems to be some demand for such a thing and if so, then I can easily file that on the schedule.
Next furcon is going to be Golden State Fur Con.
Need to file panel requests to potentially host the poker tournament at that event, amongst anything else that I feel should be on the schedule.
--Mozdoc
FurtherConfusion for two thousand twenty-five is done and over, and again my overall impressions of the con are decidedly mixed. Where are all my fucking friends? :/ Used to be I'd wander the halls and just be able to pick out faces in the crowd that I'd see at the con all the time, and now that's no longer the case. I wander the hallways, I wander the dealers room, I pop in to a panel or two, and I could count the number of furs that are "friends" on both hands at the end of the weekend. That's deeply disappointing.
Friends off hand that I knew and saw:
HeiLeeJoe , 
Seriva , 
Shievina 
Cassidy , 
TrashCamell , 
Blazionite , 
Skyite , 
Onnanoko , 
Zhivago , 
Tabbicus , VelliWolf , Khandor , 
Isaac , 
JunkKnight , 
Jinx , Mario who doesn't have an FA name, Jim the Jaguartaur who doesn't use FA .Maybe there were others and they just happened to be on staff and elsewhere when I wasn't around, but hell it sure seems like the list of friends is pretty god damn short for a con of this size.
I hate to say it, but touring the dealers room again nothing stands out. There's no artists that I've dealt with that I feel like I could confidently give my strange ideas to, and I really contemplated not going back in a second time yet I'm glad I did as the artist TrashCamell managed to find her way into the Artist Alley side of the room and that let me give out at least one of my sketchbooks for an art piece.
Can someone explain to me why the fucking fandom is so fucking obsessed with disposable trash stickers!? I don't god damn get it. People just dump this shit everywhere and then are surprised when I refuse to play the sticker game and that I'm not interested. I'm genuinely not. I couldn't give a single shit about anyones fucking stickers.
My takeaway from the con was that there was a packed schedule of events, none of which I found curious enough to even look in on except a few things.
Thursday
Picked up badge effortlessly in the registration queue.
Attended the panel demonstration of the Krita digital art program. I must say, its mighty impressive in its capabilities.
Briefly showed at the back of the room for a panel titled "The Banana Chronicles: How Appealing" and I quietly left because I honestly have no idea what that panel was about.
Attended the Opening Ceremony, which set the theme of the convention of "Animal Business" by being a poorly constructed slideshow with graphs and pie charts and then the CEO came on stage but her microphone was muted which made the audience have to yell "YOU'RE ON MUTE!" until it was corrected before everyone in attendance was promoted to Vice President in which the organizational chart of the company meant we all reported to the dog. Its furry logic, it doesn't make any sense. Actually was seated at a table with a fur who was coming to cons for her first time so I could explain this aspect of the fandom that every convention has a theme, and it ultimately means absolutely nothing unless you want it to guide your creativity.
Friday
Maybe its just me but I swear that I recall furcons opening and kicking things off earlier in the mornings with events happening at eight or nine in the morning. Shit getting going at ten or eleven just seems...off. I wake up and end up just lurking in my hotel room because there's absolutely no fucking reason to go to the con if nothings happening. Am I missing something here?
For as packed with events as the day was, nothing interested me.
Briefly popped in to the Twenty-Five Years Of Confusion panel before ducking out because it more or less was prior con staffers who had been with the con from the start detailing war stories rather than a social thing of long time con attendees.
Attended the very well presented "An Intro To Vore" panel mostly because I'm curious about it.
Had to only briefly show at the Protogen and Sergal meets because they started at the same time at opposite hotels.
The Transformation Meet happened afterwards hosted by Cassidy.
And...that was it.
Saturday
Again, the late freaking starts to the day. Nothing opens until ten in the morning.
The con fed the Sponsors and above with Sponsor Brunch.
Eat food in an effort to make it to The Compu-Taur Lab just so I could find out from the panelists why its called that, and come to find out Rogue is a 'taur shapeshifter. It was a panel about retro tech otherwise that had no relationship to 'taurs despite its name.
Then catching a single shot of the Fursuit Photo since the parade was cancelled for some reason.
And then the highlight of the con, the Charity Poker Tournament. I got set as a dealer at one of the tables to run the event and even though I didn't make it far past the first break, I still had fun in it. I kept my nerves settled this time and the number of mistakes was minimal this time around, unlike Painted Desert where I was a dealer and got frazzled a lot of the times and just kept kicking myself for doing dumb shit and having to apologize for it. I stuck around the entire duration of the event to assist in it, even though it meant that I'd miss the M*cro Meet that occurred over it. Oh well.
Saturday ended with me retreating to my room again, since FurtherConfusion has basically become the furry kink capital with its "Night Market" that consumes the night and I'm not interested in it.
Sunday
Again another day that on paper is full of panels, and nothing that I desire to actually look into.
I actually just idled in my room well through the afternoon on my laptop just waiting until it was time to head out to the 'Taur Meet, and then doing the FC: Unleashed! and Closing Announcements panel.
For the 'Taur Meet, a fair number of furs showed up into the room early before the event was set to start but when the time came, Blazionite was nowhere to be found. So, I took the initiative and stepped up to the front of the room to kick off the panel and start discussions, because that's the great thing about the Meet And Greet format for a panel, no actual presentations need to be made and all that is needed is someone to anchor their name to the panel to make it be on the schedule so someones accountable for it.
The 'Taur Meet was another small group, set in an equally small room which was nice because it made the setting feel appropriate for the amount of furs that were in attendance. Once the ice was broken it sure seemed like the conversations got flowing pretty nicely between all involved. Blazionite I hope you didn't mind the assistance.
But that's about all I can say happened on Sunday.
Monday
Leave the con and go home. Maybe someday there'll be reason to stay for all five days at FC again, but right now I just don't see why this thing stays being five days long. It should be one day of setup on Thursday, three con days, and be done with it. Dragging it out with a smattering of events through Monday just to drag people along to the actual Closing Ceremonies is just boggling to me.
There were a few things about FC that were just silly.
Like requiring damned masks again, but only if you were in the dealers rooms.
Some unspecified "threat" which was revealed mere days before the con was to kick off that required the event to hire an abundance of rent-a-cop security services and set up screening checkpoints for entry into the convention center hall between the Marriott, Hilton, and the outside plaza, and also nixed the Fursuit Parade.
The screening points were fine, except I kept having to get stopped because my metal pencil case tin for my drafting pencils kept setting off the detectors. It wasn't my steel toe work boots, because whenever I'd go through the convention center without my backpack with me nothing would happen.
Honestly there'd be times where I'd have to transition between the end point hotels and would rather just go the fuck outside than traverse the convention center concourse.
Other things that FC did well this time around I'd say were the execution of the theme, and the introduction of a memorial table for furs who are sadly no longer with us.
Aside from the shenanigans that occurred at Opening Ceremony, down in the Lower Level of the convention center was a whole business center set up. Someone brought with and assembled two cubicles which had everything in there from a vintage computer showing a FurCon logo in ASCII text, a hacked printer you could send pictures to print in dot matrix, mail slots stuffed full of ties, Post-It notes with all sorts of scribbles, motivational posters, a working phone setup between the two cubicles, a mock setup of a break room with a microwave and other assorted office products, a giant reconstruction of Clippy the paperclip, even a gigantic stapler and a coffee cup for fursuiters to get trapped under.
On the wall was a poster of the world, but it had a bunch of scribbles and notes on it further fitting the theme announcing the "Further Confusion Annual Company Meeting" as a reason for the conventions existence.
On main stage, there were two banners hung over the stage to make it seem like you were attending a professional televised exposition conference from the "Animal Business Stage" and the other banner had mock meme company logos on it as if companies had paid for platinum, gold, silver and bronze tiers of sponsorships. Overall, yeah, I'd say for theme it was well realized.
The memorial table laid to the side wall in the Lower Level was a new addition, and an unfortunate one. So many friends gone and along with them their creativity.
Dogbomb.
Konaroo.
Dragoneer.
They all attended FurtherConfusion in spirit.
Non-furs just will not understand the deep bond this fandom has amongst itself.
Was it just me or did anyone else imagine the eight hotdog cart vendors lurking outside the convention center plaza just sounded like barking seagulls? Everytime they'd start catcalling "hotdoghotdoghotdawwwwg" the only thing that I could picture in my head was the seagull scene from Finding Nemo.
"Mine!""MinemineMINE!""Mine!""MineMineMINEMINEmineMineMine!"
Seriously, there's eight of them all serving the same thing, none different from the other, all begging in the same catcall manner.
Dates for next year FurtherConfusion have already been announced. No doubt, I'll probably go again despite the con being a decidedly mixed event for me this time. Next year though, I'm planning on hosting a Multifur Meet, for there seems to be some demand for such a thing and if so, then I can easily file that on the schedule.
Next furcon is going to be Golden State Fur Con.
Need to file panel requests to potentially host the poker tournament at that event, amongst anything else that I feel should be on the schedule.
--Mozdoc
PDFC 2025 Con Journal
Posted 8 months agoWell fans, I've wanted to write this journal sooner after coming home from Painted Desert Fur Con, but someone at the con or its surroundings managed to make me come down with an illness SO HARD that for two and a half days this week it felt like I had to put conscious deliberate effort behind all my movements on top of not being able to sleep at all and actually made me schedule a doctors appointment because I honestly did not know what was wrong.
This is no easy feat; I do not go down easy when it comes to any illnesses, as more often than not I'll muster the fortitude to power through whatever is trying to keep me down and carry on, so for something to just take me out has to land a ferocious blow.
Monday January sixth after coming back I made macaroni and cheese and used some portion of milk which was slight past the expiration date but a spoon test hinted it still tasted fine so I proceeded, but by Tuesday afternoon at work I was feeling off and maybe dreading my previous days choice and thinking I'd given myself a minor case of food poisoning.
Off in the way that I was finishing out my shift feeling like time was dragging by because I could just feel myself deteriorating in spirit and I just wanted to go home.
And I made it home. My thought was that I'd just chill in my room watching gaming streams and last the night, and my body was like "you have thirty minutes, and you're going to bed with a pounding headache and raging fever". Damn I was under the blankets that it felt like they were heated I was so hot and my headache just made me not want to think about moving. Hours later, the headache and fever broke and I thought I was over it. Oh no.
Tuesday and Wednesday followed.
No hunger for food; just trying to eat breakfast I'd have to force myself to consume something, and for lunch the best I could do was eat a banana because anything else seemed a bad decision.
Sleeping under the blankets I'd feel too warm; shedding them I'd feel too cold.
I'd be at work or home in a room that was supposedly warm but yet I'm feeling cold squeezing my sweatshirt tight and hood over my face.
Changes in temperature would just send me shivering from indoors to outdoors.
Nose being a stupid snot factory so I'd be coughing because of that.
Unable to get any sleep at all because my brain would just not stop racing.
It was concerning enough that by Thursday afternoon I felt that something was seriously wrong and I'd need help with whatever this was. I just do not ever get sick like this.
Friday when the appointment was, well, my head was still a little off, but for the first time in half a week I actually felt like eating food again and my movements didn't need to be deliberately calculated. Seems the diagnosis was a common cold. Holy fuck if that's the case this was a particularly disgusting nasty virus to take me out like that.
I doubt that the slight expired milk had any play in it because discussing things with Strega Strega who I shared the con room with he fell ill with the exact same symptoms and time frame as I did when we got back and is making a similar recovery afterwards.
Phew. Well, now that's over what about the actual convention itself?
Painted Desert Fur Con was a definite mixed bag experience.
Never before have I had such a damn difficult time finding roommates for a con. Initially the room was to be three of us, but then WhiskeyFoxtrot had to back out. He'd have been the sole reason we'd have only three to the room so his absence meant I could fill two more spots.
And I put the call out.
And...no one came. Sure there were furs that answered and said they were interested, but the two available spots in my room went unfilled for the entire weekend.
I thought I'd secured two roomshares by the "luther" and "spark"? I honestly don't remember the second guys name so don't quote me on that because it doesn't ultimately matter. Spark was trying to go to the con on a negative budget with no job or anything to his name and ultimately saw reason and backed out but at the same time was such an autistic basketcase that removing him from the roomshare group made him freak the fuck out and he desperately wanted to be back in just to lurk even though he wouldn't be at the con. I swear I don't understand furs sometimes.
Luther messaged the first day of con saying he'd gotten sick and wouldn't be attending.
So suddenly its just me and Strega to the room. Again.
And then another fur Ruchiyoto messaged me Saturday asking if the room offer was still open. Yep, sure is, he'd like to join in after he gets off work at 3a Saturday morning.
And I did wake up at that ungodly hour and await messages that never came because even though having solid plans in place this fuck went home and fell asleep and never bothered to message me until later in the day to then say he wasn't going to come to the con.
I'm fucking sorry am I being trolled now or something? So in a move that's a first for me I closed down the roomshare Telegram chat early before the con even ended because there was zero point in keeping it open; no one's going to seek a con room for one night at the tail end of a tiny furcon.
Beyond that disappointment, the rest of the event seemed to go okay. I got two art pieces in my sketchbook from
otherwords OtherWords , I just haven't gotten around to scanning them yet because I've been sick the last three days. At this con I actually decided to host some panels; a Multifur Meet and a 'Taur Meet. The multifur meet was because in previous years at the con I've noticed quite a few fursonas and fursuits bearing multi- traits and so I figured I'd throw that onto the schedule and see if there was any active interest in it. Turns out, yes.
The panel was put into quite a huge room with theater seating which wasn't exactly ideal for a "meet and greet", and was hijacked by some friends Tabbicus Tabbicus and 
KartFox KartFox as they decided to sit at the front and command the microphones. The convention says that at some point there were thirty-ish attendees in here but I think more realistically I'd have counted seventeen.
The 'taur meet was met with similar attendance. Housed in a more appropriate room with round tables even with being the very last panel in the schedule there was still a welcome amount of thirteen attendees in there.
The convention seems to think that similar panels should be hosted again next year, so...know what? I'll keep that into consideration.
I'll just remember to file my panels earlier this time than waiting until the "late submission deadline" so they're actually given proper listing in the convention book and schedule.
I'd like to think that I made a positive difference in the outcome of Painted Desert Fur Con this time around, because without my two panels I believe the schedule would've been somewhat lackluster in content. For some reason there was no Fursuit Parade or Art Show room at this con this time around, and largely that was due to the shortage of con staffing, and maybe some behind-the-scenes bickering about certain staff members being relieved of positions.
Furs, I cannot stress this enough...step up to steer the ship that is your local cons because they do not operate on their own. If you've got a passion for some topic and think you can put together some content for it, host a panel for it.
My two panels may not have amounted to much in the rooms they were in, but just imagine hosting a house party and seventeen furs come and join you. That'd be a pretty decent event so don't feel like you have to fill a room to make an impression.
And quit letting stupid fucking furry politics creep into focus, if that's genuinely the reason that PDFC was understaffed as this year was. You'd think as a fandom we'd get over this by now.
--Mozdoc
This is no easy feat; I do not go down easy when it comes to any illnesses, as more often than not I'll muster the fortitude to power through whatever is trying to keep me down and carry on, so for something to just take me out has to land a ferocious blow.
Monday January sixth after coming back I made macaroni and cheese and used some portion of milk which was slight past the expiration date but a spoon test hinted it still tasted fine so I proceeded, but by Tuesday afternoon at work I was feeling off and maybe dreading my previous days choice and thinking I'd given myself a minor case of food poisoning.
Off in the way that I was finishing out my shift feeling like time was dragging by because I could just feel myself deteriorating in spirit and I just wanted to go home.
And I made it home. My thought was that I'd just chill in my room watching gaming streams and last the night, and my body was like "you have thirty minutes, and you're going to bed with a pounding headache and raging fever". Damn I was under the blankets that it felt like they were heated I was so hot and my headache just made me not want to think about moving. Hours later, the headache and fever broke and I thought I was over it. Oh no.
Tuesday and Wednesday followed.
No hunger for food; just trying to eat breakfast I'd have to force myself to consume something, and for lunch the best I could do was eat a banana because anything else seemed a bad decision.
Sleeping under the blankets I'd feel too warm; shedding them I'd feel too cold.
I'd be at work or home in a room that was supposedly warm but yet I'm feeling cold squeezing my sweatshirt tight and hood over my face.
Changes in temperature would just send me shivering from indoors to outdoors.
Nose being a stupid snot factory so I'd be coughing because of that.
Unable to get any sleep at all because my brain would just not stop racing.
It was concerning enough that by Thursday afternoon I felt that something was seriously wrong and I'd need help with whatever this was. I just do not ever get sick like this.
Friday when the appointment was, well, my head was still a little off, but for the first time in half a week I actually felt like eating food again and my movements didn't need to be deliberately calculated. Seems the diagnosis was a common cold. Holy fuck if that's the case this was a particularly disgusting nasty virus to take me out like that.
I doubt that the slight expired milk had any play in it because discussing things with
Strega Strega who I shared the con room with he fell ill with the exact same symptoms and time frame as I did when we got back and is making a similar recovery afterwards.Phew. Well, now that's over what about the actual convention itself?
Painted Desert Fur Con was a definite mixed bag experience.
Never before have I had such a damn difficult time finding roommates for a con. Initially the room was to be three of us, but then WhiskeyFoxtrot had to back out. He'd have been the sole reason we'd have only three to the room so his absence meant I could fill two more spots.
And I put the call out.
And...no one came. Sure there were furs that answered and said they were interested, but the two available spots in my room went unfilled for the entire weekend.
I thought I'd secured two roomshares by the "luther" and "spark"? I honestly don't remember the second guys name so don't quote me on that because it doesn't ultimately matter. Spark was trying to go to the con on a negative budget with no job or anything to his name and ultimately saw reason and backed out but at the same time was such an autistic basketcase that removing him from the roomshare group made him freak the fuck out and he desperately wanted to be back in just to lurk even though he wouldn't be at the con. I swear I don't understand furs sometimes.
Luther messaged the first day of con saying he'd gotten sick and wouldn't be attending.
So suddenly its just me and Strega to the room. Again.
And then another fur Ruchiyoto messaged me Saturday asking if the room offer was still open. Yep, sure is, he'd like to join in after he gets off work at 3a Saturday morning.
And I did wake up at that ungodly hour and await messages that never came because even though having solid plans in place this fuck went home and fell asleep and never bothered to message me until later in the day to then say he wasn't going to come to the con.
I'm fucking sorry am I being trolled now or something? So in a move that's a first for me I closed down the roomshare Telegram chat early before the con even ended because there was zero point in keeping it open; no one's going to seek a con room for one night at the tail end of a tiny furcon.
Beyond that disappointment, the rest of the event seemed to go okay. I got two art pieces in my sketchbook from
otherwords OtherWords , I just haven't gotten around to scanning them yet because I've been sick the last three days. At this con I actually decided to host some panels; a Multifur Meet and a 'Taur Meet. The multifur meet was because in previous years at the con I've noticed quite a few fursonas and fursuits bearing multi- traits and so I figured I'd throw that onto the schedule and see if there was any active interest in it. Turns out, yes.The panel was put into quite a huge room with theater seating which wasn't exactly ideal for a "meet and greet", and was hijacked by some friends
Tabbicus Tabbicus and 
KartFox KartFox as they decided to sit at the front and command the microphones. The convention says that at some point there were thirty-ish attendees in here but I think more realistically I'd have counted seventeen.The 'taur meet was met with similar attendance. Housed in a more appropriate room with round tables even with being the very last panel in the schedule there was still a welcome amount of thirteen attendees in there.
The convention seems to think that similar panels should be hosted again next year, so...know what? I'll keep that into consideration.
I'll just remember to file my panels earlier this time than waiting until the "late submission deadline" so they're actually given proper listing in the convention book and schedule.
I'd like to think that I made a positive difference in the outcome of Painted Desert Fur Con this time around, because without my two panels I believe the schedule would've been somewhat lackluster in content. For some reason there was no Fursuit Parade or Art Show room at this con this time around, and largely that was due to the shortage of con staffing, and maybe some behind-the-scenes bickering about certain staff members being relieved of positions.
Furs, I cannot stress this enough...step up to steer the ship that is your local cons because they do not operate on their own. If you've got a passion for some topic and think you can put together some content for it, host a panel for it.
My two panels may not have amounted to much in the rooms they were in, but just imagine hosting a house party and seventeen furs come and join you. That'd be a pretty decent event so don't feel like you have to fill a room to make an impression.
And quit letting stupid fucking furry politics creep into focus, if that's genuinely the reason that PDFC was understaffed as this year was. You'd think as a fandom we'd get over this by now.
--Mozdoc
In An Alternate Universe, I Start The Year Jobless
Posted 8 months agoEveryones doing it, filing a last journal reflecting on the year as it lapses into another.
Normally I don't do these types of things because I've got nothing to say about it.
I survive another year motherfuckers; I live.
This year, something feels off. This doesn't feel like the right time for a new year to start. In my head, Christmas feels like its still approaching with another two weeks on the horizon, and then the new year gets here afterwards. Largely I think that's due to my mental approach to and requirements from work. Scheduled to work? Go to work. Scheduled across a holiday? Go to work and earn doubletime pay for it.
So for most of everyone else, two thousand twenty-four is going to give rise to two thousand twenty-five tomorrow.
For me? Its Wednesday.
I'll wake up, make my breakfast, then get in my car, and off I drive.
It'll be a quiet day at work. I've engaged in the family tradition of years past where I procure donuts to snack on as I watch the Rose Parade on the TV in the morning, and chances are the phone won't ever ring, and no one from the air traffic room will come out and bother me for the whole ten hours of shift. I'll go home, and that'll be my "New Years", per say. Honestly pretty lackluster.
Really am breathing a sigh of relief here because I'm lucky as shit to even have a job right now. The title of this journal isn't a lie; for in an alternate universe I'm killing myself for losing my well paying federal job for a simple oversight fuckup that I never noticed on a Thursday and no one ever mentioned until I showed up to work again on Monday.
At work there's a system that collects radar data from the field, and processes it so the air traffic controllers can see the moving aircraft spots on their screens.
Every day, because no one trusts this stupid shit, four reports have to be generated from each redundant service side, you do another reporting thing from the security terminal, and then you sign off that you've done all these things and certify with your name on the fucking line that this system can perform its services.
Somehow apparently, despite falling into a very routine process over the last two years, I neglected to ever sign off any of these daily checks, even though I went to these consoles and did what I normally do. Had there been any incidents involving aircraft and an investigation were to have found the system was left uncertified, therefore untrustworthy, I'd have lost my job. Immediately. There's no second chance, no counseling, no retraining. I'm just done. And my fifty-thousand dollar per year job goes away.
Fortunately, the air space did not produce any incidents.
But in an alternate reality tangent to this one, I'd be entering the new year wondering what the fuck it is I'm going to do going forward because all my carefully laid plans just got destroyed, and there's no replacing the job I had just lost, ever.
On a brighter note, given all the art pieces that I've painstakingly organized and uploaded to the best of my abilities in order of acquiring them, plus delving into my own art, I feel that I've grown as an artist. Make no mistake, I'm still a shit artist. I draw too slow, I draw too infrequently to ever make tangible progress, I have no concept of anatomical skeletal structure beneath a subjects skin, and my art pieces never progress beyond pencil stages because committing to inking something just makes me shudder, and I'm not exactly keen on figuring out digital art despite having a medium size Wacom Bamboo Fun size tablet sitting here collecting dust.
Still, some of you think that my arts and ideas are actually worth something. Thank you for that. I never entered this fandom with a goal that my arts or ideas would appeal to anyone but myself and yet occasionally now at cons I'm met by furs that discovered weird kinks because of me or have wanted to meet me and chat. I still like being in furry, despite its obvious problems at times, for these experiences and meetings with other furs, other friends, and its especially cool to meet other furs from entirely different countries. Furry here in the US is wildly different than overseas.
It was during the last huge project of Sleepyhead's four page comic that I felt mentally like I'd made that jump of being able to turn on being an artist on a regular basis. I'd come home from work and feel the want to draw, and just set out my sketchbook and get to it. For as insanely labor intensive as Sleepyhead's comic looks like, it never felt like it was a chore to draw any of it, believe it or not, just the opposite. The repetition of multiple limbs again and again and again got progressively easier because I started just getting practiced to it, and there was also never any rushing stress to finish it to a deadline. I'd just draw until I was content with progress, put it away, and unwind during the night.
That type of thing had never happened before, and it felt kind of good. Hopefully I can capture that desire in any future endeavors I attempt.
Going into next year I will be saying goodbye to Ixion, my trusty Windows7 desktop that I built what must be thirteen or fourteen years ago at this point. Its finally really hitting the limits of longevity and shit is just refusing to work on it anymore. Windows7 is obsolete. Discord refuses to fucking be installed on it anymore when I uninstalled it troubleshooting things so now I have to use its website interface. Dropbox is saying it'll stop working. Sometimes the graphics card will completely lose its shit when playing streams full screen and hard freeze the system but it happens so infrequently that I honestly don't know what it could be. Some games on Steam just can't run given the hardware I have.
I never had the financial opportunity to ever get hardware parts in the past. House renovation loans; the crypto shit that shot all prices to the moon; and a mentality of just saying "eh, its good enough, why bother?" until here I am where I am and the whole system just needs to be rebuilt new again.
I shopped for and purchased everything I needed to do so back in August. But then, you know...running poker tournaments at some fur cons and traveling to cons, plus the immense task of scanning in my sketchbooks and posting art pieces before dicking with my system pushed it ever further back because the last thing I wanted was to find out nothing would carry over to Windows10 and then that task cannot complete.
But I think here, in the distant two weeks once Painted Desert and Further Confusion furcons have passed, thats when there's a significant break that I could get that done.
Financially speaking, two thousand twenty-five is shaping up to be an absolute banger of a year. I think, if I play my cards right in it, come April or May one of my two remaining house loans could stand to be paid off in full and gotten rid of, and that will be a difficult thing to swallow when it happens, but the release of a debt will be so worth it and I've been waiting for this for about five years now it seems.
A friend of mine is thinking about surrendering a Cintiq22 drawing tablet and I've been feeling the want to purchase it because of the want to try out digital arts. The new system should be able to handle this but is it something that's worth delving into?
Also, gaming. The new system will have a 3060 graphics card. More than adequate to handle whatever I want to do. I've been far out of the gaming scene for many years but maybe this would be an opportunity to try and get back into that if I could.
Anyway, that's about all that I can think of.
Please me, don't fuck up anything next year...
--Mozdoc
Normally I don't do these types of things because I've got nothing to say about it.
I survive another year motherfuckers; I live.
This year, something feels off. This doesn't feel like the right time for a new year to start. In my head, Christmas feels like its still approaching with another two weeks on the horizon, and then the new year gets here afterwards. Largely I think that's due to my mental approach to and requirements from work. Scheduled to work? Go to work. Scheduled across a holiday? Go to work and earn doubletime pay for it.
So for most of everyone else, two thousand twenty-four is going to give rise to two thousand twenty-five tomorrow.
For me? Its Wednesday.
I'll wake up, make my breakfast, then get in my car, and off I drive.
It'll be a quiet day at work. I've engaged in the family tradition of years past where I procure donuts to snack on as I watch the Rose Parade on the TV in the morning, and chances are the phone won't ever ring, and no one from the air traffic room will come out and bother me for the whole ten hours of shift. I'll go home, and that'll be my "New Years", per say. Honestly pretty lackluster.
Really am breathing a sigh of relief here because I'm lucky as shit to even have a job right now. The title of this journal isn't a lie; for in an alternate universe I'm killing myself for losing my well paying federal job for a simple oversight fuckup that I never noticed on a Thursday and no one ever mentioned until I showed up to work again on Monday.
At work there's a system that collects radar data from the field, and processes it so the air traffic controllers can see the moving aircraft spots on their screens.
Every day, because no one trusts this stupid shit, four reports have to be generated from each redundant service side, you do another reporting thing from the security terminal, and then you sign off that you've done all these things and certify with your name on the fucking line that this system can perform its services.
Somehow apparently, despite falling into a very routine process over the last two years, I neglected to ever sign off any of these daily checks, even though I went to these consoles and did what I normally do. Had there been any incidents involving aircraft and an investigation were to have found the system was left uncertified, therefore untrustworthy, I'd have lost my job. Immediately. There's no second chance, no counseling, no retraining. I'm just done. And my fifty-thousand dollar per year job goes away.
Fortunately, the air space did not produce any incidents.
But in an alternate reality tangent to this one, I'd be entering the new year wondering what the fuck it is I'm going to do going forward because all my carefully laid plans just got destroyed, and there's no replacing the job I had just lost, ever.
On a brighter note, given all the art pieces that I've painstakingly organized and uploaded to the best of my abilities in order of acquiring them, plus delving into my own art, I feel that I've grown as an artist. Make no mistake, I'm still a shit artist. I draw too slow, I draw too infrequently to ever make tangible progress, I have no concept of anatomical skeletal structure beneath a subjects skin, and my art pieces never progress beyond pencil stages because committing to inking something just makes me shudder, and I'm not exactly keen on figuring out digital art despite having a medium size Wacom Bamboo Fun size tablet sitting here collecting dust.
Still, some of you think that my arts and ideas are actually worth something. Thank you for that. I never entered this fandom with a goal that my arts or ideas would appeal to anyone but myself and yet occasionally now at cons I'm met by furs that discovered weird kinks because of me or have wanted to meet me and chat. I still like being in furry, despite its obvious problems at times, for these experiences and meetings with other furs, other friends, and its especially cool to meet other furs from entirely different countries. Furry here in the US is wildly different than overseas.
It was during the last huge project of Sleepyhead's four page comic that I felt mentally like I'd made that jump of being able to turn on being an artist on a regular basis. I'd come home from work and feel the want to draw, and just set out my sketchbook and get to it. For as insanely labor intensive as Sleepyhead's comic looks like, it never felt like it was a chore to draw any of it, believe it or not, just the opposite. The repetition of multiple limbs again and again and again got progressively easier because I started just getting practiced to it, and there was also never any rushing stress to finish it to a deadline. I'd just draw until I was content with progress, put it away, and unwind during the night.
That type of thing had never happened before, and it felt kind of good. Hopefully I can capture that desire in any future endeavors I attempt.
Going into next year I will be saying goodbye to Ixion, my trusty Windows7 desktop that I built what must be thirteen or fourteen years ago at this point. Its finally really hitting the limits of longevity and shit is just refusing to work on it anymore. Windows7 is obsolete. Discord refuses to fucking be installed on it anymore when I uninstalled it troubleshooting things so now I have to use its website interface. Dropbox is saying it'll stop working. Sometimes the graphics card will completely lose its shit when playing streams full screen and hard freeze the system but it happens so infrequently that I honestly don't know what it could be. Some games on Steam just can't run given the hardware I have.
I never had the financial opportunity to ever get hardware parts in the past. House renovation loans; the crypto shit that shot all prices to the moon; and a mentality of just saying "eh, its good enough, why bother?" until here I am where I am and the whole system just needs to be rebuilt new again.
I shopped for and purchased everything I needed to do so back in August. But then, you know...running poker tournaments at some fur cons and traveling to cons, plus the immense task of scanning in my sketchbooks and posting art pieces before dicking with my system pushed it ever further back because the last thing I wanted was to find out nothing would carry over to Windows10 and then that task cannot complete.
But I think here, in the distant two weeks once Painted Desert and Further Confusion furcons have passed, thats when there's a significant break that I could get that done.
Financially speaking, two thousand twenty-five is shaping up to be an absolute banger of a year. I think, if I play my cards right in it, come April or May one of my two remaining house loans could stand to be paid off in full and gotten rid of, and that will be a difficult thing to swallow when it happens, but the release of a debt will be so worth it and I've been waiting for this for about five years now it seems.
A friend of mine is thinking about surrendering a Cintiq22 drawing tablet and I've been feeling the want to purchase it because of the want to try out digital arts. The new system should be able to handle this but is it something that's worth delving into?
Also, gaming. The new system will have a 3060 graphics card. More than adequate to handle whatever I want to do. I've been far out of the gaming scene for many years but maybe this would be an opportunity to try and get back into that if I could.
Anyway, that's about all that I can think of.
Please me, don't fuck up anything next year...
--Mozdoc
Incoming Art Uploads
Posted 8 months agoMore art uploads are coming, this time from my own hand!
My time tonight December twenty-fourth was spent productively scanning in my own personal sketchbook which I haven't done since I started drawing in it, and the first art piece in it is from two years ago.
Not everything is in a "finished" state to where I can say its complete, so some of them will include a note that there stands a good chance that I could return to old arts and bring it up to a completed state later; but then again there's a fair bit of art pieces in here that I honestly can say I'm damned proud of for achieving and I cannot wait to share, and that's saying something considering what an abysmal piece of shit this sketchbook is.
What can I say, the sketchbook from a 'Five Below' is...well, what you get for five dollars in a sketchbook. Seemed like a good deal at the time so I went ahead and grabbed it, and I've really regretted this decision ever since but I'm also too stubborn to just throw it away for recycling and have come to see it as a challenge for what I can do with a lackluster media.
How best to describe this sketchbook?
The pages feel...felty? Like they're fuzzy instead of crisp and flat. You put your pencil onto the paper and start making your strokes and the pencil has to cut into the top fuzz layer to move around; if you decide you want to erase, the paper just refuses to release the graphite. My kneaded rubber eraser removes some of the mark, but not ALL of the mark if its excessively heavy. And from experience I know the use of kneaded rubber is very limited for you can only apply it so much before the ability to erase anything at all is gone.
So this sketchbook has really demanded a careful approach to make use of it.
Gentle faint pencil strokes with barely any pressure applied at all to allow for easy erasure over the course of the project, and gently having to sneak up on it waiting until the last minute to permanently make your lines indelible when you're absolutely happy with what you've done.
Its made me required to have a really solid idea of what it is I even want to make appear on the page, and by that extent exercising patience in the creation of an art tolerating and working with mistakes as they happen.
But ultimately the takeaway is, get your sketchbook and drawing supplies form somewhere other than a 'Five Below' store. Its not worth the five dollars you'll spend on it. Get an actual 'good' sketchbook from some art store.
Anyways; thirty-five pages, so two sessions of seventeen images at a time should do it.
--Mozdoc
My time tonight December twenty-fourth was spent productively scanning in my own personal sketchbook which I haven't done since I started drawing in it, and the first art piece in it is from two years ago.
Not everything is in a "finished" state to where I can say its complete, so some of them will include a note that there stands a good chance that I could return to old arts and bring it up to a completed state later; but then again there's a fair bit of art pieces in here that I honestly can say I'm damned proud of for achieving and I cannot wait to share, and that's saying something considering what an abysmal piece of shit this sketchbook is.
What can I say, the sketchbook from a 'Five Below' is...well, what you get for five dollars in a sketchbook. Seemed like a good deal at the time so I went ahead and grabbed it, and I've really regretted this decision ever since but I'm also too stubborn to just throw it away for recycling and have come to see it as a challenge for what I can do with a lackluster media.
How best to describe this sketchbook?
The pages feel...felty? Like they're fuzzy instead of crisp and flat. You put your pencil onto the paper and start making your strokes and the pencil has to cut into the top fuzz layer to move around; if you decide you want to erase, the paper just refuses to release the graphite. My kneaded rubber eraser removes some of the mark, but not ALL of the mark if its excessively heavy. And from experience I know the use of kneaded rubber is very limited for you can only apply it so much before the ability to erase anything at all is gone.
So this sketchbook has really demanded a careful approach to make use of it.
Gentle faint pencil strokes with barely any pressure applied at all to allow for easy erasure over the course of the project, and gently having to sneak up on it waiting until the last minute to permanently make your lines indelible when you're absolutely happy with what you've done.
Its made me required to have a really solid idea of what it is I even want to make appear on the page, and by that extent exercising patience in the creation of an art tolerating and working with mistakes as they happen.
But ultimately the takeaway is, get your sketchbook and drawing supplies form somewhere other than a 'Five Below' store. Its not worth the five dollars you'll spend on it. Get an actual 'good' sketchbook from some art store.
Anyways; thirty-five pages, so two sessions of seventeen images at a time should do it.
--Mozdoc
Bound For Home - Part Two
Posted 8 months agoNo furry content here.
Midwest FurFest is done, and from here on its all non-furry stuff, a vacation extension visiting my family in Kentucky for nine days.
December Ninth To Nineteenth: Kentucky Is A Magical State
-
It'd been two years since I last visited my parents at this house and it sure doesn't feel like it, probably because we talk on the phone together a lot so there's never a long period where we're out of touch.
I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a bit apprehensive about my visit though, because lately in the past couple of months my mother has become excessively "clingy" to me, the phone calls coming with her breaking down emotionally because she says she misses me and that she loves me and just wants to hear my voice because it cheers her up. I get it, I do, but to me it really feels like she's fixated on me and I don't want to be a focal point like that. And then spending nine days there, well...I'm not entirely sure what it is that I'm wandering into. It really feels like this visit isn't so much something I planned, but something that I'm sort of obligated to do.
The flight was interesting because you knew there were going to be furries on board departing immediately after the con, and sure enough that was the case. The baggage claim had one standing by holding his fursuit head in hand but I never approached to ask his name as he gathered up his bag and left.
And then I got picked up and it was the hour drive to Raywick where my parents live.
Now, I was told ahead of time that my mother had planned some surprises for me, but kept me in the dark as to what they were. All I knew is that immediately after my arrival on Monday, by Wednesday we were taking off and going somewhere else for a few nights elsewhere thanks to my stepdad being a disabled veteran and being able to stay for free in accommodations for two nights in any national park twice a year.
This was surely an interesting prospect, because I only brought one large bag, so then further breaking down my belongings into a grocery bag with just enough to last two nights was...sure different!
So with only a day and a half at most of acclimating to their house, Wednesday we packed up for a roadtrip further south to Corbin close to the border with Tennessee, and heading into the mountains; the destination was the Cumberland Falls State Park and the cabins, which we had booked a two bed, two bath cabin for two nights.
December Eleventh To Thirteenth: Cumberland Falls
-
I really did fall in love with this place the moment we stepped inside.
Turns out by sheer chance we got cabin 508, which was one of two that were decorated for Christmas with an artificial tree, string lights, and little candle lights in each of the windows.
Man, you could live here for easily five days and never be cramped for space. Upon entry you're in the common room which has a working fireplace, seating, and is open into the dining seating area. Further in is the dining set, and if you turned right you'd be heading into a completely stocked kitchen with all the utensils you'd need to cook things in the cabin. Behind the dining set is a back door to a porch looking out into the woods.
From the entry door, turn left and you'd be heading towards the first bathroom, with a two bed room beside it.
From the entry door, turn right and cross the common room and you'd be entering the other two bed room, and having to turn into its adjoining bathroom.
The size of this cabin is just comfortable, all around. Every room is just generously sized, you're not feeling like you're closed in for space, the wooden paneling on the wall is warming, you have your own showers and toilets instead of a common community facility. Just...wow this was such a cozy place to be and just...melt away hours. You even have wireless internet access provided for free so you aren't even isolated if you don't want to be.
We didn't necessarily bring any food stock to cook in the cabin, we'd planned on eating breakfast at the lodge up the road for the two mornings we'd be there, and head elsewhere for food out of the park. And driving down into Corbin, it started to snow, not enough to really stick or accumulate, but still, it was flurries falling from the sky as we ducked into an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet, which was damned delicious.
Nature had a welcoming surprise on the return trip up the mountain for while it had stopped snowing down in the valley, it was still flurrying up in the higher elevations and it definitely made for a slow trip back to the cabin where it just made the atmosphere just all that much more special that we were out here, as a family, in a cabin decorated for Christmas as the snow was coming down.
Truly, this is something I won't be forgetting soon.
The following day had us starting with breakfast in the lodge, which is included for free with your stay and is advertised as a "continental breakfast". Now that to me implies a few things that its going to be rather lackluster and just enough to get you by, but oh fuck no that wasn't the case with this place. You order whatever you wish from the menu, and not knowing anything I ordered a waffle stack, thinking it'd just be one waffle. No, it was TWO waffles as big as dinner plates, along with the breakfast bowl that I'd ordered, and I wouldn't need to eat anything the rest of the freaking day.
Being in the off season of winter up here, it was also extremely weird because the dining room was just empty. Both mornings we stopped in for breakfast the place is deserted with no one else in this giant room.
Driving back into Corbin, my parents had a few surprises of things to see here. One of which was the very first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant which is still an operating place as well as an attached museum dedicated to its founder. I'm not really all that invested in Kentucky Fried Chicken, and hell, even though I'm in the state of Kentucky you just kind of forget that its the state where its named after, but it sure was interesting being in the original place where it began.
Then the second surprise.
My parents know that I like railroad artifacts, so when we turned down Depot Road and started passing an antique parked steam engine and a disused depot building that's honestly where I thought we were headed. Okay, not...genuinely a surprise but I'd take it. Only to then be really surprised when we went two small blocks away to visit the Pinball Museum Of Corbin.
Oh hell yes I can absolutely get behind this.
The first thing that I see when in the door is a machine that made my eyes pop wide, a SlugFest machine. Dude I remember this machine from the bowling alley arcade when it had a baseball card dispenser attached to it so depending on what you scored it'd give you baseball cards! I loved playing this thing back then!
But of course the highlight was the vast array of pins on one side of the room. Pay one admission, and everything is set to freeplay for as long as you can take it.
And my god man, let me tell you three hours just flew by slamming my hands against the sides of cabinets and relishing in the sounds that these machines make. Even got my sister hooked on a reproduction of Cactus Canyon so she was always gravitating towards that to give it another spin.
I took two fantastic memories away from this place.
I put easily a half dozen games on Jurassic Park attempting to get CHAOS Multiball and I finally got it. I was popping off and going ham on the thing with its four ball multiball and by the time I'd finished with it, I got to etch my name in the leaderboard as the CHAOS Multiball Champion of that machine. And then on Cactus Canyon I dropped the four Bad Guy popup targets to trigger Showdown Multiball and started slamming Bad Guys like crazy. I got my initials on this machine as the Showdown Champion for scoring sixteen targets.
It was a pizza dinner at Mellow Mushroom in Somerset, back to the cabin, and then Friday came all too soon to pack up and leave out of the cabin. Another breakfast at the lodge, and then down the road to actually see these Cumberland Falls that the place is named after.
The magic of the Cumberland Falls is that they form a horseshoe shape like Niagara does, though not as high. The Cumberland River going over the falls to create a sheer sheet of water that under certain circumstances at night creates a Moonbow and these are the only falls in the hemisphere that do this. The viewing platforms down the riverbank offer terrific views, and its just awe-inspiring watching this natural force at work as water flows through a gorge of sheer vertical rock walls downstream.
-
I'd have a bit of a depressive episode on Friday night finding out that through all this joy and stuff that we'd just been doing, my sister had lost her job as a nurse just one week before I'd arrive.
No one ever had told me about this. The only hint that I had gotten was that she was becoming more and more disinterested in being a nurse profession, and then over the phone her job told her that she was no longer employed.
Really, I don't know what to say to that to follow it up. My sister was the only employed member of my family. My stepdad is military disabled. My mother is retired. I really honestly don't know how things are going to work over there but I sure hope they hold it together or she figures out something... :/
-
By now, my trip is drawing to a close.
In the peace and tranquility of Kentucky I actually pulled out my sketchbook and worked on a furry drawing as a piece of giftart for
gigian654321 Gigian and his character "Bless", which can be seen here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/57764863/ .
There's a lot that I love about this character. I'm a sucker for Chimeras, I love 'taurs, I love multiple heads, and the whole characters appearance gave me a hint of something like religious corruption of a sermon leader given that the upper half is an anthro goat, there's those tapestries draped between her lions heads, she's a fire mage, and her name is 'Bless'.
And so, over the course of three days, I got to work drawing her, and damn do I have to say I'm exceptionally pleased with the end result. Had to ask Gigian for details on what exactly the Naga snaketails looked like because they're annoyingly hidden from view behind the wings, and in my art I purposely posed everything in such a way that they're fully visible and all traits of this lovely creature are visible.
Sharing it with Gigian, it had the desired effect; he absolutely loved it, its the first giftart of her and that seriously makes me happy that I've gotten to be enough of an artist to do stuff like that for some furs.
After the vacation to Cumberland Falls, things sort of...changed pace. I really started to get restless because looking everywhere around my parents property there's just...stuff. Stuff left half finished or put away in the front yard. Shit just littering the front porch. Boxes left unpacked. I don't live here, but it frustrates me seeing my parents tolerating it. My stepdad is sort of lazy and leaves messes everywhere behind him. My mothers frustrated with it but has given up cleaning up after him and doesn't have the motivation to self start on any projects by herself, and my sister when she did have a job was working frequently and then just coming home and being too weary to consider starting on anything in the house either.
Alright. This is where I excel. I'm in a field of work that demands that shit get fixed if its broken whether you're in the mood for it or not, so I start prodding the problems and saying "Well what's stopping us from just getting it done? If you don't want to do it, I'll do it." and then in just minutes of tidying up things have improved.
And before you know it this room they call the foyer that was cluttered with boxes has the boxes unpacked, allowing the picture frames to get moved around and the room vacuumed. Tools and objects that should be in the shop are boxed and consolidated in some of the emptied boxes we just created.
My stepdad gets finally motivated to address my sisters want of swapping out the medicine cabinet and light fixture in her bathroom.
Hardware kits get brought out and I'm helping affix shelves to the walls of my sisters library so she can put knickknack objects on them. Punching hooks and nails into the walls so my mother can put those framed pictures up that have been laying around for months. Getting to a frame shop to replace glass in two frames.
Moving a wooden structure into the kitchen that's to be their bar for alcohol bottles, freeing up space where they've been stashed in the spice rack.
Mounting an awkward second shelf in a corner cabinet so they have an additional layer for pans.
Gluing spindles back into the chairs of a set that were popping loose.
Clearing off another table so it could be broken down and carried upstairs into the craft room.
Getting an unwanted low sitting cocktail table down from upstairs so it can be sold.
Hanging pictures for my sister in her library.
More shelves in my sisters room, mounting a hook rack to the wall, and mounting her TV to the wall for her gaming consoles.
My last two days at my parents place turned into an utterly wild frenzy of activity of just getting...shit...done. And it really did feel good doing it. Leaving my mark of positivity behind because my time in Kentucky very very rapidly came to an end.
I came into the state fretting my time there wanting it to be over as soon as possible, and I left thinking that my time there wasn't long enough after nine days.
-
December Nineteenth: Home
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My travel home was sort of similarly cursed.
Either the slow traffic on the road made the trip to the airport last longer; or we honestly really did leave too late for the journey; or my mother and sister really don't truly know how long it takes to make it to Louisville airport; or a combination of all three, but I missed my fucking flights.
First time in my god damn life I've just flat out missed my flights. I got to the airport too late and the flight had already closed.
I swear we left at 9:00a and they said it'd only take an hour to make it to the airport. Well, I rushed in at 10:50a for a flight that was about to leave at 11:05a and it wasn't happening.
So I had to be rebooked, and the next flight out to Los Angeles was at 2:00p. So I was in Kentucky for another three hours at least, and the second time around, there were very minimal tears shed about going our own ways since we'd already kind of done that the first time.
Really there were worse things that could've happened, but little did I know how this would fuck me over so bad in Los Angeles.
The flight to Dallas Fort Worth? Fine.
The flight to Los Angeles? Fine, special in fact. For some reason the plane was a monster, a huge Boeing 787 with three-by-three-by-three seating across. A plane normally used in international flights being used for a domestic and it was my first time ever being on one. The plane is just so huge that the takeoff doesn't ever feel like the pilot is putting any effort into the work, the plane just floats upwards and lofts into the sky.
Finally at Los Angeles because I missed my initial flights I also missed the shuttle bus home at 5:30p. I'd have to wait for the next one at 7:30p. Thinking about this now after the fact I should've poked my head out there and looked for the earlier bus because there could've been a chance I may have gotten it, I just didn't realize how colossally fucked traffic was around the airport. The time of seven-thirty came and went, and I'm still waiting. Eight-thirty now. Still no van. Finally phone call from the driver that she's here, but it'll "be a while" before she gets to me. Fuck dude, it wasn't until 9:20p at night I got picked up. The van didn't escape the airport until well past 10:00p, and all we had to do was get past three more terminals.
The driver said traffic was bad, but it wasn't until we got out of the airport that I saw HOW bad.
Century Boulevard in? Jammed.
Sepulveda Boulevard in? Jammed.
The upper deck departures? Jammed.
The lower deck arrivals? Jammed.
And none of it was moving, at all.
Once on the freeway, thing were fine, until we were off the freeway because of roadwork and it wasn't until well past 11:00p at this point I'm at the northern end of the shuttle route waiting for an Uber driver, of which there appeared to only be ONE person available and she's driving all the way from Rosamond to come get me.
And I finally finally finally come home at midnight with travels completed for both Midwest FurFest and Kentucky.
-
Going forward I need to scan in my seven art pieces in my sketchbooks from MFF. And begin work scanning in my own sketchbook. There's a lot of great arts in here that I really want to share.
--Mozdoc
Midwest FurFest is done, and from here on its all non-furry stuff, a vacation extension visiting my family in Kentucky for nine days.
December Ninth To Nineteenth: Kentucky Is A Magical State
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It'd been two years since I last visited my parents at this house and it sure doesn't feel like it, probably because we talk on the phone together a lot so there's never a long period where we're out of touch.
I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a bit apprehensive about my visit though, because lately in the past couple of months my mother has become excessively "clingy" to me, the phone calls coming with her breaking down emotionally because she says she misses me and that she loves me and just wants to hear my voice because it cheers her up. I get it, I do, but to me it really feels like she's fixated on me and I don't want to be a focal point like that. And then spending nine days there, well...I'm not entirely sure what it is that I'm wandering into. It really feels like this visit isn't so much something I planned, but something that I'm sort of obligated to do.
The flight was interesting because you knew there were going to be furries on board departing immediately after the con, and sure enough that was the case. The baggage claim had one standing by holding his fursuit head in hand but I never approached to ask his name as he gathered up his bag and left.
And then I got picked up and it was the hour drive to Raywick where my parents live.
Now, I was told ahead of time that my mother had planned some surprises for me, but kept me in the dark as to what they were. All I knew is that immediately after my arrival on Monday, by Wednesday we were taking off and going somewhere else for a few nights elsewhere thanks to my stepdad being a disabled veteran and being able to stay for free in accommodations for two nights in any national park twice a year.
This was surely an interesting prospect, because I only brought one large bag, so then further breaking down my belongings into a grocery bag with just enough to last two nights was...sure different!
So with only a day and a half at most of acclimating to their house, Wednesday we packed up for a roadtrip further south to Corbin close to the border with Tennessee, and heading into the mountains; the destination was the Cumberland Falls State Park and the cabins, which we had booked a two bed, two bath cabin for two nights.
December Eleventh To Thirteenth: Cumberland Falls
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I really did fall in love with this place the moment we stepped inside.
Turns out by sheer chance we got cabin 508, which was one of two that were decorated for Christmas with an artificial tree, string lights, and little candle lights in each of the windows.
Man, you could live here for easily five days and never be cramped for space. Upon entry you're in the common room which has a working fireplace, seating, and is open into the dining seating area. Further in is the dining set, and if you turned right you'd be heading into a completely stocked kitchen with all the utensils you'd need to cook things in the cabin. Behind the dining set is a back door to a porch looking out into the woods.
From the entry door, turn left and you'd be heading towards the first bathroom, with a two bed room beside it.
From the entry door, turn right and cross the common room and you'd be entering the other two bed room, and having to turn into its adjoining bathroom.
The size of this cabin is just comfortable, all around. Every room is just generously sized, you're not feeling like you're closed in for space, the wooden paneling on the wall is warming, you have your own showers and toilets instead of a common community facility. Just...wow this was such a cozy place to be and just...melt away hours. You even have wireless internet access provided for free so you aren't even isolated if you don't want to be.
We didn't necessarily bring any food stock to cook in the cabin, we'd planned on eating breakfast at the lodge up the road for the two mornings we'd be there, and head elsewhere for food out of the park. And driving down into Corbin, it started to snow, not enough to really stick or accumulate, but still, it was flurries falling from the sky as we ducked into an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet, which was damned delicious.
Nature had a welcoming surprise on the return trip up the mountain for while it had stopped snowing down in the valley, it was still flurrying up in the higher elevations and it definitely made for a slow trip back to the cabin where it just made the atmosphere just all that much more special that we were out here, as a family, in a cabin decorated for Christmas as the snow was coming down.
Truly, this is something I won't be forgetting soon.
The following day had us starting with breakfast in the lodge, which is included for free with your stay and is advertised as a "continental breakfast". Now that to me implies a few things that its going to be rather lackluster and just enough to get you by, but oh fuck no that wasn't the case with this place. You order whatever you wish from the menu, and not knowing anything I ordered a waffle stack, thinking it'd just be one waffle. No, it was TWO waffles as big as dinner plates, along with the breakfast bowl that I'd ordered, and I wouldn't need to eat anything the rest of the freaking day.
Being in the off season of winter up here, it was also extremely weird because the dining room was just empty. Both mornings we stopped in for breakfast the place is deserted with no one else in this giant room.
Driving back into Corbin, my parents had a few surprises of things to see here. One of which was the very first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant which is still an operating place as well as an attached museum dedicated to its founder. I'm not really all that invested in Kentucky Fried Chicken, and hell, even though I'm in the state of Kentucky you just kind of forget that its the state where its named after, but it sure was interesting being in the original place where it began.
Then the second surprise.
My parents know that I like railroad artifacts, so when we turned down Depot Road and started passing an antique parked steam engine and a disused depot building that's honestly where I thought we were headed. Okay, not...genuinely a surprise but I'd take it. Only to then be really surprised when we went two small blocks away to visit the Pinball Museum Of Corbin.
Oh hell yes I can absolutely get behind this.
The first thing that I see when in the door is a machine that made my eyes pop wide, a SlugFest machine. Dude I remember this machine from the bowling alley arcade when it had a baseball card dispenser attached to it so depending on what you scored it'd give you baseball cards! I loved playing this thing back then!
But of course the highlight was the vast array of pins on one side of the room. Pay one admission, and everything is set to freeplay for as long as you can take it.
And my god man, let me tell you three hours just flew by slamming my hands against the sides of cabinets and relishing in the sounds that these machines make. Even got my sister hooked on a reproduction of Cactus Canyon so she was always gravitating towards that to give it another spin.
I took two fantastic memories away from this place.
I put easily a half dozen games on Jurassic Park attempting to get CHAOS Multiball and I finally got it. I was popping off and going ham on the thing with its four ball multiball and by the time I'd finished with it, I got to etch my name in the leaderboard as the CHAOS Multiball Champion of that machine. And then on Cactus Canyon I dropped the four Bad Guy popup targets to trigger Showdown Multiball and started slamming Bad Guys like crazy. I got my initials on this machine as the Showdown Champion for scoring sixteen targets.
It was a pizza dinner at Mellow Mushroom in Somerset, back to the cabin, and then Friday came all too soon to pack up and leave out of the cabin. Another breakfast at the lodge, and then down the road to actually see these Cumberland Falls that the place is named after.
The magic of the Cumberland Falls is that they form a horseshoe shape like Niagara does, though not as high. The Cumberland River going over the falls to create a sheer sheet of water that under certain circumstances at night creates a Moonbow and these are the only falls in the hemisphere that do this. The viewing platforms down the riverbank offer terrific views, and its just awe-inspiring watching this natural force at work as water flows through a gorge of sheer vertical rock walls downstream.
-
I'd have a bit of a depressive episode on Friday night finding out that through all this joy and stuff that we'd just been doing, my sister had lost her job as a nurse just one week before I'd arrive.
No one ever had told me about this. The only hint that I had gotten was that she was becoming more and more disinterested in being a nurse profession, and then over the phone her job told her that she was no longer employed.
Really, I don't know what to say to that to follow it up. My sister was the only employed member of my family. My stepdad is military disabled. My mother is retired. I really honestly don't know how things are going to work over there but I sure hope they hold it together or she figures out something... :/
-
By now, my trip is drawing to a close.
In the peace and tranquility of Kentucky I actually pulled out my sketchbook and worked on a furry drawing as a piece of giftart for
gigian654321 Gigian and his character "Bless", which can be seen here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/57764863/ .There's a lot that I love about this character. I'm a sucker for Chimeras, I love 'taurs, I love multiple heads, and the whole characters appearance gave me a hint of something like religious corruption of a sermon leader given that the upper half is an anthro goat, there's those tapestries draped between her lions heads, she's a fire mage, and her name is 'Bless'.
And so, over the course of three days, I got to work drawing her, and damn do I have to say I'm exceptionally pleased with the end result. Had to ask Gigian for details on what exactly the Naga snaketails looked like because they're annoyingly hidden from view behind the wings, and in my art I purposely posed everything in such a way that they're fully visible and all traits of this lovely creature are visible.
Sharing it with Gigian, it had the desired effect; he absolutely loved it, its the first giftart of her and that seriously makes me happy that I've gotten to be enough of an artist to do stuff like that for some furs.
After the vacation to Cumberland Falls, things sort of...changed pace. I really started to get restless because looking everywhere around my parents property there's just...stuff. Stuff left half finished or put away in the front yard. Shit just littering the front porch. Boxes left unpacked. I don't live here, but it frustrates me seeing my parents tolerating it. My stepdad is sort of lazy and leaves messes everywhere behind him. My mothers frustrated with it but has given up cleaning up after him and doesn't have the motivation to self start on any projects by herself, and my sister when she did have a job was working frequently and then just coming home and being too weary to consider starting on anything in the house either.
Alright. This is where I excel. I'm in a field of work that demands that shit get fixed if its broken whether you're in the mood for it or not, so I start prodding the problems and saying "Well what's stopping us from just getting it done? If you don't want to do it, I'll do it." and then in just minutes of tidying up things have improved.
And before you know it this room they call the foyer that was cluttered with boxes has the boxes unpacked, allowing the picture frames to get moved around and the room vacuumed. Tools and objects that should be in the shop are boxed and consolidated in some of the emptied boxes we just created.
My stepdad gets finally motivated to address my sisters want of swapping out the medicine cabinet and light fixture in her bathroom.
Hardware kits get brought out and I'm helping affix shelves to the walls of my sisters library so she can put knickknack objects on them. Punching hooks and nails into the walls so my mother can put those framed pictures up that have been laying around for months. Getting to a frame shop to replace glass in two frames.
Moving a wooden structure into the kitchen that's to be their bar for alcohol bottles, freeing up space where they've been stashed in the spice rack.
Mounting an awkward second shelf in a corner cabinet so they have an additional layer for pans.
Gluing spindles back into the chairs of a set that were popping loose.
Clearing off another table so it could be broken down and carried upstairs into the craft room.
Getting an unwanted low sitting cocktail table down from upstairs so it can be sold.
Hanging pictures for my sister in her library.
More shelves in my sisters room, mounting a hook rack to the wall, and mounting her TV to the wall for her gaming consoles.
My last two days at my parents place turned into an utterly wild frenzy of activity of just getting...shit...done. And it really did feel good doing it. Leaving my mark of positivity behind because my time in Kentucky very very rapidly came to an end.
I came into the state fretting my time there wanting it to be over as soon as possible, and I left thinking that my time there wasn't long enough after nine days.
-
December Nineteenth: Home
-
My travel home was sort of similarly cursed.
Either the slow traffic on the road made the trip to the airport last longer; or we honestly really did leave too late for the journey; or my mother and sister really don't truly know how long it takes to make it to Louisville airport; or a combination of all three, but I missed my fucking flights.
First time in my god damn life I've just flat out missed my flights. I got to the airport too late and the flight had already closed.
I swear we left at 9:00a and they said it'd only take an hour to make it to the airport. Well, I rushed in at 10:50a for a flight that was about to leave at 11:05a and it wasn't happening.
So I had to be rebooked, and the next flight out to Los Angeles was at 2:00p. So I was in Kentucky for another three hours at least, and the second time around, there were very minimal tears shed about going our own ways since we'd already kind of done that the first time.
Really there were worse things that could've happened, but little did I know how this would fuck me over so bad in Los Angeles.
The flight to Dallas Fort Worth? Fine.
The flight to Los Angeles? Fine, special in fact. For some reason the plane was a monster, a huge Boeing 787 with three-by-three-by-three seating across. A plane normally used in international flights being used for a domestic and it was my first time ever being on one. The plane is just so huge that the takeoff doesn't ever feel like the pilot is putting any effort into the work, the plane just floats upwards and lofts into the sky.
Finally at Los Angeles because I missed my initial flights I also missed the shuttle bus home at 5:30p. I'd have to wait for the next one at 7:30p. Thinking about this now after the fact I should've poked my head out there and looked for the earlier bus because there could've been a chance I may have gotten it, I just didn't realize how colossally fucked traffic was around the airport. The time of seven-thirty came and went, and I'm still waiting. Eight-thirty now. Still no van. Finally phone call from the driver that she's here, but it'll "be a while" before she gets to me. Fuck dude, it wasn't until 9:20p at night I got picked up. The van didn't escape the airport until well past 10:00p, and all we had to do was get past three more terminals.
The driver said traffic was bad, but it wasn't until we got out of the airport that I saw HOW bad.
Century Boulevard in? Jammed.
Sepulveda Boulevard in? Jammed.
The upper deck departures? Jammed.
The lower deck arrivals? Jammed.
And none of it was moving, at all.
Once on the freeway, thing were fine, until we were off the freeway because of roadwork and it wasn't until well past 11:00p at this point I'm at the northern end of the shuttle route waiting for an Uber driver, of which there appeared to only be ONE person available and she's driving all the way from Rosamond to come get me.
And I finally finally finally come home at midnight with travels completed for both Midwest FurFest and Kentucky.
-
Going forward I need to scan in my seven art pieces in my sketchbooks from MFF. And begin work scanning in my own sketchbook. There's a lot of great arts in here that I really want to share.
--Mozdoc
Bound For MFF And Kentucky - Part One
Posted 8 months agoThis isn't going to be a short journal, but then again my trip to MFF was far from normal. Dear god man what a trip it was.
December Fifth: Bound For Chicago
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Started out great; Strega Strega picked me up for this one because of my plans after con it meant he'd be coming home on his own and I'd have different ways of making it home.
The trip to the Flyaway bus, fine.
The Flyaway trip from Van Nuys to LAX, fine.
We got there two hours before our flight which was to leave at 7:40a and we did this one specifically to have it coordinated that we'd be in Chicago and able to check in at the hotel ahead of our three roomshares that were driving in from elsewhere.
All should've been great! ...Except it wasn't.
On board the plane the pilot makes an announcement that the right engine won't fire as we're taxiing to a run-up area. He's trying to get it to spin over by using the left engine to induce draft into the right engine to make it spin in the hopes it'll fire. And I got to admit, I just kind of zoned out in the seat, shut my eyes, and waited for the flight to begin.
And then with the plane still jiggling around from the left engine working, the pilot comes back on and says he's unsuccessful in his attempts. Its now 8:17a. We've been on the freaking plane on the ground for near an hour already and the journey hasn't even begun.
And this is a first for me, we taxied back to the terminal and the maintenance team came onto the plane to diagnose the problem. And we remained there for another hour. I kid you not, its now close to 9:00a when the determination was made that this aircraft was not going to be making the trip, and the plane was offloaded of passengers back into the terminal.
And so...we wait.
My text messages start going off as American Airlines tries to keep this flight alive.
Leaving at 9:40a gate 42A; then 10:00a gate 42A; then 10:15a gate 42A; then corrected to 10:15a gate 48C; then 10:45a gate 48C; then 11:30a gate 48C; then 1:30p gate 48C...and then the flight was condemned. Now leaving at 6:30p gate 48C.
Fuck me man, we've been in the airport since 5a this morning and haven't even moved. There's no spare aircraft just sitting around that can readily be swapped in either and my plans of actually being there in Chicago for my roomshares is just blown completely out the window at this point. I'm contacting them on Telegram to exchange the reservation information, contacting the hotel to add one of them in by real name so they can check in so that their experience at the con can go off without a hitch until we actually get there, just completely stranded at this point.
Meanwhile, other scheduled flights to Chicago are happening around us. So when the flight was condemned to an eternity me and Strega took a chance to be put on standby for a flight that left at 11:01a and within stones throwing distance two doors away. Dude I've never had to be put on standby for a flight ever in my life, so that was a first actually seeing my name on the screen hoping to get on a plane if there was ample space. And somehow, there fucking was. Both me and Strega got on it, and with one hundred percent success this time, we were finally on our way to Chicago and MFF six hours after getting to the airport.
In the air; smooth sailing all the way to O'Hare.
And then...a text message upon landing.
My bag didn't make it with me on the flight. Strega's did, but not mine. I get to see baggage service to find out where the fuck it is.
So when the previous flight was condemned and I was put on a different flight, the ground crew was probably offloading the cargo from that plane, and dashing it into adjacent flights as they were closing the doors and taking off. So my bag was on its way, on a plane that was to arrive in one hour.
So here's where me and Strega got smart; we parted ways. Strega was to stay in O'Hare for my bag, while I'd jump ahead and get to the hotel to check in and take care of my damn roomshares for the con who are still waiting for me all this time because I found out none of them could check in as the hotel wants my specific credit card that I held the room with to charge it for check in.
And finally, I got to meet my three roomshares
RyRyFurGuy RyryFurGuy, 
FelixWildDog Felix, and 
ObsidianSkin Blake and give them peace of mind that I in fact did exist and they had a room to stay in.
Oh, and Strega? He finally rejoined the party two and some hours later. That flight my bag was on landed, but then it took an hour and a half for the cargo to be discharged onto the carousel. It was a good god damn thing we didn't stay together piddling time away at the airport.
Fuck me man, I've never had a travel day just go...rough like that. At this point, forget trying to even go to the con for badge pickup, its closed by now, but then again there's nothing that really takes presidence to do so it'd wait until tomorrow. At least we're here in Chicago.
December Sixth to Eighth: Midwest FurFest Happens
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Am going to have to look at the convention schedule as I write this because oh man, was there a lot to do, more than I thought really.
Whoever was in charge of scheduling and consolidating events to be in common areas, I fucking love you. The first day of MFF I never left the convention center building or even saw the Regency, not one trip across the Skybridge was made. I was just endlessly going back and forth from different meetups in the meeting rooms, then Dealers Room, then Artist Alley, all day and night.
Friday: 10:00a Registration; 10:30a Hybrids Meet; 1:00p Dealers Room; 4:00p Realistic Fursuits Meet; 6:00p VRChat Meet, accidentally; 6:30p M*cro Meet; 10:00p TFTuesday Podcast.
Now on paper that doesn't look like a lot, but fuck me man let me tell you that its way more than it seems. Registration first where I realized I'm a fucking moron and actually forgot to ever register for this con so had to do that in line to get my Sponsor badge. Then to an awesome meet and greet for Hybrids; then I was first in line for Dealers Room because of not having anything to really draw my attention in the schedule and quickly handing out two books and loads of cash in there; then figuring out where the hell Artist Alley was and giving out another book in there; by now needing to take a lunch break and chill in the room a bit; get into the Realistic Fursuits Meet where there's some impressive examples of artistry that goes into being a furry creature; distractedly wandered into the tail end of the VRChat where I met a handful of 'taur friends I wasn't expecting to see; then to the actual event I wanted to go to the M*cro Meet; and the day concludes with going out to dinner with a few macro friends at a Mexican place on the backside of the parking garage that I...honestly never knew existed until now because I thought it was just a dead end bleak concrete structure.
The last event I wasn't even going to go to initially, but since I happened to be close and I was getting notices on Bluesky that K-libra was going to be a cohost I figured, hell, why not?
Dude turns out this was soooooo worthwhile. I slinked into the theater and took a seat at the back to just kind of keep out of the way and towards the end of the hour a gentleman in a green jacket stepped up to the microphone and made his name known.
It was freaking
picklejuice Picklejuice! I've known this guys name in the transformation circles for a number of years, and now suddenly I'm just sitting in the same damn room with him. Of course I wandered over to say hi after that to make acquaintances because I wasn't expecting this at all. Not that I've ever really considered ourselves to be "friends", but in transformation art Picklejuice has just always been an enduring name, and we even did some art trades and work for each other a long long time ago when I had no idea what I was doing for art.
That really wrapped up the night and kicked off the con in a special way.
There were lots of furs met this day, artists and non artists, fursuiters and not, and an awesome feeling of being able to wander around and start up random conversations with furs. By far the most interesting was seeing a younger fursuiter whose mask was one face but split into two muzzles. That really captured my interest because I know a few furs who are really into that sort of thing so sharing a picture would really be neat. Come to find out her mother is wholly supportive of her craft and interest in the furry fandom, and has been a creative all her life because she made and crafted muppets in their home workshop. Dude, I cannot imagine how cool their house must be to walk into and seeing their work hanging on walls and being part of a supportive furry focused family like that.
I wish I could create a tag list here of who I met and stuff but man, without carrying a notepad with me there's just no way I'm even going to try and come up with it off top of my head.
Friday ended with me practically worn out and sore from all the walking, and there's still two days left.
A note about Friday...I'm sorry for screwing things up for MFF and what must've been some kind of carefully orchestrated thought process concerning the line queue for Dealers on opening day. Having not gotten to registration on Thursday, and not seeing Opening Ceremony as a worthwhile event to go to, meant that I just strolled on over to the corridor hallway where the queue line into Dealers has always begun, and I parked myself there; even was a sign saying "Friday Timed Entry" there so I figured I was good. And then more and more furs kept stacking up along the wall with me.
Uh...turns out the con had different plans and I'd just singlehandedly fucked up everything by generating a line where they weren't expecting because we weren't being queued up in the room behind Dealers Room for its opening time, no, we weren't using that room at all and instead lining up in the corridors directly off of the Dealers Room foyer at the top of the escalators.
Super Sponsors and Sponsors would have first dibs in, while Attendees would get handed a card saying to come back at a specific later time in the afternoon, which is what that sign "Friday Timed Entry" was hinting at, and the same system that Biggest Little Fur Con does.
Later on in Closing Ceremony the board members on stage mentioned "we're so good at creating lines we made some where they weren't expecting", and it probably has to do with me.
Hey, I've been going to this con for a number of years now, why would I think that they'd do anything different this year!? But even Artist Alley was in a different place now. Instead of being in the South Meeting Hall its now in Hall B downstairs right next to the registration room, which isn't something I ever expected either.
-
Schedule for Saturday: 9:30a Sponsor Brunch; 10:00a Dealers Room; 10:30a Hybrids Meet, yes another one for some reason; 12:00p Charity Poker Tournament; 2:30p Transformation Meet; 5:00p Taur Meet, off schedule; 5:30p Bimbo Meet And Slay, just briefly; 6:30p Demonic Creatures Meet; 8:30p Vore Meet.
Damn, Saturday is packed, right from the start. Good thing the Sponsor Brunch isn't anything really timed that you need to show up to it right when it starts because I woke up late and so tired from the previous day that I just didn't want to get up! Dealers wasn't exactly important to get in right at the crack of opening either as it was just sketchbook retrieval from Friday. This was the first day where I actually went into the Regency as well for any purpose and I think the heavy relocation of meet up events to the convention center shows because there wasn't the usual cluster of fursuiters lingering around the entry lobby like before. Previous years you had to wade through them at the front, but now its rather easy to just get in and out.
The only real disappointment of the day was my dismal performance in the poker tournament. I went in wanting to play but being conscious of the time until the Transformation Meet thinking that I'd be running through it or missing it, and yet I was taken out of the tournament thirty minutes after starting. Fuck me man that really kind of boggled me and I expect myself to do better than that. Oh well, I'll try again at Painted Desert, its no real great big loss.
I wandered into the Transformation Meet after it'd already gotten established and they handed out their cards of various themes, and a 'taur friend had created a "TAUR" interest, but yet it just seemed to be me and the creator who were there and that really disappoints me.
In fact that was sort of a regular thing that I began to notice as I'd run into a fair number of 'taurs or furs that have 'taur characters but never have any 'taur badges of themselves to be identified as a 'taur! Damn you guys are frustrating for that since the badge art is the main way of knowing these sorts of details.
The off schedule 'Taur Meet happened with a whole eleven of us showing up, which then led me to be at the Bimbo Meet ever so briefly to peek in and then leave since that's not entirely my thing but I was just curious anyway; and the Demonic Creatures Meet was full of all sorts of twisted horrors and the types of things that nightmares are made of, which is just super fun to see that creativity on display. Even met a fursuiter who was a three-eyed feline so that was a treat!
And finally the convention has figured out that the Vore Meet deserves a large empty room with only a scant arrangement of chairs as its a con within the con, and I looked around for some friends who are into that type of thing before calling it a night.
Fuck man this con is...just packed.
Sunday: 11:00 Comparative Anatomy In Transformation; 1:00p Transformation; 5:00p Closing Ceremony
Honestly, at this point I'm glad that Sunday had so little going on. On the plus side, I'd been going going going so much that by now I'm just not really sore anymore, I've transcended beyond that by now.
The highlight here of this day was the Comparative Anatomy panel. That guy as the host was well spoken and just the kind of furry you love to see in this fandom, obsessively focused on a singular topic to know it in minute details but on the outside you'd never actually realize that. The panel was fascinating and well put together examining ways to completely fuck with the anatomy of a transforming person so that what they were and what they're turning into looks right and its not just a human with wings stuck on or something like that.
The day really progressed along quickly.
For the first time in many many many conventions I actually had gathered up all my sketchbook and was actually taking them home instead of leaving one of them behind with an artist to do commissions in afterwards.
Its really disheartening how quick the magic fades when the convention ends; logistics moves in quick to shutter the Dealers Room, pack up all the materials and shutter the venue to where the last remaining trades of the con are in the basement level of the Regency.
It was only now during the con that I actually pulled out my sketchbook with the intent to actually draw on things, staking out a chair at the back room of a round table, but I just wasn't feeling it. The last three days had been spent just going from dawn to dusk with sleep in between so while I dragged the pencil around the paper a bit and showed off my work, nothing actually got accomplished.
Given that the mornings flight out would be here before we knew it with an early wake up time, me and Strega called it a night, and the con was complete.
It was successful, but still there were some furs that I know I never got an opportunity to see. Attendance registered at sixteen thousand eight hundred for the event.
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December Ninth: Bound For Kentucky
With a 5:50a wake up and our bags packed, we slipped out of the room leaving our three roommates to clear out on their own.
While me and Strega went to O'Hare together, our destinations were not the same.
Strega was to return home to California; while I'd wander away to another terminal for a flight southeast to Louisville.
Our two planes left at exactly the same time. Strega's at 9:49a, mine at 9:50a, and Chicago was left behind.
--Mozdoc
December Fifth: Bound For Chicago
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Started out great;
Strega Strega picked me up for this one because of my plans after con it meant he'd be coming home on his own and I'd have different ways of making it home.The trip to the Flyaway bus, fine.
The Flyaway trip from Van Nuys to LAX, fine.
We got there two hours before our flight which was to leave at 7:40a and we did this one specifically to have it coordinated that we'd be in Chicago and able to check in at the hotel ahead of our three roomshares that were driving in from elsewhere.
All should've been great! ...Except it wasn't.
On board the plane the pilot makes an announcement that the right engine won't fire as we're taxiing to a run-up area. He's trying to get it to spin over by using the left engine to induce draft into the right engine to make it spin in the hopes it'll fire. And I got to admit, I just kind of zoned out in the seat, shut my eyes, and waited for the flight to begin.
And then with the plane still jiggling around from the left engine working, the pilot comes back on and says he's unsuccessful in his attempts. Its now 8:17a. We've been on the freaking plane on the ground for near an hour already and the journey hasn't even begun.
And this is a first for me, we taxied back to the terminal and the maintenance team came onto the plane to diagnose the problem. And we remained there for another hour. I kid you not, its now close to 9:00a when the determination was made that this aircraft was not going to be making the trip, and the plane was offloaded of passengers back into the terminal.
And so...we wait.
My text messages start going off as American Airlines tries to keep this flight alive.
Leaving at 9:40a gate 42A; then 10:00a gate 42A; then 10:15a gate 42A; then corrected to 10:15a gate 48C; then 10:45a gate 48C; then 11:30a gate 48C; then 1:30p gate 48C...and then the flight was condemned. Now leaving at 6:30p gate 48C.
Fuck me man, we've been in the airport since 5a this morning and haven't even moved. There's no spare aircraft just sitting around that can readily be swapped in either and my plans of actually being there in Chicago for my roomshares is just blown completely out the window at this point. I'm contacting them on Telegram to exchange the reservation information, contacting the hotel to add one of them in by real name so they can check in so that their experience at the con can go off without a hitch until we actually get there, just completely stranded at this point.
Meanwhile, other scheduled flights to Chicago are happening around us. So when the flight was condemned to an eternity me and Strega took a chance to be put on standby for a flight that left at 11:01a and within stones throwing distance two doors away. Dude I've never had to be put on standby for a flight ever in my life, so that was a first actually seeing my name on the screen hoping to get on a plane if there was ample space. And somehow, there fucking was. Both me and Strega got on it, and with one hundred percent success this time, we were finally on our way to Chicago and MFF six hours after getting to the airport.
In the air; smooth sailing all the way to O'Hare.
And then...a text message upon landing.
My bag didn't make it with me on the flight. Strega's did, but not mine. I get to see baggage service to find out where the fuck it is.
So when the previous flight was condemned and I was put on a different flight, the ground crew was probably offloading the cargo from that plane, and dashing it into adjacent flights as they were closing the doors and taking off. So my bag was on its way, on a plane that was to arrive in one hour.
So here's where me and Strega got smart; we parted ways. Strega was to stay in O'Hare for my bag, while I'd jump ahead and get to the hotel to check in and take care of my damn roomshares for the con who are still waiting for me all this time because I found out none of them could check in as the hotel wants my specific credit card that I held the room with to charge it for check in.
And finally, I got to meet my three roomshares
RyRyFurGuy RyryFurGuy, 
FelixWildDog Felix, and 
ObsidianSkin Blake and give them peace of mind that I in fact did exist and they had a room to stay in.Oh, and Strega? He finally rejoined the party two and some hours later. That flight my bag was on landed, but then it took an hour and a half for the cargo to be discharged onto the carousel. It was a good god damn thing we didn't stay together piddling time away at the airport.
Fuck me man, I've never had a travel day just go...rough like that. At this point, forget trying to even go to the con for badge pickup, its closed by now, but then again there's nothing that really takes presidence to do so it'd wait until tomorrow. At least we're here in Chicago.
December Sixth to Eighth: Midwest FurFest Happens
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Am going to have to look at the convention schedule as I write this because oh man, was there a lot to do, more than I thought really.
Whoever was in charge of scheduling and consolidating events to be in common areas, I fucking love you. The first day of MFF I never left the convention center building or even saw the Regency, not one trip across the Skybridge was made. I was just endlessly going back and forth from different meetups in the meeting rooms, then Dealers Room, then Artist Alley, all day and night.
Friday: 10:00a Registration; 10:30a Hybrids Meet; 1:00p Dealers Room; 4:00p Realistic Fursuits Meet; 6:00p VRChat Meet, accidentally; 6:30p M*cro Meet; 10:00p TFTuesday Podcast.
Now on paper that doesn't look like a lot, but fuck me man let me tell you that its way more than it seems. Registration first where I realized I'm a fucking moron and actually forgot to ever register for this con so had to do that in line to get my Sponsor badge. Then to an awesome meet and greet for Hybrids; then I was first in line for Dealers Room because of not having anything to really draw my attention in the schedule and quickly handing out two books and loads of cash in there; then figuring out where the hell Artist Alley was and giving out another book in there; by now needing to take a lunch break and chill in the room a bit; get into the Realistic Fursuits Meet where there's some impressive examples of artistry that goes into being a furry creature; distractedly wandered into the tail end of the VRChat where I met a handful of 'taur friends I wasn't expecting to see; then to the actual event I wanted to go to the M*cro Meet; and the day concludes with going out to dinner with a few macro friends at a Mexican place on the backside of the parking garage that I...honestly never knew existed until now because I thought it was just a dead end bleak concrete structure.
The last event I wasn't even going to go to initially, but since I happened to be close and I was getting notices on Bluesky that K-libra was going to be a cohost I figured, hell, why not?
Dude turns out this was soooooo worthwhile. I slinked into the theater and took a seat at the back to just kind of keep out of the way and towards the end of the hour a gentleman in a green jacket stepped up to the microphone and made his name known.
It was freaking
picklejuice Picklejuice! I've known this guys name in the transformation circles for a number of years, and now suddenly I'm just sitting in the same damn room with him. Of course I wandered over to say hi after that to make acquaintances because I wasn't expecting this at all. Not that I've ever really considered ourselves to be "friends", but in transformation art Picklejuice has just always been an enduring name, and we even did some art trades and work for each other a long long time ago when I had no idea what I was doing for art.That really wrapped up the night and kicked off the con in a special way.
There were lots of furs met this day, artists and non artists, fursuiters and not, and an awesome feeling of being able to wander around and start up random conversations with furs. By far the most interesting was seeing a younger fursuiter whose mask was one face but split into two muzzles. That really captured my interest because I know a few furs who are really into that sort of thing so sharing a picture would really be neat. Come to find out her mother is wholly supportive of her craft and interest in the furry fandom, and has been a creative all her life because she made and crafted muppets in their home workshop. Dude, I cannot imagine how cool their house must be to walk into and seeing their work hanging on walls and being part of a supportive furry focused family like that.
I wish I could create a tag list here of who I met and stuff but man, without carrying a notepad with me there's just no way I'm even going to try and come up with it off top of my head.
Friday ended with me practically worn out and sore from all the walking, and there's still two days left.
A note about Friday...I'm sorry for screwing things up for MFF and what must've been some kind of carefully orchestrated thought process concerning the line queue for Dealers on opening day. Having not gotten to registration on Thursday, and not seeing Opening Ceremony as a worthwhile event to go to, meant that I just strolled on over to the corridor hallway where the queue line into Dealers has always begun, and I parked myself there; even was a sign saying "Friday Timed Entry" there so I figured I was good. And then more and more furs kept stacking up along the wall with me.
Uh...turns out the con had different plans and I'd just singlehandedly fucked up everything by generating a line where they weren't expecting because we weren't being queued up in the room behind Dealers Room for its opening time, no, we weren't using that room at all and instead lining up in the corridors directly off of the Dealers Room foyer at the top of the escalators.
Super Sponsors and Sponsors would have first dibs in, while Attendees would get handed a card saying to come back at a specific later time in the afternoon, which is what that sign "Friday Timed Entry" was hinting at, and the same system that Biggest Little Fur Con does.
Later on in Closing Ceremony the board members on stage mentioned "we're so good at creating lines we made some where they weren't expecting", and it probably has to do with me.
Hey, I've been going to this con for a number of years now, why would I think that they'd do anything different this year!? But even Artist Alley was in a different place now. Instead of being in the South Meeting Hall its now in Hall B downstairs right next to the registration room, which isn't something I ever expected either.
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Schedule for Saturday: 9:30a Sponsor Brunch; 10:00a Dealers Room; 10:30a Hybrids Meet, yes another one for some reason; 12:00p Charity Poker Tournament; 2:30p Transformation Meet; 5:00p Taur Meet, off schedule; 5:30p Bimbo Meet And Slay, just briefly; 6:30p Demonic Creatures Meet; 8:30p Vore Meet.
Damn, Saturday is packed, right from the start. Good thing the Sponsor Brunch isn't anything really timed that you need to show up to it right when it starts because I woke up late and so tired from the previous day that I just didn't want to get up! Dealers wasn't exactly important to get in right at the crack of opening either as it was just sketchbook retrieval from Friday. This was the first day where I actually went into the Regency as well for any purpose and I think the heavy relocation of meet up events to the convention center shows because there wasn't the usual cluster of fursuiters lingering around the entry lobby like before. Previous years you had to wade through them at the front, but now its rather easy to just get in and out.
The only real disappointment of the day was my dismal performance in the poker tournament. I went in wanting to play but being conscious of the time until the Transformation Meet thinking that I'd be running through it or missing it, and yet I was taken out of the tournament thirty minutes after starting. Fuck me man that really kind of boggled me and I expect myself to do better than that. Oh well, I'll try again at Painted Desert, its no real great big loss.
I wandered into the Transformation Meet after it'd already gotten established and they handed out their cards of various themes, and a 'taur friend had created a "TAUR" interest, but yet it just seemed to be me and the creator who were there and that really disappoints me.
In fact that was sort of a regular thing that I began to notice as I'd run into a fair number of 'taurs or furs that have 'taur characters but never have any 'taur badges of themselves to be identified as a 'taur! Damn you guys are frustrating for that since the badge art is the main way of knowing these sorts of details.
The off schedule 'Taur Meet happened with a whole eleven of us showing up, which then led me to be at the Bimbo Meet ever so briefly to peek in and then leave since that's not entirely my thing but I was just curious anyway; and the Demonic Creatures Meet was full of all sorts of twisted horrors and the types of things that nightmares are made of, which is just super fun to see that creativity on display. Even met a fursuiter who was a three-eyed feline so that was a treat!
And finally the convention has figured out that the Vore Meet deserves a large empty room with only a scant arrangement of chairs as its a con within the con, and I looked around for some friends who are into that type of thing before calling it a night.
Fuck man this con is...just packed.
Sunday: 11:00 Comparative Anatomy In Transformation; 1:00p Transformation; 5:00p Closing Ceremony
Honestly, at this point I'm glad that Sunday had so little going on. On the plus side, I'd been going going going so much that by now I'm just not really sore anymore, I've transcended beyond that by now.
The highlight here of this day was the Comparative Anatomy panel. That guy as the host was well spoken and just the kind of furry you love to see in this fandom, obsessively focused on a singular topic to know it in minute details but on the outside you'd never actually realize that. The panel was fascinating and well put together examining ways to completely fuck with the anatomy of a transforming person so that what they were and what they're turning into looks right and its not just a human with wings stuck on or something like that.
The day really progressed along quickly.
For the first time in many many many conventions I actually had gathered up all my sketchbook and was actually taking them home instead of leaving one of them behind with an artist to do commissions in afterwards.
Its really disheartening how quick the magic fades when the convention ends; logistics moves in quick to shutter the Dealers Room, pack up all the materials and shutter the venue to where the last remaining trades of the con are in the basement level of the Regency.
It was only now during the con that I actually pulled out my sketchbook with the intent to actually draw on things, staking out a chair at the back room of a round table, but I just wasn't feeling it. The last three days had been spent just going from dawn to dusk with sleep in between so while I dragged the pencil around the paper a bit and showed off my work, nothing actually got accomplished.
Given that the mornings flight out would be here before we knew it with an early wake up time, me and Strega called it a night, and the con was complete.
It was successful, but still there were some furs that I know I never got an opportunity to see. Attendance registered at sixteen thousand eight hundred for the event.
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December Ninth: Bound For Kentucky
With a 5:50a wake up and our bags packed, we slipped out of the room leaving our three roommates to clear out on their own.
While me and Strega went to O'Hare together, our destinations were not the same.
Strega was to return home to California; while I'd wander away to another terminal for a flight southeast to Louisville.
Our two planes left at exactly the same time. Strega's at 9:49a, mine at 9:50a, and Chicago was left behind.
--Mozdoc
"Red One"
Posted 9 months agoSo its been six days since the end of Midwest Fur Fest and I'm still not home from con. I've instead detoured southeast after con to Kentucky to be with my family for nine days before the holidays.
In the meantime that I've been here my mother and sister wanted to see a film called "Red One". I really don't see many films in theaters anymore but I tagged along since I'm here on vacation so I might as well do something. You know what; its perfectly fine for a movie. I cheated and read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia before actually seeing it just to read what the beats were throughout the film because I just was curious, but even having some idea of where the film was heading there were times between major points that were little surprises and fun little creative sparks.
Its a film that just knows what it is. Creative and fun, fanciful enough to be fantasy, but still grounded to be of this reality in its dialog and actions. I went in with some idea of the story, but still low expectations, and at the end left feeling not displeased at all over what I'd seen. Perfectly okay for a Christmas film.
There's one particular scene that sort of stood out where there's a ton of extras on set in a castle tavern setting with an abundance of makeup effects, and if those masks are all indeed practical, they look like really good practical effects and I'm happy to see that versus taking the easy way out of shortcutting it just doing digital effects.
While I'm enjoying my time out here in Kentucky, I also am desiring to be home next Thursday.
--Mozdoc
In the meantime that I've been here my mother and sister wanted to see a film called "Red One". I really don't see many films in theaters anymore but I tagged along since I'm here on vacation so I might as well do something. You know what; its perfectly fine for a movie. I cheated and read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia before actually seeing it just to read what the beats were throughout the film because I just was curious, but even having some idea of where the film was heading there were times between major points that were little surprises and fun little creative sparks.
Its a film that just knows what it is. Creative and fun, fanciful enough to be fantasy, but still grounded to be of this reality in its dialog and actions. I went in with some idea of the story, but still low expectations, and at the end left feeling not displeased at all over what I'd seen. Perfectly okay for a Christmas film.
There's one particular scene that sort of stood out where there's a ton of extras on set in a castle tavern setting with an abundance of makeup effects, and if those masks are all indeed practical, they look like really good practical effects and I'm happy to see that versus taking the easy way out of shortcutting it just doing digital effects.
While I'm enjoying my time out here in Kentucky, I also am desiring to be home next Thursday.
--Mozdoc
A Bird Hit My Car
Posted 9 months agoI had something happen this morning that was completely random and scared the absolute shit out of me. By reading the journal entry you know what it is, but how it happened might not be obvious.
My path that I take to work uses only a few roads; "10th Street East" north to "Avenue E", and then head east to "120th Street East" and then I head to Edwards Air Force Base, but the journey on Avenue E is sixteen miles through flat rural dark desert farmland on a two lane road with weeds on the shoulders and there's no streetlights and minimal houses the whole way. My biggest fear and something that you grow alert to out here is coyotes and stray ground animals that could dart out of the tumbleweeds.
Making my turn after another car, I'm at speed sixty miles per hour and settled in for my trip to work.
And then a white blur of something gets hurled directly at my window from the side of the road right at head level, impacts the side of my car with a BLAM. Freaked me right the fuck out, I never saw anything in my field of vision to anticipate it. Fully expected some kind of a dent in my door, I found a weed free area to stop I used my cell phone flashlight and looked over the side of my car. I...didn't see anything. No dents, no apparent scuffs, no glass chips. What the fuck hit me!? Or did someone launch something at my car!?
Curiosity now peaked I turned back around and wondered if I could find whatever it was.
Yep, I found it by the roadside.
It was an OWL.
A fucking white feathered owl had torpedoed itself straight into the side of my car.
No, it didn't make it. Some coyote is going to have a fine meal out of it.
How utterly god damn random that was. Had I left any earlier or later this probably wouldn't have happened. This is now the third occurrence where I've hit birds with my vehicles, but I got to say, its the first time a bird has hit me and not the other way around.
I'm still kind of wondering as to what this owl was thinking or what triggered this behavior. Is it normal for owls to just kamikaze themselves into vehicles? Was it flying at me from an angle seeing some light on the dashboard thinking it was food? Later on in the afternoon I took a closer look at my car and the impact from the owl was squarely right at the seam between the front and rear door body panels underneath the B-pillar where there's a bird shaped torpedo disturbance in the dirt now, but that seems to be about it.
--Mozdoc
My path that I take to work uses only a few roads; "10th Street East" north to "Avenue E", and then head east to "120th Street East" and then I head to Edwards Air Force Base, but the journey on Avenue E is sixteen miles through flat rural dark desert farmland on a two lane road with weeds on the shoulders and there's no streetlights and minimal houses the whole way. My biggest fear and something that you grow alert to out here is coyotes and stray ground animals that could dart out of the tumbleweeds.
Making my turn after another car, I'm at speed sixty miles per hour and settled in for my trip to work.
And then a white blur of something gets hurled directly at my window from the side of the road right at head level, impacts the side of my car with a BLAM. Freaked me right the fuck out, I never saw anything in my field of vision to anticipate it. Fully expected some kind of a dent in my door, I found a weed free area to stop I used my cell phone flashlight and looked over the side of my car. I...didn't see anything. No dents, no apparent scuffs, no glass chips. What the fuck hit me!? Or did someone launch something at my car!?
Curiosity now peaked I turned back around and wondered if I could find whatever it was.
Yep, I found it by the roadside.
It was an OWL.
A fucking white feathered owl had torpedoed itself straight into the side of my car.
No, it didn't make it. Some coyote is going to have a fine meal out of it.
How utterly god damn random that was. Had I left any earlier or later this probably wouldn't have happened. This is now the third occurrence where I've hit birds with my vehicles, but I got to say, its the first time a bird has hit me and not the other way around.
I'm still kind of wondering as to what this owl was thinking or what triggered this behavior. Is it normal for owls to just kamikaze themselves into vehicles? Was it flying at me from an angle seeing some light on the dashboard thinking it was food? Later on in the afternoon I took a closer look at my car and the impact from the owl was squarely right at the seam between the front and rear door body panels underneath the B-pillar where there's a bird shaped torpedo disturbance in the dirt now, but that seems to be about it.
--Mozdoc
Artwork Question
Posted 10 months agoSo I've got to scan in my own personal art book; but how should I do it? Because though I move progressively through the pages, not every art piece gets finished. You know how it goes, you start on a sketch, lose interest, move along to something else and finish that and then before you know it this previous sketch has been left by the wayside.
I could scan in everything and post them in order so the book is in sequence, whatever the state of the pages is at that moment and then go back and update the file when I get back around to them, but by then no one will get a notification of "something new".
Or just only post the sketchbook pages as they're completed even though that'd make the gallery be out of sequential order.
What's more preferred?
I know I'm probably being stupid about this.
--Mozdoc
I could scan in everything and post them in order so the book is in sequence, whatever the state of the pages is at that moment and then go back and update the file when I get back around to them, but by then no one will get a notification of "something new".
Or just only post the sketchbook pages as they're completed even though that'd make the gallery be out of sequential order.
What's more preferred?
I know I'm probably being stupid about this.
--Mozdoc
Thermonuclear Devices For Everyone
Posted 10 months agoI've had a thought about this expedient number of furs leaving Twitter in exchange for Bluesky and I've had some inner revelations about it that are making me think it might not be as great an immediate decision as what it seemed at first. Sure, don't get me wrong, there'd be nothing more fulfilling than seeing that god damned bird site turn into a pile of rubble, and some fucktards one billion dollars or however much he spent on it be reduced to ashes as a worthless investment that he can no longer use. Imagine seeing one of the most prolific platforms of social engagement just...vaporizing. Gone. Something that you thought could never be taken down by its sheer scale just ceasing to exist.
Partly fueled by this is the change that blocking someone doesn't fully block them, your message can still be seen though not reacted to and honestly, after seeing how it works I don't see this as a huge problem as everyone imagined it would be. But no, people are so fucking sinister, so hostile, so fucking evil now that they've decided that when they want to block someone, that when they block them form everything, they want them EXCLUDED in every possible, imaginable, minuscule way. That blocking someone gives you NOTHING about the profile in question, to the point that it just doesn't exist.
And Bluesky does exactly that.
The thermonuclear option to just wipe anyone that you disagree with out of existence.
But not only that, free to make lists available to just hand out to where mass blocking of accounts at the users whims is possible.
Free and willingly able to be used by furries everywhere, whom, my fucking god that seems like a terrible mistake since this fandom seems driven by rash quick strike decisions at a moments notice rather than giving things some manner of thought.
You popufur enough to use your clout to completely fuck someone over? Subscribe to my list. Block these people because *I* said so.
Never met them or had any judgement about them at all? Doesn't matter, just block them. Because *I* said so with my list that I made to curate the fandom to how *I* want it to be.
This just makes me imagine that entry into this fandom through Bluesky is going to be based upon overwhelming control by people who are the most psychotic, ill-tempered, quick to push the nuclear button to stamp out anyone and anything that dare step out of line and express the slightest remorse or disagreement with the thought of furry as a whole, but on *their* terms. Building it as if its some great utopia where everyone is the kinkiest and accepting motherfucker around, and surrounded by like minded individuals.
Buddy. Oh ho ho...if you believe that furry is free from disagreements, well do I have a bridge to sell you. Furry is NOT perfect in the slightest, and using automatic lists to blanket kill accounts that go against some of the bullshit or ideologies that exist in furries heads is just going to do more harm than good "curating" the fucking fandom to only allow a narrow mindset into it.
You come into Bluesky, keep in mind that every fucking person has a nuke in their pocket against you.
I've been in this fandom since the early two thousands. Two thousand one in fact, FurtherConfusion; before getting into the San Jose Convention Center was even dreamed about. You know what the fandom was built upon? Fun and creativity, open to all.
Even from those early days in this fandom gay, lesbian, bi, switch, and I'm sure some transgender people were all there. And you know what? We all got the fuck along. It was a bunch of regular people, enjoying something that had limitless creativity and interest.
But over time I've seen and felt that the fandom has been used and leveraged in ways that I'm not entirely happy about. Furs hellbent on social issues being furry, but with an agenda to them, rallying support and making it be expected that if you're in this fandom, you must support their causes.
Fuck you.
No, not everyone in this fandom supports everyones causes, and you try to expose me to such things I'm going to tell you that. I do not like politics or grassroots campaigns building support for a cause; those go nowhere with me. I don't want to deal with that shit in the real world, you're damned sure I don't want to deal with it in this fandom where its my escape from the real world. I stand firmly neutral giving no support or opposition to a cause within this fandom.
The...how to word this, "social issues" that invaded furry after the pandemic finally ended sucked the every loving fun out of this fandom as a whole and I cannot have been the only person to have felt that.
Thankfully, the fandom rights the ship.
The pitchfork wielding mentality has waned, and I got to say, the last half dozen furcons that I've been to or so have been feeling like they're getting to be fun again. Like people are coming back around to dropping all that fucking baggage at the door and just...having fun with being a critter again.
That's how it should be; tolerating everyone and getting along.
But blanket bombing social accounts because someone says they're a bad person and need to be eliminated because "they're on a list to curate the fandom". I just cannot help but think that the fandom and internet is the most hostile I've seen it with Bluesky right now.
--Mozdoc
Partly fueled by this is the change that blocking someone doesn't fully block them, your message can still be seen though not reacted to and honestly, after seeing how it works I don't see this as a huge problem as everyone imagined it would be. But no, people are so fucking sinister, so hostile, so fucking evil now that they've decided that when they want to block someone, that when they block them form everything, they want them EXCLUDED in every possible, imaginable, minuscule way. That blocking someone gives you NOTHING about the profile in question, to the point that it just doesn't exist.
And Bluesky does exactly that.
The thermonuclear option to just wipe anyone that you disagree with out of existence.
But not only that, free to make lists available to just hand out to where mass blocking of accounts at the users whims is possible.
Free and willingly able to be used by furries everywhere, whom, my fucking god that seems like a terrible mistake since this fandom seems driven by rash quick strike decisions at a moments notice rather than giving things some manner of thought.
You popufur enough to use your clout to completely fuck someone over? Subscribe to my list. Block these people because *I* said so.
Never met them or had any judgement about them at all? Doesn't matter, just block them. Because *I* said so with my list that I made to curate the fandom to how *I* want it to be.
This just makes me imagine that entry into this fandom through Bluesky is going to be based upon overwhelming control by people who are the most psychotic, ill-tempered, quick to push the nuclear button to stamp out anyone and anything that dare step out of line and express the slightest remorse or disagreement with the thought of furry as a whole, but on *their* terms. Building it as if its some great utopia where everyone is the kinkiest and accepting motherfucker around, and surrounded by like minded individuals.
Buddy. Oh ho ho...if you believe that furry is free from disagreements, well do I have a bridge to sell you. Furry is NOT perfect in the slightest, and using automatic lists to blanket kill accounts that go against some of the bullshit or ideologies that exist in furries heads is just going to do more harm than good "curating" the fucking fandom to only allow a narrow mindset into it.
You come into Bluesky, keep in mind that every fucking person has a nuke in their pocket against you.
I've been in this fandom since the early two thousands. Two thousand one in fact, FurtherConfusion; before getting into the San Jose Convention Center was even dreamed about. You know what the fandom was built upon? Fun and creativity, open to all.
Even from those early days in this fandom gay, lesbian, bi, switch, and I'm sure some transgender people were all there. And you know what? We all got the fuck along. It was a bunch of regular people, enjoying something that had limitless creativity and interest.
But over time I've seen and felt that the fandom has been used and leveraged in ways that I'm not entirely happy about. Furs hellbent on social issues being furry, but with an agenda to them, rallying support and making it be expected that if you're in this fandom, you must support their causes.
Fuck you.
No, not everyone in this fandom supports everyones causes, and you try to expose me to such things I'm going to tell you that. I do not like politics or grassroots campaigns building support for a cause; those go nowhere with me. I don't want to deal with that shit in the real world, you're damned sure I don't want to deal with it in this fandom where its my escape from the real world. I stand firmly neutral giving no support or opposition to a cause within this fandom.
The...how to word this, "social issues" that invaded furry after the pandemic finally ended sucked the every loving fun out of this fandom as a whole and I cannot have been the only person to have felt that.
Thankfully, the fandom rights the ship.
The pitchfork wielding mentality has waned, and I got to say, the last half dozen furcons that I've been to or so have been feeling like they're getting to be fun again. Like people are coming back around to dropping all that fucking baggage at the door and just...having fun with being a critter again.
That's how it should be; tolerating everyone and getting along.
But blanket bombing social accounts because someone says they're a bad person and need to be eliminated because "they're on a list to curate the fandom". I just cannot help but think that the fandom and internet is the most hostile I've seen it with Bluesky right now.
--Mozdoc
Not A Great Mood, But Uploading Anyway
Posted 10 months agoSo, FA, how's your week going?
Just fucking great as usual here.
Discovering through Bluesky that there's a service called Clearsky.app where you can find out everything about everyone. Who is blocking you. Who you're blocking. Lists of shit that you're on from people who followed you over from Twitter and even though say "oh this is a great new beginning", what they really mean is "anyone who followed over to here is to be blocked and banned to oblivion".
And I find out that I'm blocked by fifty-six motherfucking assholes. The majority of which I've never heard of. And a lot that I have. Great. So much for forgiving and forgetting you cynical shitbags. And my name is on three lists, one of which appears to be something people can use to just blanket ban a bunch of people without fucking question.
Oh, and would you look at that, why is WhenWolvesCryOut blocking me? What the fuck? I wasn't aware of that, I'm in their Library Sphinx Discord and have been for five years. I've even sent them DM messages from time to time, though the last time I did was three months ago.
"Hey man, how goes?"
Oh, can't motherfucking do that because you don't share a server.
Bullshit I'm not sharing a server, I'm in his server!
I hadn't talked to Wolves since August, what happened in three months!?
Okay, so I want to find out and ask his moderator Malcolm what gives. I'm not in any trouble am I? No one's said shit about it if I am.
Malcolm says he's not aware of anything, will get back to you.
And then I just get "Wolves has made up his mind and isn't changing it, so I'm removing you from the Discord."
And the fucker kicks me out, blocks me, and I still don't know why.
Whatever it is this artist that i thought was a kind hearted soul has turned completely against me completely. Blocked on Twitter, blocked on Bluesky, blocked on Discord, blocked even on fucking Twitch so I can't even view their streams.
What the fuck dude? What gives. Fuck you too I guess.
So rather than looking forward to drawing on a horrendously complex project in my sketchbook that I decided to try, all for a stupid joke, I'm now pissed beyond belief and hating this stupid fandom again. I'm not so much ragingly pissed off now, given that I'm writing a journal about it, but calming down to be creative is just not there. Fuck stupid fucking secretive garbage like this.
I should just completely throw away my Bluesky and remake it then to get my name off of peoples stupid shit block lists.
Anyway.
Here it is Monday, its upload day.
The last art pieces still have to be posted.
Getting favorites and comments may do the trick.
--Mozdoc
Just fucking great as usual here.
Discovering through Bluesky that there's a service called Clearsky.app where you can find out everything about everyone. Who is blocking you. Who you're blocking. Lists of shit that you're on from people who followed you over from Twitter and even though say "oh this is a great new beginning", what they really mean is "anyone who followed over to here is to be blocked and banned to oblivion".
And I find out that I'm blocked by fifty-six motherfucking assholes. The majority of which I've never heard of. And a lot that I have. Great. So much for forgiving and forgetting you cynical shitbags. And my name is on three lists, one of which appears to be something people can use to just blanket ban a bunch of people without fucking question.
Oh, and would you look at that, why is WhenWolvesCryOut blocking me? What the fuck? I wasn't aware of that, I'm in their Library Sphinx Discord and have been for five years. I've even sent them DM messages from time to time, though the last time I did was three months ago.
"Hey man, how goes?"
Oh, can't motherfucking do that because you don't share a server.
Bullshit I'm not sharing a server, I'm in his server!
I hadn't talked to Wolves since August, what happened in three months!?
Okay, so I want to find out and ask his moderator Malcolm what gives. I'm not in any trouble am I? No one's said shit about it if I am.
Malcolm says he's not aware of anything, will get back to you.
And then I just get "Wolves has made up his mind and isn't changing it, so I'm removing you from the Discord."
And the fucker kicks me out, blocks me, and I still don't know why.
Whatever it is this artist that i thought was a kind hearted soul has turned completely against me completely. Blocked on Twitter, blocked on Bluesky, blocked on Discord, blocked even on fucking Twitch so I can't even view their streams.
What the fuck dude? What gives. Fuck you too I guess.
So rather than looking forward to drawing on a horrendously complex project in my sketchbook that I decided to try, all for a stupid joke, I'm now pissed beyond belief and hating this stupid fandom again. I'm not so much ragingly pissed off now, given that I'm writing a journal about it, but calming down to be creative is just not there. Fuck stupid fucking secretive garbage like this.
I should just completely throw away my Bluesky and remake it then to get my name off of peoples stupid shit block lists.
Anyway.
Here it is Monday, its upload day.
The last art pieces still have to be posted.
Getting favorites and comments may do the trick.
--Mozdoc
Credit Cards Are Scary
Posted 10 months agoIn most of my adult life, I've had a banking account.
And in my banking account, I've kept myself to only having a debit card to my name and my logic was simple, credit cards are fucking dangerous and I didn't think I needed one. If I didn't have the cash in my bank account to do what I needed then I just didn't need to buy it.
And yet I kept getting prodded with it.
"You should get a credit card. It'll help your credit score." they say, because we all know how that works with banks talking to each other and determining how worthy you are as a person.
So fine, a couple years back I got a credit card; nothing special, just one of those bog standard cash-back types that I didn't have to pay for because I just do not see the logic in paying for a piece of plastic.
And for the most part, I don't mind it as much as I thought I would. So long as you understand the difference that buying something with a credit cards means you don't own it, the bank does, and then you pay the bank back for it, things are great. And pay it off frequently so that there's never any chance of an outstanding balance carried on it that becomes subject to their extortionist interest rates for doing so and exceeding what you actually have in your bank account.
And yet it seems the bank does everything in their power to just...go against this.
The credit limit on my card has been for the longest time, nine thousand four hundred dollars.
Dude, that is plenty for me. If I ever need ten thousand dollars worth of shit on a credit card I'm exceeding my means of operating.
...and here recently I notice that there's now a "one" preceding the dollar amount of what I can buy with the card. I...honestly kind of thought it was a glitch of sorts, because even looking at the statements even the most recent one only listed a credit limit of nine thousand four hundred dollars. In fact, I'd say about a week went by before the bank actually sent me an email about it.
"Congratulations. We've increased your credit limit to $19,400, effective immediately."
No reason.
Just "we're doing this for your benefit" things.
Dude this shit is terrifying. NINETEEN thousand dollars!? Who needs this!? I can now purchase so much shit on a piece of plastic that it would exceed my bank account balance entirely. And escaping from a "variable daily interest rate of 28.49%" for carrying a balance would be utterly impossible.
Now logic and sense is telling me NOT to, but where is it even logical to put that into a common persons hands anyway to begin with? I was just fine with the nine thousand dollar limit; never even close to it; but nineteen thousand dollars just seems obscene.
--Mozdoc
And in my banking account, I've kept myself to only having a debit card to my name and my logic was simple, credit cards are fucking dangerous and I didn't think I needed one. If I didn't have the cash in my bank account to do what I needed then I just didn't need to buy it.
And yet I kept getting prodded with it.
"You should get a credit card. It'll help your credit score." they say, because we all know how that works with banks talking to each other and determining how worthy you are as a person.
So fine, a couple years back I got a credit card; nothing special, just one of those bog standard cash-back types that I didn't have to pay for because I just do not see the logic in paying for a piece of plastic.
And for the most part, I don't mind it as much as I thought I would. So long as you understand the difference that buying something with a credit cards means you don't own it, the bank does, and then you pay the bank back for it, things are great. And pay it off frequently so that there's never any chance of an outstanding balance carried on it that becomes subject to their extortionist interest rates for doing so and exceeding what you actually have in your bank account.
And yet it seems the bank does everything in their power to just...go against this.
The credit limit on my card has been for the longest time, nine thousand four hundred dollars.
Dude, that is plenty for me. If I ever need ten thousand dollars worth of shit on a credit card I'm exceeding my means of operating.
...and here recently I notice that there's now a "one" preceding the dollar amount of what I can buy with the card. I...honestly kind of thought it was a glitch of sorts, because even looking at the statements even the most recent one only listed a credit limit of nine thousand four hundred dollars. In fact, I'd say about a week went by before the bank actually sent me an email about it.
"Congratulations. We've increased your credit limit to $19,400, effective immediately."
No reason.
Just "we're doing this for your benefit" things.
Dude this shit is terrifying. NINETEEN thousand dollars!? Who needs this!? I can now purchase so much shit on a piece of plastic that it would exceed my bank account balance entirely. And escaping from a "variable daily interest rate of 28.49%" for carrying a balance would be utterly impossible.
Now logic and sense is telling me NOT to, but where is it even logical to put that into a common persons hands anyway to begin with? I was just fine with the nine thousand dollar limit; never even close to it; but nineteen thousand dollars just seems obscene.
--Mozdoc
Art Uploads Slow Down In One Week
Posted 10 months agoJust figure I'd give furs a heads up that the pace of which I've been uploading art pieces is destined to slow down.
Its not my choice; I'm catching up to present day or state of work of projects and there's just nothing more to give after the next week. I'm looking at only nineteen digital art pieces commissioned online before then moving on to sketchbooks both my own and which I give out at conventions. Depending on how many arts need to be scanned from them I could foresee needing one or two upload sessions to put them all out onto FA but then...I'm done.
I'm done!
Twenty-some years of commissions for all to see.
--Mozdoc
Its not my choice; I'm catching up to present day or state of work of projects and there's just nothing more to give after the next week. I'm looking at only nineteen digital art pieces commissioned online before then moving on to sketchbooks both my own and which I give out at conventions. Depending on how many arts need to be scanned from them I could foresee needing one or two upload sessions to put them all out onto FA but then...I'm done.
I'm done!
Twenty-some years of commissions for all to see.
--Mozdoc
