Rain Gryphon

I see Michael Jackson's on trial again. At least this time it's just for ripping people off, rather than child molestation. The man's found his calling as a professional trainwreck, I think. They should just extradite him to Bahrain, and the Sultan could chop off his head on pay per view. Everybody's come out ahead - the Sultan would get his money back, and Jackson would be (at least briefly) at the centre of the world's attention again.

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Yesterday afternoon I helped Blayze make a duct tape tailoring dummy. At one point, we opened the blinds to get more light. Later on, we turned on the lamp. Thus it was that the neighbors got a good view of Blayze wrapped up in duct tape, with me poking him with scissors while Odell sat there in his pyjamas watching. The neighbors absolutely stared, mouths open. They're speculating yet, I'm sure.

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China seems to be fortifying its border with North Korea.


The Beloved Leader is not like other men...

Edit: Nor, come to that, is the hat of the man to his right like the hats of other men...

Caloo! Calay! Ferrari's keeping Raikkonen and Massa both until 2010. I'd been afraid they'd stick that whiner Alonso in there.

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Interestingly, most of the drivers apparently feel that the penalty against Hamilton was justified. Admittedly, a driver as good as Hamilton shouldn't have gotten into that situation to begin with, but it does happen. It still looked to me like he gave back the position and let Raikkonen choose his line before he resumed his attack.

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Maine's King endorses Obama. Appropriately, the King is noted as being 'in the wind power business'.

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Friend Loganberry found this. I'm so proud to be a furry!

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Friend Spaceroo found this: Obama Llama!

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Someone on OhioFur asked people to recount their fursuiting stories:


At CF7, I was wandering the halls early one morning, dressed as a Sheep. I don't even recall where I was going anymore. I plainly recall the woman from New Zealand, toddler in tow, who passed me in the hall, remarking so matter-of-factly, "Oh, look! It's a black and white, like we have at home." That really made my day, for whatever reason.

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Many years ago (1998, IIRC), Kodak sponsored a touring display of inflatable Dragons. Exactly what their rationale was for that, I don't recall. At any rate, it came to the Tower City Mall in Cleveland. I decided that I needed to have my picture taken in suit with the Dragons. Exactly what my rationale was for that, I don't recall. At any rate, Andy Roo volunteered to be my photographer. I was much thinner then, and could do a convincing girl, so I went as Victoria Rabbit. We went inside first to look over the layout, since I was pretty sure we'd be immediately ejected, and we'd need to get our photos fast.

They had a sort of central area roped off, surrounded by the Dragons. Signs made it clear that there would be a Mother Goose floorshow there, featuring the Cleveland Ballet. That cut off the best route and posing area, so we decided on an alternate approach. Then we went back out to the parking garage, so I could get dressed.

About twenty minutes later, here we came, me as a cute bunny in a blue sundress, and Andy following, weighed down with cameras. I led the way up the escalator from the parking level into the lobby, and sure enough, I can see from partyway up that there's a cop already at the head of the escalator, standing right there looking straight at me. I swore, but decided I'd just be bold, and keep on going, until he actually stopped me.

We got to the top, and I paused a second to get my bearings. The cop still hadn't said anything. I hugged a couple of children that came running over, and I still haven't been accosted by the policeman. I started off to one side, and the cop stepped out to block my path, and pointed me toward the performers' gate. "That way, Bunny Rabbit!" So, not being one to argue with a policeman, I marched on through bold as brass, with Andy Roo right behind me, and we got pictures with all the Dragons. When we finished, we went back out the same way, and the policeman opened the gate and told me I was cute.

That was an interesting day. I need to dig the pictures out and get them scanned sometime.

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A few years later Erfy the Foxboi and I hit a mall near our house, with me dressed as Amodeo, a Red Panda. We lasted roughly 90 seconds before security ejected us. In that 90 seconds, though, a Chinese lady with a toddler in tow came rushing up to us, and went through some excited expositional spiel to the kid (in Chinese) that ended in "WAH!!!" She was plainly delighted to see the Wah. The kid was less certain. I loved it, though. She was the first adult that knew it was a Wah, and not a Qoon.

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Once at Duckon, when I was dressed as a Lioness, some Klingons wanted to invite me to a Klingon wedding that was happening later. This occasioned much sinister and manly bwahahahing from all the assembled Klingons standing about. I had to turn them down, since I was going to the masquerade later. I never did figure out what the joke was about being invited to the wedding.

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A year or so later at Millennicon, I made a Klingon lose face by causing him to blush and giggle in a most unmanly fashion in front of his friends, by coming onto him while dressed as Victoria Rabbit. I view this in some vague way as taking revenge for the furries against the Klingons, since the wedding invitation was almost certainly something dishonourable.

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I once got to lackey for Michigan J. Frog at the San Francisco 49ers game. I really wanted to be on the field performing, but I was lucky to get what I did, as it was pretty much given me as a consolation prize from the kindness of a friend. I did get to see the football game free, and got a nice package of free 49ers stuff as well.

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Max, Rasby and myself got to perform at the Erie Seawolves baseball game a few years back, as part of their official Mascot Day. Penn State's Nittany Lion was there, among others. I learned that they actually pride themselves on having a delapidated-looking mascot, which is why the suit looks like it came from Goodwill. It's been torn apart and sewn together a number of times. The jaw was held on with big safety pins that day. Mascot Day was fun. We played games on the field, we did Meet n' Greets with the crowd, we even helped film an advertisement for hot tubs.

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I've been in a great many parades, larger and smaller. I once rode in Jim Petro's convertible. He subsequently managed to get elected Attorney General, so I couldn't have done his reputation that much damage.

Once, on a stifling hot day when I plainly wasn't going to make it up the last hill, a church invited me to ride aboard their Noah's Ark float. They teased me for not having a mate like all the other animals on the float. I told them she'd died of heat exhaustion.

Click to Embiggen

And before I forget, it's last Saturday's Halloween outing. It stikes me what a talented set of friends I have. It also weirds me that two of this group are older than I am. This isn't a statistically normal group of trick or treaters.

It's Fox Guys' Day! Blow up your neighborhood Fox Guy!

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I need to find time to see a movie. I've got four of those free movie passes that they give away at work, to the uber-excellent AMC Easton 30. I'd like to have seen 'Sky Captain', but I seem to have waited too long. That happens to me a lot with movies. :/

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There's a movie now about Ray Charles, which leaves me sort of nonplussed. He's a good piano player, but I can't stand the man's singing. He's got an atrocious voice.

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Q. Why does Ray Charles wear yellow socks?
A. His Dog's blind too. :)

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One of my recently fired cow orkers has just been described as being "like an extra from a Cheech and Chong movie". Sadly, it's true. The guy *wanted* to do a good job, but it wasn't just that he knew little to nothing about computers. He just completely lacked any capacity for logic or systematic problem solving. He seemed reasonably intelligent, but he just wasn't there in some respects. Cheech and Chong is a striking comparison.

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Poor Lizard has just discovered that there're scarey furries where he works! Little does he suspect just how many are here...

Porsupah discovered this. Someone built an RL Nekobus!

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I spent my weekend guarding the portable Vietnam Wall. It's a 4/5 scale replica, made out of enameled aluminum, with the names gritblasted into the surface. I think it's nice that they make the effort to bring things like that around to the hinterlands, and I'm honoured to help guard something like that. It was extreme light-duty guarding. Most of the time was spent answering questions and listening to old soldiers reminisce.

It took me by surprise as well how old the Vietnam soldiers all are, but I suppose it shouldn't really. Time's marching on. When I was just a tiny Little Pony, it was the WWI soldiers who were old. In my teens, the WWII soldiers suddenly became more a part of the past than the present. Now it's the soldiers from Vietnam.

I was pleased to see how many teenagers came to see the wall. That whole decade's nothing more than history for them, which is weird for me to contemplate. Still, they came, and they seemed well-behaved and patriotic. On the whole it strikes me that the current crop of teens is probably better citizens than we were. We spent all our time stoned and tripping. In retrospect, it was the zeitgeist, more than any inherent character defect. It's like the whole nation had a collective nervous breakdown at the end of the 60s. There didn't seem to be any moral certainty or inherent meaning left to anything at the time. It was a scary, impressive time, and I'm glad I was there to see it, but things are better today. I wouldn't go back.

There was a large art show in conjunction with the wall. Most of it was military scenes, usually with helicopters. The UH-1 chopper is iconic for anyone who remembers those days, I think. You can't see that thing, and not immediately think of Vietnam, and everything that surrounded it.

The three paintings that really stuck with me were 'Nixon in Hell', depicting the old scoundrel chained to a tank, dragging it though Hell as the gun fired right over his head; one titled 'The Last Mousketeer', which showed a soldier with 'Bobby' markered on his helmet cover, staring in horror at a tombstone which depicted him as a dead child wearing Mouse ears; and one that showed an astronaut on the moon, with a faint reflection of a soldier in his faceplate. The last one was the most subtle, but also the most effective, at least for me. There was such a glaring dichotomy in those days, it's hard to grasp yet, or even define it satisfactorily. I'm surprised too by how much I still hate Nixon.

There was a big display of militaria too. I never really thought of Vietnam-era stuff as particularly collectible, mainly because it was common as dirt when I was little. There were tons of it, all labelled and displayed. It fulfilled a longstanding fantasy of mine, to be locked overnight in a museum and have all the displays to myself. It got old after I'd seen everything, though.

Much of the Vietnam stuff is identical to what they issue us (Ohio State Guard). My steel pot, web gear and flak jacket are vintage Vietnam issue. My shelter half was marked '1966' as the year of manufacture too, but seems good as new - military issue is built to last. All kitted out with my flak jacket and an M16, I look like I've just stepped out of 1968, except for the modern woodland-pattern BDUs.

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It's gratifying how well people react to me when I'm on-duty as an MP. At the same time, it's kind of embarassing, because I haven't actually done anything. I've never been in combat, and probably never will be. I've never even had to arrest anyone. I train, I give directions, and I guard stuff. That's about it. I feel something of a fraud. I look like a soldier, though - I've got the posture and the bearing, and people react positively to that. A lot of that comes from ballet training - a confident alpha male has a distinctive body carriage. I also have an 'authority voice'. I'm quite sure that in an emergency people would do what I told them, which builds confidence, which increases the effect. It's a feedback loop.

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I've lost 20 pounds in the past two months, which is more than I'd expected. I started with the South Beach diet thing on Aug 7th, mainly because my mother's doctor had started her doing that for her diabetes, and I wanted to encourage her. It works remarkably well, and the theory behind it seems reasonably sound too. It's based on the idea of controlling your blood insulin levels by controlling your intake of carbohydrates, and by being aware of your digestive system's response to carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. After the first few weeks, you aren't very hungry anymore. In the end I think it works by causing you to eat less, but it accomplishes that by manipulating your metabolism rather than by directly eating less, so that it appeals to me. I've always rather enjoyed seeing what my body will do. It's fun to push myself into ketosis now and again too. The world just hums and shimmers in the first few hours of ketosis. "You are your own best toy to play with", as Grace Slick said.

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Austin seems surprised to learn that paper has been made from mummies. Mummy powder was once a fairly popular patent medicine too, at the end of the 18th century during the craze for all things Egyptian. Ingesting powdered corpses, especially when you don't know what they died of, doesn't really strike me as a guarantor of good health. 18th C people saw common sense differently, I think.

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I brought my good blue foam block out of storage to start on the Skiltaire head, and Flaster immediately claimed it as his perch. He spends hours just sitting on top of that now, so I'm reluctant to start carving it. I'm hoping that the novelty will wear off soon. I don't think I've ever seen a Skiltaire fursuit. I know deMeep is working along those lines as well, but I don't think he's gotten any further than I have.

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Before the end of October, I need to go to the Olentangy Indian Cave. I've been meaning to do that ever since I moved here, but haven't. They've got a cave, an Indian village, and miniature golf. That would, in fact, perhaps be an interesting place to play mini-golf in fursuit.

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Butterscotch and Nikoonie have broken up, it seems. You could kind of see that coming, but it's sad anyway. Nikon's a nice little Qoon, but seems destined for unhappiness.

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I was sorting through stuff the other day, and I found a $20 MediaPlay gift card that I'd lost. I need to get down there and redeem that.

Yesterday, in a fit of boredom, I took out a sheet of foam that I've had lying about forever, and started making a Deer tail from it. I surprised myself. It turned out amazingly well, and weighs less than half of what it would in solid foam or stuffed fabric form. I've always been sort of intimidated by sheet foam, but that was remarkably easy and quick. The shape is just lovely, all curved and swoopy, as good as anything I could carve.

I just more or less envisioned how the flat foam would wrap around the shape I wanted, and cut the pattern accordingly. It's no different really than fitting faux fur to a carved surface, except that the surface is imaginary instead of real. I'm going to get some more sheeting, and try something a bit more ambitious. I may make the Skiltaire that way.

I'm going to make myself a tail, antlers and ears for Christmas, I think. Maybe a red velvet harness with bells too. Then I shall talk Goofius Maximus into going to the mall with me. If I'm very lucky, he'll agree to wear a Santa hat and fake beard.

I've not forgotten about making you Bunny ears (or else posting a pattern) either, Loganberry.

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I still can't get sound to work in Linux. I even bought an Ensoniq 16 bit card to use in place of the on-the-board Yamaha. The drivers are there, the equipment is all recognized and reports itself as ready, the CD player seems to be engaging the sound engine, but nothing comes out the speakers :P I'm probably overlooking something minor.

On the bright side, everything else works, even the Palm Pilot link and client, which I understand some people have had issues with.

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The BBC is carrying on about the President of Turkmenistan again. You have to learn his political precepts (handily set forth in a book that everyone gets a copy of) before you can get a drivers' license. Now frankly that's stupid, but it's not a bit more stupid than what goes on here in the several states, where teenagers can't get their license without fulfilling various 'good citizenship' requirements, etc.

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There's an interesting speculation on AFF as to whether Hitler might have been furry. I'd never really considered it before, but some interesting points are being raised about his attachment to Wolves, and certain figures of speech he favoured.

Now that the conceptual hurdle has been crossed, I'm starting to wonder about Charles Manson, who seems to be very into animals in general, from what I've read of his writings.

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Distressingly, the organizers of the Phoenix World's Fair are now touting the idea of having a 'distributed' fair, with various venues all across Arizona. I smell the unsubtle hand of the state here, certain that tourists will happily drive all over Arizona, spending as they go :P More to the point, breaking the thing up into dozens of small fairs misses the point of a World's Fair entirely. If I were still making good money like I used to back in 2001, I'd just go to China for their fair and spend my money with the commies.

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This sounds stupid, but is on the level. Josephine the Milk Jug Lady makes sculptures from plastic milk jugs. She'd be grateful if anyone could send her one or more. She wants the semi-transparent one-gallon square sort, ideally the ones that have pop-off (as opposed to screw top) caps, and also ideally with either red, white or blue caps

Her address is:

Josephine Stapleton
6752 Harding Highway
Mays Landing, NJ 08330

She'll be grateful for any she can get, as she can sculpt a lot faster than she can drink milk.

A friend asked me how to do this, so I typed it out. As long as it's already written I figure I'll post it, in case anyone else is interested. I'm assuming she'll not mind. This same method will work to make a tail for a Wolf, a Fox, or a bushy-tailed Dog. Very little imagination would be needed to convert it into an Otter or Cat tail.

What you'll need (besides fur):

Basic sewing supplies. Scissors, needles, thread, etc.

Foam pipe insulation. Home Despot or anyplace similar will have it. It comes in the form of an extruded foam tube about six feet or so long.

Glass strapping tape. It's the clear stuff with those multiple glass fibers running through it.

Fiber-fil. A one pound bag should be more than enough.

Big sheet of cardboard or paper to make the patterns.

Cut a piece of the pipe insulation in half lengthwise, so that you end up with a six-foot U-shaped trough. Now, working from the centre of the piece, fold it over double, concave side to concave side.

Take some of your strapping tape, and wrap it around the end by the fold, securing it so that you end up with a loop. This is the loop where the belt goes. Wrap it thoroughly. Now you've got a neat, tight little loop with two long, sprawly ends.

Decide how long the tail will be. Cut the ends to a little more than that length. Decide what shape the tail will be (i.e., curved, straight, etc.). Working from the loop end out, bend the tail core in the shape it should be, then wrap a loop of strapping tape around it to hold it. You should do this every four inches or so.

What you're doing here is causing the foam to bend by taping together the two legs with one slightly bent and one straight. E.g., to make a curve, hold the two legs together, then slide on slowly through your paw while holding the other one in place. Do you see how that makes a bowed structure that holds the tail curved?

Once you've got the whole tail core taped, cut off the excess at the tip. Test the boinginess by holding it by the loop and pressing down on the tip. If it needs to be stiffened up a bit, add a few more tape loops.

Now it's time to make the cloth covering. You might want to make a test one out of cotton scrap before committing your fur.

Lay the tail core on a big piece of paper or cardboard. Keep in mind that the core forms more or less the backbone of the tail. Draw the outline of the tail around the core. Cut this out for a pattern. Now, because tails are more or less cylinders, and the circumference of a cylinder is pi*D, you're going to need a third piece. Draw this one by hand. It's a gusset for the bottom of the tail, and should be more or less what the pattern piece you made earlier would look like if it weren't curved. Just as long, just as wide, but straight.

Now cut out two of the curved pieces in mirrored fashion, and one of the gussets. Pay attention to the way the fur lies.

Sew the three pieces together to make a sort of bag, which is the covering for the tail. If at all possible, try to hand sew instead of machine sewing - you'll get much nicer results. Leave the little bit at the very top (where the tail attaches to the body) unsewn.

Turn your work right side out, and put in the tail core. Does it look reasonable? If not, you may want to do a bit of adjusting. This is why it's good to do a test one first with cheap cloth, especially if you've not done it before.

Once you're happy with what you have, insert the core, and stuff the empty space LOOSELY with fiber-fil. Now sew it all together at the top. Once it's all together, make two slits aligned with the open sides of the loop in the foam core. This is where the belt will pass through. Put some insurance stitching at either end of the slit to keep it from tearing. It won't hurt to turn the edges under and baste them, but it's not really necessary.

Now you've got a Wolf's tail. Your belt fits through the loop, and the foam core makes it boingy :)

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At Fort Benning, the 3rd Infantry Division has a trash can made from the head of a huge statue of Adolf Hitler that they captured. They sawed it off at the neck, mounted it upside down, and now it's their trash can. People used to understand the importance of a good, bombastic victory monument that celebrates the enemy's humiliation. These days, everyone seems to act sort of embarassed about winning.

I worked all night before travelling to New Jersey, so I was uber-pleased to be able to ride as a passenger, and not have to drive.

Max and Cirrus came by to pick me up around 8am. After a detour to the Giant Weasel for breakfast foods (I got a vegetable wrap) and an ATM, we got started. Max consented not to play Weird Al all the way to New Jersey, a concession appreciated by both Cirrus and myself. The songs are funny in their own way, and enjoyable the first time, but after you've heard them once or twice you've heard them. I can't imagine listening to parody music repeatedly.

After some messing about with the new CD automotive adapter, Max put on Bill Cosby, and I got to hear his routine about puking while I ate breakfast. I bore it in good heart, confident that Max was more easily squicked than I, and that my hour would come.

I spent much of the morning sleeping in the back seat of the van. There's something very secure about sleeping in cars. It hearkens back to when one was little, and slept in the back seat on trips, I think. It's also just neat to fall asleep in the warmth and sunshine, and wake up much, much further down the road. It gives the trip a dreamlike aspect.

We made worse time than we'd expected to OC, arriving around 6pm. Traffic in Philadelphia was awful, which seems normal for there. I don't think I've ever gotten expeditiously through Philly in the afternoon. Once we were past the train yards, it all flew along, but getting those few miles from Valley Forge to downtown took more than an hour.

We'd expected to be late, but as it developed we'd beaten RTR to Ocean City. A scouting expedition to the Biscuit turned up only Whiffert and Magnus - no-one had yet seem RTR. A bit of cell phone work established that he'd called JBadger a bit after 3 from his home phone, although he hadn't left a message. We decided that he was probably okay and on his way. This being decided, we went to meet up with Pandaguy, and get something to eat.

We had dinner at the newly-unburned Litterer's. I had a stromboli, made with spiced roasted chicken in a light pastry, with marinara served on the side. I'm pleased to see Litterer's back in operation.

As I'd expected, I got the chance to squick Max by talking about Panda's catheterization during dinner. Various people kept drifting in while we ate, including finally RTR. He'd been delayed trying to collect a Care Bear costume. I met Magnus Diridian (he of the rapidly-built Peacock suit) at dinner. He built either five fursuits in three days, or else three in five days - I forget which. Either way it amazes me, since it takes me forever to do anything. At any rate, he'd brought along the Peacock, which was one of them.

People seem to be building their own suits again, which is a good thing. Fursuiting was getting a bit depressing for a while, with all of the Marylen's and Costume Creations suits in play. Generic suits suck the fun out of fursuiting. I think everything out there this year (with the obvious exception of the Care Bears) was a one-off design.

After dinner and a brief bit of visiting at the Biscuit, I went back to the hotel to finish up the trimming around the Otter's eyes. I like the way he looks a lot better now. I watched the end of 'Dinosaur' while I worked. Disney was showing it back to back, as it turned out, so I started watching the first part after I'd seen the last part (I've got it on tape anyway, so it's not like I've not seen it before). Just after Aladar and the Lemurs meet the travelling herd, I got a phone call from Cadpig. He'd just arrived, and had no real idea where to go. I was feeling vaguely helpful and unfulfilled, so I went out and collected him personally (he'd ended up by the Coral Sands) and took him back to the Biscuit, where he got introduced to everyone. After that, I spent some time schmoozing with MeJeep, so that by the time I got back to the Impala Island I was just in time to see the exact same last part of 'Dinosaur' that I'd watched before. :)

Stormwulf followed me back to the Impala, and he and Cirrus ended up taking the empty room next door.

Max got up early Saturday and ate pancakes at the Biscuit, while I laid around the room and made last-minute modifications to the Otter's tail. Once that was done, I went to visit everyone at the Biscuit, and ended up on the couch watching Saturday morning cartoons surrounded by friends. Sort of a neat retro way to start the day.

Around 10:30 or so we headed back and started to get suited up. Some teenage boys in the parking lot saw us and posed for pictures with us, which was neat. They took them with a cell phone, so I'm assuming they got sent off immediately to wierd out the folx/friends. I need to look into getting one of the phone/camera/PDA combos, as I'm carrying three separate pieces of hardware now.

Cirrus and I made a small 'Not a Care Bear' sign for Max out of a piece of leftover felt, and sewed it onto his tummy. I was all for decorating him with a swastika, as I felt that would plainly show him not to be a caring sort of Bear, but Max vetoed the idea.

I had a bit of last minute panic about the wisdom of the way that I'd modified the tail harness, and dithered for a bit about what to do, finally getting Cirrus to carry along a belt if I needed to make a late minute repair at the assembly area. I have a long history of making alterations at the last possible moment, then having to wonder if they're going to work, or even hold together in performance. By the time we'd walked up to the assembly point, I was confident in my tail harness, and liked it better than the old design. I'll prolly make a few more changes there in days to come. I think I've hit on a good method for big, heavy tails with large moment arms.

I carried the 'Rapid T. Rabbit Show' banner this time, since I'd never done that and it was prolly about my turn. As a a result, I doubt that there'll be many pictures of me in the parade. I survived better than I'd expected. It wasn't nearly so tiring as last year. They held the parade to a decent, steady pace, and we didn't have to sprint to keep up, nor did we have to stand in one place for ages waiting for them to shovel dead basset hounds out of the street. A well-paced affair all around. The sun was shining, there was a constant breeze, and the crowds were huge. It was just a good day for a parade.

The Care Bears rode on a float with a seriously good ragtime pianist, who played all the way. The pi-anny was amplified, and was plainly audible back where we were, despite the presence of two radio station trucks with sound systems in between us. The poor Bears must have been deafened.

I got identifed as a Squirrel all day long, to my considerable chagrin. I'm not sure why this is. Kids know that it's an Otter, and furries know, but adult mundanes consistently say 'Squirrel'. They're keying on some different set of identifying characteristics than children and furries use, but damned if I can figure out what they are. Is it the pointed carnivore's teeth? Is it the tapering muscular tail? Is it the black triangular nose? What exactly says 'skwirl' to these people, and why can the kids figure it out when the adults can't? It's a mystery to me.

Additionally, there's a subgroup of mundanes to whom any animal costume, without exception, is a 'bear'. It doesn't matter what you're wearing - it's a 'bear'. This bothers me less, actually, as they seem to be using 'bear' as a generic term for 'mammal', much like people say 'xerox' or 'coke'. It's just a figure of speech. The 'squirrel' people are making an actual effort to identify you, and failing, though. It's weird.

The formerly blown-up Music Pier was open again this year as well. We used the upper room to change, which afforded a good view of the reviewing stand. I got to see Larry Storch (Corporal Agarn on F Troop) and also had a good view of Max getting his prize. The tee shirts are of much nicer quality this year than in former years, with an attractive two colour graphic of a basset hound.

Afterward, we went back to the hotel to shower and rest a bit. The local spanish channel was playing a movie called (IIRC) 'Ninja American Warrior', which seemed to be about a ninja forced to fight to the death against Mexican wrestlers, outlaw bikers, and Vikings in a series of cage matches. This was being offered as part of "Cinema Tarde", which Max seemed to believe should be translated as "Afternoon Movie". I like "Retarded Cinema", myself. Regardless, I enjoyed the movie :)

That evening we ate at the "Chatterbox" restaurant. Every year I hope that the food will have improved, but it never does. This is a generic bad 'family' restaurant, of the sort I have memories of getting dragged off to on Sunday afternoons as a child. I can't imagine how the place has stayed in business for 60 years. People obviously don't go for the food.

On the other hoof, I love the building it's in. It's a poured concrete faux Moorish sort of thing, painted pink and black with a cupola and geometric decorations poured right into the concrete facade. The windows are outlined in blue gas tubing. It's exuberantly garish. The owners have had the good sense not to try to modernize this in any way, or to try to make it 'tasteful'. They've even got a mutant 1930s wall telephone behind the counter.

After dinner I returned to Impala Island with SK-1, who'd decided to room with us. We had to put him on the couch. He and Max had been planning to do the boardwalk in fursuit, but SK was too tired. Cirrus and Stormwulf came around for a while and examined SK's new puppet and everyone's fursuits. Stormwulf is leaning in the direction of making a suit. For once I didn't do the boardwalk at night.

Sunday morning I got up early and wandered around taking photos for a while. There's bits and pieces of the past all around Ocean City. After an hour or so of that, I went up to Litterer's for breakfast, where I found Max and SK. I had some good plain home fries, and a remarkable egg sammich with cheese. I'm fairly sure the cheese was havarti, or something similar - whatever it was, it had a mild tang, and had melted to an almost buttery consistency. It was worlds away from the cheddar or american that I'd expected. Litterer's never disappoints me.

After breakfast we checked out of Impala Island, and went over to the Biscuit so that Max and Cirrus could record a segment for the Rpaid T. Rabbit show. Whiffert kindly gave me a used DEC Alpha, which is going to replace my old server.

Our return through Philadelphia took us through the dismal and menacing ghettoes near the Walt Whitman bridge. As before, we got stuck in traffic, and spent an hour or so getting through the city. Max sang the 'Happy Ghetto Land' song to entertain us. Cirrus and I took pictures out the van wondow. The high point of Philly for me was the Incredible Swastika House. This was an ancient-looking brick row house that had a huge swastika worked in dark coloured brick on the front. It was an Indian swastika (with left-bent arms) rather than a Nazi swastika, but that's why they make PhotoShop. I can just imagine this place harboring a secret society of revenant Nazis, perhaps with Hitler's brain kept alive in a basement laboratory as they plot to take over the world. At first glance the left-bent swastika seems a transparent ruse, and hardly sufficient to fool the police. On the other hoof, this is the same police department that once thought it'd be a good idea to use a helicopter to drop a bomb on a row house...

So, there's a parade this weekend, and tonight the fursuit I'm going to wear (my Otter) is distributed around my apartment, chopped into pieces. For months I've been meaning to change the shape of the head (make it a little flatter, and more musteline) and make the eyes a bit bigger, and somehow there was always something more pressing to do, until finally we got to the point where it's do it this week, or don't have it done in time. It's sad, but a lot of my stuff gets done that way. My suits always appear carefully finished on the outside, but Lord what last-minute kludge jobs they generally are! If I have time I'll probably alter the tail harness too, so the tail will move with my spine better, instead of just being stuck on my butt.

Findra thinks I do cute work :) He's thinking of wearing Amodeo in the Mountain View parade on the 24th, which will be (I think) his first parade in a fursuit. Fortunately it's only a half mile, not like the Ocean City Death March. If it weren't for the tail, I'd think about riding in the boat this year. I'm way out of shape.