So, here's the situation.

A good while back, FA updated the list of species that users can choose from, when submitting works to the site. During this update they added a new section for fandom created species. However, Foozles didn't make the list, and I wanted to see if I could correct that.

At the time, I found absolutely no way to contact site staff. They don't have a "contact us" link anywhere that I could find, so I did the only thing I could think of, which was to file it as a support ticket.

Here's what I wrote:

Opened on: Nov 14, 2021 02:13
Not really a problem, but I'm not sure who to contact about this: I noticed that FA has updated their species pulldown tab when submitting art, and now includes fan-created races. I'd like to get one added, if I could: Foozles.

And soon afterward I received this response, from "Fur Affinity Staff" :

Posted: 12/14/21 08:27 am
Hey there,
Thank you for your feedback! I've passed it along to the team.
Thanks for being part of our community!
[system]: Closing the ticket.

Six months have now gone by. And when I posted the Oasis piece yesterday, I noticed that Foozles still aren't listed. So... :

Posted: 06/19/22 02:49 am
Sorry to bug you guys about this again, but it's been six months now, and I still don't see Foozles listed under species. Could someone please see to this?
[system]: User reopened the ticket.

There has been, as yet, no response.

And I'm still not sure if I'm even doing this correctly. Does FA have any official channel for contacting staff, or are support tickets the only open window? I really don't want to be an annoyance, but I would also like to get this done.

Comments, suggestions, etc... let's hear 'em.

UPDATE: Just sent an email to Dragoneer with a request and a link to this Journal, since he put his email address on his FA account with the statement "email me" - so I did.

Fingers crossed.

I've been watching a bunch of youtube videos, of people doing yard work.

I find it much more relaxing than actually doing yard work. Especially at 4am.

Quite a few of these videos have been on the subject of pressure-washing sidewalks and driveways.

A typical sample, here:



...anyway, the point is, some of these videos (such as the one linked) show the pressure-washer in question essentially excavating lost sidewalks and driveways which have been buried under dirt, which has come from the accumulation of decades of unraked leaves falling, piling up and composting where they lay.

In one such video (not the one linked) what started as a simple pressure-washing turned into a massive archaeological dig, when an entire lost driveway was uncovered, buried six inches deep. And it seems that these six inches of dirt had been accumulating there since the 1990s, when the old driveway was replaced by a newer and larger driveway nearby.

And that got me thinking about dinosaur bones.

Basically, the mechanics of the situation work like this:

Sunlight beams down onto planet Earth where plants are growing.
The plants use the sunlight as food to grow.
This is done via cell division, wherein energy is basically turned into matter.
This matter then begins to pile up and eventually becomes more Earth.
The lost driveways and sidewalks show that this can happen over a relatively short term.
The fact that dinosaur bones are found hundreds of feet deep indicates that this has been going on for millions of years.

That's the whole idea behind strata, isn't it?
The fossil record showing layer after layer of matter piling up on the planet?

So.... is Earth getting bigger?

Is Modern day Earth that much bigger than millions-of-years-ago dinosaur era Earth?

If so, how much bigger are we talking?

Is all that extra mass doing anything to the planet's orbit?

I know from playing Kerbal that an orbital trajectory, once achieved, can be pretty stable. But I also know it can go a bit wonky.

I'm wondering how much more massive Earth can become before it starts to go wonky.

...and if someday we're going to have to start doing something about all this dirt.

Anyway... it's no longer 4am, and I've wasted twenty five minutes writing this.

This is what my brain does when I haven't got enough television available to numb it back into low power mode.

Cheers, all.

No, this is not going to be political.

It's about YouTube.

Bear with me...

Over on YouTube, there has been a trend for awhile towards clickbait. And it's everywhere. And it's annoying. It constantly pollutes the recommended videos that the algorithm (all hail the algorithm) shoves towards me.

So I have made a decision for how to deal with it. I don't have any actual technical proof that this will affect the YouTube algorithm itself, but part of me likes to think that it does.

Anyway...

If you mouse over the name of a video, you will see three dots. Clicking these brings up a menu, and under that menu is an entry:

Don't recommend channel

I have made a conscious decision to use this to start blocking channels if I see certain behaviors:

If your video has a "shock" thumbnail image that appears nowhere in the video, you're gone.

If you have blacked out or blurred a major chunk of your thumbnail to entice people to click to see what it is, you're gone

If you have something circled or an arrow pointing to something that cannot immediately be identified, you're gone

If your video has anything along the lines of "You won't believe what happens next!" in the title, you're gone

If the video title and thumbnail are deliberately ambiguous so that people will click just to find out what the hell you're talking about, you're gone

Basically, if you're trying to trick me into watching your video, fuck you, you're gone.

If you're lying to me about your video content, fuck you, you're gone.

I've got into the habit of right-clicking videos and opening them in a new tab now, so that I have the option to go back to the thumbnail and give it the boot after the fact.

I have also noticed that since I have started blacklisting clickbait, I seem to be getting served less and less of it.

I figured I'd pass that along.

Maybe if enough people start pushing back against YouTube clickbait, we can relegate it to the trashbin of history.

Cheers, and apologies for the title of this journal.

I'm gone!

It seems that while this was going on:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/24635618/
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/24726564

...this was also going on:

Trump Kept Asking if China Was Shooting Us With a ‘Hurricane Gun’
The then-leader of the free world also inquired whether the U.S. could bomb China in retaliation for the alleged hurricane attack

https://www.rollingstone.com/politi.....d-war-1350638/

Talboc has asked me to reiterate his "no comment." So here it is.

So, I've just watched episode one of STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds.

I guess it was okay. It's no The Orville, though.

The story was... acceptable. The only thing about the story that was in any way bad, was that it relied too heavily on events that occurred on Discovery, which I'm not watching, because I just didn't like it.

My biggest problem with it though was the everything else.

I don't know where to start on just how bad the production design is for this show. Maybe it's just because it's a spin off of Discovery, (which as I already mentioned, I'm not watching) so it's labored with the poor design sensibilities of that show. And of course, they both owe a lot to the design of the theatrical Abrams-Trek films, which should be taken out behind the Paramount studio and shot in the head, twice.

....But it's not good.

Every single fucking surface of the Enterprise bridge has a light on it. Every. Single. One. Even in places, where having a light would not just not make sense, but would actually make working there an absolute headache-inducing nightmare.

Each bridge control station has an arc shaped light that goes up and over it, and it's bright. So bright. So bright that it causes a bright hazy glow around it. A bright hazy glow that completely obscures the controls. Which you'd think that people might actually need to see. But no, there it is, shining directly into your face and blinding you while you desperately squint and paw randomly at switches and knobs that you can not see. Because Lens Flare!

And there are lights on the pillars, and lights on the stairs, and lights on the handrails, and a light across the BACK of the helm console where nobody can even fucking see it except the audience. Because that makes sense.

While it's nice to have Star Trek series with an Enterprise boldly going where no one has gone before again.... the constant sandpaper of the design pretty much cancels out any enjoyment. I'm just sitting there hating that it looks like... that. That they spent so much time and money to not do a good job at all.

I'm not a big fan of the outside of the ship either. The original Enterprise is iconic. One might even call it perfect. The SNW version is once again a cast-off from Discovery, which means it's basically a kitbash of ideas from every era of Trek, no matter how wrong they might look in context.

I realize that to save money, they likely just re-used stuff they had lying around, but they really need to do a deep design rethink on things if they're going to do another season of this. Drag the design away from Abrams-Trek and back towards the original series some more. Retro it out. Go 60's. Lose all the idiot lights on the bridge. And put some fucking paint on the exterior, to give it that battleship smoothness of the original.

Just show some design sense that makes sense.

It's a starship bridge, not a fucking pinball machine.

Since my big soda-themed journal the other day, I've bought a couple more cans of Nitro Pepsi.

But Now I'm starting to regret that decision, because I've just discovered something about each can of Nitro Pepsi that is quite annoying.

The cans aren't recyclable.

Each of the cans has a cylindrical plastic gas canister permanently affixed to the inside. The reason why the soda tastes flat is because... that's exactly what it is. The can contains flat soda that is then injected with nitrogen to create the foamy head, when the pressure inside the can is released, via popping the tab on top. Which is why it makes that wooshing noise when it's opened, rather than the simple pop and fizz.

I've cut one of the cans open, to see if this gas canister can be removed, but no. It's stuck there. There's no removing it. And it's not affixed to the side, which would be easy to cut and remove, it's affixed right in the middle of that big round dimple in the base.

So, while I like Nitro Pepsi, I doubt I'm ever going to buy it again.

Not unless the find a way to redesign the cans so that they can go directly into aluminum recycling, without the need disassemble them using power tools.

I've drunk a few things recently , and now I'm here to tell you about them. Strap in.

SPACE COKE: It's the space-flavored coca-cola all the hip kids are talking about, or rather were. Briefly. Because it tasted like hell in a bottle, with a toothpaste chaser. Absolute nightmare.

Verdict: All the thumbs down. Find whoever came up with this and force them to drink it forever as penance.


NITRO PEPSI: It's Pepsi, but with nitrogen bubbles instead of the usual carbon dioxide bubbles. So they're very small. I have actually had two cans of this now, because I only realized after I had finished the first one that I had drunk it wrong. You're not supposed to drink it out of the can.

The three steps listed on the can, waaaay down at the bottom on the back are:

1) Chill Can (it was cold already, check)

2) Pour Hard (innuendoes aside, they mean that instead of pouring smoothly you want that GLUG GLUG GLUG as you dump it into a glass so it really foams up)

3) Admire and Enjoy. (Yes. just look at the foamy beer-like head on it. Very nice. Unfortunately all the nitrogen went into making it, so the soda is basically flat now)

Verdict: It is better in a glass than straight from the can. I actually kind of like it. It's better than Space Coke at least.


Also, For my birthday, I was gifted an assortment sample pack of 12 "vintage" bottles of soda, manufactured by the Orca Beverage Company.

Kickapoo Joy Juice: This is basically Mountain Dew, but with a sharper bite to it.

Grape NEHI: Radar O'Riley's favorite. A quite serviceable grape soda.

Bedford's Ginger Ale: To date, my only experience with Ginger Ale was the Shop Rite store brand that my parents used to buy when I was a kid, which was sharp and bitter and consequently made me decide I don't like Ginger Ale. But I did like this. It's more like a sprite or seven up with a bite to it than that nasty pale fizzwater from days or yore.

Howdy brand Cherry Jubilee: Basically cherry kool-aid with bubbles. Simple. Effective. Cherry.

Romano's Italian Sodas : Orange Cream: You know how orange soda doesn't taste like orange juice? This does.

Red Rock Premium Peach: I hate peach. But I ended up liking this. Probably because it didn't taste much like peach.

Route 66 Root Beer - it's root beer.

Anchor brand Ginger Root Beer: It's root beer with a bite.

Jersey Creme Soda: It says on the label "the perfect soda" but, while it's a perfectly good cream soda, it's still not a patch on Faygo Rock N' Rye.

Americana Huckleberry favor: I had never tasted huckleberry anything before. Apparently huckleberries are raspberry flavored.

Hollywood's Original Shirley Temple: I have had many a Shirley Temple in my time. I'm also an old hand with it's hurly-burly macho man equivalent the Roy Rogers. These are made by taking either a lemon-lime soda, or a cola and mixing in a shot of either grenadine, or that red juice from the maraschino cherry jar. I've had all of the varieties of those. And they tasted nothing like this. This one was essentially citric acid flavored soda. Sweet and acidy. That sums it up.

Spiffy Cola: I have not listed these in any particular order, but I did save the worst for last. This was undrinkable. It tasted nothing like any cola I have ever had in my life. The flavor was something closer to the way turpentine smells, with a hint of pine scented floor cleaner. Truly awful.

Verdict: 11 out of 12 ain't bad.

I see on their website that Orca also sells a number of other vintage sodas including the old Frostie Root Beer, which was a fave from way back when I was a tiny little thing, and spent my summers camping in the cabins at Elk Neck State Park. I may have to explore their wares further.

But for now. That's all, folks.

It's April 16 again.

I'm 52.

Got some spiffing news for you folks over in Europe.

As some of you may recall, quite some time ago, I did a series of playboy-style images of everybody's favorite hippie teddybear surfer dude, Rockweed.

Example of such: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36908386/

Well... several months back the publisher of a furry magazine called Clowder sent out a notice asking for beach-themed art. They had a six page hole, and it needed filling. So I offered to take all six of those pages off their hands.

The result can be found here:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/46590750/

I did a six page playboy style playmate pinup layout with a mix of heavily reworked art and some all new images.

Rockweed, getting naked on the beach, showing off the goods, and even doing a little nude surfing.

You folks in Europe should be able to buy it direct. And I've been told that it will be on sale at EF2022.

The rest of the world will likely have to pick it up when it becomes available at places like Rabbit Valley.

But it's a thing that is happening. I'm quite pleased with the way the photo layout came out, and I think you will be too.

Throw some money at it!

Cheers :)

Hola folks....

We're a scattered few hours away from the end of 2021, and though I don't usually do that sort of thing, this time I have actually made myself a bit of a new year's resolution.

Here it is: It's time to finally learn Blender.

I have been using a now very ancient, and very creaky copy of 3DS max, from back in the days of working for RoseArt. (That was a long long time ago) I've also been making use of Poser, which hasn't really had an update in almost as long. (It recently got bought by new owners who released an update, but that's really just more of a "stamp the new company branding on it" release than a new version.)

Anyway....

In the past, I have made several attempts to get into Blender.

These all followed the same trajectory:

1) Hopeful optimism. I can do anything if I put my mind to it, and it's free. So download it and let's go. Install install install. And, open.

2) What the hell is this? Why does nothing work? Where the hell are the controls? Who designed this? Have they ever even used a 3D program before? How does anybody even get any use out of this piece of junk! I can't even move the fucking camera! This SUCKS!

3) Uninstall. Grump a bit. Deep breath.

4) Back to 3DS Max. Get things done.

Recently though, Blender has released version 3.0, which has fixed the UI a bit. There are at least camera controls now. And I've been slowly coming to terms with the fact that doing most anything in Blender requires learning a ton of obscure and never explained keyboard commands.

There's also the fact that if every other piece of 3D software on the planet has standardized around names for features and how they should work, Blender decided not to do any of that.

So, coming into Blender with several decades worth of 3D experience is proving to be both a help and a hinderance. I keep expecting this to be there and do that and it just isn't. And it doesn’t. Because reasons.

Some would call this quirky. I would call this annoying.

However, I have a couple of things which are helping me along on this task.

The first is  ralei who has agreed to be a bit of a guru. When I get stuck and find myself ready to smash Blender in the face (which would just damage the monitor screen) he's there to talk me down off the desk and take the brick out of my hands.

The second is a Neo Tour Box. This is a little USB device covered with an assortment of knobs and buttons which can be programmed with hotkey commands. This has made learning the obscure keyboard controls easier, because... now I don't have to. I don't need to know that you press all these keys to make this thing happen, I can just program them into a button and know that one button performs that one task.

It's been about a week now since I downloaded 3.0 - and I'm staring to "get it" a bit. The modeling tools are a bizarre mix of amazingly sophisticated, and stupidly stone primitive. (The program lacks a simple alt-drag to copy, for example) And everything is named wrong. But I am starting to be able to make it do things.

But it's going to be a long uphill climb.

I guess that's why I made it a new year's resolution.

Because I expect it to take at least a year, at best.

Tomorrow's Xmas eve. We've nearly made it through another one together, folks.

Time to enjoy the greatest christmas album ever. Make it a part of your holiday festivities.



¡Que tengan unas felices fiestas, gente!

I have just seen the new Ghostbusters.

It is absolutely epic.

Go see it.

And don't miss the post-credits sequences.

Howdy folks. Breaking my silence to let you all know that I am still out here, and I am still doing okay.

I have more things I need to post, and I'll get to them eventually. But for right now, I'm here to talk about a thing.

And there's a question that goes with it. So stay tuned for that.

Anyway, here goes: As the journal which has been sitting around for the past three months on my FA account may have suggested, I am interested in working on a visual novel. Specifically, an adults-only visual novel. And indeed, I have started doing so.

I started off by downloading the program Twine, and using it to sketch out a storyline in a flowchart style. For those of you not familiar, Twine lets you create boxes with links between them, and fill them with text. This can be used to create entire interactive stories, but in text form only. But I didn't use it that way. I created a box for each of my plot points, then wired them together in sequence. I then filled out each of the boxes with key details about that section of the story. It gives me a rough roadmap for where I want to go.

My next step is to take that flowchart and, using it as a guide, begin constructing the actual VN in renpy. I had hoped to find myself a guru who was well versed enough in the program to assist me in turning my ideas into code, but that ended up not really happening. Instead I was pointed toward a few online resources where I could ask questions, get answers, and hopefully work it out myself.

And that has worked. I have had a couple stumbling points, but each time I was able to get assistance in working through them.

It's likely to be awhile before the completed thing is seen, as the flowchart of plot data comes in at around 45 little boxes of plot, and I have just started on box one.

Here's a brief rundown of the concept:

Zero Day is coming to the planet Boink: a celebration of Zero, the first Foozle. On this day, Foozles remove their coloring and their identities, spending the day in their natural albino state, as a symbolic gesture of unification, and a celebration of their progenitor.

The player is invited along on a trip to Boink by Cobalt and Twinkle, who are headed there for the Zero Day festival.

But someone has their own plans underway for that day, with a plot to take advantage of the anonymity it provides, and it's up to you, the player to intervene. You have one week to figure out what they're up to, as the clock is counting down... to Zero.

(dramatic music)

The plot I have worked out for it is constructed so that the story unfolds over the course of a week. My plan is to finish up day one, and release that as a public Demo, and from that point on, to release each subsequent day of story to my Patreon as it gets completed, until the final project is finished. At that point I will likely release the entire thing publicly for free.

I also plan on keeping the Patreon up to date on how the work is going, with lots of behind the scenes stuff posted each month. In the past, my Patreon has primarily been driven by patron request images, which has ended being somewhat limiting. I'm hoping that this game project can move me a bit past that.

So, that brings me to my question:
I have been looking around at the various Patreon accounts of people who are also writing and putting out game content, and a lot of them seem to have their top tier set with "Get your name in the credits" as the only benefit.

So, would there be any interest in that? If I created like, a $25 tier on my Patreon whose only benefit was "Get your name in the credits" would anyone be interested?

I'm seeing people pull in thousands of dollars a month doing this, and I have to admit, I'd like a piece of that.

But I also have to admit, writing a VN is proving to be a somewhat rewarding experience on its own. Between the creative needs of designing, writing, drawing characters, painting backgrounds, and writing code, there's a nice balance of left-brain and right-brain activity there, so if one part gets boring, I can bounce over and work on one of the other parts.

I still have two final commissions I need to finish up and deliver before I go into this thing full time, though.

But, this is where I plan on going, and what I plan on doing.

Let me know what you think.

I realize this is probably a long shot, but are there any visual novel programmers out there who might be interested in collaborating on a boink-themed VN?

I've poked at Ren'py a bit, but I'm not much of a programmer, and non-linear storytelling is a bit beyond me.

I also can't really pay anything, so it would be a purely voluntary thing, if it ever happens.

Just kind of sticking a toe in the water for now.

So, it's been a good while since I posted anything.

Ironically, this has not been because I haven't been drawing anything, but because I've been drawing far too much.

Over the past few years, due to the fact that I have been churning out upwards of six new pieces every month, at the request of my various patreon patrons, I have been slowly sliding into burnout. On top of this pile I also had the Evil Twin comic, and last year I took on a huge stack of extra commission work to cover my tax bill for that year. And then more commissions on top of that because people kept asking and I kept saying yes.

Which meant that when I finally hit the wall and entered burnout stage, I didn't stop. I kept going. I owed so many people so much art that I couldn't stop, and I ended up putting myself through the meatgrinder trying to keep up, until it eventually overwhelmed me.

But again, I couldn't stop. So instead of stopping, I went into slowdown mode, and from there into extreme slowdown mode, in an attempt to stop burnout from turning into a complete breakdown. As part of an agreement with my patrons, I have started designating specific months that I would "take off" where there would be no patron requests for that month - these would be December and June. These months have allowed me a chance to catch my mental breath, cool down and grind away at those remaining commissions at a more sedate speed.

You'll also note that it's been over a year since the most recent Evil Twin. I sacrificed work on it to save myself for the things that I owed people. It will probably come back at some point, but for right now It's got to wait. It would just be one more thing standing in the way.

Part of the reason why I haven't posted much new as of late, is that I've been deliberately holding off on posting until I had those last three commissions finished off.

However, as I have just been contacted by someone who was worried that I went silent.... no COVID did not get me. I have had both of my shots - the first on April 20, and the second on May 18. So I am fully immunized from the nasty bugger ( and for those of you keeping track of such things - no, it has not made me magnetic)

I am still here, and will post a few pieces from the growing backlog to tide the rest of you over until I can get things fully sorted out again.

I've already told my Patreon that I'm likely to be taking July off, too. Hopefully this will allow me the time to finish off these last few images, while still keeping things low-key enough that I can unwind from my burnout. I will commence regular postings once this is all behind me.

Here's the status of the remaining commissions:

Marbles: 65% - 70% done. Two page comic. Page 2 is done. Page 1 is laid out, panel 3/3 in progress.

Adumbratio: 25% done - single piece three characters, rough layout stage. Background in planning stages.

Doodles: Single piece, two characters - Rough idea, nothing down on paper yet. This should be the easiest of the three.

Sorry for the stress and the silence. I've been in over my head, but I am nearly dug out now. I'm just digging slowly.

Anyway, thanks for still being here, and off we go...

Do any of you folks know if the wacom stylus for a newer model will work with an older model tablet, such as a Graphire?

This kind of stuff fascinates the hell out of me:



I'm still amazed that the kinds of FX shots that used to cost millions of dollars can now be done by hobbyists in their spare time.

The following is a true story, or as true of a story as I can make it, considering that most of it is cribbed from my own patchy memories of the events in question, and the stories told by my parents well after the fact.

Anyway....

I live in Delaware, and apart from a few odd times here and there when I moved elsewhere for job-related reasons, I've mostly always lived here. There was that time I spent six weeks living in an apartment on South Street in Philadelphia for that printing job, for example. Or that time I spent a month in Coatesville, on the mistaken assumption that it was closer to my job than just living here, In Delaware. I also had a place in Asbury Park, at the height of its abandonment and decay for yet another job.

But mostly, i've lived here in Delaware. It keeps pulling me back.

I was born in 1970. It's a bit crazy to think that for the first four years of my life, I was living in Richard Nixon's America. I lived through Watergate and was blissfully unaware of it, the entire time.

Joe Biden also lived in Delaware.

In 1972, some things happened to him: He won an election to become Delaware's newest Senator. He also lost his wife and daughter in a car accident, while his family were out campaigning for him. His two boys, Beau and Hunter also sustained injuries during the crash.

That's where I come into the picture.

Beau Biden ended up with a broken leg. And as it happens, around that same time so did I. I won't go into the specific details, but suffice to say it was my older brother's fault.

Was so.

And the two of us, Beau and I, we ended up sharing the same Hospital ward. And as we had similar injuries, we ended up right next to each other. And because of this, my parents would run into Joe when they came to visit me, and he came to visit Beau.

I don't remember too much about those days. I was only two at the time. I remember being in bed with my leg up in a cast. I remember family members leaning down over the bed when they came to visit. I remember being annoyed that my brother got to run around the Hospital while I was stuck in bed. And I remember the nurse feeding me Kellogg's Corn Pops, which I had never had before, and which is where this story takes it's next swerve.

The nurse fed me with a spoon that hadn't been properly sanitized. and as a result, I got a staph infection.

In my mouth.

A quick Google will reveal the following information: "Staph can be spread person-to-person and is very contagious.
Common symptoms include boils and oozing blisters. Staph can also cause food poisoning resulting in nausea, vomiting, and stomach ache. In rare cases, staph infections can turn deadly if the bacteria invade deeper into the body or enters the bloodstream resulting in fever, joint, and muscle pain."

And I had that in my mouth, and it was growing.

And the medical staff, for whatever reason, weren't listening to my parents about it. Like i said, I don't remember too much about those days, but my parents say that at one point, when they came to visit me, they discovered I hadn't eaten anything for three days. And when they looked in my mouth, I had white fur growing everywhere.

There is still, to this day, a thin line on the surface of my tongue marking where the edge of that infection lay. As a result, I have had somewhat sensitive taste-buds my entire life. Oddly, while this has resulted in some foods being physically painful for me to eat, it also resulted in an ability to easily consume food so hot that it can damage metal cookware. (It's also partially the reason I never consume alcohol, though that's another story for another time.)

It was, at this point, when my parents were frantically trying to get the hospital staff to even admit there was a problem that Joe arrived to see Beau. And seeing what a state my parents were in, he asked them what was wrong, and they showed him.

To hear my parents tell it, Joe Biden went absolutely viking on the hospital staff. Having a newly minted state Senator breathing fire on your behalf tends to get things done.

No, let's put that in all caps: Get Things Done.

And get done, things did. From that day forward, I was being treated by the same medics as Beau, at the same time as Beau, with Joe watching over both of us to make damned sure of it.

I guess the point I'm making is this: If not for Joe Biden, there is a very real possibility I would be dead right now.

That I would, in fact, have actually died back in the 1970s, long before anyone had even conceived of this fandom. Long before I picked up a pencil for the first time. I might not have even survived to see Star Wars.

You would never have known that I even existed.

So, it is somewhat gratifying to see that Joe has gone on to bigger and better things. The man who once stood watch over my bedside is now standing watch over the entire country.

And it's also in a sorry state - one big mess for him to fix, caused by someone else's carelessness.

I believe that I can trust him, to help it heal, too.

Anyway, that's my Joe Biden story. I've told a few people that I'd tell it after the election was over.

And so, here it is.

And it's as true as I can make it.

That's the fact, jack.

Today is Blue Monday, which is supposed to be, statistically, the most depressing day of the year.

So cheer up, people. It's all uphill from here.

No Snark:

By donating $12 you can send a pizza to the National Guard troops currently guarding America's capitol.

Local DC Pizza shop WE THE PIZZA has set up a way for people to donate pies online to the National Guard who are currently protecting America's Capitol, at the price of $12 a pie.

They plan to match each order. So if you buy one, they send out two. They are also working with other restaurants in the area to provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner so the troops have a variety. Buffalo & Bergen, CHIKO, District Doughnuts, The Duck and The Peach, Maketto, Pizzeria Paradiso and RIS.

Full story:
https://www.today.com/food/dc-pizza.....apitol-t205887

Order here:
https://donorbox.org/we-the-pizza-we-the-troops-1

I sent $25 worth.

Pass it on!

Since it has been asked, let us turn our attention towards this question, sent in by Marbles:

"Why are foozles always so sexual, and horny?"

Why are Foozles constantly sexual? Because Foozles are constantly having sex.

A read-through of the wiki article, reveals that a Foozle is essentially one giant self-propelled erogenous zone.

https://foozlefan.club/index.php/Foozles

As such, behavior from a Foozle which may not at first glance appear sexual, actually is.

Let's take the following scenario, and see if you can spot all the ways this Foozle is having sex, right in front of you:

Picture the scene:

It's one of the many clean and modern underground subway terminals on Boink. At left, a set of stairs descends through the glare of sunlight into the relative dimness of the room, coming down from street level above. At right is the transparent partition wall between the loading platform and the tracks, with entry gate, now closed. Beyond that lie the subway tunnel and tracks, currently empty.

There is a bench seat, a tiled floor, and also present are some advertising posters, and a couple vending machines, a waste bin, and an overhead announcement screen.

And here comes our Foozle. She bounds lightly down the stairway into the platform area, and pauses for a moment at the bottom, there in the dazzling rectangle of sunlight from above, to have a stretch and give us a nice look at her: She's not wearing very much - a skimpy revealing halter top of metallic fabric with a heart-shaped cutout in front, string bikini thong panties of the same shiny material, a small computing device on a wristband, and matching color sandals. A few pieces of jewelry dangle from her antennae.

Looking around, and realizing the she has the place pretty much to herself, she gives her tummy a ruffling scratch, and then bounces over to the vending machines.

Waving her wristband computer at the payment sensor, she buys a Bubble Tea from a machine. And, as she waits for the machine to provide this drink, she stands, arms clasped behind her back and lightly brushing her tail. Her hips sway slightly side to side. as if she were slow-dancing with herself to music that only she can hear, her antennae bobbling lightly with the motion.

Yes, her ass is quite mesmerizing when she sways it around like that, but don't linger there too long. There's a lot yet to see.

With a soft klunk, the drink has been provided by the vending machine, and she now collects the cup and the oversized straw with which to drink it. She makes her way lightly over to the bench seat, climbs up onto it and sets about unwrapping the straw and inserting it into her drink. She takes a sip, swishing the boba pearls around in her mouth before swallowing. Approving of the flavor, she takes another sip, and then raises her computer armband, unclasps the small computing device from it, and begins to play a video game, which buzzes slightly as she scores points.

For the next few minutes, all seems quiet. Quiet sipping noises. Quiet video game buzzing noises. She continues to play her video game, and drink her tea as she waits for the train to arrive.

Finally, there is a chime announcing an incoming train, and the screen lights up to list the impending arrival. She re-clips the computing device to her armband, sets down her now empty cup, and places her hands flat against the seat of the bench as the train comes rumbling into the station, sending a wash of air through the terminal, ruffling her fur, sending her hair fluttering, setting her antennae jewelry bouncing in the breeze, and causing everything in the room to vibrate.

As the entry gate opens, she stands up and has another quick stretch, casually runs a hand through the hair atop her head, to brush it back into place, and then gives each of her antennae three strokes from base to tip, as if straightening them. She deposits her straw wrapper and the now empty plastic cup into the waste bin, and then walks over to the entry gate.

She gets on the train, finds a seat upon it, and after a few more moments of quiet, the doors close, the gate closes, and the train leaves, whooshing her away to wherever she was going.

This is the end of our scenario.

Did you spot all of the sex that you just witnessed?

Let's start with the least obvious: She's wearing a vibrating buttplug. How do we know this? Well, this is more a guess than anything - the swaying of her hips as she stood in front of the vending machines seems to suggest that she has something inserted, and that she's moving her hips to enjoy the stimulation it's providing. She could be wearing a pair of Cyberdonix Pleasure Panties, except for the fact that she's wearing a g-string thong, which would have made a pair of Cyberdonix visible and obvious if worn beneath. The buttplug is the most likely, least visible alternative.

Okay, but what about the rest of it? Let's start with the sandals she's wearing. The bottoms of a Foozle's feet can be sexually stimulated. Most Foozles go barefoot, and Boink makes it a point that all walking surfaces on the planet are clean and comfortable to walk on without shoes. So, when a Foozle chooses to wear something on their feet when they don't have to, it's worth taking note of.

In this case, the sandals that she's wearing have a pebbled, jelly-like sole which provides a massaging stimulation as they're walked in. So, when she came bouncing down the steps, and when she walked around the room, she was basically using a sex toy on herself. The aforementioned swaying motion as she waited for the vending machine would also provide stimulation as her weight shifted from foot to foot.

We're not done yet. A Foozle's antennae can also be sexually stimulated. So, those little dangling bits of jewelry she was wearing on them? That's right, they're technically another sex toy. The motion of them provides stimulation as they swing about. Likewise, those strokes up her antenna after she stood up were essentially public masturbation.

Speaking of public masturbation, the palms of a Foozles hands can also be sexually stimulated. So, when she ruffled her tummyfur using them, casually brushed them through her hair, and then stroked her antenna with them, that was all public masturbation as well. And it doesn't end there either: by placing her hands flat against the bench seat as the train's arrival caused it to vibrate, she basically used the entire subway as a vibrating sex toy.

Oh, you think we're done? We're not done.

She ruffled her tail as she waited for the vending machine, another erogenous zone. More sex.

And then there's the tea - Bubble tea contains Boba "pearls," which are small, spherical rubbery blobs of tapioca. The special oversized straw makes it possible for these to be sucked up into the mouth. And if you'd read the wiki article, you'd know that the inside of a Foozle's mouth, and also their throats, can also be sexually stimulated. So, drinking this specific style of drink, and letting those pearls swish around her mouth is also sexually stimulating, as is the feeling of swallowing them - like a ribbed sex toy as they go down.

So... yes, this was technically another sex toy.

But, that's got to be it, right? Nope. let me draw your attention to one last thing:

The videogame on the computing device. It buzzed. This was likely to be one of the many varieties of game developed by Foozles for Foozles, wherein each point scored causes the device's "silent ringer" to buzz, vibrating the unit. The more and faster points are scored, the more intense the vibrations. So, that's right - yet another vibrating sex toy.

There is also the possibility that the game was remote linked to that buttplug we mentioned earlier. Though this cannot be proven just from visual evidence, it is also a possibility and is therefore worth mentioning. In that case, points scored would have also either activated or intensified the vibrations from that as well.

So, let's sum it all up, now:

You just watched a Foozle repeatedly masturbate herself in public while using a series of sex toys on herself, and you probably didn't notice at all.

Why are Foozles always sexual? Because Foozles are always having sex.

Owing to their unique physiognomy, they aren't just living in their world, they are also constantly having sex with it.

Even when you don't realize it.

And that's the long and the short of it.

And now you know.

Since my last journal was written some three months ago, and I should probably put something new here, let's take a little time today to talk about the recent Animaniacs revival.

Specifically, let's talk about why it doesn't work.

Even with none of the original production team working on it, I still had high hopes. The trailers that were shown mostly hit the right notes. It looked really promising.

So, what went wrong?

I don't know if the staff currently working on the show have never actually seen the original series, or if they just didn't understand it when they did, but the final product they presented seems to miss the mark on every point:

They didn't get the concept.
They didn't get the characters.
They didn't understand why any of it worked.

The Warners are supposed to be cartoon characters from the black and white age of moviemaking, who were locked in the studio water tower never to be seen again, until they escaped. This premise was outlined in the opening titles for most of the early part of the original show's run. Their comedy is supposed to harken back to those days. They owe a ton to early comedy teams such as The Marx Brothers, or Olsen & Johnson.

The writers of this new version really needed to be sat down, not just in front of episodes of the original show, but in front of those old black and white comedies, so they could get a feel for what they were supposed to represent. The snappy patter, the clever wordplay. The construction of a setup and a payoff. Even at their wackiest and most slapstick, that style of comedy demonstrates skill and craftsmanship.

Instead, the writers of this new version went with more of a Family Guy "throw piles of random shit at the screen and hope something sticks" approach where nothing matters, and things just happen so they can happen. None of it has to make sense. It doesn't have to fit together moment to moment. Fuck context. It's random noise and screen filler. A gray haze of disconnected incidents that fail to add up to a greater whole.

As characters, and leaning once more on The Marx Brothers as an example of ths working, the Warners work best as agents of chaos which are unleashed upon abusively deserving authority figures. The little guy who gets pushed just that bit too far and unleashes comedic retribution. The antiheroes who step forward to deliver a satiric slap in the face to the forces of oppression, even if that oppression is just the fat slob in the guard's uniform being paid minimum wage to chase them around the backlot.

The clearest demonstration that this new version just doesn't "get it" is the new studio head.

They made the studio head a woman.

Okay, so... it's the modern era, and women in positions of power are supposed to be a good thing.

So, why is this a problem?

Because in this show, authority figures are supposed to exist primarily as punching bags. They should only be present as a target for abuse, and as a result of them making this authority figure a woman.... the show has no idea what to fucking DO with her.

The studio head from the original series was a short, fat, balding bastard who the Warners could abuse the hell out of. Why? because he deserved it. His every appearance onscreen reinforced that he was a horrible person desperately in need of a well-placed kick in the pants for making the lives of everyone serving under him a living hell.

But now, this authority figure is a woman. A modern business woman. And as a result, completely un-fucking-touchable.

Do you get just how broken that is?

The Warners were an unstoppable force, always ready at any given moment to snap back with a witty retort, or a bit of absurdity to exasperate the forces that be. Now they're being written as annoyed bystanders to the chaos that surrounds them.

The characters and the show are all the weaker because of it.

Like most of the things that 2020 has given us, The new Animaniacs is a bit of a disaster.

And like most things 2020 has given us, I can only hope the future holds something better.

Passing this along:
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/9571352/

Old school furry artist Brian Harp is in a pretty bad place right now, and could use some financial help to tide him over until he can get out of there. Anything you can send to his paypal would be appreciated.

Thanks, all.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

- IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

It's April 16. Today I am 50.

Not sure how I feel about that.