Well, ladies and gentlefurs, I have just seen The Desolation of Smaug, and have been rampantly disappointed. I could go on at length about the hows and whys, but that would be dignifying the decimation I witnessed beyond its' due. Suffice it said that I was not in the least happy, and am glad that I am not the one who paid for the ticket (though I feel sorry that the friend who DID pay for it lost said cash).

Put simply, I loathe winter. Loathe the season with a passion bordering upon the insane. All I want right now is to be warm again. Anything is better than this frozen nightmare hell that is any time it's cold enough for snow to reach the ground or remain present thereupon. It's below 70 degrees F. This automatically falls into my personal category of "Too damn cold". Teh Kyubi No Want! This fox demands summer!

Blech.

*Sound of a Boatswain's whistle going off*

Now hear this, now hear this, announcement from the CIC.

Note to all and sundry: fennecs can and WILL make you explode from cuteness!

FENNEC!!!! *BOOM*

That is all.

Gather my friends, gentle furs one and all, and please excuse this Kitsune's rantings, for goodness knows I am about to.

Some of you may know that I have a few pet peeves in the fandom, and they are just that: few and far between. Every once in a while, though, someone manages to hit not merely one of my buttons, but a slew of them in a row. Such has happened, and I desperately feel the need to vent, lest the unnamed individual who caused this rant may find a pleasantly over-curvy Kitsune hunting them down with a large baseball bat with a number of nails rammed through it, in the concerted effort to ventilate their skull and allow the evil spirits out (along with what little there might be of their brains, but that is merely a casualty of war.)

Now, I am well aware of the preference in this fandom for the concept of "Fursona". It is needless to say not one I ascribe to, though I usually do not have ill to say of it. What I do have ill to say of it is when someone comes to me, asks me what my fursona is, then proceeds to go ballistic in a nice long suborbital arc when I explain to them that I have characters as opposed to a fursona.

By ballistic, mind you, I refer to ranting and freaking out in a PM (thankfully) to me pertaining to how I should, can, and must indeed leave the fandom before I bring upon it terrible ruin in the form of horrible psychological harm to its' true fans and proponents, and how I am most assuredly not a fan of furry whatsoe'er, because I do not have a fursona. They then proceeded to attempt to question my very self-image and how I could not possibly have a complete self-image if, in the process of calling myself a furry fan, I did not ascribe to and religiously follow the very idea and ideals of "fursona".

Now, my friends, I am certain that if one of you joined a fandom and were told that in order to join you would have to devoutly and truly convert to an organized religion, say Hassidic Judaism, or Fundamentalist Christianity (of any stripe and denomination), or Orthodox Buddhism even, most of you would I am certain look the person telling you this and laugh in their face with a vehemently nasty and sarcastic tone before walking away. Some of you might go so far as to spit in their face, and others further still and be moved towards violence, verbal or physical. Now, I am familiar fully with the idea of fursonae, the concept of "me, just with fur, or me as my idealized animal". I recognize it as escapism. I have not the slightest quarrel in the world with this. What I was thoroughly unaware of was that, apparently, to some folk, I need to alter my entire personal outlook, philosophy, and value system to reflect this or else apparently I am not a fan!!

I proceeded, needless to say, to protest this, and wa then ranted about yet further as to how I needed to acknowledge the, and I quote, "ancient and respected roots of the fandom." Needless to say, as something of an old greymuzzle, I brought this into question, explaining that I've been in the fandom since close to its' beginnings. Said individual promptly turned deeply snarky and asked me if I was four thousand years old somehow. They went on to try to state that the ancient Egyptians were furry and respected furries, and how other cultures were furry, including the Norse and the American Indian prior to contact with the European settlers. Now, ladies and gentlefurs all, I am not one to seethe, but this set me to a slow, not-quite-simmering boil. I'm old enough to remember and understand the roots of the fandom, and believe me, the ancient cultures scattered across our globe, no matter how nature-worshipping (replete with human sacrifice) they might have been, furry was not part of that. Certainly not in the form we recognize it today. I spent a few simple paragraphs explaining how the fandom's origins can be successfully traced to cartoon animal fandom in the 1960s and 1970s, how furry in essence actually began in the 1980s, and that it came into the form we recognize today, replete with its' odd pseudo-philosophies and attendant sub-groups and related groups and not so related groups attached to it around roughly the early to mid 1990s. As you could well imagine, this "denial of the obvious and plain to see history of the fandom" merely drew out yet more rantings from this fellow, to the tune of accusing me, yes ME of trolling. Me? A troll? I cannot remember a time when even once I have willfully fished for a reaction from anyone, even mildly, let alone one done to expose one to emotional grief or hardship.

I do so adore certain things about our beloved furry fandom, though, mind you all, most especially the oft-repeated and deeply-beloved to fans phrase of "As furries, we accept all sorts, everybody is welcome." With the deepest apologies to folks' feelings in advance, but I must say that I am deeply sick and tired of this hypocrisy. As is true of any fandom, we have our sub-groups in which those who share in their particulars, whether philosophical, spiritual, physical, erotic or non are welcome, and those who do not share are unwelcome. We exclude, judge, pre-judge, and discriminate easily as much as any other fandom anywhere, with perhaps the one binding truth amongst the vast majority of us being that we at some point were rejected by another fandom for our particular bent. We most categorically do not, even as a fandom on the whole, "accept everyone one and all". In fact, we accept, usually, in our various little cliques, fairly few. There are perilous few who try, honestly and with concerted effort, to live up to our fandoms' promise of accepting everyone, and of those few, fewer still those who even begin to manage it. I respect deeply those who do try, and those who accept without using those oft-repeated words that we do not. What I have come to loathe are those who say they do and then behave in a contrary manner.

You might ask, dear readers, what the point of the above paragraph is, seemingly slightly non sequitur to the rest of this rant. I shall explain. Put simply, the "We accept all" line was promptly rammed down my throat by the individual in question who had spent close to a half hour lambasting me, roundly and soundly and with a loquaciousness that boggles and befuddles the mind, about my lack of fursona and how I was not a true fan. When I pointed out their plain and obvious hypocrisy, they flew into a rage, finally degrading into pointless profanity and not terribly imaginative slights to my ancestry, my personal beliefs, religion, race, color, creed, sexual preferences, and the like, before declaring that I was apparently a lost cause and leaving in a huff.

My friends, ladies and gentlefurs, dear hearts all, rarely does someone's behavior incense me deeply, but this individual has done so, and left me viciously and violently vexed with a vile and vindictive vengeance burning under my furry bosom. Never in close now to 30 years' time in this fandom has a single individual incensed me so, to the point where I wish to deliver a well-deserved and sound total thrashing, replete with attendant long hospital stay, preferably in an intensive care ward to them. Were I not to have spoken, nay indeed ranted about this to all of you, I fear I would be in a murderous mood about now.

Thank you one and all for your tolerance of my ranting. You have my appreciation for lending me your ears. Fair day or eve one and all.

Yours all,
Mika

Well, thanks to a friend, I'm now $380 in the hole, but have my home compy working again.

On a different note, had a nightmare for the first time in many a year. One nasty and messed up enough that I figure writing about it might just get the imagery out of my head.

I wish I could remember how it began, but I was talking to a rather pleasant and friendly fur, a anthro male fox in blue, maybe in his late teens. I normally don't dream about anthros/furries, so this alone made it weird. Well, the discussion was about mecha and science fiction, turned to Pacific Rim, when there was this really unpleasant-sounding wet crunch noise and he got all quiet mid-sentence. One of my other friends, also there and on the conversation, looked over, then screamed and pointed. For a moment I didn't know how to respond, then saw the fox was looking down at his waist, where his shirt was now not merely wet but DRENCHED in blood. The fox looked down, then moved to bend over, and his whole upper torso from the waist just fell over. Gore, intestines, all his innards just fell out and he's staring, then looks to me and my friend for help, mouth moving but not speaking really, just these fluttery sounds. That's when we realized the legs were STILL STANDING. They bent over and if it wasn't so bloody and messy I'd have called it comical, as the waistband of his now blood-soaked jeans had sprouted a ring of inward-facing teeth. It was these which had bitten the poor fox through, the crunch being his spinal cord getting severed. Parts of his guts were still horrifically attached.

That's when I screamed. I mean wake the dead holy hell screamed at the top of my lungs, and woke up screaming. Never ever even when on painkillers or other medication have I ever had such a dream, and I admit it's left me really shaken. I couldn't fall back asleep, and my screams also woke my roomie (who thankfully COULD fall back asleep).

I don't know what brought this weirdness on, but I hope to Inari and all the gods that it doesn't return ever again.

Well, that's the news. Fighting off a sleep deprivation headache, a backache from a damaged bed (matress needs replacement), and elsewise working.

Yours all,
Mika

Well, something I had been dreading for the last 2 years has finally happened. My aging main computer, the one at home, has finally given up the ghost. I cannot be sure if it is the motherboard or the processor, but all the rest of the components work fine. Either way, this means that I'm not going to have use of my games or anything from my home machine for the next month or two while I scrimp and save enough to go mobo+processor+memory. The combo is going to maul me financially, just when I was in the process of getting back on my feet.

The upshot to this is I will finally be trading in my 4-generation-old Core2 Quad Q8200 machine, with its' 4 gigs of DDR2 800 MHz RAM, for something likely to be a Core i5 machine, and probably as much as 32 GB of DDR3 RAM. I'm hoping and praying things work out financially. At the minimum, I'm down for the next month, though, and likely more than 2.

The good news to this is I still have my work computer, my netbook at home, and if need be my old Dell laptop also at home, though that last monster is a hassle and a half, plus is three times older than dirt.

So, that's the story. I'm annoyed, but I cannot say I didn't see this coming.

Well, as usual, it's been a fair few months since I posted a journal, and indeed, a few things happening in my life.

First has been the unwelcome discovery that my blood sugar was and is disgustingly distressingly high. This a change in diet has brought down, but still I'm in need of taking it down further, something I shall hopefully be able to do with primarily diet and exercise. In the process, I have for the last 2 months cut out sugars from my diet as far as is possible, and have, thanks to that, dropped close to 12 pounds.

Next up was the surprise: quite some time ago, 2007 to be exact, I had borrowed my roommate's Nintendo DS. This is one of the old originals, mind you. After the convention I had gone to, I knew I had brought it home but I lost where I'd put it. I knew EXACTLY where the charger was, but the unit itself had escaped my scrutiny. Fast forward six years, and while cleaning my room a bit some four days ago, what should I behold hidden under a massive foot-tall stack of napkins but the Nintendo DS I'd misplaced. On a pure lark, not expecting anything, I opened it up and depressed the power button. To my shock, awe, and surprise, it powered up immediately and was able to play. Now I just need to look for some old old games for it!

I loathe being sick. And yet again, here I am. Sore throat, fever, all-over body ache that feels like several someones decided to see what fox puree looks like. That, plus gastrointestinal upset best left to some horror writer's imagination.

I do believe I'll stay home next week just to recover from this. It's still ramping up, and with my sicks, it takes time for them to ramp down again.

OK, folk, odd question to anyone who cares to answer: I'm looking for furry mods for Skyrim. Not modifications on the Khajiit or the Argonians, there are those a-plenty available. I mean actual new species added in with their own complete bodies, etc. If there are any out there, they seem to be well-kept secrets. If anyone has links or the like to toss my way, I'd be a very ecstatic Kitsune. I can understand if, for the interests of privacy, said links are sent as notes. If this is the case, I give my word these won't be given out, nor their source cited anywhere.

Thanks, folks!

Well, my friends, they say bad things like to come in groups, and thus, they have...

The business I work for follows the Jewish High Holy Days. Thus, over the next three weeks I will essentially only be working 2 out of the 4 days I normally would, with the consummate effect upon my income.

On top of this, I have the unpleasant fact that as I currently recover from some form of sore throat and cough, which is being nasty and refuses to quite leave me, like some clingy hanger-on that one just can't shake regardless of how many times you boot them in the face, for the third time in my life, I have pink eye, also known as conjunctivitis. This means, for those unfamiliar with this awful malady, that for the next two wonderful weeks, I get to experience my eyes overbrimming with thick, nasty gop, this awful mix of tears and mucous-like material that I euphemistically refer to as "slime", while at the same time being red, irritated, feeling like someone poured sand into them every waking, eye-opened moment. Altogether a deeply unpleasant state made even less so by its' rather high level of transmissibility. In short, it's not just gop, but infectious gop.

Thus, as I walk through the week of my birthday sliding yet another year past me, I will be the wonderful recipient of being both poor and sick.

Pardon, my friends, as I crawl into my den and be somewhat of a grumpy old vixen.

Well, Ship-Wreck, on my watch list, is offering a chance to win a free reference sheet! Go on and hit them up, folks, but note the few conditions!

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3779183/

And here's hoping!

To all,
Mika

OK, pointless, dumb, but I may as well share it...

TentacleStation Pro™ and Pro][™. Available in single-user, four, eight, and twelve-user station formats.
The Pro]['s got some nice features, like up to a dozen fully-adaptive tentacles up to two meters in length.

Satisfaction guaranteed, service guaranteed, with a smile! And beats the heck out of TentacleStation Home™, which is limited to a single group of four one-meter long tentacles...

Take three seconds, and try to handle this image, though by the GODS it's naughty. In fact, if you can, imagine it drawn in JollyJack's style (which I adore): A unit, roughly looking like a DDR station, replete with grab-bar, and a figure standing on it, curious, wondering what it might be. Then for the next scene imagine from screen, floor, and a back "speaker" unit emerge bunches of tentacles. Offscreen highly-vocal naughtiness ensues.

I leave this odd tidbit to my readers' fertile imaginations.

Now, I for one, recipient of art that I am, am not usually one to say anything that might be considered criticism of any artist's policies, nor that of the art community in general. After all, it's poor relations at the least to upset those who have graciously given one stuff for years for free. Nonetheless, a (more than somewhat understandable) trend has been naggingly bothering me for the longest time, around a year's time now, and when an itch hasn't abated after that long, I feel I must say at the least something...

Having once drawn, and having no small number of artists as close friends, I can understand the strong desire to get right someone's character for a commission. It is, to me, a given to want perfection in this, both for ones' own artistic satisfaction and for the satisfaction of the client. Thus, I can fully understand why a reference picture of the character in question is a necessity, or at the least a highly-desirable item.

Nonetheless, requiring one to be present prior to work presents an interesting conundrum: what happens when you are the first artist to ever draw the character? Is it right to force someone, who feels your art style is the perfect fit for their in-head imagined image, to have to seek out and pay for someone else's style, one they feel isn't perfect, prior to coming to you as the artist? This becomes doubly or triply apparent and painful when possession of a reference sheet is a make-or-break affair on the side of the artist: No sheet, no art, period.

I don't know about anyone else, but I feel there is some unfairness, though somewhat justifiable, in forcing someone to get an "imperfect" version of their work, sometimes at high cost, then spend again to get the "perfect" or "correct" version.

To those of you who bother yourselves with my journals and are artists, and to those who commission art here and have in the past run up against this, please, I'm interested in your various thoughts, and experiences if you've found artists to be negotiable on this matter. Many commission sheets that I've been seeing state simply "no ref no art", and I've been increasingly seeing it. It has left me wondering how in the future I shall perhaps manage to get art of several of my characters. I have been the lucky and highly grateful recipient in recent years of some gorgeous work by friends, and at least one equally-gorgeous gift commission, but these are, of course, nothing to rely upon without being ungrateful or rude. So please, sound off on this, as I am interested to hear what other folk think or have to say on this matter.

Well, I'm figuring it's time for a new journal, more than six months after the last one. Sadly, or perhaps not so sadly, there's little really to update folk on, except to say I'm somehow still here, somehow still alive and kicking, and amazingly doing decently, though by no means outstanding.

On an odd side note, as some folk know, IRL I'm asthmatic. I've been taking Advair for a while, and cut the dosage from twice a day to twice a week, my doctor approving. Amazingly, my asthma remained under control. Now I've cut the Advair usage down to once a week and it's STILL holding up. I'm wondering if somehow my asthma went into, I dunno what to call it, remission or somesuch? Either way, I'm grateful because less asthma trouble means less money spent on meds.

Well, I have to say I've never been unwatched before. With the way the system is laid out, I have no way of knowing who it was that decided I was unworthy of their attention, and thus no way of finding out the cause of such. Very disturbing, especially since I barely DO anything in the first place. Definitely unexpected.

Now, mind you all, I am not the sort to wontonly gripe about anyone's user interface, by by the GODS the system for handling the management of favorites and submissions here on FA was just godsforsaken AWFUL.

I just spent an hour on what should have been a five minute affair, most of which was hitting the refresh button on my browser, since the FASTEST way to get back to the section I was clearing was to hit back, then refresh it, then confirm to my browser that it was OK to re-send information. This could have all been solved by a few checkboxes and the code remembering what page you were on and returning you to it, as opposed to your starting point. I feel sorry for those who have favorite lists longer than my own, or large galleries. Management must of needs be an immense chore!

Seriously, FA, dear heart, you NEED to change that feature, or at least update it...

The amazing CaptainQ, one of my good close friends here on FA and IRL, drew this piece for me. It's an example of what he can do in monochrome as a commission. Check out the insane detail on the bracers!

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5900410/

He's a really sweet guy and in need of some cash these days, so if you like what you see here, go and toss him a commission!

Ganked from  fellaniabloodclaw who ganked it herself from Yahoo's Scott B:

INSTALLING RAPTURE.
███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 44% DONE.
Install delayed....please wait.
Installation failed. Please try again. 404 error: Rapture not found.
EVENT "Rapture" cannot be located. The rapture you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.


Gods I adore this! How true!

I'll learn to actually update my bloody journals more than three times a year.

Let's see... Since my last journal, we got all the matters of my mother's death squared away. Things have been that awful silence that tends to be the standard when waiting for the other shoe to drop. Well, it did.

After playing an infinitude of telephone tag with the New York State Department of Health, Shuffled between departments A, B, C, D#, E F and G in a maniacally manic shuffle one step away from a Joe Satriani guitar solo, I have been denied the opportunity to re-enroll or recertify for insurance. Which means, as has happened something like eight times prior, I am, once again, without even the minimum of health insurance provided by welfare-level programs.

At this point, I also have this pending, still-to-be-fixed failed-out online registration that I need to go through, but where the web site refuses to acknowledge my Social Security number, then shunts me to an "unspecified error" page, where it fails silently. I've sent emails to the webmaster, called their hotlines, and jumped through more hoops than any vixen logically should in a million years, let alone the span of three months. All for naught.

Thanks to this, I need to wait a full month from the date of postmark on my rejection notice, re-apply in full, then wait another two months for them to agree that I am covered again. All this time sitting there with my hernia. Which is now inoperable because it is non-life-threatening and I have no money.

Aside from this complication in my life, though, thank all the gods great, small, known and forgotten that I have nothing else to really complain about.

Well, let's see. About a week and some odd change since my last journal, so let me keep you folk up to date.

The ashes of my mother arrived from the crematorium on Monday. This means the last stage in this too-long-drawn-out mess will finally end, and I can let my mother rest in peace, and maybe regain some peace of mind.

Saturday, February 22 I'll be heading out to Huntington to scatter my mother's ashes. So, I am no longer sitting here on tenterhooks waiting and anticipating things, which is good.

If things go well, then on Saturday I'll finally finish all of this and I don't have to deal with feeling like someone left me with a meter-wide hole in my chest. While I don't often pray, I'm doing so this once.

Well, that's what's new, folks. Also, I know many of you have been worried, so let me reassure you I'm coping with this well enough to remain on an even keel. It's rough, but I've the utmost confidence that I'll get through this, now more than ever. Again to all those who've taken the time to send me wishes and care, thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Yours,
Mika

Firstly, let me thank all of you for your outpouring of comforting words and prayers. It means an awful lot to me, more than I can properly express in words. Thank you all for being there.

I just today, not a few hours ago, finished my legal requirement of personally identifying my mother's body (as next of kin they required me as opposed to my aunt, my mom's sister, to do so). It gave me the chance to see her one last time before she's cremated and to say my farewells. I really don't know what to think or feel about it, it's kind of all in a jumble. I want to cry, but part of me wants to also smile knowing that she's not in pain, that there's nothing more that can ever hurt her.

After that, I spent some time going through her personal affects to see what I needed to keep. It came down to maybe 15 - 20 old old photos, all of which have sentimental value to me, and a few books my Mom held on the side for me to take when I would have seen her later this month. It's really disturbing to look at your Mom's place and know she's not coming home again. I don't think it's all hit me yet, but I can feel it coming. Might just take off work tomorrow to let this hit me and pass.

Next week Monday or Tuesday we should get the ashes back from the crematorium, and that's when, as per her final wishes, they'll be spread near the library in Huntington Station, a place where in the last year and a half she derived utter joy at being able to sit and read. I also don't know how I'm going to handle that one, as my aunt can't do it. She said as much to me today while in the funeral parlor waiting for the paperwork to all get finished.

So, that's what's been up, folks. Again, thank all of you for being there. It's mead this a lot more tolerable, knowing I have friends both online and close to me IRL that are there. I'll try to keep you folks abreast of the situation.

Yours all with love,
Mika

Well, folks, I don't know what to say... I just got news that my Mom is dead of a stroke. According to the medical examiner, she died instantly and painlessly. She was found by my aunt and my cousin in her apartment on Long Island. Six hours later same said aunt lost her husband, my Uncle, Al, on the operating table during leg surgery. I don't think I'm going to be in good shape for a while, folks. If I seem more out-of-contact than usual, this is the reason why.

Well, it's that time again, for one of my rare journals. Most of this is venting over stuff, the other part well, normal journaly things.

After twenty years and some odd change, my hernia operation popped. So now my lower abdominal region has this puffy unsightly bulge where a loop of intestine rests a little TOO close to the surface. I'm not a happy vixen about this. It's unsightly and uncomfortable, especially when bending or leaning over from a seated position, or when walking for too long.

Now, being intelligent, I went to the hospital Emergency Room to have it checked, something which is covered quite nicely under my health insurance, which I promptly informed of the fact I was visiting the ER. This went well, as a short time later I walked out of there with the official diagnosis of my bulge being a hernia and not some other nefarious bodily bulge. While not happier, at least I had the satisfaction of being certain. I was discharged a few minutes later with a paper asking me to follow up with the Outpatient Surgical Clinic the next day.

Now, I'm the sort to follow doctor's orders, as after all, they've gone through med school and the like. So, I went to the Outpatient Surgical Clinic the next day. The meeting went something like this:

Receptionist: "Oh, hello! Welcome to NYHQ's Surgical Clinic! How can I help you?!

Me: "I was asked to follow up with you folk from the Emergency Room. Here's the papers they left me."

Receptionist: "Ah, great! Just put your insurance card here on the table and I'll get everything set up!"

So of course I place my insurance card on the table, my dinky el-cheapo insurance, one of those that have taken the place of simple Welfare and Medicaid sorts because EVERYONE has to have the wonders now of a private insurance company...

The receptionist suddenly lost all animation, face falling into this blank neutral look, and her posture went from happy to neutral.

Receptionist: We don't take this insurance. You'll have to go to Elmhurst. Thank you. Goodbye.

This was followed by her turning away without a further word and chatting up her friend in the office in ultra-rapid-fire Spanish.

Little not about Elmhurst: It's the Queens County General Hospital. Specifically it's a trauma hospital. It's also where all the prisoners from Riker's Island Prison are brought when they need help of any sort. It's got a medical record that reads like multiple death knells. I'd known of its' bad reputation before, but decided to ask the folk who REALLY would know, the EMT's. To this I got the following responses:

EMT #1: "Oh man, Elmhurst? It's been nice meetin' you, amigo. You go there you gonna DIE."
EMT #2: "Girl, you're thinking of getting surgery in ELMHURST?! You might as well be a Jew and get surgery in Auschwitz! You'll have a better chance of living!"
EMT #3: "Listen. Don't go there. We only bring patients there when ordered by the police or when there's no other choice. People have a bad habit of dying while waiting on their gurneys there, and I can't count how many times they've done the wrong surgery on people."
EMT #4 simply shook his head and walked away, this look of doom on his face.

Sooooo, as you can see, I'm now looking for surgeons who take my health plan (there ARE plenty of them) and who don't work out of Elmhurst (Which seems to go from plenty to none.)

Now, add on top of this mess what appears to be an ulcer, making any drinking or eating an experience in excruciating pain. Pain that sears through my chest and abdomen like a branding iron not on the first swallow but on EVERY swallow, unless it's of saliva from my hungry mouth. A meal has become an episode of seeing how much torture I can endure, and how well I can handle the aftermath of pain (throbbing headaches and general malaise for a few hours).

So, that's the new stuff up with me. Not good. Only good thing is, thus far, that hernia surgery IS covered by my plan (if I can find someone to ACCEPT the damn thing somewhere that isn't a death trap!) and doesn't need prior authorization through my company (what idiocy it was that made THAT a requirement for insurance coverage I've NO idea.)

Hey, folks. Here's another journal from my friend  Technic.

He's looking to get out from where he is, and is looking for folks around the Milwaukee region to lend a hand of some form. If any of you can do so, please contact him.

Here's a link to his journal on the matter:

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1499951/

Thanks, all.

Aye, I must disagree with the outlook held specifically on this site and indeed on some other notable web sites that Second Life avatars, whether heavily-customized "stock" avatars or pure one-off never-before-seen ultra-custom ones, aren't art.

For the latter, the answer is obvious: it's a one-of-a-kind deal, made within the limitations of a non-photo-realistic program not designed to take seventy-five bajillion hours doing some hyper-realistic rendering that would make the executives at Pixar blush. That it comes out looking as good as it does is in and of itself simply amazing. We'll not get into the countless hours spent making sure that each part matches a client's personal preferences to the last detail. While this site may find that art, plenty of others do not, mostly because of the rendering limitations of the Second Life client.

As for the former, while not as work-intensive to a single designer, the effort most less financially-well-off folks on SL go through to take a stock, non-custom av, one of which at a minimum hundreds, more likely thousands, of which are sold, and alter, tweak, modify, clothe, jury-rig, etc. until it is bashed, sometimes well and sometimes roughly, into the shape and look of ones' dreams is in and of itself worthy of note. Add unto this the expenditure of real-life money, often in a decent though not insane quantity ($20 to $50), and a LOT of shopping around (in many cases more so than occurs with a one-off custom design), makes these items works of art in and of themselves.

Whether one has "more" or "less" merit artistically when compared to one another is a matter of highly-subjective judgment, but nonetheless, for a program where the limitations seem nearly-crippling, to have created a unique one-off avatar or to have modded an avatar into something it might not originally be is a matter worthy of pride, regardless of origins, and yes, artistic credit.

To those who read this and choose to without thought nor experience disagree, I suggest that you at least make a solid effort to make one of similar quality (as opposed to the anybody-can-do-it slap-dash anything onto itself in a jumble) and if you find yourself spending so little time that it is effortless, then I will respectfully say that you've either lied about doing the work.

To compress this whole long shebang into something a little less tl;dr, SL Av making is art, in ALL forms.