Month: January 2023

I’ve been involved in the furry fandom, in various aspects, since the early 80’s…

For me it all began with “Albedo Anthropomorphics”, an independent comic published by Thoughts & Images that I discovered and became enamored with in ’84… Back then there was no Internet or anything, so the “funny animal” culture that was available only really existed in comics – and I was lucky enough to have a pretty amazing comics shop in my home town.

I suppose technically my decent into furry hell actually began with “Cerebus the Aardvark” in the early 80’s, but Albedo was the first ‘pure’ anthropomorphic setting and story I became engrossed in.

In 1986 I left home, joined the Navy, and ended up within easy driving distance of a Newbury Comics in Worcester Massachusetts. This dramatically increased my exposure to independent comics full of anthropomorphic critters from publishers like GraphXpress, Eclipse, Warp, Thoughts & Images, and others.

I still have some of the comics I picked up from that Newbury Comics…

While I was a definite devotee of all things fury by 1987, I didn’t get my high-priest’s robes until 1988 with the publication of Vicky Wyman’s “Xanadu”… Xanadu, with its interesting social caste system and high-fantasy setting quickly became a part of the roleplay setting I was running, and that not only cemented my furryness but also drug a dozen other people into the fandom as well.

The RP setting carried the funny animal torch through to the early 90’s when I left the Navy. Fortunately with the advent of newsgroups such as alt.fan.furry and alt.fan.dragons, and then things like IRC, FurryMuck, and Alfandria throughout the 90’s, I was able to keep not only the RP setting alive but stay active in the fandom.

While I had attended numerous gaming and scifi conventions since my high-school years in the 80’s, I didn’t attend a dedicated “furry” convention until Confurence East in 1996.

I did CFEast in ’96, CF8 in ’97, and CF9 in ’98.

CF9 was my last “furry” convention as the fandom convention setting in general seemed to be departing ‘funny animals’ and was instead becoming more of a ‘furry kink’ sort of thing… Which is fine, different strokes for different folks and all – but it wasn’t my scene anymore.

After CF9 I mostly dropped out of the fandom, only getting involved again in early 2004 with SecondLife where I’ve continued to haunt the virtual world to this very day.

Listening to "Take Me Away" by FM Attack

Back in August I mentioned that I was embarking on re-reading the “Xanth” novels from my childhood, in order, from one to forty six – and I figured I should post an update…

Number	Title	Released
1	A Spell for Chameleon	Sep-1977
2	Source of Magic	1979
3	Castle Roogna	1979
4	Centaur Aisle	Dec-1981
5	Ogre, Ogre	Sep-1982
6	Night Mare	Jan-1983
7	Dragon on a Pedestal	Oct-1983
8	Crewel Lye	Dec-1984
9	Golem in the Gears	Jan-1986
10	Vale of the Vole	Oct-1987
11	Heaven Cent	1988
12	Man from Mundania	Oct-1989
13	Isle of View	Oct-1990
14	Question Quest	Oct-1991
15	The Color of Her Panties	Sep-1992
16	Demons Don’t Dream	1992
17	Harpy Thyme	1993
18	Geis of the Gargoyle	1994
19	Roc and a Hard Place	1995
20	Yon Ill Wind	1996
21	Faun & Games	Oct-1997
22	Zombie Lover	1998
23	Xone of Contention	1999
24	The Dastard	Oct-2000
25	Swell Foop	Oct-2001
26	Up In A Heaval	2002
27	Cube Route	Oct-2003
28	Currant Events	Oct-2004
29	Pet Peeve	Oct-2005
30	Stork Naked	Oct-2006
31	Air Apparent	Aug-2006
32	Two to the Fifth	Oct-2008
33	Jumper Cable	Oct-2009
34	Knot Gneiss	Dec-2010
35	Well-tempered Clavicle	Nov-2011
36	Luck of the Draw	Dec-2012
37	Esrever Doom	Oct-2013
38	Board Stiff	Jan-2014
39	Five Portraits	Oct-2014
40	Isis Orb	Oct-2016
41	Ghost Writer in the Sky	Apr-2017
42	Fire Sail	Nov-2019
43	Jest Right	Jul-2020
44	Skeleton Key	Feb-2021
45	A Tryst of Fate	Oct-2021
46	Six Crystal Princesses	Jun-2022

Right now I’m about 3/4 of the way through “Vale of the Vole”, so there’s a ways to go yet.

While I tend to be a fairly fast reader, I’m limited in how much reading I can do per day because of ‘real life’… I generally get about 15-20 minutes a day where I don’t have to fix stuff, do something, or go somewhere, so it takes a while to get through a recreational book. 🙂

Either way it’s been a lot of fun to re-visit the first eight books from my school years, and then continue on in the setting!

Listening to "Back to You" by Timecop1983

Listening to "Sophie" by Morgan Willis

I’m a big fan of “Long John Silver’s”, a fish / chicken place from back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

It was supremely unhealthy stuff, but that’s probably why it tasted so good – and being so unhealthy (and being picked up by Yum!) was eventually their downfall I think. Either way, I miss the place.

So, the other day I found a copycat recipe for the batter they used on everything, bought all of the listed ingredients, and passed it all off to my roommate who deep-fries 2-3 meals a week and has experience with hot oil and food…

And last night we had a pretty close emulation of Long John Silver’s chicken planks.

All in all it was pretty good chicken, and there were even the trademark ‘crumblies’ which is just batter that dribbled into the hot oil.

It was a good treat, but I’m too old to eat this more than really occasionally. 🙂

Listening to "Panopticom" by Peter Gabriel

As I mentioned back in November, back in July I’d submitted for an itemized list of every place I’ve worked over the years from the Social Security Administration – and that paperwork came in today!

It’s fascinating to look back over the years and suddenly remember things that are mere dim memories, because the name, location, and date is readily available.

For example, here’s the “Mr. Steak” (#106) I worked at in Longmont right before the family relocated to Golden in 1985… All I remember about that place was the quirky 60’s era cartoon cow logo.

Like most 80’s teenagers, I worked a string of restaurant jobs starting out; Café Marnie (Longmont), Mr. Steak (Longmont), Señor Frogs (Wheat Ridge), and finally the “Royal Fork” or “King’s Table” depending on what year it was (Lakewood).

In ’86 I went into the Navy for four years, getting out at the end of 1990.

The 90’s were a pretty weird time for me; the economy sucked, my ex was issueful, and it seemed like 1991 lasted about a decade…

Once I got out of the Navy I promptly started work at Prairie Tek working on bleeding edge 2.5″ laptop hard drives – which lasted until Prairie Tek moved everything overseas in February of ’91.

I was self-employed for a while in the middle of 1991 where I worked the convention circuit for about six months and then worked in a call center third shift for a month before landing a job at EDCON doing gravity and magnetic oil surveys in December of 1991.

EDCON lasted through late ’92 before things went weird with my ex again and everything fell apart. I subsisted on temporary jobs until I landed another job doing building maintenance and management at Town View Plaza in early ’93 and did that until late ’94 when I started at Intelligent Electronics – 3rd shift assembly on IBM EduQuest machines.

I left I.E. to work at a local computer store called “Action Computers” in mid ’95, then went back to I.E. to take over the network operations from early ’96 to mid ’97.

In 1997 I moved to Virginia and landed a job at Amerind in Alexandria, and in early ’98 struck out on my own to start “PFM Technologies” with some friends, and built some amazing things for anyone who paid me. One of these was the “Sticker Station” for APBI / foto fantasy.

From 2000 to 2001 I lived on a yacht in Baltimore and made all sorts of amazing things with Scott and Ken.

2001 to mid 2002 was teaching CompSci at Marianapolis Prep in Connecticut. And from there I worked a temp job for about a month, and then ran the computer repair side of a store in Vail until August 16th, 2004 – when I started at the company I currently work for.

All in all it’s a really interesting look at my past, and now I need to go and adjust things in my memoirs that felt like they were years apart, but were really only weeks… Especially 1991 – 1991 is very problematic because a decade of things happened in the span of about nine months.

It’s a tapestry of failures and successes, ups and downs, but it’s mine. 🙂

Listening to "The One" by Jessie Frye

Just got back from King Soopers, my local grocers, and things have gotten weirder here in Colofornia…

Starting yesterday you have to pay ten cents per plastic bag – ostensibly for ‘recycling efforts’, but I couldn’t find anything proving that. In fact, I found the following: “All across the state, 6 cents will be given to the county or municipality to be used towards a program of its choice. The other 4 cents will be given back to the establishment/ grocery store.”

So – profit… And they sell reusable store-branded bags that get around this for a buck, which is probably 90 cents profit as well as advertising.

What really frustrates me is that I’m old enough to remember the push to use plastic bags to “Save the Trees” in the first place…

Anyway, now you have to bring your own bags and ring up your own groceries at the store.

And today I spent $50 on four “Jimmy Dean” breakfast bowls, two TV dinners, and a twelve-pack of “Hint” flavored water – which makes the added hassle / expense of going to the store all the more unpleasant.

Sigh…

Listening to "Never Stop" by FM-84

Listening to "Oblivion" by At 1980