Dogpatch Press

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Tips are always welcome. 

Documentary: The Anti Mascot.

Lou Seal is the one Giants fans love.

The story of the San Francisco Giants’ Crazy Crab, the most outrageous mascot of them all. The 1984 San Francisco Giants were dreadful. But the team’s ill-conceived “Crazy Crab” mascot endured worse.

Shared by Excelsior30 on FurAffinity … a cautionary tale of how anthropomorphic costuming could make you a magnet for abuse. Professional performer Wayne Doba documents his experiences with water balloons full of pee, and back injuries from a “macho” attack by players from a rival team.  (Get happier with Hulu’s mascot documentary series, Behind the Mask, that had an Emmy nomination for Outstanding New Approaches in Sports Programming.)

MNFurs becomes a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit.

News announcement. On FurAffinity, Aerak shares what it means to him: now the organization can officially host charitable activities like hospital fursuiting to brighten people’s days. MNFurs have a lot to be proud of:

In a matter of six years, with only the word-of-mouth advertising, MNFurs has gone from a small group of close friends and associates with a weekly meeting number of less then a dozen people to 40 to 60 people in the same room every other Saturday night. At the same time, we went from 20 to over 200 people on our mailing list.

Their growing presence in the world of fluffy stuff is bringing Furry Migration, “Minnesota’s first furry convention having its second year on August 28-30, 2015.”

Furrycon in Rochester gets a great media spokeskitty, Zeigler Jaguar.

Zeigler tells me:

This reporter posted on Twitter that she knew nothing about furries but had an assignment to go to a Rochester’s FurryCon. Being the friendly, helpful big cat that I am, I offered to give her the 411 on the fandom, so she’d be prepared. I figured that she’d use the stuff I said as background information, maybe one or two quotes, nothing more, since she’d meet more relevant people at the con itself.

Then FurryCon decided to bar all media from attending (a very poor decision in my opinion) so this very good, very open-minded reporter had to cobble together a story based only on what she had from me and one other person.

I’m upset with FurryCon’s decision, because it turned the story from “what we are” to “what we’re not,” and I’m a little tired of us defining ourselves by what we’re not. I don’t like being constantly on the defense… I prefer the articles that are “I went to a furry con and it was awesome.”

This is awesome: the Blue Angels pilots showed up and a wedding happened. “Furries, flyboys, and holy matrimony… looks like EVERYONE’S experience got better!”

We’re in Peru too!  “Furry fandom: the community of stuffed animals in Lima.”

From a regular feature titled “Unusual”, in El Comercio – “founded in 1839, the second oldest existing newspaper and the largest in the country.”

• In Spanish – check here for fursuiter video.
• Google Translate to English.

It’s the standard introduction mandatory for every “furries” article, adding these useful tidbits:  It’s “still somewhat unusual” to see furries in Lima, because their local movement is little more than four years old, and “the members of this tribe in our country are no larger than 100.”  There’s also an interesting claim I’d like to hear more about:  “In Latin America, Chile is a privileged country for furry fandom.”

Vox supports me being outrageously sparkly at BLFC.

LostWolf’s fantastic BLFC photos – if you went, you’re probably in there.

All 8,523 of them… and Mike Folf gives a nice look at the con’s themed propaganda.

A fake blog does a fake article about Furrymate.

“Adventures In Dating—Spotlight On FurryMate“.  I hate this article so much I’m sharing an archive link so it gets no hits. My “Spotlight on FurFling” mentions that both sites have the same owner and users report being tricked by bots for money.  You’d think a real article would notice, and go meet real people on Pounced instead. But this one’s only made up to mock. Don’t bother.

North Carolina paper gives fursuiter a front page pic to represent an Anime article.

The article says nothing about furries though.

Stop-Mo animated “Tom & Jerry” in MacDonalds UK commercial – shared by Fred Patten.

I like the approach, but give me the classic 2D stuff!

Facebook’s “real name” policy provokes protest.

Facebook, the world’s most used social network, is based among the world’s most dense population of furries. Furries have been getting their accounts killed left and right, and they’re pissed.  Nuzz Cat shares a protest about it at Facebook headquarters in Silicon Valley:

This is probably relevant: Pass it along if you or anyone you know has been burned by this or wants to participate. Fursuits I think would especially help get us officially recognized as well.

FurFright covered by FoxCT back in 2012 – (Shared from Ace Eldritch.)

Not everyone in the media sucks.  Ace shared this and said: “An article that gets it all RIGHT!”

FoxCT Special Report on the wonderful world of Anthropomorphism, otherwise known as the Furry fandom.

LostWolf’s astonishing pic catches Patch and Kiwi Tiger in the same room together!