Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Opinion

April 15, 2014

More from Reno – Biggest Little Fireside Chat

by Patch O'Furr

Part 2 of 3

(Pic from Hahul.)

(Pic from Hahul.)

You’re at a smarty-pants club that smells of leather bound books and rich mahogany. The wisest animals are here. On a perch, Archimedes Owl thinks egghead thoughts. In a corner, The Great Mouse Detective gives him an eyeball and orates about the rat race. By the bar, a beatnik goat sips espresso and beardily strokes his beard. A sniffy elephant waiter serves a snifter of spirits. Your armchair is waiting. Bring your favorite tweed jacket, and rest your elbow-pads and paw-pads. Have a chess game by the fire and let’s converse.

Now switch the scene to a con hotel room. There’s cartoons everywhere, fursuiters chugging Monster energy drinks, and party music thumping thru the wall. Ooontz oontz oontz. Shove some stuff off the bed, play video games and hang out.

There wasn’t actual fire in the hotel, but when you hang out with furries… you never know…
After Part 1, here’s how smarty-pants it got with Dane, a fur con newcomer.
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May 8, 2013

Book review: ‘Freak’s Amour’, by Tom De Haven.

by Patch O'Furr

Flayrah News, 5/8/2013:

FreaksArmorFreak’s Amour, by Tom De Haven, is simply a masterpiece. This is some of the best weird literature that few seem to have heard of or remember. It’s been out of print for 27 years. I started it once, long ago when I was just getting into science fiction and weird genre stuff. It was a bit arty and demanding for a teenage reader, and my interest wasn’t up to the challenge at the time. Now, I have to give it very high recommendation after finding it again.

I suggest that anyone into classy lit as well as furries and pulp/pop culture go get it now, even if it takes your last two bucks. It’s one of those obscurities that could be worth quite a lot if it was less available – but it earned enough acclaim to get several printings, so it’s cheap and easy to get secondhand. (In fact, I’ve noticed a new comic/graphic novel version: info below.)
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May 3, 2013

Opinion: Street fursuiting is the most fun furry experience

by Patch O'Furr

Repost from Flayrah, 5/3/2013:

San Francisco hosted the 14th annual How Weird Street Faire last weekend, with the theme “WEIRDI GRAS: Carnival of Peace.” An informal fursuiter outing was organized through Meetup.com and its active Bay Area Furries group (independent from the mailing list), which runs many local events each month. I offered changing space at a nearby apartment, and scored a pair of “Disco Pants” for costuming, direct from the office of local web-based fashion startup company Betabrand. Afterwards, Betabrand was cool enough to post photos of modeling the pants on their “Model Citizen” section. (There’s more photos on Reddit.)

2013-4-28-howweird3_0-288
Left to right: Kitten, Meerk, Patch. Background: Ty Cougar.

Any news media story that covers furries is likely to focus heavily on fursuiters, and their striking visual appeal and fuzzy glamor. Fursuiters can’t represent the whole of furry fandom, when “furry” is a vague and broadly defined umbrella over anything related to anthropomorphic animals- but I think it’s OK to consider fursuiters the expressive, theatrical soul of furrydom. There is an element of “ambassador” role to their hobby. Without the 15-20% of furries who wear fursuits and costumes for role-playing, you’d just have regular unglamorous nerds saying “meow! I’m a cat”. That’s what crazy people do.

Of course, I’m kidding: Call me the most crazy of all, but I prefer the term fabulous. I like to put on silver disco pants and a Husky partial, and get on the subway to go dance and hug random people, under the influence of blasting techno music and magical substances in the air. They get so entranced by a giant sparkly talking dog, that they hand over their babies for photos. That actually happened several times this weekend at the How Weird Street Faire. I didn’t know where those babies had been, but I let them touch my paws anyways, even more carefully than when I pick up my chihuahua (who gets super confused and never knows whether to trust me when I dress up.) As far as I can tell, everyone loved the experience, even the astonished babies. Those photos might provoke some interesting questions when they grow up.

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March 7, 2013

Opinion: Indie web series ‘Fursona Files’ looks a little mangy

by Patch O'Furr

Flayrah News, 3/7/2013:

I haven’t seen this shared around until I noticed it on the Bay Area Furries mailing list.

Admit One Productions presents – Fursona… A SNEAK PEEK from Courtney James.

(EDIT: video down, try here.)

According to their website:

What’s your Fursona? Thats [sic] the million dollar question asked in this fast paced black comedy web series about the adventures of Virginia Blake – a successful investigative journalist – who is writing an expose on the FURRY underworld to save her tarnished career!

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March 5, 2013

A famous experiment in anthropomorphism and psychology

by Patch O'Furr

HarlowMonkey

Flayrah News, 3/5/2013:

Anthropomorphism is often imagined from our human point of view (attaching human characteristics to something non-human). But the concept can exist apart from ourselves, when animals see themselves in objects. The way it works for them can reveal more about us.

Harry Harlow was a psychologist who experimented with monkeys. In the 1950’s and 60’s, he gave his subjects “surrogate” mothers built from different objects, to see how they would behave, and learn about care-giving and companionship in social and cognitive development. PBS says about his famous experiment:

He took infant monkeys away from their real mothers, giving them instead two artificial mothers, one model made of wire and the other made of cloth. The wire model was outfitted with a bottle to feed the baby monkey. But the babies rarely stayed with the wire model longer than it took to get the necessary food. They clearly preferred cuddling with the softer cloth model, especially if they were scared. (When the cloth model had the bottle, they didn’t go to the wire model at all.)

Here’s an image gallery that illustrates the concept of “anthropomorphism” in monkey terms. To understand the experiment as a powerful metaphor, this web art project/essay says a lot with few words: Chicken Wire Mother.

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October 23, 2012

Opinion: Why the furry experience hits home so deeply

by Patch O'Furr

Flayrah news: 10/23/12

Originally posted to BAF and reposted with permission, here is a nice short piece by Spottacus.

The furry experience addresses a nearly universal desire to be seen as you feel you are

Whether you are a fur (who feels a species identity different than your human skin shows), a transgender (who feels a gender different than your birth body shows), or just differently colored, shaped, or pigmented than those around you, probably all furries and their kin were likely acutely aware at an age as young age as 4-8 years old that how people saw and treated them was very different than what they felt they were like inside.

This is true for all humans, in fact, who are instantly judged at some level based on impressions: blonde, female, Mexican, Asian, African, and so on, which also have nothing to do with who you are inside. Where furs step off this path of false impressions is that we, nearly uniquely, create a fursona that we own (we feel it, we made it, it was not set a birth), and then we project and interact based upon that character.
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September 8, 2012

Andrew W.K. to join panel at Brony convention; let’s discuss furry con guests

by Patch O'Furr

Flayrah news: 9/8/12

Bronies: are they furry? Skipping that topic, let me just say this makes me like Andrew W.K.:

The unruly, boisterous rocker will be part of a panel answering the question, “What Would Pinkie Pie Do?”… The king of partying hard claims that he is the living embodiment of the positive, party pony.

In this interview, the rocker known for a bloody-nosed image discusses why he’s a Brony, his love for cupcakes, and ponies with “nice, fragrant hair.”
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September 2, 2012

San Francisco rapper MC Crumbsnatcher’s furry music video

by Patch O'Furr

Flayrah news, 9/2/12

As a club-goer most likely to get down to goth/industrial/EBM, I’m not qualified to say much about hip hop/rap. However, I know that MC Crumbsnatcher is a secret goth too, and that’s my fursuited ass he’s humping at 4:00 in the video, so let’s do this.

The San Francisco Bay area hosts many subculture scenes. They bring people together who often stay separate in less busy places. MC Crumbsnatcher’s ties might be tagged as spoken word/slam poetry, indie rap, electro, Nerdcore and Homocore. His Facebook page also lists Poo Joke Teller, ruiner of childhoods, and being a trained psychic. Let’s add Furry to the list.

Content warning: Video contains super dirty words and sexy dancing.

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June 26, 2012

Fursuiting at San Francisco Pride 2012

by Patch O'Furr

(Flayrah news: 6/26/12)

The 42nd anniversary of San Francisco Pride happened this weekend. People from all over the world filled the city to celebrate. It was too large and fabulous for words, so I can only personally comment about fursuiting at some street parties. There was no organized furry event or mission, just a good opportunity to wear a costume.

The last organized furry participation was a float in the 2005 Pride parade, arranged via BAF and its mailing list. (I heard that there was some negligible drama about connecting furries + LGBT, but it stayed internal, with positive reactions elsewhere.) Due to logistics and cost, it hasn’t reoccurred.

San Francisco Pride parade, 2005

However, one of the organizers posted on Facebook: “The SF Pride committee bugs me every year to bring the Furries back, and that’s just what I am going to do for 2013! That’s right, for the 2013 pride parade there will be a Furry float!” (Yay!)

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