2 - Furry Balls Aah, AnthroCon! Nothing like 3 days and nights of furry convention to make you feel like you've been hit by a fucking truck. Oh, it was a beautiful convention! There WERE a few problems, like, ah...oh, we had to drive 1200 miles to Philadelphia, then turn around and drive BACK to Ohio, just to get into the fucking registration line! Furs were dying of old age in the fucking registration line, pre-reserved seats clasped firmly in their stiff, dead paws! And, you know, some furs are a bit overweight, you know? Well, OK, some furs are WAY overweight! Some furs are tremendously, fucking "feed-Africa-for-a-year" overweight! Like, so overweight that the smaller furs were getting caught in the gravitational pull and orbiting these big motherfuckers, you know?! Like, "land-Apollo-11-in-the-belly-button" overweight. And I know what happened! I know, I know the evil plot behind it all. AnthroCon people were sitting around and saying "hmm, we've sold out this hotel, how can we squeeze more furs in here next year? I know! We'll break the fucking elevators and make them walk up 12 million flights of stairs until they're sweating cooking grease and cheese whiz and falling over from cardiovascular seizure! Then we'll put them in a registration line that starts in fucking Kairo! And with no food, and they'll turn cannibalistic and starve and by the time they get to registration desk, they'll weigh like 12 fucking pounds, and we can stuff 40 of them in one room!" OK, well, no. Probably they didn't do that. And every furcon is going to have a couple of problems. But overall, it was a wonderful, excellent convention. The staff was really great, there was tons of things to do, I got to hang out with some very special people, you all know exactly who you are. And thanks to everyone there and all the people who came up to say "hi" to me and made me feel like I'm somehow worth something. But you know what the best thing about going to a furcon is? I get to feel like I have these big, 100 lbs gryphon balls of death! I get to wander around in a hotel with more furs than there are people in Bob Dole's shitty little hometown, and that rocks! So what am I doing here? I'm walking around the halls, planning my Furry Army Of Doom to take over the world, that's what I'm doing. Oh yeah, I'm thinking about how I can get a thousand furs armed with neon pink bitchslap waterballoons and march into the Congress and demand furry holidays or we'll fuck up their richie-ass Armani suits! And I can do it, right? I can put together a proud, brave army that can take over Disneyland and bitchslap that stupid mouse until he screams like a gay stud during springtime, right? Right? Well, no, I can't! Because, you see, I'm walking around the con and I run into this fur and he's whining! He's fucking whining! In the middle of the biggest furcon in the universe, he's whining! So, I'm thinking, you know, this really must be serious, you know! I mean, Osama Bin Laden must've blown up the fucking Altoids factory! Or something! Mark Parsons must've finally figured out how much of an art god he is and raised his sketch prices, you know, something, right? Has to be earth-shattering, right? No, it's not! I'm listening to this guy going about "how the waiters in the restaurant made fun of him and treated him like a freak and he doesn't wanna be freak and what a world, what a world..." SHUT UP! SHUT UP, SHUT THE FUCK UP! I've seen this before on the Maxim mailing list. Why can't I have a furry army of death? Because the fandom has no balls, that's why! What happened to our balls? I mean, where did they go? When I jerk down the pants of the fandom right now, all I see are these shriveled, little raisin-looking things. Of course you got treated like a freak, nimrod! What did you expect? "why look dear, there's a person wearing a panda suit in the middle of Philadelphia, but he seems intelligent and he's not hurting anyone, so he's OK! We should invite him home to marry our daughter!" Is that what you thought it was gonna be?! What, have you been living in Barbara Bush's cleavage for the last hundred years or something? Where did you get this idea that the world was reasonable place? And see, that's the next thing that happens. I get some smartass fur, some fur who's supposed to be intelligent telling me "no, furs should not expected to be treated like freaks because it's wrong." Wow, uh, OK, you know what? "hey Hitler, you shouldn't be gassing all those Jewish people because it's wrong!" "my goodness, you're right! I'll stop doing it right away!" Is that what you're thinking is gonna happen? You think the world cares what it's doing wrong? An LA cop shouldn't beat the shit outta me just because I flip him off, right? Let's go try that! You know, you're right. You're right, though. I mean, being a fur, there's nothing wrong with it! We're not hurting anyone! Even if we're wearing fursuits to work, we're not hurting anyone, okay? If we're eating our dinner at TGI Friday by stuffing our face in the plate like a dog, we're not hurting anyone, so people should not treat us like freaks, right? Some guy gets off wallowing in a bucket of pigshit while he's reading his copies of ASB, but he's not hurting anyone, so people should just not mess with him, right? But you know what? They're gonna do it anyway! Did you think for one second that this world was NOT filled with morons? Since when did people give a shit about what they should and shouldn't do? And unless you just crawled out of Jimmy Hoffa's ass, then you're just stupid not to expect it! What, what am I saying? Am I saying not to be a fur? Am I saying to run and hide when the world decides to treat you like the 3-armed farting psychoboy on the short bus? NO! What I'm saying is that when you dress up in a fursuit and go bouncing around in public like Barishnikov on a subway rail, you're going to be treated like a freak, no matter how much you think you shouldn't be! Don't think for a minute that you won't! And you know, I DON'T want to see furs bouncing around in public and making idiots of themselves, but they're gonna do it whether I like it or not. All I'm asking is that when you DO and someone calls you a freak, take it like a fucking man! Don't run off limbering! The fandom is just starting to get some attention here, what, do you think you can just pack it in and run home as soon as it gets rough? "Oh, they're calling me names, run away, run away, run away!" No, you wimp, get back in there! You're gonna walk around with ears and a tail, then you're gonna take the flak for it, OK? Get some Nike air-pump balls or something! I like to see big, dangling furry balls! When someone comes up to a fur and says "Oh, you're wearing a tail and ears, you're a freak", you better not run away like some inbred dopey tailor kid in a slapfight! You know what I wanna see? I wanna see that fur look back and say "I'M a freak? You're wearing a shirt made from sheep, shoes made from a cow, buttons from horsehooves and all sorts of dead animals to paint your ugly-ass faces and my tail and ears are synthetic, so EAT ME!" I wanna see that! That's what I wanna see! Hey, I'm not saying the society is right, you know? But, if you're gonna do something that's socially unacceptable, the for God's sake, accept the consequences with a bit of dignity! No social change has ever come about without freaks! Einstein was a freak, Ben Franklin was a freak, Martin Luther King was a freak, you should be proud to be included in those ranks, all right, instead of whining about it! So pump up those balls, get out there and be furs, and quit fucking whining! This is 2, your proud Ranting Gryphon, and that's all I have to say about that.