Furries in 757

Published
by
Justin
on Monday August 25, 2008
in Local
. 10 Comments

I can’t believe that Link has a fucking front page article about Furries. I can’t believe that Furries are becoming respected as a semi legitimate subculture. In the future, Link, when you’re at a loss for a cover story and you’re about to pick the dumbest fucking shit ever, just do the story about me. We’ll go get some pancakes at the House of Eggs at 2AM. I promise I will make it as interesting as possible.

Furries are proof that America might very well be too retarded to maintain it’s role as the cultural leader of the world. Furries are proof that, after WWII, Japan would take passive-aggressive avenues to get even with us (as we’ve already established, Kim blames the Manga). When confronted with Furries, even the most liberal thinkers sense that the noblest avenue to take in dealing with them is to just kick their asses, but I guess we’re worried that maybe giving them the much-needed wedgie they’re so obviously asking for would be in violation of the same kind hate crime discrimination laws that protect other minorities.

I’m pretty sure the only reason Furries have achieved half of the mainstream acceptance they have is because ten years ago we were on sites like portalofevil.com posting links of these lunatic geocities sites and saying “I can’t believe these people are real!” This was the nineties when the internet was this awesome place where alienated fuck-ups could get on AOL and find validation for things like sticking bicycle pumps in their asses by meeting like-minded individuals. It didn’t take long before we went from shocked to desensitized. Now it’s on the cover of the free newspaper in a military town in a red state. Craziness.

Don’t even try to say that Furries deserve to be free from the persecutions that homosexuals and ethnic minorites feel. It’s scientifically proven that you cannot beat the gay out of someone, you can’t beat the pigment off of someone’s skin, and you can’t beat someone into renouncing their faith (no matter what they say to get you to stop, if anything). However, somewhere in the world, there is a parent that failed to beat the notion out of some confused kid’s head that he was an anthropomorphized cartoon rabbit with purple tiger stripes and that his name is Talisman.

In other cultures they call this a psychosis. Do you think they have Furries in Iraq or Sudan or Georgia? (OK I secretly hope they do). People dressing up like goofy animals and claiming it’s “part of who they are” is the most spoiled-brat American crybaby thing I have ever heard. The world is so hard, now put on a big sports mascot costume so no one can see you and you can pretend you’re someone else.

For Lyons, it was an escape from painful memories: not knowing his father as a child and being held at gunpoint when he was 29. “Lions were always strong and dominant. They helped me get through a lot of troubles.”

You are not a fucking lion. You simply aren’t. There isn’t much more that I can say about it. Lions are not part of who you are, because you are not one. End of discussion. I didn’t know my father very well growing up, and I was 23 when I was held at gunpoint. I didn’t need to devise some kind of pointless persona to combat these “troubles.” I got into music. I got into writing. I simply got the fuck over it.

Remember when sallow-skinned, patchouli oil-drenched, overweight losers in bondage pants and pleather corsets smoking clove cigarettes and hissing as they bared their fake fangs at you in the Taco Bell parking lot was the lamest thing you’d ever seen in your life?

I miss those days.

Scott Bailey R.I.P.

Published
by
Justin
on Sunday August 24, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

Just found out that a friend of mine from Alpha Music passed away. We’d lost touch after I left the teaching staff but he also left later on to return to Winston-Salem for his law degree (which I recall was his initial aspiration before being sidetracked by music). I was indirectly responsible for his teaching gig at Alpha: Scott, John Kohn and I played a gig together for his boss and that introduced him to the Alpha family.

Apparently Scott was hit by a car on his way to school and the only reason anyone even knows about it down here is because the ER people used his cell phone address book to notify his next of kin.

Scott was a free spirit type who was always encouraging me to do more as a musician and I hardly ever listened to him. He was a genuinely noble person who never seemed stressed out or bothered by anything. I remember he just decided one day to quit smoking and he just did it. He’d been smoking his whole life (he’s from NC) and he just woke up one morning and decided to stop and never complained or vocalized any desire to have a cigarette again. He just stopped. He didn’t want his students to see him smoking outside when they came in for lessons, which, even though I teased him about it, I very much admired.

I though Scott was a better vocalist than a guitarist but he made up for his shortcomings with charisma, class, and the desire to perform and teach. He was one of the few sources of intellectual non-musical conversations that I’d have at Alpha. We’d talk about anything from physics to philosophy. He was a really smart dude.

We played several shows together and I regret not staying in touch with him after I left Alpha. I figured our paths would cross again eventually but I guess that won’t be the case. I didn’t even know he and Terrie got married and had a son.

I feel awful about this.

Think about your friends. Imagine your world suddenly without them.

Another Conversation That Really Happened

Published
by
Justin
on Thursday August 7, 2008
in General
. 8 Comments

I was casually perusing some books at Barnes & Noble on my lunch break when this duo (brother and sister, maybe?) of white trash psuedo-goth teenagers (it’s a strange breed to describe but they are rampant in the south and if you’ve seen them before you know what I am talking about) rush the manga shelves and start making a bunch of noise. I wasn’t really bothered by them, but they (particularly the girl) were loud enough as to catch my attention. I guess the fact that she was loud wasn’t as obnoxious as the fact that she kept repeating everything she said until her counterpart paid attention (”Robbie, it’s over here. The big manga section. Over here. Robbie. Robbie. Robbie, it’s here. The manga section. Over here, by the comics. Robbie.. Robbie..etc.”)  Later on I crossed paths with them again:

Girl: “Oh my god, look. ‘Manga For Dummies!’ Look. Manga. For Dummies. MangaForDummies!”

Boy: (silent)

Me: ….

Girl: (holding up book) “Manga For Dummies!”

Boy: (still silent)

Me: That’s certainly repetitive!

Girl: “I know– what’s ‘repetitive’ mean?”

You don’t know what “repetitive” means? These kids were easily 13 years old. Maybe older.

I don’t feel one way or the other about manga. I don’t know much about it. I do know that every time I go into one of the “big box” bookstores I always seem to see a collection of dorky kids languishing on the carpet and reading manga for hours. This bugs me a little, but I don’t think its damaging to society or anything, though I think that you would get your ass kicked out of the store if you were doing that mess in a real comic shop.

Kim, on the other hand, sees another side of manga at her job. Kim views manga the way that parents viewed American comics in the 1960’s: They’ll rot your brain, make you even dumber than you already are and they have no redeemable value. She’s hypothesized that manga is a ploy created by the Japanese to get America back for the H-Bomb (actually I think I was the one who came up with that ). Her venom for manga is serious and to me its seriously entertaining to watch her get all worked up about it. I think she really snapped when she saw something like this, but really she probably just has a better understanding of people that are checking manga out of the library. After my little run-in with the dumb kids at Barnes & Noble, I kind of see how easy it is to generalize them all as dumbasses.