Music Things

So, I have moved my music. In an effort to cut down on the bandwidth used up by my server, I have relocated my music to my profile on iCompositions. iComp is an awesome site for independant artists, since they offer unlimited music hosting, podcasting, and a wonderful community. All of my music is still CC-comercial-attribution licensed, and totally free for download.

If you are looking for a place to host music, I reccomend iCompositions.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Why the Purdue Furry Club Died

I still get asked, on occasion, what ever happened to the Purdue Furry Club.

The Purdue Furry Club is dead. I am not running it any more - no one is. The club expired from Purdue's official registry when I failed to turn in an updated consitution this year. I deleted the web site. So, it's not happening, ever.

What happened, I still get asked. It was a decent enough idea. I know a lot of furries in the area who don't know each other, but would get along really well. I was hoping the club would be a good way to get them together, as well as meet some people I didn't know. I thought it would be a good way to bring some more people into the fandom. But no - that's not what happened.

What happened is, the people I really wanted to bring together were not interested. They figured a 'furry club' would attract all the dregs of society. From my knowledge of social dynamics, the membership of the club would determine the future direction of the membership. Cool people would attract more cool people. But, when the club lacked cool people (with the exception of Kyle, Liz, and occasionally one or two others), the one or two not-cool people started bringing in reinforcements.

Essentially, two people joined the group because of a deep-seated psychological need for emotional codependence. What ended up happening at the meetings was that these people would make everyone else who attended miserable. The rest of the people at the club, being relatively few in number and lacking more mean-spirited individuals like myself, didn't run them out. So we had a club where every meeting people got together to deal with the Grand Canyon-sized emotional problems of these one or two folks. I lost interest, even when several of my friends still wanted to make it happen - they saw the promise of the idea, where I only saw the failed execution.

So, basically, the Purdue Furry Club wasn't really enjoyed by anybody, so I stopped running it. I won't start it again. The problem with a public club like that, is that anybody is allowed. I would rather be able to gate access to any furry events I set up, so that my friends and I don't have to deal with truly flawed people when we'd rather just get together and have fun.

Sorry it didn't work out, folks. But them's the breaks.

Photoshoppy Things

Check out what one of my associates produced. Photoshop is freakin' awesome sometimes.

Anime Central Pics

Finally uploaded my anime central pictures. The good ones are posted in a flickr photo set, and the rest of them are posted in a raw iPhoto Gallery. I had a blast at ACEN this year - I really took it a lot easier than I usually do, and I think I got a lot out of that.

I hope everyone else who went also had a grand old time!

Washington Blade Online

Washington Blade Online:

"The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says marriage is between a man and a woman," Dean said May 10 during a "700 Club" program hosted by conservative Christian leader Pat Robertson on his Christian Broadcasting Network.

So it's official: now only the special interest groups (HRC, NGLTF, GLAAD) actually give a shit about gay rights. The democrats officially do not care, as detailed by Terrance. And I used to wonder how people couldn't see a difference between democrats and republicans.

Gay marraige could have been a winner for democrats. 60-some percent of the US population believes in some form of equality for gay people (even though that includes people who are against gay marraige, but for civil unions). All the democrats had to do is send a clear message: we are against legislating gays and lesbians as second-class citizens. They didn't even have to fight for gay marraige, as much as I and my brothers in the Big Gay Conspiracy would love for them to.

And yet, by constantly running away from debates about gay rights, by trying to play both sides, by trying to avoid it as much as possible, the Dems have given the gay marraige debate to the Republicans. This is not the way to win. This is the way to look like a bunch of scared, poll-pandering flip-floppers who will sell out anyone to get a few votes. Nice going, Dean. How're those astroturf-roots working out?

I swore if the Federal Marraige Amendment ever passed, I would move to Canada. Now I'm thinking that might be the way to go anyhow. When my minority has absolutely zero representation on Capitol Hill, and tentacles of the government all across the continent are legislating against me and my kind, I just don't see how I'm supposed to stay in a country that clearly would rather not have me.

Update: Big Gay Picture has a good take on all this. Reccomended reading.

Technorati tags: dean, democrats, politics

Tetris Cosplay

Tetris Cosplay
Originally uploaded by agius.

Ah, the horrors that unfold when I actually unload my Treo's photos into my newly nearly empty iPhoto library. Thank you, iPhotoBuddy for making iPhoto usable again, and thank you Mark/Space for making iPhoto work with my mobile phone.

Cuter pictures from my trusty Treo contain kittens and my nephew.

Yay!

Immigrant Protest Things

I'm protesting with the immigrants today, and refusing to make purchases or ride the bus. HR 4437, the bill currently being voted on in Congress, is a bill designed to strengthen immigration security, and militarize our borders just short of lacing them with land mines. It also makes it a thousand times easier to deport illegal immigrants, and much harder for them to have any rights whatsoever.

Now, there are some people who agree with that. After all, illegal immigrants aren't Americans, right? Why should they have the same rights we do? That's certainly what the racist assholes who made up the Minuteman Project thought, and it's people like that who are the driving force behind this new law. Normal people don't find the law utterly repugnant, using the reasoning above, so it has a chance of passing despite being at its heart a nationalistic attack on anyone not privelaged enough to be born in America.

Whether the law is reasonable or not, I can't help but see the action for the people behind it, and I will not support new laws designed to kick immigrants that are being pushed by the "Dey dook our derbs!" segment of our population.

Philisophically, I'm against the law as well. I'm against all immigration law. I think if you're in the country, you should have all the same rights as an American citizen (with the exception of voting - though I might argue for that one as well). Considering that we are a country of immigrants and descendants thereof, and that we say often and proudly, "Come to us, we are a land of opportunity," I think it's stupid to have the mountains of impossible paperwork and hours of hoop-jumping that we have between immigrants and citizenship. And considering the current trends of outsourcing, I think we should make it as easy as humanly possible to set up businesses in the US, which right now illegal immigrants can't do.

So all things told, I support immediate amnesty for all illegal immigrants, and I am rabidly against any of the counter-protesters out there today that will be out there screaming "Go back to Mexico!" today.

Edit: More information here: http://www.nohr4437.org/

Update: Aravosis has said it in better words than I could. Read it - this is serious.

Technorati Tags: politics, immigrants, protest