austin_dern

Yesterday I said our visit to Michigan's Adventure was going great right up until it ended short. Let me expand on that: it was going really great. It was chilly, somewhere in the 50s, but good weather for us to go in costume. bunnyhugger wore her Cerberus kigurumi and drew much attention from people delighted to see a Cerberus wandering around. I wore Angel, because my other kigurumi --- the red panda --- has too much tail to let me ride roller coasters. Probably; I'm wondering now if I could squeeze it between my legs, at least on Michigan's Adventure's coasters, none of which have a between-the-legs restraint. bunnyhugger said she should have worn Stitch so we could be a couple, but there's no sense her restricting herself just because I don't have more costumes.

Also we were well-liked in suit. One of the people working the gate thanked us for dressing up, and both ride operators and general public members would say how they liked our look.

We also got to see the Deadly Duo in concert. This is a little stage set up near the Wagon Wheel pizza place, around all the adult flat rides, and we'd seen the stage without seeing what was performing. This time we were nearby when a show was starting up, and we stood around a few minutes to spare the performers the embarrassment of playing to a crowd of two people. We were able to be a good nucleus for growing an audience and maybe a dozen people or so stuck around for their singing. It was the sorts of spooky-season songs you'd expect, like the theme to Scooby-Doo Where Are You? (they never do The New Scooby-Doo Movies or the other shows, you notice?) or the Monster Mash. Also Witch Doctor, leaving us to wonder is the general public ever going to notice it's kinda racist? But they did an impressive job of speeding up every verse, past the point where people could clap along. They also did a good job of recognizing everyone's costumes, if we allow for ``something like Stitch?'' as matching mine. (I'll take it.)

We also got to the Wagon Wheel pizza to try one of their seasonal deals, the Mummy Pizza. This is a flatbread with strips of mozarella in an irregular pattern and two olives put on top, a better mummy-pizza look than you'd expect. Even better, turns out this was covered by our meal plan so we didn't have to spend extra on it. (Or, this being the last day of the season, the cashier didn't see any reason not to just comp us.) Anyway I recommend getting a slightly goofy pizza at zero incremental cost.

We didn't catch the costume contest this time around, so couldn't be asked to support anyone who inexplicably failed to get audience support. But we did walk past the stage a couple times when they were doing something about tossing white balloons out that the audience was supposed to keep in the air. Something ghost-related. Not sure.

What had us wandering back and forth in the park without riding, on a day when nothing had lines, was photography. bunnyhugger brought her film cameras, including with some film for doing color-shifting and other light-sensitivity tricks, the better to get pictures of the autumnal park looking different from how digital does. She particularly wanted to get a photo of the Scare-ousel --- the carousel but running backwards --- in motion, but the ambient light and her camera's range of apertures were working against her. And worse, at one point she realized she had the settings all wrong for the speed of film she was using and had to go re-take photos. I don't begrudge the time spent on this, although I understand bunnyhugger feeling rotten about pictures that are surely going to come out over-exposed, particularly as she couldn't match the candidness of some of that first round of pictures.

And at the Trunk-or-Treat lineup --- where they had the same cars, the ones from the removed Be-Bop Boulevard car ride, dressed as monster cars as last time --- first, bunnyhugger got some pictures she was really happy about until noticing the exposure problem. But also we got to talking with the guy manning the pirate boat. He's also interested in film photography and has a camera that was his grandfather's. Also some black and white film from 2003 he doesn't know if it's still usable. (People sometimes make an effort to find expired color film because it develops in weird and unpredictable patterns. bunnyhugger has not heard of people looking for expired black-and-white film, so probably it doesn't do anything cool.) He asked about where you get film and bunnyhugger initially thought he meant, like, the weird color-shifting films she was using. On realizing he might just want normal-person film she went back and told him the good news that Target sells surprisingly good film at decent prices. But we don't know anywhere in Muskegon that develops.

This is all pleasant stuff, but it does take time doing. We finally went back out to the car and re-entered the park shortly before 4:00, to get in (we trusted) a solid hour riding roller coasters and whatever flat rides caught our eyes. We started with Mad Mouse, and that turned out to be the last ride of the season, and you can see yesterday's report for how that turned everything out.

And this is how we closed Michigan Adventure for the season. See you in May, all going well.

Now to close out the Motor City Fur[ry] Con fursuit parade:

And here's bunnyhugger in the parade! And a hamster behind her.

Here's everyone gathering around outside the hotel for the fursuit group photo.

The rare gathering-for-the-group-photo picture where I can clearly point out where bunnyhugger is. (She's in the light, just to the left of a dog, about one-third of the way from the right edge of the picture.)

Fursuiters gathering, facing away from me, while waiting for the real photographer to get ready.

And here comes a rabbit with a butterfly net. A bunny-fly net? Something like that.

My panoramic photo --- you know one would come --- of fursuiters lined up ready for the group photo.

Trivia: Dave Theurer's original design for the arcade game Tempest had the player's gun stay still, while the cylinder of approaching space invaders rotated as a whole. Players said this made them nauseous and he changed it to the cylinder keeping a constant angle while the gun moves around the outer rim. Source: The Ultimate History of Video Games: The Story of Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World, Steven L Kent.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 46: The Fresh-Water Denizen, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

Going to use today to catch up on photos because I didn't have the energy after work to write up the Sunday trip to Michigan's Adventure. It's coming.

Ah, it's any nondescript void space, so you know what that must mean: furries are convening!

Yup, not even into Motor City Furry Con registration and there's Avali and Protogen suiters hanging around.

Chicken purse! You bring one of these out and around and people aren't going to stop talking about it. (This is not bunnyhugger's famed chicken purse, as that's a moulded rubber ball and not something that could pass for a puppet.)

Some milling around at the first event we got to, which I believe was the trash animals SIG? You can see Pakrat in the background there.

I don't see what's confusing about the con hotel layout.

Oh hey, one of a nonzero number of inflatable dinosaurs that would be around the place.

Photographs printed out on real photo paper from last year's Motor City and from some furry bowling events, which made me remember I had Twitchers's photo from last year in the car.

Also this was left on the counter, free for the taking. I have no use for this and probably still have some in some box in the basement somewhere anyway, but it's neat to see the old things in pristine shape.

Once again Hospitality's tables were covered with paper for the drawing on. Some people got really good shapes and colors out of the crayons, somehow.

I mean, look at this. I suspect the artist brought their own pen to bear on it but the crayon work is still really good as crayon work.

The dance already? Well, it's big criss-crossing patterns of light in a black void so it must be the dance!

It's hard to believe the dance would be over so quick but you see the sign wishing us goodnight and telling us to get out there.

Tune in later this week to see how long my resolve to take only photos that are interesting or particularly unique to the 2024 iteration of this convention lasted!

Trivia: Big Ben, the great bell in the Great Clock of Westminster, is the second bell cast for the job; the original was cracked beyond repair in testing. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel. And yes, it was recast by the same firm that made the Liberty Bell, so, these guys and prestige bells, am I right?

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 46: The Fresh-Water Denizen, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. A bunch of jokes about Popeye and Wimpy going fishing at Lake Lakelake, where the fish are wise to them and also bigger than either of these two.

After the Puppeteering SIG petered out we went across the hall to the Rodents SIG. This, as usual, involved a bunch of people introducing themselves and their rodents or, in my case, their relationship with rodents. Yes, there were cats popping in too. There were also people in suit, including someone in an Emperor Rat costume that was amazing for being extremely pear-shaped. I'm not sure how he could fit his thighs through a door, let alone manage getting up or down steps.

Where the SIG diverged from any that bunnyhugger might have run is that after everyone had the chance to talk a bit, the event moved downstairs, joining the Pipsqueakery area to look at actual rodents, plus rabbits, plus a pigeon and some goats and some baby chicks and all. The thing most astounding to me, here, is that the Pipsqueakery allowed people into the enclosure --- including people in fursuit, despite their limited visibility and diminished flexibility in case they start to fall. The Emperor Rat particularly was trying to coax any of the rats into his paw but they were suspicious of what the heck all this could even be about. One can understand where they're coming from.

We also finally got to the dealers den, which opened late due to the bomb scare and all. It had a new location, held in the detached building in back of the hotel. It's the one where my failed Raccoons and Procyonids SIG had been a couple years ago. The location doesn't seem to have hurt the den's popularity any, though; the place was just shy of being too busy for me to be comfortable. Along the way bunnyhugger reconnected with someone who'd done some of her oldest sketchbook art and I, at least, thought really hard about this t-shirt showing the ``dragons of the American Midwest''. It had this nice collection of what looked like 70s fanzine dragon art of dragon shapes, many of which looked to me like geographic in-jokes. Drawn by some Michigander, I assume, because the Ohio dragon had some particularly insulting name and pathetic appearance. While I support the making of stuff like this, though, I didn't need to buy it.

We missed the memo about Closing Ceremonies being pushed back an hour, so did more sniffing around and trying to catch people and, I'm pretty sure, getting more of the diet Faygo varieties they had in Hospitality. When Closing Ceremonies did start, though, it saw a lot of the familiar notes. Also two startling ones. The first is that the Pipsqueakery would not be Motor City Furry Con's charity next year. They'd put in a new convention bylaw that the same charity couldn't be picked more than three years running. I'm not sure I would rate that as worth a rule --- you could just make the choice --- but do understand the logic in spreading the charity potential around and not making an automatic choice out of the thing. (That said, there's danger in picking an animal-related charity, as see the doubts we had but could never substantiate, or refute, about that guy with the sloth from back in like 2014 or 2015 or so.)

The other was the announcement for next year's theme: the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We were startled that we'd never encountered that theme at a furry con before. Surely someone's done it in at least one of the estimated 760 furry cons of the past ten years but, considering how core it was to the Gen X Nerd sense of humor it ... probably should have been used in the 90s, if cons had themes back then, and this might be the last time it could. (Do young nerds still read/listen/watch it, or do they just know that 42 is a funny number for some reason?)

A very small surprise is that they didn't ask people to help them out by clearing chairs away so the main ballroom could be repurposed to the Dead Dog Dance. Instead we spent the time between the two events somehow meeting more people and popping in to Hospitality. And then, for the dance, bunnyhugger once again suited as Velveteen, this time inviting me into the Headless Lounge to help her get in suit. Previous times she'd done the important dressing --- the part she needed help with --- in our hotel room but as we didn't have that, I had to come into an area I'd previously never visited. It was ... about like you'd expect, people in partial or no fursuit drinking cold water and letting fans blow cold air on them.

Still, all fun stuff ends, too soon, and the dance was among them. We went to Hospitality again, where the beer was running out (the popcorn was not) and foiled our resolution to set out early, so we wouldn't be getting in to our hotel room ridiculously late. If it were any other weekend, we'd have stuck around another hour or so and headed for home. But this was April 7th. The Eclipse was tomorrow.

Let's enjoy a touch more of Indiana Beach; getting to the evening now, which comes fast when you would rather stay out for an extra day or two.

Here's the Hoosier Hurricane (above) and Cornball Express (below) as seen from the platform of Tig'rr Coaster (to the right).

And here's Tig'rr, with the tig'rr holding the ride sign.

Rocky's Toybox is the name given to the kiddieland rides, which include the Rocky's Roundup carousel. So far as I'm aware there isn't a full-body picture of Rocky, at least on park signs.

Oh, and here's the kiddieland Ferris wheel, an Eli Bridge company #6, complete with LED packaging so it looks much brighter than it would have when new. It's underneath the Hoosier Hurricane.

Hand-painted signs, some of them accurate (such as pointing to the Skyroom Restaurant, the Boardwalk Grill, and the offices) and some obsolete (21 was a roll-a-ball game) outside the museum.

More views of the museum, which has a great set of old signs and such set in the window.

Trivia: The airship Macon had a top speed of about 85 miles per hour. The Sparrowhawk aircraft it carried were faster, and risked stalling out when slowing to dock with the mothership, done at not less than 63 mph. Source: When Giants Ruled The Sky: The Brief Reign and Tragic Demise of the American Rigid Airship, John J Geoghegan. The planes docked to a hook underneath the blimps, to maximize your chances of noping out of that.

Currently Reading: The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations, Jacob Soll. Embarrassed to realize I was conflating Jean-Baptiste Colbert and John Law, who for crying out loud are from different centuries and one different Louis, which makes me realize oh, that's why everyone treated me like that in middle school.

Heading back at last to Motor City Fur[ry] Con, Saturday. After the fursuit parade and associated wandering around --- and chance encounters with more friends of ours; it was a great con for catching up with folks --- the most intriguing new event was something for bunnyhugger's interest. This was a sticker-trading session, people getting together in one of the panel rooms and setting up their wares and going around swapping stuff. bunnyhugger grabbed a couple of conveniently available Mrs Grossman's stickers from her several-years-deep club membership and figured to see what might happen.

Her biggest trade, then, came while she was out for something or other and I served as agent. There was someone thrilled to see Mrs Grossman stickers again --- they're not sold in stores anymore, just to club purchases --- and offering trades including a sheet of dragons inspired by the Dragonriders of Pern series. bunnyhugger was, of course, a Pern fan back in the day so this was an easy trade to make. There'd be a couple of other trades when she got back to the room but nothing that big. The unexpected thing is that most people brought vinyl-printed stickers like every seller in the dealers' den now has. It happens bunnyhugger had some like that, stickers she'd just had printed with the mascot for the Lightning Flippers women's pinball tournaments, but she didn't think (or imagine) to bring them. Something to consider for future cons, if we see sticker-trading on the schedules.

Later in the day was --- I think it was the Rabbits SIG, so let's go with that. (There was also a Rodents SIG.) As often happens the Rabbits SIG developed, after introducing everyone's relationship with rabbits, into answering trivia about bunnies in exchange for prizes, mostly small plush. Many of these I recognized as the sort of trivia bunnyhugger would ask when she ran the panel and I could see on her face the eagerness to answer everything and to also explain why the correct answer is more subtle than that. As it was she only took one small plush, and while I think she did answer a second question she gave the second reward to a fursuiter sitting beside us who wasn't so quick on the answers.

We also finally set foot in the arcade room where, for the second year running, they didn't have Earthshaker or an equivalent pinball machine. But they did have something pretty neat: a homemade pinball game. The early, pure mechanical sort, where you bat the smaller-than-pinball balls up and they drop into one of a couple of holes while bouncing off pin nails. Unfortunately, the wood frame of this wasn't quite assembled tightly enough and I could not get the ball to plunge, or the four other balls in the game to drop down into the shooter lane. I don't think I broke it, but I didn't get the chance to shoot even one round. Otherwise the arcade room was hopping, much busier than it had been in previous years, with people enjoying the mug-shooting game (I never got to play it this time around) and Dance Dance Revolution and a virtual jumprope and all that.

We also finally got to the sponsors lounge to try out a lot of popcorn, a reasonable amount of Faygo, and a bit of the beers and ales and ciders and all on tap. They even had a wheat beer that first time I went up so I could have a drink that wasn't All The Hops.

Eschewing the furry bingo this time we spent a bit more time at the dance, bunnyhugger once again getting into Velveteen and me having dug out a couple of earplugs from my messenger bag. I'd forgotten my usual routine of bringing a couple but ones from past cons that I dropped in and forgot meant I could be in the dance without worrying about hearing damage. (Friday night I didn't have earplugs at all, but the music was a bit softer than usual and we were in for too few minutes before the dance ended.)

After the dance ended --- they forgot to play Toto's ``Africa'' so we had to only infer the thing was done from the music stopping, the house lights coming on, and the DJs packing up and leaving --- we returned to our hotel, finding the parking lot full and resorting to parking in that mysterious detached lot that maybe is for the Buffalo Wild Wings but how could a Buffalo Wild Wings ever need that much parking?

We got to bed, anticipating the last day of the convention plus the start of our Eclipse Adventure.

Trivia: The word ``interlude'' first appears in English around 1303, meaning a light or humorous act or skit, often involving mimicry, between the acts of a long mystery or morality play''. The original form came from the Latin ``inter'', between, and ``ludus'', play. Source: Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning, Sol Steinmetz.

Currently Reading: The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations, Jacob Soll.

We would miss the dealers dens and the artist alley on Friday. Mild shame, although there was plenty of Motor City Furry Con left. The big inconvenience in missing that was reducing the chance bunnyhugger would get a sketchbook commission (she ended up not getting one at all). Also that I didn't get a badge. I had forgotten my bag with my handful of character badges, one of those things left at home along with the battery charger, so I spent the weekend without features like my character pictures or my Certified Coatimundi badge or FurFright pin or all that. Will have to remember to bring the box to Anthrohio.

We would have the time, though, to see the rabbits and other small animals of the Pipsqueakery, which were there in what turned out to be the charity's final year at the convention (for now, at least). We didn't have long and we saw a good bit of them being packed up and taken in for safekeeping but we were there enough to see a lot of rabbits, and that they even had chicks and also a goat for some reason.

The big highlight of the night was getting to a game of Werewolf. There's one at almost every furry convention and bunnyhugger always wants to get to a game and we never manage. This time, we were on time and ready, in the big pentagonal room that had been the Trash Animals SIG place. Not quite there was people. The organizers finally came in, and waited some more, taking the chance for some event or other to finish up and pick up some more people. As it was there were at least two dozen participants and it turned out many of them would be needed. This particular version of Werewolf was played with a lot of roles --- werewolves, sure, and villagers. But also stonemasons and mystics and seers and a Cupid who could proclaim two people to be a joined couple (so if one died the other did too) and on for a very long list of people. Had fewer people attended they'd have cut back on the special roles but as it was there were only something like three normal villagers, me among them. bunnyhugger would be the Cupid and would assign the pairing to two people, one of whom turned out to be the Mystic, on the grounds that they looked like a cute couple.

The game would go on for quite a long while, longer than bunnyhugger anticipated. Part of this was the large crowd; with so many people and theoretically at most two dying per round and 84 special roles who had to do things each 'night' between rounds, there's a lot of overhead. Add to that the late start. Many people started just walking out, making a hash of anyone's attempts to deduce roles from the logic of who could or could not have just died back there.

Also slowing things down: me. The core of each round is talking out what we can deduce from the deaths and claims of the people left behind. Somehow in an early round someone nominated me as a suspect werewolf, and so I had to defend myself, and from there I wasn't just in the game, I was involved. Following the rules of mystery cozies I had to point out, for example, the person who had given the assurances he was part of a particular organization and that he knew two people in the room could attest to that had gone very far without actually making the claim he was a stonemason and his assertions would be equally truthful if he were one of the werewolves. (I think both of us weren't sure whether the existence of the stonemasons was supposed to be openly known, or admitted to except under duress.) I am not the fast builder of logical arguments that bunnyhugger is, but I am able to occasionally spot something.

Unfortunately the high point of my deductive reasoning that night --- the thing I was actually able to conclude by saying QED --- was completely wrong. I mean, I did spot a weakness in the Mystic's alibi (revealing that her Cupid-assigned partner was a werewolf and the Mystic knew it), but when the game was over and all the cards revealed it turned out that no, the putative Mystic and the Stonemason were exactly who they said they were. In the narrative of the game, I was the fool making it harder for everyone. The villagers won the game, killing the last werewolf before everybody was dead, but it's humbling to realize your entire contribution to events was to make them worse. I will write this up to inexperience with the tropes and unwritten customs of the game rather than to ``thinking carefully about what precisely we know and what less obvious scenarios also fit the certain information'' being a bad plan.

All this, plus visiting the Sponsor's Lounge to get some Faygo and popcorn, took us to after midnight, to our amazement. We would get to the dance, which was a comfortably busy affair, but for less time than we'd expected or would have really liked. But I was able to put on my red panda kigurumi and bunnyhugger made the first of several forays in her Velveteen fursuit, making its Motor City Furry Con debut. This would be a hit; she could not go out without getting some people telling people they loved it and asking for pictures. Made for a satisfying end to the day.

Enjoying a bit more of Indiana Beach photography here:

bunnyhugger enjoying a ride on Rocky's Roundup, the kiddieland carousel. (They don't presently have a full-size carousel and Rocky's was not operating when we visited in 2022.)

Looking out on the carousel and incidentally capturing a cross look from one of the guys waiting for a ride or a rider.

Probably the horses we rode. You can see it's not a big carousel but it's painted nicely.

Getting ready for the Hoosier Hurricane ride, which goes over top of the Rocky's Rapids log flume. Many Indiana Beach rides are stacked atop one another like this.

The exit for the Hoosier Hurricane and for Rocky's Rapids points the way to the Cornball Express --- or as they label it here the ``Corn Ball Coaster'' --- on the reasonable supposition people riding the big coaster or log flume are likely interested in the other log flume.

Peeking out from the Hoosier Hurricane queue to the ride's lift hill, and you can see Rocky's Roundup carousel underneath that, as well as the train which tracks we were warned about a couple pictures above.

Trivia: Hiram Stevens Maxim applied for a United States patent for his flying machine, which in 1894 used two 180-horsepower steam engines to hurl the four-ton machine down an 1800-foot track, lifted briefly off at 42 miles per hour, and promptly crashed against the upper guardrail. The application was denied, as the machine did not have any balloon to provide lift and so ``was not, in the eyes of the law, a useful invention''. Source: To Conquer The Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight, James Tobin. The quote is from Maxim's own description of the outcome. Have to say I think the patent office's conclusion was right even if the reasoning was wrong.

Currently Reading: The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars, Dava Sobel.

Motor City Fur[ry] Con 2024! This year I felt secure enough in my position and finances to take the Friday off, although the prospect of getting there in time for Opening Ceremonies evaporated. Just too much to do to get ready, and then it turned out there was a heck of a lot of traffic and even more road construction going on between Lansing and Ypsilanti. It got bad enough, in fact, that we gave up on US 23 south, the sensible way to get there, and improvised tacking our way across Ypsilanti and it so happens going past the famous water tower that people make too big a deal of. This time, seeing it by daylight, we noticed the bust in front of it and briefly wondered who it might be. It was, of course, Demetrius Ypsilantis, namesake for the city.

In the end we got there late enough that we were able to check in to our hotel, the overflow hotel we always seem to end up in because we aren't paying attention when they open the main hotel. We also got there very close to the first event we wanted to attend, the ``Trash Animals'' SIG. Whether we could make it would depend on whether we could find parking and how long the registration line was.

The registration line was almost nothing and, even better, I didn't lose anything in line, unlike last year. Parking, though, that was a problem. The parking lot for the Motor City Furry Con hotel in Ypsilanti has always been too small, and it got even more constrained when the golf course adjacent to it built a new sports center thingy. It's managed to get even more constrained than that, because the hotel is putting up gates at its parking lot, chopping off a couple of spaces from every row, including the one that still has the sign reserved for ``Employee of the Month'', which feels like a special insult to an already meager prize. There's also more spaces roped off for valet parking.

We did wonder a little why the hotel doesn't have nearly enough parking spaces, and finally realized: oh, it's because furries will put 26 people in a two-bed room, and all 26 of them will have driven in separately. In the event, I dropped bunnyhugger off at the hotel --- a thing that would become our routine all weekend; I think there's one time we parked together --- and I went searching the many rows in the forlorn hope that there might be one --- oh, there's a spot right in the front row, not far from the entrance. OK. Sweet. We could start the convention!

Before getting to the SIG, let me wrap up the Calhoun County Fair. Ready for whatever pinball tournament was next on my photo roll? Well, just you keep waiting, you'll see what's next.

Crown of lightning bolts at the center of the Silver Streak ride, by night. Love the look of that.

And from Silver Streak here's a photograph looking to the front of the carnival area, with the Gravitron and Zipper and way in back, the Nuf Edils and all that in the glow of a warm, humid August night.

Going back to the carousel for a visit and photographs of the wrong side of the horses before they close it up.

... Oh, they're closing it up.

Last look at some ride art on the way out, here, the ringmaster, a tiger, and a human cannonball for the Big Top Circus funhouse-type walkthrough.

And here's a cheerful-looking monkey and elephant sharing peanuts in the Big Top Circus ride art.

Trivia: In 1927 the NBC radio network had 28 affiliates and CBS 16, accounting for 6.4 percent of all the United States's broadcast stations. By 1931, NBC and CBS accounted for 30 percent of all stations and 70 percent of all broadcasting. Source: With Amusement For All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830, LeRoy Ashby.

Currently Reading: The Acme Catalog: Quality Is Our #1 Dream, Charles Carrey and Scott Grass.

Too busy this weekend with Motor City Fur[ry] Con and the eclipse to get today's entry written. So please enjoy a maybe 50% chance of seeing a double dose of Jackson County Fair pictures. Also, we were fine, we were staying at an overflow hotel so the bomb hoax called in to Motor City just meant that when we pulled up to the main hotel we saw the Ypsilani Fire Department blocking the road and wondered what the heck was going on. More to come.

Also I don't know why Livejournal's servers aren't able to serve pictures up reliably; I'm going to file a complaint when I have the chance and I'll pass along the ``I don't know, it works for everyone else, have you tried logging out and logging back in again'' that they offer as explanation.

bunnyhugger at the top of the Ferris wheel, dismayed that the stands are all empty.

Another dramatic angle peering down on the merry-go-round.

And some more fairground stuff, looking out to where I think those picnic tables or something were?

Down near enough the Feris wheel we can see the closed ticket booth and that cozy fries stand again.

And here we are leaving; they were taking up metal plates, reducing the size of the queue areas, reasonably.

And there they go, taking parts of the Ferris wheel and putting them away.

One of the kiddie rides, although I notice the sign doesn't say adults have to be accompanied. Just to have tickets. We didn't see it run; I'm curious if the trucks do anything fun like rear back on two wheels any.

I like the mood of this picture of one person walking past a bunch of illuminated but unattended carnival games.

Swinging ship rides, always good for me.

Not sure why the comic acrobat dog is on the overhang for the concession department but I guess I wanted to preserve the art for future appreciation.

``Will you be long, Sonic?'' ``Yes, Knuckles, I will be long. Will you?'' ``Of course.''

Oh, and got a peek at the control panel for the hang glider ride. It ... doesn't look like it's that complicated a ride to operate.

Trivia: In July 1942 Winston Churchill endured a parliamentary vote of no confidence, though passed it easily. Source: Why The Allies Won, Richard Overy. In fact, Churchill faced two confidence votes in 1942; the January one he won by a margin of 463 votes (out of 465), the July by 450 votes (out of 500)

Haven't had the time to talk about what we did this weekend, but maybe I will soon. In the meanwhile, what's going on at Motor City Furry Con for Sunday, after everything's been done going on? Why, we go ...

To the Dead Dog Dance! See any dogs here? Well, there was dancing, at least.

Not so much dancing from me. I had my winter boots on, the only shoes I had for the weekend, and while they kept my feet warm and dry they also got to ache a good bit by now and forced my hand at going and buying some pleasant-fitting new shoes instead.

Lights! I'm not going to pass up the chance to photograph in weird and difficult lighting.

bunnyhugger showing off her C Is For Cookie song moves.

Did I mention bunnyhugger dual-wields the C?

Coming up on the end of the dance, and the end of all the convention events besides clean-up! ... Wait, that's not a good thing.

Trivia: Before the end of the twelfth century weekly sermons were not a common feature of parish churches. Sermons were intended for specialists considering theological arguments in monasteries, or for would-be converts, or by bishops at episcopal sees (which often were no longer the largest town in the area). Source: A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order, Judith Flanders.

Currently Reading: Railroads for Michigan, Graydon M Meints.

PS: What's Going On In Mark Trail? Why is this leprechaun guy in Mark Trail? February - May 2023 gets its plot recap here.

Happy Sunday, a day of no significance whatsoever since last September! Please enjoy some pictures from Motor City Furry Con's own Sunday.

Closing ceremonies! Already, somehow! I'd found bunnyhugger by this neat thing where we sent short messages on our phones.

Does the audience look about like what you expect for this? It should. It's possible this is a picture from closing ceremonies at every convention ever.

I was too far off to get good pictures of, like, the charity's delight at the final total donation or anything like that, so let's move on to things breaking up. I still haven't heard what the convention theme for 2024(!) is supposed to be.

Pinky Pie(?) swipes one of the giant lollipop decorations from the stage.

So we finally sat down in hospitality and grabbed crayons to add our sketches to the paper tablecloths. Unfortunately, the only crayons I could find were yellow, which on the ... salmon(?) pink paper do not photograph well at all. I had to convert this to black-and-white and fiddle with the contrast to get any look at my sketch here of nose-tapping with bunnyhugger. Sorry.

I had to do similar tough photo editing to get anything suggesting bunnyhugger's sketch of herself looking with hearts flying at me. It only looks like I had to take the picture on a 7-Eleven security camera in 1994.

Trivia: The 1941 ``Victory Program'' outlining a plan for United States military involvement in World War II, tasked Colonel Hal George to work out the air war needs over the course of nine summer days. Source: Why The Allies Won, Richard Overy.

Currently Reading: Railroads for Michigan, Graydon M Meints.

When we got done exploring bunnies and back into Pinball At The Zoo, I got in my first game of FunHouse, the only table I hadn't played before. And, armed with a night's sleep and good feelings that I was playing for nothing but fun --- and bunnyhugger's reports of how the table played --- I put up a lousy game. And now, with four tickets left of my original $20, what should I play again? I decided to go to Funhouse again, and decided, you know? I like this game. I'll just play it until I have a killer game and then reevaluate it. On the replay, I got some idea where the shots were, and doubled my score to two million points, or as it's officially known, ``made a shot at some point''.

I went to Funhouse again, realizing I had to change my strategy. I had fallen into the trap of trying to play the long game, playing each of the ``modes'' on the mirror and building to the Super Frenzy payoff. I needed to play the short game and race for multiball. Six million points would be a decent game; ten million points would put me into ``might make it into B Division playoffs after all''. While I got multiball started, I didn't do anything with it, and finished at three million points. Here I decided my last two games were going to be FunHouse, no matter what, and thought, and maybe I can make this the year I never have to have an entry voided, for being a score below what I already had. If I could just beat three million points on Funhouse with all I knew about how the table was playing now ...

And, I couldn't. I didn't break three million, I didn't meet my personal goal of ``no voided entries'', I didn't get anywhere near playoffs. I would finish the main tournament in 69th place, which I guess is ... oh, I don't know, good? All right? Something like that. Anyway, my worst finish in Pinball At The Zoo.

And bunnyhugger? She went in doubting she could beat SS, sitting atop the Women's rankings, in the three crowded hours she had left. And while she tried all the women's games (and only the women's games), she didn't make any progress in any of them, bettering nothing from the night before. On the other hand, SS didn't gain anything on her either. They would reach 11 am and the start of the Women's Finals in first and second place, just as if they had slept in three extra hours.

Still, it left her going into finals feeling down on herself. She'd put an estimated $75 into entries and SS --- playing seriously in the Women's and in the Main and in the Classics tournaments --- hadn't done anything like that and still topped her out. With the benefit of hindsight and the easy ability to pull the record into spreadsheets I can see that's not true. While SS put in a few entries into Main and Classics, she spent most of her time and money on Women's. She ultimately had 112 entries in this tournament, compared to bunnyhugger's 74. Given 40 percent more tries it's maybe not surprising she had a couple relatively-better games than bunnyhugger. But, not knowing that, she went in feeling she was badly outclassed.

But they were seeded into different groups, and so couldn't face each other in the first round. How that would go, I intend to tell you tomorrow.

Let's enjoy more of the small animals of the Pipsqueakery, from Sunday at Motor City Furry Con:

The rabbit all ANGY at having to share their quarters with a turtle also had another companion, and here we have them together in a pose I quite like, ears fitting snug into legs.

Finally looking a little softer here, less ANGY and more disappointed in you.

Here's a bunch of the guinea pigs, including three Skinny Pigs that really show how much the animal does kind of look pig-gy.

I sadly just missed one of those odd moments where the guinea pigs get superheated and everyone starts running around wheeping. I probably wouldn't have been able to get a good movie of it anyway.

More guinea pigs expressing their default emotion of ``Are you sure I was supposed to be invited to this meeting?''

Well, back to the important guinea pig work of not being sure what they're supposed to do but as long as nobody's hollering they guess it's all right!

Trivia: The ``staplers'', English merchants specialized in exporting wool to northern Europe (typically Bruges, Antwerp, or Calais) in the late middle ages, so specialized that they did not bother organizing return cargos. Source: Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages, Jean Favier.

Currently Reading: Railroads for Michigan, Graydon M Meints.