austin_dern

Enough parking. What can I say about Sunday at Motor City Fur[ry] Con, besides that we kept seeing people for the last time, sometimes because they were hoping to beat the storm? And that we were looking at storm forecasts to see if we should take off before the convention even closed, to be safe at home?

For as busy as Saturday was, Sunday didn't have much programming we wanted to attend. There was a gettogether for mythical beasts but coatis aren't mythical, just fantastic. And, you know, I'm not saying bunnyhugger has ever had a hippocampus character but she didn't feel like it was a group she wanted to join.

Instead we went back to the Artists Alley again --- no realistic chance of buying a commission there (bunnyhugger does not leave her sketchbook to be mailed back to her after the con), but prints or stickers or buttons are always possible --- and to the Dealers Den, getting a look at some of the places we had not had time for Saturday. Here we ended up in a pretty good conversation with one of the vendors whom Shamus had for some reason been talking with us about. I think it was over amusement parks; my recollection is I was wearing my Kings Island The Beast t-shirt. (I managed the whole weekend to wear shirts that were kind of furry without being furry con t-shirts, surely the most meh of accomplishments.) I don't remember that we got anything besides a nice time from them.

Also I noticed someone offering to make custom kigurumis, for about $1200. It ... seems like it might be nice to have a coati kigurumi, but ... I mean, I have a red panda kigurumi already and the substantial difference in kigurumi resolution is that a red panda has a dark belly, not light. Is fixing that worth twelve hundred dollars? It's hard to see that it is, but it's been a couple weeks and I still have that figure in mind.

While bunnyhugger was off at something I noticed a guy who'd set up near the main ballroom. He'd taken photographs of all(?) the people in the fursuit parade, and had gotten them printed out, and had them arranged out there for people to take. Only yourself, he was asking, although he allowed that if someone knew a friend had left the con for good then that was all right. I did pick up bunnyhugger's picture and then told her about the lineup. We came back sometime after that and found Twitchers there. We couldn't swear for certain that he was not going to be back at the convention but after some hemming and hawing declared that to the best of our knowledge he had left the con for good.

Anyway this all brought us to Closing Ceremonies, and then that strange gap in time between the close of the convention and the Dead Dog Dance. bunnyhugger hoped to get some work done in this stretch, and I hoped to eat a cookie. And then that's when the tornado sirens came and staff started ordering everyone into the main ballroom to shelter from the high winds, as discussed way back at the start of things.

Although the hour-plus of sheltering delayed the start of the Dead Dog Dance, it didn't delay the ending. It couldn't; the Dead Dog Dance ends about 9 pm because they can't run longer and still have time to clear the room on time for whatever hotels do when there aren't furry conventions on. So we had a shortened time for dancing, but we made it through the end. And, after that, went back to Hospitality, and took the half-hour daily walk bunnyhugger does daily. We figured it was better to take it in the hotel where we knew there was power, rather than home where it might be off.

And, yes, when we got home, our power was off. It came back sometime around 3 am. Based on our plant timers --- which use a mechanical dial to turn lights on and off --- it looks like our power was off about eight hours total. And somewhere in all this I misplaced my camera (and my umbrella) and it's never turned up, nor has anyone from the con acknowledged my e-mails.

Fun convention. Looking forward to the next one.

Though I'm closer than ever before I'm still not at the end of our anniversary day at Indiana Beach. Come, please, and look at:

Want to get all the carp in the river to come see you? Here's how!

Another view of how to get food to feed animals. I'm like 95% sure the duck is from a Preston Blair illustration. Don't know about the fish.

Indiana Beach used to have some big-name concerts, the way all parks did. Now, they get smaller acts and are more likely to be tribute bands.

One of the dark rides, the Den of Lost Thieves, that we didn't have time for this visit. You see some of the vibe of the place from the projections above it.

And here's a nice organ that's set up at the pizza place. I don't believe we've ever seen it played, and I don't know if it can be played.

Ice cream stand with a bunch of logos for bands that I believe all played Indiana Beach at some point. It's impressive how many are names that are at least still familiar 70 or more years later.

Trivia: Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover's entertaining costs far outstripped the White House budget for such, and covered the gap from their own riches. Source: A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression, Jane Ziegelman, Andrew Coe.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 58: Let Us Look To Lettuce, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

The next panel that I went to was the Plush/Inflatables/Puppets panel. bunnyhugger went off on her own for something else; I forget what. I think it was a tabletop roleplaying game that she was interested in. There were several of these over the weekend and she's always eager for the chance to play something as we don't have a good gaming group. There are her parents and they're happy to see us but her father only really likes rolling dice and her mother is certain she doesn't understand the games.

The Plush/Inflatables/Puppets panel was an informal hangout --- all the things which looked something like a SIG were hangouts --- and I brought out Latham, my guinea pig puppet, for his big outing of the weekend. As usual he got a good response from people since he is about the right size and shape for a real guinea pig and it's thinkable that someone might sneak one in the way it's not plausible someone might sneak in a dragon. I did a lot of explaining his basic gimmicks --- mostly why he wears a plastic ring around one leg --- to different people and was mostly well-received.

There were a couple inflatables shown off, filled up and set down on the floor where you could pose for pictures (sniff). And a good number of plush as well, including one person who had a fox plush maybe four feet tall and pretty hefty. The giant fox plush was popular for photographs as who doesn't want to be buried under a fox, in this fandom, and a couple pictures of the fox riding the big inflatable dog were taken by everyone.

One of the puppeteers from the show was there, but I didn't get any further discussion with them. I'm not hurt by this; I'm not even sure what more I'd say.

We returned to our hotel room to get fursuit parts, so that bunnyhugger could dress as Velveteen and make good on the (mild) bother of driving home and back for it. But when we returned to the convention hotel she didn't suit right away, going instead to a meetup for Women and AFAB Persons. Meanwhile I did some other exploring on my own, among other things getting to the video game room for the first time. This was, first, extremely hot, and second, pinball-free. The Surfers in Hospitality was all the pinball there was. (Whoever brought their little pure-mechanical pins table didn't bring it back this time.) I did get to play a couple rounds of Quick And Crash, the shooting game that explodes a coffee mug if you do it right. Not too many, though, since this was very popular and there was a line almost every time you looked in.

I also got onto the Super Mario Brothers arcade cabinet and played a couple rounds, sometime even getting close, I think, to beating World 1-1. I don't know what I was doing wrong. When I wasn't being killed by turtles or plummeting I would just run out of time, something so shocking to bunnyhugger that I believe if I'd confessed this inability at the wrong time it might have cancelled our wedding. Yes, I know the B button is for running. I'm just not good at the game is all.

Finally after this bunnyhugger got out her fursuit bag and became Velveteen, the plush rabbit who looks vaguely disapproving of all this going on, thank you. We got time in both walking the floor and at the dance, although not so much time at the dance: She had forgotten her earplugs and was willing to take only a short time before getting somewhere quieter. I had also forgotten earplugs but had found a couple slightly dusty older ones in my messenger bag that I was using. (I don't remember why the wax earplugs for sleeping weren't used. I assume we must have just forgot to bring them to the convention hotel and they had been left safe and sound in our hotel's room.)

When we had enough dance, and walking around the hotel for the daily exercise, we returned to Hospitality to find the pinball machine broken and hopeful that it would be repaired Sunday. One of the pop bumpers had broken Friday night and it was in good shape Saturday morning, after all, but this good repair work wouldn't last.

Back at our hotel we confirmed the sad news: checkout time here was 11 am, so we'd have to get up no later than 10 to have a chance of packing everything up. This after we'd had to make several rounds of the hotel parking lot before I found a spot bunnyhugger is still angry about. More on that to come.

Now back to the pictures, and Indiana Beach of last June.

Here's the Falling Star, a Moby Dick-type ride, at the top of its arc where you can see the star roundels underneath. Also in the background is the station for Hoosier Hurricane.

Went past one of the gift shops and happened to notice an old cash machine in the window, along with a note about ``All cottages are to be charged a cleaning deposit''.

Beyond this wall of ivy is the Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain. Don't believe me? Well look just a little to the side ...

There! The two-car train is at the loading station on the left, with the elevator off on the right. As you can see, it's a wood coaster.

There's the next train on the elevator up. There's no room for a lift hill without demolishing the Superstition Mountain dark ride structure and then it would hardly be a Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain, would it?

Train coming out of the lift elevator. The ride is built into what had once been a dark ride, so it is a heck of an intense ride.

Trivia: Analysis of just how strongly the space shuttle's thermal protection system tiles needed to be was not done until well after many tiles had been manufactured and the first, failed attempts at installation had been done. Not due to any particular shortage of ability to do the analysis; simply that other items had been higher priority and there had been good reason to suppose the initial estimates of pressure loads were correct. Source: Development of the Space Shuttle 1972 - 1981, T A Heppenheimer.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Sundays Supplement Volume 15: 1953, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

Returning to Motor City Furry Con and, more or less, Saturday. I'd picked out a furry --- pinball, actually --- T-shirt to wear Saturday but then decided to set out in my red panda kigurumi, since I don't wear that enough. Figured I'd change back when I felt like. It turns out I never did feel like, and spent the whole day in suit. This got a bit hot at times; it's fleece, after all, and I was wearing cargo pants underneath as the best way to be sure I had my phone and car keys in a secure place. The kigurumi pockets aren't even deep enough to fit my hands, let alone a thing. It did have the advantage that the tail is easier to keep managed than my coati tail, though, which keeps wanting to fall down in a most out-of-character way.

As mentioned the day saw a lot of panels of interest to us. We joined, late, the panel ``Before Furry: Funny Animal Comics'', which advertised itself as talking about the ancient days of primordial furry art, you know, like the 80s and 90s. It turns out that this would have been our best chance to see Lightspill, a friend from SpinDizzy Muck, who was at the convention and that somehow we never did catch. They told me after they'd gone to the panel but had to leave partway through, suggesting we passed each other without noticing.

Anyway the panel did get back to the really old stuff, complete with pictures from the funny animal comic books that I've discovered are easy reading and pretty good learn-to-draw reference material. They even had a couple truly vintage comic books out there, such as one issue of Fawcett's Funny Animals, where Captain Marvel Bunny (Hoppy) appeared. I got to actually touch this ancient thing, in the minutes they had at the end to invite people up to see and look through some of their old comics.

But the bulk of what they had, and of what we saw in the presentation, was 90s stuff, including stuff I recognized from when it was new. One item, clips from Joe Ekaitis's T.H.E. Fox (a web comic that started in the 80s(!)) even came in handy since it was fresh in my mind when a friend asked about an old furry comic he sort-of remembered. And there were things like Gene Catlow's illustrated trip report to Confurence VIII, that I remembered from when it came out on SCFA/Yerf.

We hung around a while after, looking at the comics and talking with twitchers --- the second day of our meeting up with him some --- until bunnyhugger asked if we shouldn't get to the variety show. So we should have: I had misread the schedule and thought we had a half-hour, so we joined it already in progress.

And the progress! First of all, it was a variety show, mostly people singing or lip-synching to something already recorded. But it was also a variety show making use of the convention's theme, which you may have inferred from my subject lines here: Don't Panic. It was a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme, something it's astounding we hadn't seen before. It's almost stunning enough people still remember the books to support a theme like that. It did give all the convention materials a great graphic design style, and gave the show a central pretext. That pretext: that this was the dinner show at Milkybone's, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Also stunning: the hosts for this show were puppets! They'd set up a small puppet booth at one end of the stage and had a pretty good white dog of some kind as the main host, and a moose as subsidiary character, with a couple others popping in and out for specific bits. Puppets! In furry! We had no idea there was going to be a variety show, but a variety show with puppets? If we'd had any hint we'd have volunteered.

After the show we stuck around to catch the puppeteers and tell them how much we appreciated seeing that. The dog's puppeteer explained he had build the rigging for the puppet stage at the last minute and was kind of surprised it worked at all and everyone agreed this was a great development. Yes, it was.

Back to Indiana Beach in pictures here, with some more pinball:

Continuing the games; after Scooby-Doo we get a bunch of modern Stern, with Batman '66, Elvira's House of Horrors, and the Mandalorian.

More pinball. After The Mandalorian we get the Led Zeppelin pinball which, um, well, there's people who enjoy that. We didn't get it at our local venues because the operator looked at the game and said ``nah'', as most people have.

And one more row! The left are the two Pinball 2000 games, Star Wars Episode I and Revenge From Mars. Next to that, a special edition of Jersey Jack's inaugural The Wizard of Oz game.

And it's a whole Jersey Jack row here with Wizard, Dialed In, and Willy Wonka.

The site has also got the Stern Insider Connect thing going so you can log in to games and have your data tracked by another company.

bunnyhugger and I played a tight game of Aladdin's Castle, and she won in a squeaker, the kind of win everyone loves most.

Trivia: The first public references to Yuri Gagarin's flight as Vostok 1 came in a Pravda publication the 25th of April, 1961. Before then the spaceship-satellite had been referenced as Korabl Sputnik VI. Gagarin's call sign was revealed the 25th of April to have been Swallow. Source: This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury, Loyd S Swenson Jr, James M Grimwood, Charles C Alexander. NASA SP-4201.

Currently Reading: One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and Succession, Birch Bayh.

Saturday morning had a panel that would have been neat to see, ``Your Plastic Pals'', getting everyone's inflatable toys out together to be seen and played with. It was at 8:30 am. I don't like anything that much. But Saturday would be the most-packed day for programming at the convention, and one that at least did see us doing the least back-and-forth travel between the convention hotel and the place where we were staying.

As alluded earlier the big event was the fursuit parade, for which bunnyhugger would wear not Velveteen but her BunnyHugger outfit. We weren't sure which she had worn in the parade the year before, but, University of Michigan had just been knocked out of the NCAA (Men's) Basketball tournament the evening before so she expected some good response to her Michigan State t-shirt here in metro Ann Arbor. In fact, she got a bunch of ``Go Green!'' or other congratulatory messages, Michigan State still being in the playoffs at that point, and concluded either the rivalry wasn't that strong or Michigan fans just know when they're beat.

Also as mentioned there was no parking anywhere to be found at the hotel or its overflow lot. I dropped bunnyhugger off with her bag, and I went to the nearest spot, in the strip mall across the highway. Despite how close we came to the scheduled start of the parade I had time to walk back to the hotel and even got a good, unobstructed space with big glass windows behind me. It was maybe the best spot I've ever had for a fursuit parade; I could see people in the far background starting off and then passing in front of me for the real parade. The whole thing ran nearly eighteen minutes, the longest yet for one of these. And bunnyhugger, despite her perpetual scheme of finding the back of these parades so she doesn't have to wait around in suit for the group photo, ended up near the front of the parade. Just as well, as they'd taken the group photo inside the Main Events ballroom before setting out, so she didn't have to wait for anything afterwards anyway. (I assume this was because outdoors it kept threatening to rain, although it never did anything too much Saturday.)

After the parade and a little milling around we went our separate ways, so she could change out of suit and I could get the car and drive over. I forget what slowed me down but I was pulling into the parking lot just as bunnyhugger started texting to ask where the heck I was. She wasn't amused to find out how far away I'd had to park.

Despite the business of Saturday we had a couple hours and used the time, first, to get some lunch and second, to give bunnyhugger a little time to rest and work. We got lunch from the Tim Horton's near our hotel. Hospitality, for a change, did offer something promising, a vegetarian option we would actually be into. Among the meals we could exchange our sponsor's meal ticket for was an Impossible Burger. If we'd had the time Friday we'd have exchanged it then, on the supposition that they might run out if we waited too long. Saturday would have been a good time to use it, but we'd left one of the tickets in the hotel room and if we had to leave at all it was going to be annoying to get back. We would get lunch Sunday afternoon, at last, and they hadn't run out of Impossible Burgers. It happens we hit at a moment they were critically low on Tater Tots, so we had a side of fruit salad. More important is they didn't have mayo but we carried on despite hardship.

Since besides Impossible Burgers they had a most wonderful thing in Hospitality: a pinball machine! A Surfers, a 1967 Bally game with zipper flippers and a theme that you notice is about a tidal wave flooding the beach. If you compare the backglass to the main playfield. The art's by Jerry Kelley, as bunnyhugger spotted; Kelley was the person her favorite pinball artist (Christian Marche) was told to draw like when he got hired. It was a little beat up --- for a while Friday night one of the pop bumpers was barely triggering --- but it was there, on free play, attracting people all Friday and Saturday long. And as bunnyhugger said, if she'd known there'd be a game there she'd have scheduled a tournament.

Maybe it's as well she didn't. Saturday evening, when we came in around dance time, the game was turned off, and all Sunday it was turned off as well. We assume something catastrophic and beyond their ability to fix at the con happened. It's quite disappointing; in our time on the table we were finally working through things like how to play it all right, even cracking two thousand points on the four-digit scoring reel.

Something on the table would cause a gate to open, so the right outline instead fed the ball back into the shooter lane, and while I was getting to be pretty reliable about opening it I was never sure just what did it. There's a small rollover target that seems plausible, but hitting both the two blue (non-pop) bumpers also seemed plausible. There are fewer rule guides published online than you'd expect for a 58-year-old pinball game, so we couldn't get confirmation.

We had wondered if Vix brought the game, and had a slow time finding him to ask. No; it'd come from [ Name I immediately forgot ], who'd gotten the table in [ time frame I immediately forgot ] through a process that didn't stick in my head. Vix is still hoping to get Earthshaker up and running in good enough shape to endure a long, hot weekend in the gaming room, but it's not there now.

We'd be away from the con a little while, to eat and rest and all that. And then ... a lot of stuff. That's to come.

With today's pictures I close out our short visit to the Cass County Carousel in Logansport, Indiana.

One of the chariots, with I assume unrestored or minimally-restored paint, so the style is probably close to what this had a century-plus ago.

Tiger yawning right at you!

Here's the bag that the rings get kept in when they're not in the arm.

Historical plaque explaining the Dentzel carousel, with a bit of discussion of how it migrated before being housed here.

The completion of the plaque. The plaque's wording makes it sound like intact Dentzel carousels are exceptionally rare, and for Gustave Dentzel that's true, but there are a fair number of his son William Dentzel carousels and those have equally good claim to the Dentzel Carousel name.

And something outside that, I think wasn't running that day: a miniature train that goes past the carousel and the tennis courts and other things. There's also a miniature golf course but we didn't have the time for that. And why did we not? ... You'll see.

Trivia: In July 1877 when President Rutherford B Hayes ordered the US Army to attack the strikers in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, most of the soldiers had not been paid in months. (Democrats, holding that Hayes had not lived up to his part in the Compromise of 1877 to remove federal troops from the South, had refused Army appropriations.) Source: A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters, Scott Reynolds Nelson.

Currently Reading: One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and Succession, Birch Bayh.

PS: What's Going On In Gil Thorp? Is Emily Thorp back in the strip? January - April 2025 ... worth learning.

The hotel did not have my camera as of today. So, I need to wait for Motor City Furry Con's staff to answer their e-mail. I grant I'm slow answering my e-mail but I'm not staff.

So let's try a trip report. As Thursday, packing day, developed and bunnyhugger drove down to her parents' to drop off Athena and attended an online meeting of her philosophy reading group. And we realized as usual there wouldn't be time to do everything and get to bed in time to make Opening Ceremonies. So what was the first thing after Opening Ceremonies we might want to attend? That would be about 2 pm, and something called the Left-Center-Right sticker trading panel, and after that, a regular un-themed sticker and pin trading session. bunnyhugger was glad to see sticker trading at Motor City Furry Con 2024 and picking out some of her many stickers that she was comfortable trading away would be one of the other things keeping her up Thursday night to do.

Our goal was setting off Friday about noon, and we were only about fifteen minutes late for that. This should have got us to Ypsilanti and the convention hotel in plenty of time for 2 pm except that we didn't realize how many dense construction zones we would pass, including one spot where the traffic came to a stop. Fortunately for just a few minutes, but still, we were pulling into the con hotel's parking lot with under ten minutes to spare.

Also the con hotel has a new bad thing. The overloaded parking lot now has a gate, and an attendant just standing around out in the weather in a ridiculously ad hoc fashion, with parking in the hotel lot $15 a day. The lot was designed like a normal parking lot, with long rows that open onto streets on both sides, and all those open ends on one side were chained off except for the parking attendant's gate.

You would think that having to pay extra to park would encourage furries to carpool in and relieve some pressure on the overloaded lot. You would be wrong. The lot was as full as ever. The attendant asked if was there for the convention and if we wanted to park. He sold me a parking ticket for the dashboard and said there were three or four spots left. So at least there was the promise that the lot attendant would tell us whether there was any point going in. This would not last; by the end of Saturday the attendant was just wishing us luck and I don't think the attendant on Sunday had any idea whether there were spots available.

A good question: was the parking pass good for one day or for the whole weekend? On Saturday they accepted the parking pass I had in the car for entry. On Sunday they charged me another fifteen bucks. It's not like the passes were color-coded by day; these were all green. Maybe they knew what ticket numbers were being issued that day but then why was my Friday pass good on Saturday? I suspect parking lot discipline completely broke down under the weight of furries trying to park. That said, the only time I was completely unable to find a parking space there was Saturday just before the fursuit parade, the one time when absolutely everyone would be at the convention. That time there wasn't even any space available in the overflow lot, and I had to park in the shopping center across the highway. It wasn't quite as long as a hike back to our hotel would have been, but it wasn't that much short. bunnyhugger was cross about that even though I'd been able to drop her off, and pick her up, just by driving through, and I didn't miss any of the parade.

Despite the fear we wouldn't have time to get through registration before the event started, we had no trouble. There wasn't a line, and they were able to give us our con badges with only enough delay to print the things out. And then we would make a sad discovery, before another sad discovery that would change our plans for the night.

On that cliffhanger now let's enjoy more of the Cass County Carousel. You know what they've got?

Giraffes! A bunch of giraffes, behind a chariot with, as traditional, cherubs or something.

Hey, a tiger! When do you ever see one of those on an antique carousel?

Uh-oh, tiger gone and attacked bunnyhugger. How embarrassing!

Another carousel ride, with the ring arm ready to extend. Around the top of the building you can see handprints from people who'd made small donations to the carousel preservation and the new building.

The G.A.Dentzel sign promising the latest improved carrousel, just like the Kiddie Kingdom Carousel at Cedar Point.

And here's the token, good for a free ride, that you get for grabbing the brass ring! bunnyhugger got this by talking with the ride operator a lot and being interested in what he had to say, but still, that counts. Next ride, she got one by actually grabbing the brass ring.

Trivia: After his 1670 trial for being a Quaker[1], William Penn, found not guilty would have been released except that he refused on principle to pay a fine for refusing to take his hat off in the courtroom. Source: The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power, Deirdre Mask. [1] Technically, for practicing a non-Church-of-England religious assembly of more than five people. The jury refused the judge's repeated orders to find him (and William Mead) guilty despite his being incredibly guilty, and the case would go onto establish the independence of juries, and that jury members could not be punished merely for returning an incorrect verdict. (Incorrect in that the jury agreed to the fact that that Penn and Mead did it, but ruled them not guilty anyway.)

Currently Reading: One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and Succession, Birch Bayh.

In other bogus news after Motor City Fur[ry] Con: when we got in, during our local blackout, I was content to get all the luggage and boxes (holding fursuits and kigurumis) and all in the house. Monday afternoon I figured to unpack everything and move photographs onto my computer and everything. Unpacking went fine, but photographs ... I couldn't find my camera.

There were obvious reasons it might have been missing. We moved everything in hurriedly, because it was like midnight. We were exhausted. We'd been through an attempted derecho. We were moving stuff into a blacked-out house illuminated only by handheld flashlights. Surely it was just put somewhere wrong. Or maybe left behind in my car. I'd put my con badge and character badge in this little box with my coati tail and ears, and expected I'd put my camera --- the other thing wrapped around my neck --- there too. It's what I usually do. But it could easily have fallen onto the floor of my car, rolled under a seat, and gone invisible there.

So we're left with the question: did I leave my camera at the con? I know with certainty that I had it as late as our last walk around the hotel before leaving. My suspicion is that when I went to the bathroom right before our final departure. I'd taken off everything I was wearing around my neck so I could take my tail off the belt. It would be not-ridiculous if I missed one of the things to put back on.

So, I called the hotel to ask if anyone had turned the camera in to their lost-and-found. They took my name and e-mail and phone and haven't called me back. I also e-mailed the convention in case anyone turned it in to their lost-and-found, but haven't heard back yet.

Today, going into the office during a rain not as heavy as Sunday's but still pretty good, I remembered: I had hung my small umbrella on the camera bag, and so that's missing too. On the one hand, some good news as if I can find my umbrella I've surely found my camera. On the other hand, I haven't seen my umbrella either. And while I've had that umbrella for months, it was only this weekend it got its real first workout, as the umbrella kept in my car for when it turns out to be rainy when I was away from home.

Can't say I approve of this direction of things.

And now ... at last ... we close out Jungle Jim's, and photos from our Hot and Lineless amusement park trip last June. After this it was all driving home and finding an interesting weirdly good Taco Bell in some tiny town in the northwestern corner of Ohio. Can't photograph that. Instead, the last pictures:

This Campbell's Soup swing is whimsical or body horror, you tell me! It looks like the mouth is supposed to move but I have no idea what for. I can't tell if the Lego Block Indiana Jones is part of the same promotion or was another figure they put on for convenience.

Jungle Jim's is proud of their bathroom. They have a couple TVs showing endless loops of local news footage, including from WDIV in Detroit, and various stations that reported on their bathroom-competition success.

Back over to the (American) candies. A bunch of candies are put on shelves built out of bumper cars from the WKRP-area Coney Island.

Last time we were here, about a decade ago, the candies were loose in the seats. The shelves make it easier to find stuff but also obscure the bumper cars.

I don't know how long ago these bumper cars were removed --- Coney Island all but shut down in the early 70s and regrew in the mid-70s, but it didn't close for good until last year.

And a last picture of the Coney Island logo and the Duce maker's mark for the bumper car.

Trivia: The first woman-owned McDonald's franchise opened in 1960 in Pontiac, Michigan. Source: Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, Marcia Chatelain. Chatelain doesn't mention her name (or at least, doesn't on the page I drew this from) as it was secondary to her point about the rare roles for women even in line operations.

Currently Reading: One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and Succession, Birch Bayh.

We've reached another milestone in my humor blog: a quarter of the way through a massively long MST3K fan fiction. Want to see it, and the nonsense that isn't entirely about Air Bud for some reason? Read on, here:

• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 10
• What's Going On In Flash Gordon? Is Ming back from the dead? July - October 2024
• Statistics Saturday: Length Of Various Movie Franchises Using _Air Bud_ As The Base
• A Stray Movie Franchise Discovery
• Gritty Reboot Where He Has to Not Only Break Even … But _Get_ Even
• What's Going On In Gil Thorp? Who was it nearly killed Gil Thorp? July - October 2024
• This Might Just Change Everything (In a Good Way) (For Once)
• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 11

And now, I close out pictures of Motor City Fur[ry] Con's Sunday, getting all the way to the Dead Dog Dance without going overboard on dark photos of blurry fursuits. I'm sparing you some of those.

People milling around the fire pit out on the hotel patio.

Huh, what's going on there with a couple of canine suiters and someone holding up a tennis ball? Is it --- wait, could it be ---

It is! Fetch! ... You know we don't play that sort of game in the raccoon community.

Oooh, now what might bunnyhugger be focusing her mighty camera on here in Hospitality?

... Oh. I guess she's just practicing focus and light metering and stuff.

Are we at closing ceremonies already? Well, why else would I be in a big crowd taking pictures of sparkly purple dolphins?

And there we are. The convention's officially closed and all there is to do is ... wait, I don't think they asked us to clean up chairs. All right.

A rare parking lot photo here because someone got a nice dragon painted on their car.

Someone took a load off their shoulders and it turned out to be a three-eyed head. You don't see many three- or more-eyed fursuiters, so there's an unexplored niche for you.

Now we're at the Dead Dog Dance! Note the Alkali picture hanging from the rafters for whatever reason. This is about as good as the pictures ever look.

Huh, I'm sure there's nothing ominous about a Victorian-y plush rabbit standing before a mirror at an odd angle late at night in an empty corridor!

And the convention is truly wrapped up; you can see staff taking apart the main events stage beyond the doors. (I also have a similar picture where you can't see the person working on the doors, but can see someone walking past the other door inside the ballroom. If I could have got both together it would have been the strike-the-set picture.)

Trivia: Chicago's Centry of Progress Exposition entrance had a 218-foot-tall, three-sided thermometer. The temperature exceeded 100 Fahrenheit several times during June of 1933. Source: Cool Comfort: America's Romance with Air-Conditioning, Marsha E Ackermann.

Currently Reading: The Life of Lines, Tim Ingold.

No big news to report so please enjoy some pictures of Sunday at Motor City Fur[ry] Convention this past spring.

Back in the convention hall, someone going fishing for cats.

They've got the interest of a tiger! And a skunk or maybe badger?

bunnyhugger isn't up for this, but the tiger? Someone's hooked.

On to the rodents SIG. You see the Emperor Rat and also the guinea pig.

bunnyhugger, of course, is not a rodent, but her friend and puppet Chitter is a squirrel and so qualifies.

The session of people mixing and mingling of course orbited the Emperor Rat, thanks to natural gravity.

And then everyone went downstairs to meet the rabbits and other rescue animals including, as you can see in the cage there, a pigeon.

Rabbits and goats. Note the one rabbit going to warp speed in the lower right corner there, so that they look like half of a pushme-pullyou rabbit.

Here's that earless rabbit again, wondering why we're so excited about an invisible set of ears.

Pigeon isn't interested in posing for pictures but would like more to eat.

I am staggered that they let fursuiters into the enclosure but it is stunning to see the rat looking like this.

Couple rabbits pillowing each other and staying out of the fuss with the fursuiters.

Trivia: A 1906 student rally at the University of Wisconsin, protesting rumors that the school might disband the football program, saw students chanting ``death to the faculty'', shouting ``put him in the lake'' at one professor, and burning effigies of three faculty members. Source: With Amusement For All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830, LeRoy Ashby. The rumors came abut after several deaths on the gridiron left people wondering whether football could be reformed to not be preposterously and needlessly damaging to its players. Fortunately with the invention of the forward pass all football's player-health problems were solved forever.

Currently Reading: The Life of Lines, Tim Ingold.

You know what I have for you today? The conclusion of Motor City Fur[ry] Con's Saturday as seen in my photos. You know what's coming up next, then? Go on, guess ...

We ran into Pakrat in the arcade room and talked some.

Peering down over the balcony edge. I like that the angle makes Pakrat's walk be up, in frame, while he was walking on a level surface as part of going down.

And here, later in the night, Velveteen comes out to examine the rabbits who hadn't been taken in yet.

Though roped away from them she can still wave to her non-plush relations.

Many of the rabbits have settled down, but you can see some still up to things. A bit above dead center you can see the earless rabbit at a water(?) bowl. At about 9 o'clock you can see that white rabbit still sitting there, acting angy.

Here's Velveteen sitting in the ``Furassic Bark'' jeep prop. I think this might have been the convention theme. Who can say?

And here she examines the mechanical pinball game that still wasn't really plunging right.

In Hospitality was this whack-a-mole-style game and she got some rounds in on that.

Velveteen at the dance. I did my best to take fewer blurry pictures of people in darkness at the dance this year and I think it shows.

Still, I do love when you get nice contrast like this.

Checking back on the rabbits. Here's one settling into a unicorn mouth and not looking happy about it.

And here's Vix hanging out in a quiet lounge to see out the night.

Trivia: Charle Abbot, the Member of Parliament whose bill created the Census of 1801, projected the English population might be anywhere between eight and eleven million people, the higher number, he believed, result of a ``more correct train of reasoning''. The actual tally came in at 8.3 million English people, 2.1 million in Wales and Scotland, and an untallied number in Ireland. Source: The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age, Andrew Whitby.

Currently Reading: The Life of Lines, Tim Ingold.

This week has been one of maintenance. On Wednesday, my teeth. The report is basically good. No new cavities, and the filling put in back in April looks good. They're content with my brushing and flossing. The possible problem is gum recession. It's not a specific problem now, but the hygienest has been dealing with a woman whose teeth basically collapsed and so is very sensitive to it right now. Switching to an electric toothbrush --- and my belated realization that if I just gave it two seconds on each face of tooth I'd brush the correct time, and I am good at pacing that sort of thing --- has solved my brushing-induced recession problems. Apparently my problem is grinding my teeth at night, including bruxing, which prompted bunnyhugger to say she thought I'd been doing that but hadn't thought to mention what with how it's much more interesting what long conversations I have in my sleep every night.

They recommended I consider a mouth guard, to which I said sure, that sounds good. But they didn't ask me to make an appointment to get fitted for one so I'm not precisely sure what's the next step. I don't think this is something I can just try a Meijer's-brand one for a few weeks and see if I can even have something in my mouth all night.

The other maintenance was on my car. It was due for its oil change and tire rotation and inspection, and I got a 6 pm appointment yesterday for that. For the first time in a while the car didn't come back with anything extra that needed doing, which is a nice feeling. Except that one tire has been squealing a little when the car is started up cold. I know this is probably something annoying possibly involving a brake caliper, but their brake guy had gone home for the night already so I couldn't have it diagnosed. I need to make another appointment earlier in the day, or maybe see if the car place on the end of the block will give me a try. (It's also imaginable that just rotating the tires jiggered something to loosen it, but I haven't had cause to drive the car since getting it home, and the car wasn't cold then.) Still, nice and normal.

I bet you're curious what happened at Motor City Fur[ry] Con after the fursuit parade photos, right? Get ready to be stunned ...

bunnyhugger spots some of her kin! The Pipsqueakery was once again the charity and they brought lots of rabbits to hang out and be photographed.

Here's your typical scene, with a couple rabbits grooming one another, a rabbit trying to get away from a furry petting them, a white rabbit sitting off alone possibly being angy. Another tan one camouflaged in plain sight.

Fursuiter kneeling down to what the rabbits. We were stunned when later on the Pipsqueakery let some suiters in, considering the risk of stepping on a too-slow rabbit.

Top of the picture center you can see a pile of rabbits plus one goat.

And here's a view of at least sixteen rabbits plus one other goat.

Here's a brown and darker brown rabbit saying ``Boo''.

Cute little Dutch rabbit with no idea why they're being picked up, but, all right, they'll see where this is going before biting.

Can you pick out fourteen rabbits here? (Some may be only partially visible.)

A couple rabbits huddled together for a secret conference.

And here's a rabbit hiding out in a tunnel from all the fuss.

Three rabbits, including one where you can see what the problem that's left them a rescue lifer is: no ears! This may well be because as an infant their mother over-groomed them, damaging their ears.

Bunnies, goat, you know the deal here. A white rabbit grooms a tan one for us. You can also see that Dutch rabbit who'd been picked up standing dead center of the picture here.

Trivia: To safely fly over the Hudson River for the 1909 Henry Hudson/Robert Fulton celebrations in New York City --- flying from Governor's Island to Grant's Tomb, a 20-mile round trip --- Wilbur Wright attached a canoe to the base of his flyer. He was paid $15,000 for the exhibition. Source: First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane, T A Heppenheimer. The plan was if he did have to ditch in the river, he could wait in the canoe for rescue.

Currently Reading: The Life of Lines, Tim Ingold.

PS: What's Going On In Flash Gordon? Is Ming back from the dead? July - October 2024 in a special bonus comic strip plot recap post.

PPS: the subject line is from Alan Jackson's ``The Talkin' Song Repair Blues'', a song I didn't know existed until this evening when I went casting for a repair-themed song that wasn't The Beatles' ``Fixing A Hole'' and I'm giggling over hearing the thing for the first time.