Toby's Den

In speaking with someone today, a comment was made about Chuck E. Cheese's. I made a comment about it having been called Showbiz Pizza when I was a child and curiosity led me on a brief Google search. I uncovered a few interesting things and wanted to share them.

Firstly, the animatronic robots that made up the Pizza Time players ( scare the everloving crap out of me still. )
Secondly, the original Chuck E. Cheese is terrifying.
( I think he wants to rape me. )


Lastly, some things never die. Even though the Rock-afire Explosion show is long gone, some people keep the memory alive.

http://www.starsof.com/fans/index.html

At this website, you can make a bid on a song and if you are the highest bidder, they will choreograph the robots to perform your song. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry, but I was certainly intrigued. I'm a little perturbed that these robots are still around. As a child, I made the mistake of peeking backstage while the robots were deactivated between shows and the things I was became the subject of nightmares. I think Invader Zim was pretty close to how I viewed these things with the episode about Bloaty's Pizza Hog. Alas, I cannot find a video clip to illustrate.

For those who are curious, the website I got the pictures from is http://www.showbizpizza.com/ptp/index.html

If you ask someone for a ride somewhere (i.e. home) and they agree and you decide to go with someone else, tell the person who agreed to give you a ride so they don't spend 15 minutes looking for you for no reason.

As of right now, I have booked a room at the Mariott for the duration of the con. I am near the top of the waitlist for the main hotel, but I don't expect to hear anything on that until the week before the con as that is when most people cancel. Hopefully, I will be able to get into the main hotel closer to the con, but I am taking people in my room right now. If you want to be in the room and it does change to the main hotel, you will transfer with me. If you choose to find yourself other arrangements, remember that it is first come, first served if my room in the main hotel gets freed up. I think from now on I'm just going to book my rooms a year in advance. Furries are crazy.

Also, I seem to have developed some kind of sickness. I hope it goes away soon.

What is with all the Russians friending me lately?

Gobblerfest was yesterday and I got to go out and prance around as Toby for about 3 hours. I was absolutely exhausted by the time it was over, but I had a blast. I forgot to bring my camera, so I don't have any pictures, but hopefully I'll be able to track at least a few down in the coming week as I ended up in quite a fair number of them. It's events like this that remind me why I love fursuiting. I love seeing people's reactions, making children smile (and sometimes cry) and generally giving people something to talk about later. I also found out I can successfully hula hoop while dressed like a giant fox.

I'm thinking it's high time I washed my fursuit. If anyone has tips on this, they would be helpful. I'm not sure what else to add here. I guess we got about 10 people sign up for the email list, so hopefully soapvt will get some fresh faces.

Just a quick thank you and plug for djinni .
Thank you so much for the icon.

None of these LJ themes make me happy. Oh yeah, sleeping. That's what I should be doing.

Stolen from zekiwolf  just because...

Leave me a comment and I will reply with why I like you. If I don't know you, I'll either make something up or tell you why I like your LiveJournal. You must pay for the privilege by posting a message like this one on your LiveJournal.

In other news, my parents are driving me a bit nuts right now, but at least they bought me a few things and I get the weekend off.

...is a good movie and you should watch it. Thanks to zekiwolf  for sharing it with me.

So, this is a little late, but I figure I need to pester everyone with stuff that nobody is going to read. :) Well then...let's see: Wednesday Made some final touches on my new tail and waited for Drake. He arrived around 7pm and we set off into the wild. The drive was pretty uneventful, barring the incredible amounts of road construction that seemed to be everywhere, especially in PA. We reached MattRat's a little after midnight and we were asleep by 2. I couldn't sleep due to allergies and sat in a chair most of the night until 7am when pancakes were made by some kindly Canadian furs. Thursday After pancakes and some visiting and chatting, we departed for the con. After a somewhat frightening drive through Pittsburgh, we made it safely to the hotel, parked and checked in. I forgot to pre-reg like an idiot, so I got in the reg line with the rest of my carpool buddies and waited in line from 1:45 until almost 4. Dinner was had at Cory's, across the street from the hotel. Had a few drinks after that and went fursuiting, ending up at the dance and meeting some pretty cool people. Friday Slept late, missed opening ceremonies, spent most of the day gallivanting around in fursuit and meeting random friends that I hadn't seen in forever. Planned to attend the dance, but then other issues cropped up concerning people drinking to much and delaying me for a few hours. Eventually made it to the dance and met more awesome people, danced until 2am and then ended up in the lobby, talking to some random folks that had come in off the street to see what was going on. I ended up convincing them to come back the next day and register. Saturday Fursuit parade. Afterwards, I felt absolutely dead. Didn't help that I seem to have picked up a mild case of food poisoning or something. All I know is that I didn't get to do very much Saturday. Ended my night sipping water in the hotel restaurant and talking to friends. Sunday Bought far more than I should have in the dealer den and spent a lot of time with  dustytehcoon  Sunday night brought the tradition of drinking a lot, but ended early when someone got taken away in an ambulance. All was well in the morning, but it added undue stress to the evening and I ended up going to bed fairly early. Monday Woke up at 10, packed, said my goodbyes and hauled out of Pittsburgh at noon or so. Leaving Pittsburgh seemed to be fairly difficult and we got turned around by detour after detour. Eventually, we escaped and made it back to Virginia around 8pm. In summary, AC this year was a pretty good con for me, minus a bit of unnecessary drama. It's still not off the chopping block for me as far as cons go, but it's making headway. Overall, I still think it's a little too big. It gets to be daunting when trying to visit and catch up with so many people in so little time. It's entirely possible to run into someone once and then never see them again the entire con or not even see them at all. In any case, it's earned another shot next year. TLDR - AC is fun. I'm a fox. Ice cream.

Posted: a month ago       Comments: Comments (0)      [Read more...]

You all should go and vote for me, not that I care or have any chance against Jase Husky anyway.

http://community.livejournal.com/fursuittourney/53841.html

Humor me, I guess.

Someone come visit me!

( Con Report )

Ok, so it's about that time that I figure out who wants a spot in my room at the various upcoming cons. This post will update as I get more information.

(names in parenthesis are tentative)

AC: Stephy, Pog, Cody, (Lazer), (Erin?)
MFF: I do not have a room at this time.

I'd like to stick to 5 people max, but I may take an extra if they don't mind the floor. Let's just not relive MFF 2007 :P

On another note, I think I'm going to start requiring a deposit from people who wish to room with me. FCN was a ridiculous mess and I don't ever want to deal with that again.

So I figure I don't post enough things and I'm bored. That means it's con report time!

Thursday:
Got up at 5 and worked half a shift. Got out of work at 10, went home, finished packing and rolled out with Stephy around noon. The drive was pretty uneventful and we got to the hotel at around 7. Found some friends, bought liquor, commenced drinking.

Friday:
I don't know. Stuff happened. Atlanta scares me. I went to lunch with Pog and his parents along with Wag, Tyler and Skan. Afterwards, a homeless man tried to sell us a DVD. Fursuiting happened, followed by more drinking and fursuiting. I got to hang out with Glowsheep for a bit and met her friend Lixa, who turned out really cool.

Saturday:
Not much to mention here except the fursuit photos, which are posted on my FA. Also, the parade happened, which was rather poorly executed, in my opinion. Got to talk to Lixa a bit more. Also ran into Drakien and went out to dinner with him and his friends. More drinking was had and I went to 2's rant and then the dance.

Sunday:
I attended a panel on tail making and learned a few tips, but most of it I already knew. Most everyone I knew left in the afternoon, but I still ran into a few cool people: Metalfox, who sold me my Wii last year and Renard Fox, who is just a really nice guy and a pretty awesome artist.

Monday:
I woke up at 9am, packed and was ready to go at 10. Stephy's car battery died because the light got left on and we had to find some friendly furries with jumper cables to help us out. I didn't get any of your names, but if you are reading this, thank you so much! The drive back was again, uneventful except for the usual joy of driving in Atlanta traffic. I hate this city.

I really need to do these sooner if I'm going to do one because otherwise I forget everything I did and you get these patchy bits. Ah well, nobody cares anyway. :P

My last post wasn't exactly fair to some people. I have to give a lot of credit to my friends. They've helped me through some tough times and I want to thank you all for that. To clarify a point made in the last post, I'm not against hooking up once in a while, but if a hookup is what you want, don't pretend you want something more than that.

So, I've secured myself a room for MFF (with Tango, Tyler, Cody and Cody's roommate) and it seems I've also snagged a carpool. Unfortunately, I'll be driving, but I'll have Tyler, Stephy and Pog with me and I'll be damned if I'm not switching off with someone. None of this AC BS where everyone is too tired or hungover to drive on the way back. I've requested the Thursday and Friday before the con off from work and I'm going to see if I can pick up a double shift or two earlier in the week. It will be terrible, but it's money I don't have to miss out on. Now I just have to lock down someone to feed the dog while I'm gone and maybe a way to use my starpoints to pay for my share of the room.

Every once in a while, I am reminded that the world is full of a tremendous amount of ignorance. While I was at work yesterday, one of my supervisors started talking to someone else about the subject of gay marriage, saying that it was only legal in California. I chimed in and said that it was also legal in Massachusetts and that it was the first state to legalize it. My supervisor then made some comment about Ellen Degeneres. I said to him that it was my opinion that everyone should have the same rights because you can't help who you fall in love with and that you don't have to call it marriage, but allow homosexuals to enjoy the same tax / legal benefits that married couples do. This comment sparked an almost 10 minute rant about how gays choose their life and how God made Adam and Eve and many other ignorant statements. He then says "No offense if someone in your family is [makes a loose wristed hand gesture]."

At this point, I was already pretty irritated, but I was still holding my tongue. He ended his rant with a story about his cousin who turned out to be gay. This story included the points that "he dated women all through high school, then he moved out west and became [limp-wristed hand gesture]." He also said something about the guy being very smart and getting straight As in school and it being a shame that he chose to be gay. This was the point that I could no longer hold my tongue anymore and I was about to go off on the guy and tell him that being gay has nothing to do with choice or that being gay doesn't prevent you from being a smart or interesting person and that, in fact, I have many gay friends as well as a sister who is gay and that I do not appreciate the things he is saying. Luckily, I got a rush of customers at this moment and avoided a possibly very unpleasant scene.

In any case, it's true what they say about religion and politics and it is especially true when dealing with uneducated red-necks. It's not as though I'm very open about my sexuality with people who don't need to know it, but I also can't stand when people bash another group for no reason apart from them being different. Let people live their lives and keep your nose out of what goes on in the privacy of their own homes because it's none of your business. If it isn't hurting you, leave it the fuck alone.


Christ, I need to get out of this job.


Off-topic side note: I reserved a room for FWA.

The photos are finally up from the fursuit photo shoot at Anthrocon.

Here are the ones that were taken of me:

http://www.dragonscales.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=32&page=40

Well, my first Anthrocon has come and gone and I had a lot of fun. For those of you that care, here's the full con report.

Wednesday
Stephy, Tiger and I left Blacksburg at 2:30pm, stopping once for food and once for gas along the way. We arrived in North Huntingdon, PA at around 8:30pm where we met up with Matt Rat and his group of Canada furs. We had a bit to eat and watched a movie. Eventually, Kai and his lot showed up after his GPS decided it didn't want to work anymore and got him horribly lost. Matt Rat was kind enough to let us all stay with him, so I slept on the floor in a big cuddle pile. Nobody got much sleep.

Thursday
I woke up at around 9am. The Canadians cooked us a breakfast consisting of made-from-scratch pancakes with real Canadian maple syrup. They were quite good. Around 11am, Matt Rat and his group set off for a museum, Kai's group headed to the airport to pick someone up and my group headed to the hotel. We arrived around noon, but our room wasn't ready yet and the hotel lobby was already packed with furries. We went to hang out with Tiger in his room until ours was ready. After we got our room, we all had showers and grabbed a nap and went to pick up our badges. I pre-registered and got to skip out on the huge line, which made me happy. Grabbed a pizza from the place in the hotel for dinner. The remainder of the night, I suited for a little while and then turned in a little early because there was nothing going on.

Friday
Everyone woke up around 11am and we went for breakfast at a little place down the street. I forget the name, but it was very cheap. Missed out on opening ceremonies. When we got back to the hotel, I met up with someone and wandered around Pittsburgh for a bit and then went to the dealer room. I bought a cute print and visited a few artist friends. I suited up for a bit, went to Kage's Story Hour and then volunteered in the game room for a few hours while Stephy ran around in my suit.

Saturday
Got up at 11am again. Waited forever for the shower. Tried to grab breakfast at Steel City diner, but it was crowded and I realized I had to be in suit and ready to line up at 1pm, so I ate some poptarts, suited up and went to the parade. The parade was a very warm ordeal, but it was fun and I got a free water bottle out of it. After that, I pranced around in suit for a few more hours before meeting Blaz and Mel for dinner at the Chinese buffet. After that, went to 2's Rant, drunk of course. After the show, I was still very tipsy and badly wanted to fursuit, so I got changed and went to the dance, which was a lot of fun.

Sunday
Sunday is hazy, as far as times go. I got up around 10:30, did a bunch of suiting, went to the dealer room and bought more prints, suited again and went to closing ceremonies, suited some more, finally put the suit away for the rest of the con. We ordered some pizza for dinner because it was raining. I spent much of the night hanging out in the Zoo and talking to people.

Monday
Woke up at 10am, packed up the rest of my stuff and said my goodbyes. After picking up the hotel room a bit, we dragged our stuff out to the car and left around noon.

All in all, it was a fun weekend and I look forward to MFF so I can do it all over again.