Lance Pope spread his time throughout the costuming, horror, were and animal welfare communities. He was a marvelous person, always ready to help the little guy, and it's with great sadness we present this obituary. The delay was required to have it cleared and approved, but it's still timely, as I know many readers have had the pleasure of meeting Lance in one of his incarnations, at furry conventions, on mail lists, or just stopping by Thrillvania.

From Mel White:
"LANCE POPE (1/27/65 - 12/17/2002)

Lance Pope, the multi-talented, energetic Texan who created Verdun Manor, one of the most celebrated commercial haunted houses in America, died December 17,
2002. He was 37 years old. He was an entrepreneur and businessman and a renowned craftsman with a keen eye for detail and a good understanding of how to create a memorable evening of spooky fun.

His fascination with haunted houses began early, when Haunted Cannon Manor became an attraction at the annual State Fair of Texas. Lance persuaded the owner to let him help around the attraction and started out sweeping the floors and cleaning up after the crowds left. He moved from that to acting in the scenes and eventually to creating scenes for the house.

In 1981, at the age of 16, Lance took $1,000 and built his first haunted house. The 400 foot square walk-through house was called Haunted Verdun Manor; the beginnings of what would become one of the most notable haunted houses in America.
...

If the furry fandom is so accepting, why do so many people feel compelled to point out that they are not Furries, and just like anthro stuff? In a follow on to my previous column on how the press view furry fandom, lets take a look on how fans and artists view the fandom.

Cthulhu Coffee is a website primarily focused on the horror genre. With such a predilection towards all things Lovecraft you probably wouldn't expect such a site to have much that would interest the Furry fandom. That's where you'd be wrong.

This fits into so many categories, but...

UN Iraqi weapons inspector Jack McGeorge likes whips and chains and other ties that bind. In fact, he's a founding member of the Washington DC area Black Rose society and a former chairman of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. So, when the Washington Post discovered that he may not have a degree in weapons inspecting, they reported instead that he was a pervert.

The furry angle to all this is a very amusing interview that CNN did with Dan Savage discussing the situation. I guess we made a heck of an impression on Mr. Savage as somehow he and Anderson Cooper of CNN started discussing Plushophilia and furry conventions. You can read the transcript on CNN's web site.

Read more about why you should be outraged by the Washington Post (and not Dan Savage).

The staff of FurNation would like to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving Day!

And for all the furries out there who would like to save a turkey this year here is a great Tofu dish:

Totally interesting article talking about a Japanese researcher's work with how humans can be more comfortable with androids, and what that means for furry. I'm psyched!

Why does 'Furry Fandom' hate the press? Are all journalists out to get us? Can there ever be a good opinion of a 'Fur Con' published in a magazine? Why do hotdog buns come in eights, but hot dog sausages in tens?

Barry Deutsch's weblog for today has a wonderful argument that almost every best daily strips has had a talking animal.

According to CBLDF Appeals Retailer Conviction, Jesus Castillo, a comic shop owner, was sentenced to 180 days in jail, a year's probation, and a $4000 fine for selling a comic (Demon Beast Invasion #2) to an adult.

A person on a furry mailing list I'm on have found that someone had forged their credit card, most likely from one of the resturants they visited. Please check yours if you used it last weekend, especially for food.
Hopefully this is an isolated event, but better safe than sorry.

Last weekend, your intrepid Flayrah editor-in-chief attended CONvergence in Bloomington, Minnesota. I had a smashing good time. I will also be attending Anthrocon this coming weekend, which will be an interesting excersize in comparisions, since both AC and CON are roughly the same size, but with very different focuses and philosophies. You can click on Read More to hear about my experiences at CONvergence.

While it's long been a popular move by individuals and corporations seeking an edge in today's Internet-aware economy to grab domain names that might be accessed by individuals who either mistype a URL or aren't aware of the proper URL (example: www.whitehouse.com is a porn site while www.whitehouse.gov is the legitimate home page of the United States White House) in an attempt to gain exposure or business, it hasn't been up until now that this tactic has been used in addition to loading the website in such a way that search engines such as Google will return them as the most likely hit and appear as if it was the genuine article.

In light of the recent debate in regards to the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, some folks might be interested in learning more about this national treasure. With the popularity of Google these days, some people might be intrigued to find that the first hit when searching Google for "ANWR" takes them to a site that advocates the proposal to drill for oil within the site. Intrigued? So was I.