Two new guests, Joe Staton and Omaha Sternberg have been added in the last few weeks to the fast-growing Guest Lineup at ConFurence 2003.

Joe Staton is best known for illustrating the recent Scooby Doo Comic Books, Creating the original E-Man, Teddy-Q, and Michael Mauser characters in the early 70's, and most recently did work on Furry Ninja High School, which is being released in a couple weeks by Shanda Fantasy Arts.

Joe has worked for 27 publishers with 82 different editors over the last 30 years, and is quite a talent in the industry. There is a Bio of Joe Staton online with more information about the artist.

Our next guest announcement, Omaha Sternberg, needs very little introduction to most furry fans. Having created the original Cabaret Fur-le-Dance at ConFurence 3 in 1992, Omaha takes her name from the exotic dancing feline created by Reed Waller and Kate Worley. The Cabaret Fur-le-Dance was originally started to raise money for Reed Waller's medical bills (he fought cancer and beat it!) and continues to be a tradition at ConFurence with different named charities each year.

Omaha returns to ConFurence 2003 after not being able to attend for the last few years, and she will be very welcome, indeed.

Looking something akin to a bird, and not unlike a "bird of prey" from the popular TV show Star Trek, Boeing released a news story on a new stealth aircraft technology demonstrator that flew 38 times in secret testing from 1992 until 1998.
More details and videos at
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/q4/nr_021018m.html
and
http://www.projectblack.net/birdofprey.html

Jim McKenna and John Lieberman of California are just as tired as you are of seeing annoying AOL signup discs everywhere. But believe it or not, they want as many as they can get. The plan? Dropping a million AOL discs back at the doorstep of the company that spawned them. AOL discs appear everywhere, in magazines, at the movies, in the mail and at parties. The campain started when the friends went to rent a movie... and got an AOL disc with it. When they got home, another one was waiting in Lieberman's mailbox. It's very wasteful, but the company does say you can return the discs for recycling to them. Why not one million?Visit NoMoreAOLCDs.com to see how many they have now.

The BBC is reporting good news about slowly increasing populations for mountain gorillas. It might not be much, but it's wonderful hearing some good news about the great apes for a change. It always seems like the news is dire...

Aardman Animation (creators of "Chicken Run") has posted a series of ten short films titled "Crackling Contraptions" and featuring their well-known characters Wallace and Gromit. The first film, "Soccamatic," is available now and may be downloaded for free, as can a trailer for the other nine episodes. The rest of the series will be available on October 22 and is downloadable for a US$9.95 fee.

The BBC also reports that Aardman director Nick Park is working on a script with Dreamworks SKG for the first Wallace and Gromit feature-length film, to be released in two years.

BBC Online reports that the endangered water vole (a mouse-like, aquatic rodent) is being killed in large numbers by people who mistake them for rats.

Hi, everyone!

I've updated my website, now that Conifur is wrapped up: http://furries.frithcat.com.

From Draconis (of http://come.to/coyoteville):

Angelina the werewolf

Hollywood movie star Angelina Jolie, well known for her taste for the macabre, is planning to don werewolf garb for her next film role, industry sources said on Tuesday.Rest at source

Construction is going on fulltime in old Downtown Pomona on 2nd St. in Southern California, preparing the storefront set for the upcoming 2003 movie of Cat in the Hat, starring Mike Myers as the cat! :)

For those of you LiveJournal junkies out there, you can now add a syndicated feed of Flayrah's stories to your friends list. Details on how to do this can be found here, Flayrah's username is, of course, flayrah.

Hey guys.. eeeeeevil evil shameless plug!

Well, ok, maybe not that evil, but I finally updated the Tailsmith website. I added a couple new sections in there with some new tips on caring for tails, plus extended information on fur anatomy and glossary, and link to the FurryTails mailing list on Yahoo! Groups I created for the general interest, and for others who're into wearing and making tails.

In a fun, new twist with the media circus, this prick bribed staff at the Sheraton Tacoma to get some material to hurt Conifur's cred. Hopefully, CFNW's staff will get this resolved with the hotel.

As many of users of the FurNet IRC network may have noticed, we haven't opened up chanserv to general registrations yet. We would like to do so in the near future, but want to make sure we can do it in a way which is fair to everyone, especially users of existing channels.

Capital One invited NCAA Division IA and IAA schools with football programs to nominate their mascots for the Capital One National Mascot of the Year. Visit the site to vote for one of the twelve finalists selected from participating schools. Each of the team members will receive $5,000 to use toward scholarships for his or her school's mascot program. The National Mascot of the Year will receive a total of $10,000.

Personal note: My alma mater's mascot, Monte for the University of Montana, is one of the twelve finalists!

The theme for ConFurence 2003 (April 25-27, 2003 in Burbank, California) is "The Furry West" and The ConFurence Group is gearing up for a rootin' tootin' high-falootin' shindig.

This is a call to all artists for western themed anthropomorphic artwork for use on the CF website, in advertising, for at-con signage, and in the Souvenir Pogram Book.

"Western Themed" includes anything along the lines of the old west, native american life and mythos, early spanish american pueblos and missions, life as a forty-niner (the miners, not the football team), and the U.S. Cavalry before the turn of the century. If you're a history buff and can think of other topics to include, we'd love to see it!

Special Note: This year's Souvenir Program Book will have color on some of the inside pages! Therefore, we will accept more than just your black&white lineart for submission into the program book.