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.

The 2-hour long Souvenir Highlight Video of ConFurence 11 (April, 2000 in Irvine, California) is now available from The ConFurence Group on both VHS tape and DVD.

Tapes are $15 each, and are dubbed directly from a digital master in NTSC format on T-120 HS media.

DVD's are $19 each, digitally mastered and written to DVD-R media, with a full-color wraparound DVD Case, and a chapter index insert. There is no region coding, and the aspect ratio is anamorphic 4:3 (full screen).

Hello everyone!

We are having some serious customer service issues with AOL, and have
decided it's time to move away from their services.

Therefore, effective immediately, Michele's website is down while we pull
the files from AOL and set them up in a new home.

If you are still using the members.aol.com URL, please update your bookmarks
to:
http://www.michelelight.com

Once the new site is up, this URL will take you there automatically.

You may contact Michele via e-mail at:
mlight@san.rr.com

"Writer Ferrets: Chasing the Muse", the third novel in Richard Bach's "Ferret Chronicles" series, was published on October 1. Click the title for its Amazon.com weblink.

Next weekend's Conjecture, a new Fantasy / Gaming / Literary Science Fiction convention in San Diego will have a large Furry programming track.

Conjecture is run by the San Diego Speculative Fiction Society, which is a non-profit corporation formed to advance SciFi/Fantasy fandom in and around San Diego.

Conjecture's Dealer's Room is being run by Darrel L. Exline, known to most of you as the director of The ConFurence Group. Their Art Show is being run by Glen Wooten (artist Terrie Smith's husband).

Several of the discussion panels on the tentative schedule will be familiar to furry fans, with input from several noted authors. There will also be a Furry Party on Friday Night of the Convention.

Rottweilers seem like macho, tough dogs, but a British pet insurance company concluded they were the most accident prone canines in the UK, with about 3 in every 5 needing serious vet treatment, requiring an insurance claim, for accidents in their lives. Last year's most sickly dog was the chocolate lab (really a colour type of lab, not a separate breed) and the year before, it was the boxer. On the other hand, poodles are still very hearty dogs, with only 1 in 5 ending up at the vets due to severe illness or accident.

Maybe a froo-froo dog knows something the tough brawlers don't?

Yes, its that time of year again. While the staff of Further Confusion 2003 is hard at work with preparing for January, its time for a new chairman and executive team to be selected by AAE for 2004. Further Confusion rotates the chair and executive team each year to keep a fresh influx of new ideas coming into the convention as well as helping grow the number of highly educated organizers within the fandom at large.

So, if you are interested in being the chair of one of anthropomorphic fandoms most exciting and largest conventions, please see the full bid guidelines at http://www.anthroarts.org/fcbids.html

The Board of Directors of Anthropomorphic Arts and Education, Inc.

Just because he has a high pitched voice, lives a happy life in a fruit and loves holding hands with his pink, triangular freind, doesn't mean the popular Nickelodeon character SpongeBob SquarePants is a homosexual.As a sponge, he's quite asexual, thank you, and though he's special says his creator, that's special as in stupid, folks. Creator Stephen Hillenburg is not surprised at SpongeBob's appeal to adults, and cites the tolerance and multifacited world of Bikini Bottom as a good reason why many gays in the US have taken to the weird cartoon character. That, and SpongeBob is just too darn silly.

Well, the winners of the Nobel Prize in Phisiology and Medicine has just been announced, but if the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death doesn't float your boat, how about a mathematical formula for measuring the surface of an elephant, bellybutton lint and its study, or "The Effects Of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting On Reading Comprehension"? All of these were awarded IgNobels, a spoof prize honoring people whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced."

We knew it was coming, but it's still a shock when it actually happens.

The CARP legislation hits the Funday Pawpet Show, extort... erm... requiring payment retroactively from their first broadcast -- 29 January 2001 through 31 August 2002.

In my opinion, CARP stinks to high heaven.

Many regular computer users are aware of Careware, the less whiney, more charitable cousin of shareware, where a programer decides that they want you to donate money to their favorite charity in leu of profit.
Well, there's careware, and then there's careware. DateBk is a popular shareware Palm program, and when the programmer retired and sold out the company, he decided, hey, I don't need these hundreds of thousands of dollars of profit and royalties.Why not give it to various great ape preserves in Africa and and start my own foundation to help them here!