Anthrocon has just agreed to host next year's presentations of the Ursa Major Award for the best anthropomorphic literature and art of the calendar year 2004. The Ursa Majors were presented in 2002 and 2003 at the ConFurence, and in 2004 (earlier this month) at C-ACE. For further information, see the Award's website.

Recommendations submitted so far this year for new Furry literature & art are being compiled for the first posting of the 2004 Recommended Anthropomorphics List, at the end of this month. If you want to recommend any of this year's Furry movies, TV series, novels, short fiction, comic strips, comic books, fanzines, published art, or games as being worthwhile, please send your recommendation to Fred Patten at fredpatten@earthlink.net. The Recommended List is popularly used as a guide at the end of the year for nominations for the Ursa Major Award.

This year's Hugo Award nominees include two stories that might be of interest to furries, both available free online:

"Into the Gardens of Sweet Night," by Jay Lake, set in a future with Uplifted animals of various sorts; one of the protagonists is an intelligent dog with hands.

"The Tale of the Golden Eagle," by David D. Levine, a Cordwainer Smith-esque story featuring a far-future golden eagle brain given human intelligence and used as the guidance system of a starship.

Both authors have also been nominated for the Campbell Award for best new professional author.

Strange Horizons has a review by Elizabeth Barrette of two interactive, fictional diaries. Both happen to be hosted on LiveJournal, and both happen to be of interest to fans of anthropormorphics. You can check out the two journals--Sythry's Journal and Flight of the Godkin Griffin--and read the review.

Yikes, live action Kenya!

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/34/

Howdy, Marci fans!

Have any of you visited http://furries.frithcat.com lately? If not, you should do so TODAY, as it may be your last chance to see the site...

...in its old, neglected format.

Yes! THRILL... to the bad design! CHILL... at the difficulty of navigating the site! SPILL...your drink in consternation!

And enjoy your final look, because as of tomorrow, Sunday June 13 at 12:00 Mountain, there will be an ALL NEW Furries.Frithcat.Com for you to look at!

All-new design, new prints, sketches, and info about Marci McAdam! Be sure to check it out, and look for new content each month!

http://furries.frithcat.com -- Marci McAdam's Furries site. Go see it now-- mark the passing of the old and the birth of the new!

Well, more like City Park. But, hey, it's the main headline in the paper.

The article, entitled "Masked Marauders", depicts them as "furry little sacks of disease"---not quite untrue, but I don't want to see us do the same thing that we did with the nutria, which was to send out police snipers, and otherwise put a bounty on them. Wholy undignified and unnecessary for raccoons. (Nutria are, by contrast, foreign, and destroy wetlands and levees; they are the true pests.)

After I submit this, I'm going to write the paper an opinion piece, because somebody has to vouch for them and be their defense where they otherwise have none.

front page photo
continuing page photo

A little late (my fault), here's Treesong's monthly addition to the Upcoming Comics list.

There are currently two pieces of art being auctioned at FurBid to benefit the brand new furry con CaliFur. The artwork is the original illustrations used on the con t-shirts, and are drawn by Brian Wear.

If you went to this con, had a good time, and want to see it come back again better next year, consider helping out by bidding on the pieces.

"Indiana" the male version tee-shirt art.
"Laura" the female version tee-shirt art.

Though dog people have always known their canines understood (when they wanted to), here comes proof from science. This article shows that not only can dogs understand a human vocabulary the size of apes and dolphins, but that they can actually learn new words on their own!

I'll keep this short because I have about 4125lbs of boxes to stick somewhere in my house. The ASB Yearbook hardcover collection is now available from Rabbit Valley Comics. Eeep.

-- Sean

A new proposed piece of U.S. legislation, House Bill 4239 (or the "Parents' Empowerment Act") would open the door to allow parents to sue anyone selling any visual media that would potentially be considered harmful to minors. The bill uses poorly-defined language that would cause more harm than good to valid expressions of free speech. More can be read at the Comic book legal defense fund and at Ninth art.

Tailpuff.com, a service being provided and maintained by the MIfur (Michigan Furry) community, is now online. The goal of tailpuff.com is to provide decent pop3 and web based E-mail to furries who are currently stuck using free email providers that sell their addresses to spammers, or blast them with pop-up ads. Tailpuff.com will allow you much of the functionality of E-mail that most free providers fail to offer, such as file attachments larger than 1 megabyte.

In addition to the E-mail service, tailpuff.com provides free web hosting to furries who have a low-traffic site they want to put online, for instance, a personal homepage. There will be no forced advertisements, or pop-ups to annoy your visitors.

Additional services may be offered in the future, but the two above are available immediately to any furries who are interested.

The two pups in this article are victims of the most recent event in a string of poisonings in rural Wyoming, seemingly aimed at the wolf population, which are theoretical hazards to the livestock community as well as the big game hunting industry.
Authorities have found hot dogs and balls of meat stuffed with poison along the side of the road in eastern Wyoming and western Idaho, where Tim Sundles owns an ammunition store and hosts his webpage, Nature's Wolves. The website contains a similar method of poisoning wolves, as well as propaganda that contributes to his anti-wolf stance.

A man is knocked down and gored by an elephant at Six Flags Marine World Near San Francisco, California.

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The winners of the third annual Ursa Major Awards (formally the Annual Anthropomorphic Literature & Arts Awards), for the Best in
anthropomorphic/"funny animal" literature and art first published during the calendar year 2003, were announced at a presentation ceremony on Saturday, June 5 at the Canadian Anthro & Cartooning Expo (C-ACE) 2004, held at the Chimo Hotel in Ottawa, Ontario on June 4 - 6, 2004.