[Vfw-times] Cloudchaser's Anthrocon 2000 report

[Rufinoform at aol.com]

Hello!  I hope everyone's OK!

First of all, because several furs at Anthrocon indicated that they had been 
unknowingly pronouncing my last name improperly, I want to tell how to 
pronounce my last name properly as well as explain its meaning.  "Shaconage" 
is pronounced Sha-cone-ah-gee and is a Cherokee word meaning "Land of the 
Blue Smoke", which is what the Cherokee called the Great Smoky Mountains.  I 
live right next to those mountains and I really am 8% Cherokee by relation.  
If anyone is still unsure that they are pronouncing my last name properly, 
please e-mail me privately and I will be glad to send you a .wav file of 
myself pronouncing my last name properly :-)

This is my report on my activities at Anthrocon.  Again, the website URL is
http://www.anthrocon.org
This is intended to be a "Wish you were here!" kind of message :-)  If it 
seems to anyone like a "Here's what you missed, looser!" kind of message, I 
sincerely
apologize :-)

At the very end of this report, you will find URL's to see scans of the 
photos I took and sketches I had done :-)



THURSDAY, 29 JUNE
Things kinda got off to a bad start because I just simply could not fall 
asleep when I tried to get some rest before leaving, so I didn't really have 
all the rest I needed, but I made the whole 9 hour drive without having any 
problems with being drowsy, so I made it here allright :-)  By the way, 
Anthrocon is in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, about 624 miles from my den.

The only problem I had was that the trip was 624 miles and my car only has a 
400 mile range, so along the way, I had to stop to get robbed (robbed = Have 
you seen the price of gas lately?!)

When I arrived at 8 a.m. local time, in addition to regular clothing, I was 
also wearing a costume red wolf tail, had a little red wolf plush with a 
howling voice chip attached to my left beltloop and was carrying a big cuddly 
samoyed plush.  For those who may not know, a samoyed is a breed of dog.  If 
my dressing up like that seems strange to you, I 
wasnt alone :-)  Many others were also carrying around plushies and wearing
tails, both of varying species and sizes :-)  Several others didn't stop at 
just a costume tail and spent a good part of their time wearing whole 
costumes, called "fursuits" :-)

No photos of the tail I was wearing are available, but I do have 1 photo each 
of the above mentioned Samoyed and red wolf plushies on my plushie photos 
page.  To see that page, go to my main page at
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/charcoal/410
then scroll down to the link in the "my other pages" that says "Plushie 
(photos of my collection).  If that URL doesn't work for some reason (it 
sometimes gets a "connection timed out" message), try again right away.  If 
it still doesn't work, please let me know and I will make sure you get the 
correct URL :-)

I only saw one other fur there when I arrived. By 8 p.m., there were already 
hundreds of furs there and the 'con doesn't even officially start untill 
Friday!  For those who don't already know, Anthrocon 2000 may have set the 
record for number of pre-registrations for a furry convention with well over 
500 pre-registrations!  And that's not including all the 100's of walk-in 
registrations!

The pawfasting of two good friends of mine, Louve and Chik'ki, went well with 
no problems :-) The weather held, so they were able to have the ceremony 
outdoors as origionally planned :-)  The ceremony was different from 
"normral" weddings in that Chik'ki wore a Tiger fursuit, Louve wore a wolf 
fursuit and even the preist performing the ceremony, Kamau, wore a lion 
fursuit :-)

Nothing else was happening that evening, so I went to get something to eat 
(bad idea to have a hungry carnivore running loose with all the herbivores 
around, you know) then spent the rest of the evening getting sketches done in 
my sketchbook.  I apologize for this first day report seeming like there's 
not a whole lot to it,but that's just because there just wasn't a whole lot 
going on, but that was made up for by the excitement of seeing friends whom I 
hadn't seen since Mephit Furmeet '99, meeting other friends face to face for 
the first time and the above mentioned pawfasting :-)

Memphit Furmeet, by the way, takes place annually on Labor Day weekend in 
Memphis, Tennessee, 13 weeks after Anthrocon.  The website is at
http://www.mephitfurmeet.org
and believe me, I WILL be going  to that one too! :-)



FRIDAY, 30 JUNE
A lot more furs arrived today.  This is just a guess, but I'm estimating that 
there's probably 700-800 furs in attendance here!

I went to "Uncle Kage's Story Hour".  For those of you not familiar with 
Kage, he tells humorous stories.  He's one of those people that always making 
some kind of joke and is quite funny!  If you ever go to a furry con that 
he's at I reccomend going to see his story hour!

It's strange.  Though Friday was more fun in general than Thursday, not as 
many things happened that are worth reporting.  Oh well.  Better luck tomorow.



SATURDAY, 1 JULY
I was waiting at the doors of the dealer's room when it first opened at 12 
noon and the first thing I did was to go for a display on the back wall that 
had several plushies.  I ended up buying this non-morph fox plush that's 12 
inches long in a lying down pose, with a big bushy tail.  It cost me $28.50, 
but it was worth it!  I still can't get over how cute it is!  For lack of 
space to put it in my room here at home, I put it in the back window of my 
car facing backwards :-)  If you want to see what it looks like, go to
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/charcoal/410
then scroll down to the "Plushie (photos of my collection)" link.  It's the 
last one listed in the "FOX (RED)" section and is made by Cascade Toys Ltd.

Ken Pick's "The Forgotten Spirituality" seminar on how animals have been used 
to symbolize things in Christianity fizzled because it was going on at the 
same time as the Fursuit Masquerade.  That's like putting any TV show 
opposite "Who Wants To Be A Millionare".  Not many furs showed up, but it was 
still interesting and Mr. Pick still did a good job of it :-)  One new thing 
I learned is that griffins were once used to symbolize Jesus Christ.  The 
lion parts represented the king of beasts with the red color of those parts 
representing Christ's mortality and bloodshed while on this earth and the 
eagle parts represented the king of the air with the the white color of those 
parts representing Christ's purity.

Reverend Boxer's "The Magical Furry" seminar on magic was very interesting 
:-)  Besides doing magic tricks, he gave a good bit of advice on doing magic 
as well as telling some about how magic is done and different types of magic, 
all with comedy mixed in here and there, so it was much more entertaining and 
informative that just an ordinary magic show :-)

SUNDAY, 2 JULY
Today started with a chapel service that was led by Angel Bear, who's also 
the leader/founder of God's Creatures, an e-mailing list for Christian 
Furries.  Website at
http://www.valleyengraving.com/furry. The service opened with Altarskunk (who 
himself is a real life Catholic minister) saying a prayer asking for God's 
blessing on the service and everyone there. Then the 16 furs in attendance 
(17 counting Mike Flafox's 42 inch tall Vicki Fox hand puppet) were invited 
to stand up and give a testimony of what God has done for them in the past 
year.  Angel Bear isn't a legally ordained minister, but he pointed out how 
Christ tells all Christians to go out into the world and preach the gospel to 
everyone, citing that as his ordination (fursonally, I thought he had a real 
good point there), then he preached a message about faith and did a good job 
of it too.  At the end of the service, everyone held hands in a big circle, 
prayer requests were taken and another prayer closed the service.

One of the tables in the dealer's room was run by the National Greyhound 
Adoption program (the breed of dog, not the bus, silly!).  If you're not 
familiar with them, they find homes for greyhounds that are retired from 
racing.  There were even a couple of live Greyhounds there as part of their 
display.  If you've never seen a greyhound up close, they are very good 
natured, gentle dogs as well as being awfully cute, very gentle and great 
with children and they make great pets :-)

I picked up a big envelope from the Fed-X dropbox outside the hotel to keep 
some of the stuff together that I planned to bring home.  I'm not kidding, 
there is a warning on the envelope that says something like "do not ship 
blood or fluids".  What scares me is that for them to be putting a warning on 
the package like that, you know that somebody tried it!

If you're low on cash or you just don't want to spend a lot on food if and 
when you go to a furry con or travel anywhere for that matter, I recommend 
McDonalds (there's always one nearby) as a source of cheap food.  4 
cheeseburgers is enough to fill up most people and only costs $4.20 (price 
may vary slightly at different locations)



SKETCHES 'N' PHOTOS
The photos I took, among which there are lots of good fursuit photos, 
including photos of the fursuits that were worn as a part of Chik'ki and 
Louve's pawfasting, can be seen in the "Anthrocon 2000" section on my photos 
page.  Go to
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/charcoal/410
and scroll down to the "Furry Convention photos" link.

An on-site full color comission that I had done of myself as a Barnstormer by 
Mitch Beiro can be seen at
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/charcoal/410/barnstmr.jpg
The aircraft in the pic is a Curtiss Wright JN-4D "Jenny", which was famous 
for it's use by the countryside roaming stunt pilots known as "Barnstormers" 
in the 1920's & 30's.  Mitch doesn't have a website or e-mail, but you can 
get a free catalog by sending a self addressed stamped envelope to
Mitchell R. Beiro
13002 Mallory Rd
Onyx, California 93255-9721
United States

I had several sketches done in my sketchbook of Vixina, a character I created 
based on my idea of the ideal mate, all the pix and sketches (including the 
ones done at ACY2K, which are listed in their own section) of whom can be 
seen at
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/charcoal/410/Vixina07.htm
If you look at that page, please be sure you read her bio first :-)  Thanx!

If anyone knows any of the missing info specified here, please let me know!  
Thanx!

Done by Derrick Dasenbrock at Anthrocon 2000.  I have his e-mail, but not his 
website URL
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/charcoal/410/ac00vx03.jpg
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/charcoal/410/ac00vx04.jpg

Done by Sagalla at Anthrocon 2000.  I don't have the e-mail addy or the 
website URL for this artist.
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/charcoal/410/ac00vx08.jpg

Done at Mephit Furmeet 1999.  I don't know the name of the artist, the 
artists' e-mail or the artists' website URL.
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/charcoal/410/Mf99vx05.jpg

Overall, it was a great con and I will definitely be trying my best to be 
able to go next year!

Well, that's all on furry convention reporting untill after I get home from 
Mephit Furmeet 2000, which is on Labor Day weekend :-)  The website for that 
con is at
http://www.mephitfurmeet.org

Take care!  Wuff!

Cloudchaser Shaconage
"Everything's going smoothly!  This scares me!  SOMETHING'S going to happen!" 
(Uncle Kage, Anthrocon organizer & top fur in charge, 30 JUN)