Well, who would've thought — the BBC has published an article on furrydom, AND they promoted it to the frontpage, too (here's a screenshot, in case the story gets replaced by something else at a later time — hope they won't mind).

It's a well-written article, too, balanced and (for the most part) factually accurate; the only thing I have no idea about is where the idea that non-furries are called "fleshies" by furries comes from, because even though I've been a part of furry fandom for more than a decade, I have never, EVER heard that term. Non-furries, if anything, are called "mundanes". It might be older usage, admittedly, but even plushlover, who's been around for much longer than I am, seems to be unfamiliar with it, so I doubt that's the case, unless it's EVEN older[1].

And of course, it's also rather ironic that they would use a picture of tanidareal's Daiquiri suit as the lead picture, with the tagline informing readers that [f]ursuits can cost thousands of pounds from shops — nevermind that Daiquiri is actually a suit that Tani built herself instead of purchasing it from a "shop". :)

And of course, I'm not sure just how "cabbit" made it to the list of common furry phenotypes when even things like "skunk" or "raccoon" or "dog" aren't there... but that's really just an irrelevant nitpick.

Seriously, it's not a bad article at all, so check it out.

1. On the plus side, at least they didn't call furry characters "exotics". ;)

Early in the recording of My Chemical Romance's fourth album, the band gave mixer Rich Costey a preview. "Everything he heard was just noise and spitting," remembers singer Gerard Way.

Taken aback, Costey asked, "What are these songs?"

"They're protest songs," Way told him. "It's the sound of 'no.'" Only later did Way realized exactly what he was protesting: "I was protesting us."

After a grueling tour behind 2006's The Black Parade, MCR were worn out and fed up. "I thought the band was going to break up," says guitarist Frank Iero. "I was expecting a call from Gerard saying, 'We can't do it anymore.'" Instead, they took a year off and changed managers. This past February, they went into the old A&M studios in L.A. with Pearl Jam producer Brendan O'Brien.

"The plan was to knock it out and not to overthink it," says drummer Bob Bryar. They expected to be done by April, but the record ended up taking all year. The goal, Way says, was to drpo the theatricality of The Black Parade -- which had lots of Floyd-ian pomp an da Liza Minnelli cameo -- and "to harness everything that's great about this band into shorter songs. Almost protopunk, like the Stooges or the MC5."

The song that pushed them in the right direction was "Trans Am." It begins with the lyric "I got a bulletproof heart" and then stomps through four minutes of fist-pumping rock.

With that new direction -- impassioned but melodic -- MCR put aside the noisier material they had been working on and wrote a new batch of songs; the fast-and-dirty "Still Alice," the anthemic "The Only Hope for Me Is You" and the super-catchy "Death Before Disco" (featuring the chorus "Everybody pay attention to me"). "We simply embraced rock n' roll and where we're from," Way says. "We learned how to be an American rock band instead of a British rock band."

On an October afternoon in L.A., MCR are polishing the album. There's only a month or two of work left to do: some mixing, some overdubs, and sequencing. Today, Way is working on that pivotal cut, "Trans Am" -- which he thinks would be enhanced by "1.2 seconds of Queen."

So he warms up his vocal cords, slips on some headphones, and asks, "Can I get a little bit of reverb? Yeah, it's a crutch." then he sings, "These pigs are after me, after you" a dozen times, creating a "Bohemian Rhapsody" harmony. His performance is stylized, almost like a yodel. With a grin, he announced, "When I start sounding teenage-girlish, that's the sweet stuff."

Way's in a good mood, and not just because he's almost done with the record. In 2007, he married Lyn-Z (bassist for the band Mindless Self Indulgence); this May, they had a baby girl, Bandit. Way took two weeks off and then came back to work "like a zombie, long hair and unshaven." But fatherhood gave him a new perspective on his lyrics, which focused on despair and death. "I wasn't writing a record about becoming a dad, I wasn't writing a record for my baby girl, but I was writing a record for the person that she would turn into when she was 15, if anything ever happened to me."

[Source: Rolling Stone Magazine (RS 1092)]
[Scan: tothetune]

I like getting packages.

The bike stuff I ordered in late October came in a couple of days ago; sooner than I expected really (the entire order only took a week or so, including the time the package actually spent in the mail), but I'm certainly not complaining. *s*

Today, I also got a few books in the mail that I'd ordered on the 5th (Thursday) — well, comic books. Specifically, these are Hugleikur Dagsson's Eineygði kötturinn Kisi og ástandið, seinni hluti: flóttinn frá Reykjavík (the newest Kisi comic), and the two current issues of Embla Ýr Bárudóttir's and Ingólfur Örn Björgvinsson's Sögur úr Njálu, namely Vetrarvíg and Hetjan.

And yeah, they're all from Iceland — so I'm quite happy they arrived in a mere five days, especially considering that I ordered them later in the night and that there was a weekend in between as well.

Now I'll only have to find a way to actually get the first two issues of Sögur úr Njálu, not to mention the first Kisi book. Why can't Iceland have SOME sort of online auction platform, or another place where people sell used stuff? x.x

Also, randomly: I really should try to have hobbies instead of timesinks, because right now, it seems that that's often all I really have.