I seem to have come across a number of somewhat Furry themed things lately, so I figured it was time to best my browser (why does being online feel like war lately?) and share them with you.

First, we have this marvelous collection of animated GIFs that feature foxes doing what they do best, namely being completely adorable.

Here are my faves :

There’s this all time classic.

What you are seeing is the quite cunning but somewhat lacking in dignity way foxes hunt in the winter. They know there is plenty of prey living in tunnels under the snow, so they stand very very still and let their excellent hearing lock in on the sounds of their next meal under the snow, and then dive into the snow hoping to come up with a mouthful of snack.

And then there’s this situation that could have been scripted by Disney himself : foxes on a trampoline.

It’s nice to know that some things are universal to all species, and that one of those things is the inherent awesomeness of a trampoline.

And lastly, there is this extraordinary image.

Foxes are cute even when they got no legs!

Or rather, when they do an impression of a car that has had all its wheels stolen. They do that by tucking their legs up under themselves and hunkering down so that their fur completely covers them.

Must be might cozy in the winter. But at home, it just looks like your fox got jacked.

Next, we have a book that combines two things I never would have thought I would find together : anthro animals and the study of logic.

It’s called “An Illustrated Book Of Bad Arguments”, and while the art style is quite brutally ugly, I still really enjoyed reading it.

I took a Practical Logic course in university, and loved every minute of it. Finally, proof that other people cared about that sort of thing and that I was not just a lone voice of reason crying in the wilderness of bewildered ignorance!

And while I trust my own intuition as a guide to logical analysis more than I trust formal terms someone else thought up, I really enjoyed having categories and labels for things I had only intuited before.

The book does a very good job of explaining the classic fallacies, although I must say that sometimes the illustrations don’t illustrate the point very well.

And if there is one thing the Internet needs, it’s help with logic. People misapply the terms for the classic fallacies willy-nilly, and therefore anything that might help bring clarity to online discussions instead of having them subside in a fog of confusion and half-understood ideas is quite welcome.

Some of us, when we discuss things, are actually looking to learn from others’ perspectives and maybe even struggle towards the truth.

The rest of you can go yell at each other on television.

The next animal in our little zoo is this heavily furry-themed music video.

WARNING : This has no happy ending. It is, in fact, quite dark and disturbing. At no point does a hero rise to save our poor protagonist. It ends very badly for him.

Just so you know.

Nevertheless, I think it’s pretty damned cool. They used the anthro animals to support a metaphorical treatment of what it is like to be a hated outcast in any society, and I think it really works.

And it was brilliant to make our protagonist a zebra, who is therefore both black AND white. That makes the message more universal than if it had been a creature we could more easily pigeonhole (so to speak).

The actual song that this is the video for is nothing terribly special. It’s not bad, it’s not good, it just sounds like a lot of other things.

But I like the video, which cannot have been cheap to make. So many scenes, so many costumes, so many sets and props, so many extras…. all that adds up to serious cash.

To me, of course, it was all worth it. I love this rise of furry imagery in popular culture. It’s such a rich vein of visual language and potent metaphors that really reach deep into our hearts.

It’s not just about fucking any more!™

Finally, we have my thing for today, which doesn’t have a damn thing to do with anthro animals, furry, or even music this time.

It’s a talker.

Bur at least I added little bits of snarky text to keep things from becoming totally visually boring. It was very tempting to just put it up there after the primary edit plus adding the intro and outro. But I have done that too much lately and it makes for an inferior product.

As fascinating and compelling as I find myself, I know that I need to put more into a video than just me sitting there talking. That’s a video you listen to, not watch.

And in a perfect world, my talker videos would be jam packed with illustrations, info-bits, and other herbs and spices to make them more of a total audio-visual experience, like what we expect from television and movies. But I don’t have that kind of energy, at least, not yet.

I totally undersand why Internet superstars like Yahtzee or CGPGrey don’t put out videos every day like I do. Sure, the talking part is not all that hard. It’s the finding or generating enough pictures to fill up all that time that drives you crazy.

Compared to that, the talking about something interesting part is a breeze.

In a truly perfect world, I would be able to just hire someone to find all those pictures for me and only have to do the easy bit that I am totally good at.

But that’s the dream of all Talent, don’t you think?

Seeya tomorrow people.