Cernunnos…

Posted August 11, 2013 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal presence, anthropomorphic, furry, furry-like
Tags: , , ,

20130811-064213.jpg – – Cernunnos is a righteous dude, and perhaps an early furry lifestyler!  Also known as the horned god, Cernunnos is the antlered “God of the Forest” and often considered “God of the Animals” who is often portrayed as sporting a rather significant set of deer, elk, or moose horns; moreover, he wears them well!  An anthropomorphic being, Cernunnos is often depicted with an impressive rack while the head beneath is sometimes human and at other times shown as that of a stag. The body tends to be human, ending in feet that in some depictions are cloven deer hooves.

Celebrated in Celtic mythology and also incorporated into pagan and Wiccan traditions, Cernunnos represents a number of things, mostly good; he is the lord of the hunt, associated with both the hunter and the hunted, and is kind of an embodiment of nature; he would certainly be an unapologetic tree-hugger. Cernunnos also represents prosperity and abundance, for which purpose he is often pictured with an overflowing purse of coins. Cernunnos is also associated with life, death, and rebirth, for which reason some images of him depict an antlered skull head, while I consider him more of a vigorous life force embodiment.  Along these lines, Cernunnos is also identified with male sexuality, fertility, and the celebration of it; he is, after all, horny!  The deity holds or is in the presence of a snake in many images, another phallic symbol. In some images, the deity is shown as quite a hunk who could probably sell products to housewives easily; advertisers please note!  He is mysterious, elemental, and rather medieval in an enticing “Game of Thrones” way…

Cernunnos is associated with the fire element and the life-giving power of the sun. Being all of these things and more, Cernunnos has rather big hooves to fill, but serves all of his roles admirably and well.  I rather like the dude and could work for him; note the fox by his feet in this image…

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Comments: 2 Comments

The NYC Subway Shark…

Posted August 10, 2013 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, aquatic, scalies, strange, strange happenings
Tags: ,

subway– – We can remember Chevy Chase’s classic SNL “land shark” routines, and it sounds like a plot for another outrageous Syfy channel movie, but this one’s real…a shark was found on a New York City subway car!  I swear that I am not making this up…

Dead, unfortunately, and certainly a fish out of water tale (–yeah, I know it’s technically not a true fish), it seems that a small shark washed up at Brooklyn’s Coney Island. — Well, a few kids picked up the deceased shark, and had their pictures taken with it, kids loving scary and gross things.  The corpus delicti then wound up beside a roller coaster, where a 31-year-old man decided to take it home with him…the perfect gift for every occasion, and all.  Then the gentleman thoughtfully decided to leave the shark on the subway for his fellow New Yorkers to enjoy.   This the denizens of the City that Never Sleeps did, taking pictures of the late shark and with it, some even propping cigarettes in its mouth and a MetroCard by its side.  New York is truly a tough city, you see, known for taking things in stride.  A shark to a New Yorker would be a minor inconvenience.

At least the shark got a good send-off, going for a great ride on the N train at the end…and it all suitably transpired during the beloved Shark Week on the Discovery Channel!  I love happy endings…

Comments: 2 Comments

Artificial Meat…

Posted August 8, 2013 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal rights, cool things, science
Tags: ,

artificial meat– – Few things are cool but creepy at the same time; artificial meat is one of them!  We had earlier posted about the possibility of artificial meat, a prospect which has now become reality…

Mark Post, a Dutch scientist, led the team that grew the meat from shoulder cattle stem cells in the Netherlands.  The cells were put into a nutrient solution to help them develop into muscle tissue, and they grew into small strands of meat, nearly 20,000 of which were used to make a 5-ounce patty, which was cooked and eaten by two volunteer tasters in London on Monday.  The tasters gave the hamburger good marks for texture but faulted it for taste, most probably due to lack of sufficient fat and commonly used seasonings.

The animal rights group PETA has gone in favor of laboratory-produced meat as it does not involve the slaughter of a complete living animal for food but rather the cloning of cells.  Lab-grown meat may eventually help feed the world and fight climate change, but artificial meat remains highly experimental and cost-prohibitive at the present time, however, so don’t expect to see it in your “Happy Meal” anytime soon…

Comments: 4 Comments

Mike’s Hard Lemonade “Deer Head” Commercial…

Posted August 5, 2013 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal rights, animals, anthropomorphic, bizarre, Brilliant but twisted, furry commercials, television
Tags: ,

mike's hard lemonade

– – It’s kind of a “night of the living dead venison”  commercial; a guy is shown kicking back with three male friends in a comfy room, the mounted head of an antlered deer hanging on the wall.  The doorbell rings, and the guy answers the door.  There standing at the door is every hunter’s worst nightmare; the body of the slaughtered deer, minus its head!  It gets creepier; you can see the headless torso breathing! 

“Who is it?,” asks the head of the slaughtered deer from the wall; you can see its mouth move, and its eyes blink.  The guy is too stunned to say anything, so the deer head repeats its question; “Seriously, who is it?”  Again, the host is unable to answer, the headless body lingering in the doorway…end of commercial!

First airing in July of 2012,  this is creepy yet wonderful stuff, imparting the message that Mike’s hard lemonade is different, and that as the host tells a friend of the lemonade, “sometimes you gotta change things up.”  If every hunter was visited by an undead version of their slain prey, it might indeed make a world of difference…(Twilight Zone theme plays in the background)

Comments: 2 Comments

Wonder Woman vs. Cheetah

Posted August 3, 2013 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, anthropomorphic, comics, furry
Tags: ,

 

20130803-080124.jpg— Does it get much better than Wonder Woman versus the Cheetah?  Not by much it doesn’t; I’d want to pull up a chair and watch this one!

There are relatively few female villains worthy of note, and fewer still of the furry persuasion; Cheetah fills the gap purr-fectly!   As with most comic book superheroes and villains, Cheetah has gone through a number of re-imaginings, ranging from the rather ridiculous to the superbly menacing. I like my Cheetah anthropomorphic and ferociously feral, thank you!  She’s evil yet alluring and seductive, more than enough to make a good boy turn bad. In the world of female furry felines, Catwoman remains the gold standard but Cheetah prowls not far behind, roaming closer to the jungle and lacking the breakout status Catwoman has achieved.

The Cheetah was originally portrayed as a woman in a costume, but over the years has come to be shown as far more than that. The character even had a heretical stint in a male incarnation!  I like the character’s portrayal as Barbara Ann Minerva, kind of a cursed/blessed archaeologist who through supernatural intervention has transformational powers.  Her status as an archenemy of Wonder Woman has at times been rooted in a desire to possess the Amazon’s golden “Lasso of Truth,” while at other times it’s more of a bruised ego thing.  At any rate, it makes for memorable cat fights which are usually inconclusive or open-ended; you don’t really want to kill off a great villain or villainess as they are what makes for a better story and a more appealing protagonist.

At any rate, I’d secretly root for the Cheetah.- – Long may she vex Wonder Woman, and perhaps someday she’ll achieve the stand-alone and cult status that Catwoman enjoys.  In one animated outing, the Cheetah did have a tryst of sorts with Batman, who saw that she although in league with villains lacked true criminal intent; she just needed money to further her scientific research, what with funding cuts and all.   Many of us have felt that pinch, and I wouldn’t mind feeling hers…Rrowr!

Comments: 2 Comments

The Orangina “Cat…”

Posted July 26, 2013 by vulpesffb
Categories: absurdities, animals, anthropomorphic, furry, furry commercials, strange, television
Tags: ,

Orangina

— In France and elsewhere, a soft drink is sold called Orangina.  A memorable commercial was made for the product in 2010 which featured a CGI-generated anthropomorphic male cougar who liked the product so much that the big cat applied it to his face following shaving like lotion to soften his skin.  As the viewer is wondering why a cougar shaves or why a soft drink has skin applications, a bare-chested human male enters the scene who approaches the cougar, and shares, shall we say, a tender moment with him…

…yes, cross-species same-sex attraction! — Ah. those French are such sly dogs, are they not…or perhaps I should say, cats? — Meow!

Comments: 2 Comments

“Sharknado;” Awesome Silliness!

Posted July 19, 2013 by vulpesffb
Categories: absurdities, animals, aquatic, Brilliant but twisted, television
Tags: ,

sharknado

– – Being eaten by an airborne shark can ruin your whole day!  It’s not that the SyFy Channel hasn’t made and aired breath-taking bad movies before; it’s just that Sharknado is one of those rare hilariously bad movies that has taken on a life of its own, and taken Twitter by storm.  For the time that Sharknado aired, there was the feeling that a global ephemeral community had formed, and that thousands, perhaps millions of bad movie connoisseurs were united in groaning and laughing over the premise and execution of this marvelously bad flick.

Originally airing on the SyFy Channel on July 11th and repeated on air July 18th, Sharknado was a kind of monster meets disaster movie production in which a freak hurricane hits Los Angeles, causing man-eating sharks to be scooped up in tornadoes, which then flooded the city with shark-infested waters.  There is something dark inside many of us that delights in seeing someone eaten by a shark, especially a throw-away character that deserves it.  Unlike similar movies in which there’s only five or ten minutes of actual gory action, Sharknado didn’t skimp on the shock and sharks; there were sharks peppered throughout the film, on land, sea, and air!  They consumed fleeing motorists, and even made their way into flooded houses. – – That’s gotta lower property values!

If you left your brains at the door, Sharknado was great fun!  Sample dialogue:  “We’re gonna fight.  You can’t just stand around and wait for sharks to rain down on us.”  Fight the protagonists did, with shotguns, baseball bats, and even chainsaws…they got up in helicopters, and used home-made propane bombs to neutralize tornadoes!   You haven’t lived until you’ve seen someone use a chainsaw to rescue a woman after being consumed and inside the shark!  Contracted by the SyFy Channel and directed for film studio The Asylum by Anthony C. Ferrante,  Sharknado will have a sequel set in New York City, with fans suggesting titles on Twitter…

Comments: 3 Comments

Creative Taxidermy…

Posted July 17, 2013 by vulpesffb
Categories: bizarre, controversial, cryptozoology, fantasy, furry, mysteries, strange, weird
Tags: , ,

20130717-134207.jpg— As an episode of the Weird or What series hosted by William Shatner would remind us (Aliens Walk Among Us), some candidates for new and unknown species have been nothing more than the products of creative taxidermy, fueled by the simple public desire to believe. The desire to believe is an incredibly powerful thing, intoxicating and seductive. If we are not careful, that desire can cause us to suspend reason and logic.

I would like to believe in monsters. They are intriguing, can be romantic, and give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside! Existentially, we all ask, “Is that all there is?” Assuming the existence of monsters can give many of us the intangible thing that we seek, the hope that there is something more beyond the evidence of our senses. Feeding the public desire and demand for monsters has been a lucrative occupation for centuries, leading in the era of P.T. Barnum to the manufacture of the Fiji Mermaid, a sewn-together linkage of a monkey’s upper body with the lower body of a large fish.  In far more recent times, the Metepec Creature served a similar function, with the skinned and otherwise altered remains of a spider monkey or similar primate masquerading as an unknown species or alien.

To show the relative ease of creating an otherworldly-appearing corpse, a taxidermist on the Weird or What Show took a skinned squirrel and paired it to the skull of a small primate which had been additionally modified to make it appear even more human-like. The results were both stomach-churning and disquieting, looking as convincing as many specimens submitted as “proof”of unknown life or aliens.  Dare to believe, but never forsake science and credibility.  Occam’s Razor is a good litmus test; the simplest explanation is usually the correct one…

 

Comments: 2 Comments

The Charmin Bears…

Posted July 12, 2013 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal spokepersons, animals, anthropomorphic, furry, furry commercials, humor, television
Tags: , ,

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— I, for one, have always found the Charmin Bear family rather dysfunctional and somewhat disturbing. Now, we all know that bears defecate in the woods, but I just don’t think that it’s normal or healthy for there to be so much preoccupation over the matter of toilet paper. I mean, the episode where Leonard, the father bear, is basically alone stroking the toilet paper by himself while almost in a trance-like state as he mutters “so soft!” strikes me as being rather creepy, or reflecting an unhealthy and unnatural obsession. Then there are control issues reflected, as when one or another of the bears (usually the males) are told (by Momma Bear Molly) how much toilet paper to use, and that they can be using less. — I mean, this is ‘merica, right, and I can be using as much dang toilet paper as I want to!  The tag line is even “less is more;” what are these bears, Republicans?!  Also we have the episode where one boy bear has little bits of TP all over his bear behind, and is called to task for it by Momma Bear, Molly…this seems to violate his body space, dignity, and personal privacy rights! There are also unresolved issues that beg to be addressed in this psychodrama, such as the apparent use of toilet paper (“bathroom tissue,” excuse me) without toilets or even bathrooms…and what of the minimally-rendered forest in which these bears reside?  Where is this unreal estate located, the Twilight Zone?

All in all, we haven’t seen this much obsession over toilet paper since the days of store owner Mr. Whipple, who chastised customers for squeezing the Charmin while secretly engaging in the same behavior himself, a paragon of hypocrisy.  The Mr. Whipple character was retired, by the way, when the actor portraying him died, death being the ultimate form of retirement…

Comments: 2 Comments

Of the Wisdom of Owls…

Posted July 9, 2013 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal spokepersons, animals, anthropomorphic, avian, feathered friends, furry commercials, television
Tags: ,

geico owls

– – The latest Geico commercial is a hoot!  Now everyone knows that 15 minutes with Geico can save you 15% or more on car insurance, but “did you know that some owls aren’t that wise?,” asks one woman on the road to her male car companion. 

The scene then shifts to the woods at night, where a female owl is reminding her mate that she’s having brunch with Megan tomorrow.  “Who?,” responds the male owl.   “Megan, my co-worker,” clarifies the female owl.   “Who?,” again calls the male owl.  “Seriously, you’ve met her like three times!,” adds the female owl.  “Who?,” replies the male once again.  At that point, it’s time for an exasperated sigh from the female owl as her head turns away…I’m sure that many of us guys have experienced this kind of thing, but honestly, we’re not all clueless!

Comments: 4 Comments

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