Boy, oh Boytaur!

house-of-mirrors

Um. Wow.

And I’m not even sure if that’s in a good or bad way.

No. No, I am sure.

It’s both. As in, I think when I looked at this my brain was broken into tiny pieces, but I kind of liked it. And that’s probably illegal, somewhere.

Boytaur.net.

Surprisingly few Harry Hamlins or even Harryhausens, all things considered. Pervs nowadays just have no sense of tradition!

I should explain.

After all, that’s what the blog is for: for you to come here and have bizarre things explained by me, as if they were entirely normal and if you were raincoaster, they would be, trust me. Remember, a poisonous spider bit me once and it died. We are very far indeed through the looking-glass here at the ol’ raincoaster blog, yessir.

One of the first blogs I really became addicted to was an innocent little cooperative blog called Chimera House. There were five or six posters there, and although at first it was confusing, eventually it became clear to me that all of these people lived in the same house and had schedules which never overlapped, so they were using the blog as a digital way of leaving notes on the kitchen table for one another. So far, so simple.

So you’d think.

a Palace of Mirrors is a strange place to feel alone

Now, as anyone who’s ever lived with roommates knows, things can get heated, especially when one has to rely on the old note-leaving thing, and it doesn’t help when they’re posted on some server in Cupertino or wherever and getting a couple of hundred hits a day, either. Things did, indeed, get heated, heated to an extent far beyond anything Gawker or most of the civilized world‘s ever seen. Two of the posters ended up having an affair and then a nasty breakup when the girl switched to sleeping with a different roomie and leaving him heated mash notes on the blog for all to see and then deciding she might be lesbian after all, since it was “less work”. But this was as nothing compared to the drama when a clueless outsider appeared and the talk on the blog was all, should we let him post or not, and all he doesn’t know and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, but then ultimately it became clear to everyone that, as much as they were having a blast ragging on him in the blog, it was just not practical to have one roomie so out of the loop, so they looped him in.

And at that point the blog began to get, in the way that blogs that are microcosms of society will eventually get, a little bit of what you’d call media attention.

At which point, the blog owner made a new Page explaining that this was the blog of a person with multiple personality disorder and it was the way that all the various personalities, who obviously could not communicate face-to-face, would keep in touch. The blogger said, I am a person who is like this; some people consider it a disorder, but I’ve recognized it and learned ways to manage things so that while the situation isn’t resolving to anything approaching normalcy, it’s working for us. So the rest of you can just fuck off.

Which I thought was pretty damn sane.

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to Boytaurs. See, Furries are one thing, and costumes are all very amusing for awhile and so on, but the thing about Boytaurism, if I may coin a term, is that it refuses to be constrained at all. You’re not zipped into some cheap fursuit that smells faintly of chemicals and strongly of the guy who sold it to you on eBay. You’re not wearing a corset you can’t wait to rip off at the end of the night. Boytaurs and their ilk exist completely online; they are avatars in the purest sense of the word. You can literally be any form you want in the boytaur universe, although you’re obviously going to be more popular if you have a face like Orlando Bloom and a body like David Beckham (with some extra legs or a tail or whatever). And you know what? You can have those things. Who needs a magic wand when you’ve got photoshop, eh? Zeta Male no more, in the universe of your own creation.

Silhouette Centaur is the SFWest thing on that site

So, what is a boytaur?

boy·taur \’boi-tawr\ n 1 : a guy with four (or more) legs 2 : a guy with any of a variety of multilimb or other transformations 3 : a guy who enjoys the company of boytaurs, and is thus a boytaur in spirit

There’s something wildly, almost primally, attractive about a guy with four legs: the crowding of long, sculpted thigh muscle, the four calf muscles bobbing and working in rhythm with his four-legged walk, the four strong male feet supporting his powerful boytaur body. Boytaurs know this attraction well, and it is our constant joy, both to have and to share.

Of course, many boytaurs don’t stop with four legs. Some add more legs, going six-legged or more. Some add extra arms. And many, enjoying all their boytaur feet, decide to go wristfooted as well.

Other boytaurs have completely different transformations, or none at all, but are still boytaurs in spirit, enjoying their augmented bodies, and sharing that joy freely. boytaur.net is dedicated to helping that sharing go on across the internet, all around the world.

Brought to you via AtomicFez, the only person on the internet whose surfing habits are even stranger than mine.

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on the difference between flying lizards, purse rats, and the higher life forms

Here you go, bird enthusiasts: absolute proof of the difference between highly evolved, sophisticated life forms and your inferior little pets. Check out that music selection!

Backstreet Boid from Cute Overload

And here’s more or less the same thing, with a Purse Rat.

The Ultimate Unicorn Chaser

I don’t know what kind of week you’ve had, but mine needs another unicorn chaser. I found one: the ULTIMATE UNICORN CHASER. And its sheer awesomeness is such that it has to be hidden over the jump: Continue reading

solidarity in solitude

paste

Stolen from My First Dictionary.

I know just how Mary feels lately.

Please do not email, phone, text, leave comments, message me on Facebook or @ me on Twitter if you are going to ask for a response, because you will not get one right now or possibly ever. And if you’re thinking of threatening to commit suicide this week, most ESPECIALLY do not email, phone, text, leave comments, message me on Facebook or @ me on Twitter, because those are my least favorite kind of messages of all, and the way I’m feeling lately, I’d probably just tell you to go the fuck ahead and jump. Remember: the Burrard Bridge isn’t high enough to do more than break a limb.

There, don’t say I never did nuthin for ya.

OLD PUBLISHERS HAVE NEW THINK COMING

Yes, that’s deliberate ALL CAPS!
(cross-posted from the Shebeen Club)

Gutenberg was an early adopter

Who: Monique Trottier, Shebeener.

What: Old Publishers Have New Think Coming call to arms!

When: Monday, April 20th, 6pm-9

Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 210 Carrall Street.
$15 cash admission includes dinner and a drink.

Call to action: I’m going to organize a panel in Vancouver. We’re going to create a model for publishing and marketing books. We’re going to move forward as an industry. Leaders will be identified. Roles will be assigned. If you’re not open to totally change everything you’re doing, then you are not ready for this revolution. Don’t come.

Who’s in?

Monique Trottier is the owner of Boxcar Marketing, an internet marketing company in Vancouver, BC. As the former internet marketing manager of Raincoast Books, she spearheaded major online marketing campaigns, including online promotion of Harry Potter and the creation of the first Canadian-publisher podcast and blog. Her thoughts on marketing and technology can be followed on Twitter at “somisguided” or on her blogs at http://www.boxcarmarketing.com/blog and http://www.SoMisguided.com.

Shebeen beer taps, but where are the whisky taps?