Musical Coincidence?

Am I the first person to notice that the Blue Man Group's Rods and Cones is Sarah Brightman's You Take My Breath Away arranged for techno? Down to the middle-of-the-song slowdown and the triumphal ending?

I have figured out what Guitar Hero is for.

So, there's this video going around: ( Video )

It's quite amazing, actually; a little ten-year-old girl from Japan playing all three parts of a Kansas song on a Yamaha Electone, rocking out the house as she does. Apparently, Yamaha runs this as a competition and she completely swept it this year.

I wanted to show the video to Kouryou-chan, so I put it up on mplayer and the girl was maybe four bars into the piece when Kouryou-chan said, "That's Carry On My Wayward Son!"

And I looked at my eight-year-old daughter and wondered where in the heck she had gotten a headful of Kansas. She explained, "I played that song in Guitar Hero!"

You see, that's what GH is for. It's something you give to your kids so they'll absorb at least a small playlist of the music you and I listened to when we were young, so we'll at least have a common reference of music to discuss when we're in the car together. The grownups control the radio, so it'll always be tuned to the oldies station, and every once in a while the kids'll be able to say, "Hey, that's Immigrant Song! I recognize that!"


[Hat Tip to Vodou_Chile]

So, am I furry or not?

I have no desire to put on a fursuit and have sex. I imagine awkward moments through obscuring eye-holes interspersed with moments of heat exhaustion, and the payoff seems absolutely absurd.

I have no desire to bang any stuffed animals. At least not until they come with the complete friendly AI package, automatic maintenance, and a decent personality. Until then, they're just furniture. I don't do furniture. I do living bodies bent over furniture, sometimes tied to it. (Hmmm....)

I have no desire to have sex with anything living short of homo sapiens. I don't imagine any other species really having the capacity, the oomph, that a living, breathing man or woman brings to the bedroom.

I actually have no objection to people who want to do any of the above. But I am not one of those people.

And yet, when I read about furries on the Internet, I get the impression that I must be one of the above, or I'm not a furry. I'm something else; I have the same relationship to furrydom that Margaret Atwood has with science fiction, or tofurkey has with Thanksgiving dinner, or Brittney Spears with adulthood: it's not quite there. The descriptions don't match. I have the oddest sensation of looking into a mirror and not seeing myself.

I think furries make great metaphors. I think they're wonderful in literature, shorthands for all kinds of human foibles, premade slates onto which one may impress overblown human characteristics. I'll even admit to thinking the artwork is hot, and collecting some it strictly because the artwork manages to stay on the far side of the uncanny valley while still poking hard at my pineal gland. I can't help but look at Dr. Comet's[NSFW!] or Jeremy Bernal's[NSFW!] or any number of furry artists' work and think, "Yeah, I'd sleep with him/her/it."

But apparently, that's not enough to "a furry." A furry some combination of fursuit fetishist, plushfucker, or zoophile, and I'm not any of those.

Pity, that. My experiment to get back to my porny roots last year was rather successful with Sterlings. I was thinking about trying to recover my furry roots as well, but apparently I'm not a furry anymore.