Wednesday 22 November 2000

Pic of the day: Yet another silly portrait of yours truly.

Bifurcurious

First of all, I assume you are curious as to my visit to the skin doctor today. Well, there is 1 possible melanona, and it is scheduled for removal on December 15th. Things don't happen at the speed of light here in Norway, not these kind of things at least. I've notified the workplace that I intend to have another vacation from then on till a couple days over Christmas. I expect it to be a bloody affair - I understand that they cut out the surrounding skin, but I'm not sure how far into my back they are going to cut. The pigmentation was not sharply delineated, that is to say it may be trying to grow into the surrounding tissue. Which is a pretty good argument to remove some of the otherwise healthy flesh, I suppose. (Of course, it is also possible that it is not malign at all...)

The other outgrowths are utterly harmless, but there will be more and more of them for the rest of my life. I am going to have lots and lots of brown spots, most of them reasonably small, riding on my skin like some kind of dark warts. Cool. This will really make the chicks stare. (As if I care.)

I expect to write more about melanoma as future events remind me of it. Right now, I've done my worrying to good effect and will worry again when it becomes useful again.

***

In rather unrelated news, I've sent an e-mail to furry.org applying for a character in their text-based roleplaying environment FurryMUCK. This is a natural continuation of my current furry fad. FurryMUCK is a large gathering place for furry fans (3-400 people have been logged on at any time when I have visited, whether morning or evening) and several of the friendly people from the TCM board hang out there.

Just to remind y'all, "furries" are human-like animals as known from comics and cartoons, basically the whole specter from Mickey Mouse to Lion King. The main requirement for being a furry is that you have approximately human-level intellect and communication skills, but still clearly retain some traits from an animal: At least bodily, such as a tail or a snout, but preferably also some personality trait. (Think "doggie style" or "crocodile tears".)

A recent comment made me think about humans as seen from the dolphin point of view. Dolphins are unusually intelligent, their brain is actually larger than ours even when compared to body mass. In their natural habitat they solve puzzles slightly better than we do, and they have some kind of spoken communication that among other things let them describe a location. Already the ancient Greeks noticed that dolphins recognized humans as potential friends rather than prey; there is a story around 2500 years old about dolphins saving some shipwrecked seafarer and carrying him to the coast. (Now the cynic may say that no one hears from those sailors who the dolphins carry out to the middle of the ocean and drop them there ... but overall, meetings between dolphins and unarmed humans seem to have been cordial throughout history.)

What struck me was that to a dolphin, a human must be much like a furry: Almost dolphin-level intelligence, good communication skills, and a healthy curiosity. But at the same time, we retain ape-like traits such as large tufts of fur on our heads. Dolphins are by nature very curious; and so I have decided that the male dolphin who the other summer pulled down some guy's swimming trunks nearby must have been ... bi-fur-curious!
(Aieee! The pun police is coming!)

***

By sheer synchronicity, less than two hours after I conceived of this awful pun in the morning, I was reading Psychology Today and chanced upon the word "bifurcated", which barely anyone uses anymore. This issue (december 2000) has several pages about gender issues, which would explain the unusual use of language.

Until recently, it has been believed that men reacted more strongly to the physical aspect of infidelity (extramarital affairs, that is) while women reacted more to the emotional aspect. This made sense from the perspective of sociobiology: The benefit of marriage to a man is that he can be reasonably sure of who is his children, and treat them accordingly. ("My children, other people's brats" as the saying goes.) For the woman, the benefit is that the guy's around to chase away cave bears and Jehovah's Witnesses, and drag home the occasional deer or washing machine to the cave. Sadly, this beautiful explanation breaks down in the light of recent findings. Basically, men and women feel the same way, they only show it differently.

Why can't people just conform to theory and be done with it?

***

Anyway, I got my furry character. Yay! I am now officially a member of the suspect underground Furry movement. More exactly, I am a slightly chubby male porcupine named Bollen. Bring on the porcupine chicks! I have read how porcupines make love: Carefully. Very carefully!

More realistically, I feel that a porcupine very neatly describes my online persona. Or indeed my offline persona. Shy and defensive. (And not very fond of cars, I might add.) And there is the dream. And, of course, there is the way I look if I haven't shaved for a couple days...

Oh, and for my non-Norwegian readers: "Bollen" means The Bun, as in the baked goods of that name. Can also be used to describe a boy who has eaten too many of them, so that he has assumed the key aspects of that foodstuff: Round and soft. The female form of the name, Bolla, is known from a popular children's song: "Bolla Pinnsvin" where "pinnsvin" means porcupine. So much for originality ... But the Americans won't know that, and are likely to empathize with a shy and chubby character, I hope. I'm sure there are lots of people like that in an online forum.