I drove to work this morning with something in my eye. It was pretty annoying. It was not painful or distracting enough for me to pull over and do something about it, nonetheless after a thirty-minute drive I began to focus on it until it became a glowing pinpoint of annoyance.
I suspect it might have come from the carpet of crud on my ceiling. The material on my ceiling has been sagging more and more, until one night it was hanging so low I could not see out of the back window. With a grunt of annoyance I reached up and ripped the whole thing down. Underneath it is a layer of some sort of black foamish material. The stuff comes off or rolls off at the slightest touch. It reminds me of some sort of fungus. I have a feeling a tiny piece of this may have detached and lodged itself into my eye. And thus is my gripe about my eye.
I just noticed my Universal pass was not in my wallet. It must be on my counter at home. Which means I have to run home at lunch and get it. Which means no free lunch hour for me. Which makes me grumpy and slurp my coffee in a surly manner.
The other day I became aware of a phenomenon previously unknown to me but apparently not very new called 'Furries'. Furries are people who dress up in fuzzy animal suits vaguely similar to school mascot costumes and then engage in various social situations with other 'furries' in which sex may or may not (but most likely may) be a part of. They claw and growl at each other and act in various infantile ways.
Now, this alone does not shock me. I have the innertubes, I see a lot of weird shit out there. If you have middle-aged men who like to wear diapers and be powdered and babied, then the possibilities of what other perversities that may be out there is endless. For the most part I laugh and move on. If two consenting adults want to do that, fine. I am not going to march in any anti-furry rallies. I might point and laugh but deep inside I really don't care.
No, what shocked me about furries is that I may have actually known a furry. I had a roommate in college by the name of Adrian Rossi. (I put his full names in the gleeful hope that he may one-day google his own name and see this). Adrian was an all right guy, but he had an affliction for the movie 'The Lion King'. He loved the movie to the point of joining various newsgroup discussions on it, and he actually wrote fanfic, little short stories inspired by the lion king.
And then there were the MUDS. I knew he played them because I would see the little dos box open on his computer. I figured he was going through dungeons and collecting keys or something. But one evening I walked by and peered at his screen. I saw him typing something like this.
SIMBA GROWLS AT LEETAH
LEETAH FLIPS HER TAIL COYLY
SIMBA BITES HER GENTLY
LEETAH PURRS HAPPILY.
I started laughing out loud and I said 'Dude, WTF is that?'. He jumped at the sound of my voice and quickly splayed his fingers over the screen and said "Dude! Go away! Its none of your business!". Laughing, I did so. I put it out of my mind as some sort of quirky Adrian-thing, but now I wonder if he was actually communicating with other furries. To be honest it does not take much of a leap of my imagination to see him prancing around in a little animal suit. It's a disturbing thought.
I'm just glad I did not know about furries at the time.
2026 Update
I'm dialing to 2006, where Ed has ceiling fungus in his eye and a roommate who growls as Simba.
Twenty years on, this post is a perfect specimen of the pre-smartphone age. Ed is driving to work without a pocket computer telling him about traffic; his Universal pass is a physical card that requires a special lunch-hour trip; and the internet is something you glimpse over a roommate's shoulder in a DOS box, full of mystery and questionable roleplay. Now that same pass lives in the same device that also knows what you ate, who you dated, and what you typed in a MUD at 3 a.m. The furry revelation is almost quaint—every subculture now has a platform, a logo, and a sponsored merch drop. Newsgroups became feeds; fanfic became streaming television; 'SIMBA GROWLS AT LEETAH' would simply be another snippet in an endless public log. And the ceiling? We still have ceilings, but now we have apps to photograph them and delivery services to bring us eye drops. Ed had one foot in the future and used it to judge his roommate. That's the true 2006 energy.
“2006 Ed, after ripping down the ceiling and catching Adrian typing 'SIMBA GROWLS AT LEETAH,' did you ever consider that the black crumb in your eye was the universe telling you to mind your own business? And putting his full name in the post—did you honestly think he'd thank you for the early internet fame?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, first off, thanks for reading, and second—hell, maybe you're onto something. That black crumb in my eye, the sagging ceiling, the whole damn roof situation... I'm not a signs-and-portents man, but if the universe was telling me to mind my own business, it picked a real roundabout way of doing it. Maybe I should've just kept my eyes on the road instead of on Adrian's SIMBA GROWLS AT LEETAH.
And as for putting his full name out there? No, I don't expect a thank-you. I expect a strongly worded email, possibly a growl. But you know what? The man wrote Lion King fanfic and typed 'LEETAH FLIPS HER TAIL COYLY' in a DOS box. If he googles his own name and finds this, maybe he'll think twice about 'coyly flipping' anything again. Early internet fame? He can thank me later. Or not. I'll be here eating donuts.
