Please don't forget to read the bulletin board. Enter +read from anywhere.

Friday night was a busy one for those working in the vast jungle that is known as the Spindizzy legal system. Mavra, local female centaur, brought an interesting case up to Adara, local female morphin cat/judge: Are centaurs considered furries or humans? With Gina_Doberman, local female canine puppet, as the bailiff, the court was now in session. The Prosecution went first. This team originally consisted of just Carlos, local male hydra, but then grew to include Mouser, local fursnake. Their stand on the situation was, "To pursue a proper classification for centaurs is to admit that the state thinks that such matters are of importance. The state of SpinDizzy has always considered humans and centaurs as equal in rights and duties. Why change that now?"

The defense team then continued. The team consisted originally of Mavra, but later included Ditzi, local male ringtail. Their stance was that centaurs are often discriminated against because some consider them non-furry, calling them names such as "pink-skin" and "horse-arsed humans". Mouser then objected, saying that centaurs needed to be classified as horses because they were needed for draft. Ditzi objected to that, saying that perhaps centaurs should be in a different class all together.

The judge said that she liked that idea, but that Mouser would have to join the prosecution and Ditzi would have to join the defense before she would listen to anymore from them. When all was settled, the case continued. The judge attempted to ask "What exactly is a furry?", but she received no clear answers, so she went on to the final remarks. Mavra's final remarks were as follows:

If it may please the court, if we centaurs are to be called animals, and ergo 'furry', then let us be so with all the received thereto. Same if we are considered humans, and all of the received that humans have."

Mouser gave the prosecution's remarks, much to Carlos's dismay:

"We urge Your Honor to classify centaurs as horses. Plowing season will be starting in a few months."

After a 1.34 minute break, the judge came back with the ruling:

"The underlying message in this case is: What exactly IS a furry? A person who has never been to a furry muck and has no experience with furrydom might say, "Something with fur, you [insert derogatory term here]. But, as seen on furry mucks, we know that is not the case. Many furry mucks are populated with creatures such as dragons, lizards, and centaurs. These animals do not have fur. Yet, these creatures (dragons, in particular) are EXTREMLY common on most furry MUCKS, and this judge has been to a lot of them. I rule that a furry is any fantastical, animalistic-type creature. Therefore and ergo, Centaurs ARE furries, and are not here just to draft. As a result of this hearing, the prosecution will have to pay $1,000 to the defense. On a minor note: there is a court charge for those who first brought up the case defendants, in this case). The cost is $999.99. This case is DISMISSED!"

Then, the defense team and the judge relaxed in a hot tub that had somehow mysteriously appeared in the middle of the courtroom.

Mouser, local fursnake and occasional world-traveler, reports that he brought back from his recent trip to Australia an assortment of interesting photos of the native wildlife. After much wrangling with computer software and an annoying internet provider, he is now proud to offer his "Aussie Critters!" gallery for your viewing pleasure.

Find out where the party is! Learn the joys of Whereare (wa for short).

Type wa <enter>. This will give you a list of what rooms have furs in them, within certain parameters. First, the room's owner has to want furs seeing his guests. Second, the guest has to want to be seen. You can set yourself so your name doesn't show on the wa, but you will be counted if the room is set to show.

Don't see any names? We can fix that. You can change the defaults on your wa by typing wa #def and a list of what you want the new values to be. I suggest wa #def 1 #dir #names <enter>. This means you can see any room with one or more fur, the names of the furs present, and directions on how to get there.

Typing wa #help <enter> will give you instructions how to set up your rooms so they show up on WhereAre!

Tired of generic responses to globals? Or having no response at all? Here's an easy way to give yourself a bit of individuality when folks 'global' you. Thanks to Austin, local Coati, and Ph. D. it's now easy to do.

Austin writes,

The global 'respondTo' allows one to set the response as well as the oresponse for any hug-type command. 'look respondTo' for details; an example of its use is to type 'respondTo hug with He hugs back!', which sets your hug and ohug both to 'He hugs back!'. Separate hug and ohug messages can be set as well.

So don't be bland and unresponsive. Use the respondto command to put more zing in your life!

Cartoon Network, who brought us the new Justice League, He-Man, Power Puff Girls, and Johnny Bravo, has introduced a new series called 'The Kids Next Door'.

The premise is, well, it's hard to say. I was left with no idea what the Kids Next Door were next door too, or what brought them together, or what their 'Mission' is. Although the phrase in the ads, 'Either you're in or you're old' makes me think that they're against adults.

Anyway, they live in this tree house, or meet there, and have all these gadgets they made out of stuff. Like Ed, Edd, and Eddy do, they apparently made their things out of stuff they found in the neighbor hood. Their tree house is made up of several different rooms, or houses, all with a number on them. Oh yes, all these kids go by numbers rather than names, and several have very bad fauz British accents. It's all pretty strange, and not really funny.

In this episode, the KND want ice cream, so they hijack an ice cream truck, politically correctly, I might add, in that they don't use box cutters to do so, and go to the ice cream factory where they have a showdown with some 'grown ups' and save the day. However, they save the day in not nearly as cute or humorous a way as the Power Puff Girls would.

Credit is given to 'Mr Warburton', who, it turns out, is Tom Warburton, who directed Cartoon Network's Sheep in the Big City. He was head character designer on the first season of ABC's series Pepper Ann. Warburton has also worked with J.J. Sedelmaier Productions, contributing to such television projects as Saturday Night Live and Schoolhouse Rock, and Beavis and Butthead. Also Credited is Mo Willems who also was involved in Sheep in the Big City.

Although I've only seen two episodes of this show, I haven't been impressed. But what do I know? When I first saw the promos for The Power Puff Girls, I thought it was some lame Anime rip off, and it turned out to be pretty good. Anyway, it's part of Cartoon Network's 'Cartoon Cartoon' block, so if CN follows usual procedure they'll contract 6 episodes and play them non-stop for about two months and you'll have plenty of chances to see it and make your own decision.

Argon told folks, "I'm doing a survey to be published in @Action News. The question this week, suggested by Adara is, 'How did you get your character name?'

• Cye says, "Random Name Generator.."
• PatchO'Black mews, "My name comes from the fact I have a patch of black fur on my back."
• Adara purrs, "I found mine in a babyname website..."
• Tyger mews, "I'm a tiger, and I like to misspell things..."
• Bones chirrchirrs, "Bones... name of the dancing/singing hamster I have sitting in my car, my char is modeled after him"
• Flutterz - S'whats bein' s'character?
• Natasha - It's a pun. One species of coati is Nasua nelsoni. Nasua -> Natasha, nelsoni -> Nelson.
• Tanuki barks, "I wanted something anonymous, and I wanted something I could somewhat dedicate to my college friends."
• Ba'ar growls, "I was originally going to be a very simple minded genetic construct, Ba'ar being one of the only words I was capable of saying."
• Mavra says, "I got my name by legally changing it after I became a centaur because I had read of a character by the name of 'Mavra Chang' and while I had 'chang-ed', she was a very strong female character and I had become physically quite strong as a centaur."
• Carlos was not planning on using his player's name, but after he came up with a good name for his bat character, some nice, nice friends used him in a story, with his player's name. His middle and last names are his own invention, though...
• Ringo got the name from John Ringo, a famous train robber who wore a mask.
• Gino signs "I was named for an ex boss of my player's...he like me was hearing impaired."
• Morticon -- That is easy. Morticon = Mort Icon = Death Figure. It came after visualizing the character and seemed appropiate at the time. The name is not unique, however. There is a band called Morticon and I think it has some meaning in a few fantasy settings. There is no other furry that I know of, marsupial or otherwise, that has the name.
• Coldfyre -- I got my character name by thinking very hard for three whole months.
• Terry -- I picked Terry because it sort of sounds like my player's name, only not as silly. And I'd decided to use a normal name because originally I was supposed to be completely normal.
• Bitterwind digs compound-word names. o.o
• Austin says, "My name's a reference to something faintly known."
• Shine just thought Shine was a nice name. Not a very enthralling reason.
• Lamar picked it at random from the first peice of literature to hand. The TV Guide.
• Vixie says, "Mine is based on a rl puppet, the name came from a friend. He has a similar puppet named Vixlet, so Vixie seemed a natural counter to it."
• Gina_Doberman says, "Just sorta picked mine at random!"
• Mouser hisses, "Well, for what it's worth, I changed it to 'Mouser' because it fit better with my character concept of being from the Thornton Burgess story-verse..." (Ed. Note, Austin remembers Mouser first taking the name Vaerschlang)
• Butterfluff is Butterfluff because it is yellow and fluffy.

Dear Editor,

Is Michael Jackson a child star that never had the advantage of a normal childhood, or is he just a freak?

Wondering

Dear Wondering.

Even with the wealth of information at my fingertips as editor of @Action News, I have no idea what's up with 'The King of Pop'. His actions are impossible to explain. His plastic surgery brings to mind Lion Man who next to Michael Jackson seems pretty normal.

And they say 'Furries' are weird.

Argon
Editor, @Action News

Submitting a story or artwork for @Action News is easy! Just send it to newspaper@spindizzy.org or qmail or page Argon about it.
@Action News is published weekly on or after 12:01 AM Eastern Time on Sunday. Most any type of story or article will be accepted. Generally, we'd prefer things that aren't out and out lies or flames about other folks, and have a basis in the reality of SpinDizzy. Things that occur in public areas are fair game. The things reported don't have to have actually happened, (any more than anything that happens here does) but make sure you don't overstep the social boundaries and rules of interaction that we have. These are pretty broad guidelines, but we expect good sense to apply.

Thanks! Argon, Editor @Action News