Fist of Furry

[GeneChing]

I just couldn't resist this. Furry Fu.

Panda man issues Tai Chi challenge
9:15am Friday 24th October 2008

CAN you take down the Tai Chi Panda?

That’s the challenge being thrown down by York martial arts instructor Stuart Harrison, who will be taking on all-comers while dressed as Tai Chi Panda, in the Museum Gardens on Saturday next week.

The challenge is intended as a fun way to promote his latest venture, Chi For Children, which is the name of classes aimed at introducing youngsters to the health benefits of the traditional Chinese art.

“People are more than welcome to try to push me over. If they think they can, bring it on,” said a confident Mr Harrison.

“The stronger they come the easier they are to bring down,” he added.

“My fellow instructor, Betty Sutherland, will be teaching Tai Chi for children on the Saturday and I will be teaching my own style which translates as push hands.”

Mr Harrison, a bronze medal winner at this year’s Tai Chi Union GB competition held in Oxford earlier this year, said his style was all about using people’s momentum against them.

“You manipulate your opponent’s centre of gravity to topple them,” he said.

Speaking of the children’s sessions, which he intends to begin in December, Mr Harrison, 32, said it would be Tai Chi set to a fun narrative.

“It helps to develop cross-lateral movement, balance, concentration skills and focus. This is a tried and tested method for kids.”

Betty Sutherland will be taking the Chi for Children session at the Museum Gardens on Saturday, November 1.

If you would like to take part in the sessions, or if you dare take up the challenge of the Tai Chi Panda, you are invited to turn up at 2pm.

Mr Harrison hopes to begin regular children’s classes in York in December at Roko Health Club, at Clifton Moor and Next Generation in Windmill Lane.

For details on any of the sessions, phone Mr Harrison on 07989 251 771.

[SimonM]

ROTFLMFAO!

Good one Gene.

[GeneChing]

My sources tell me Furry Fu is growing.

Check out this vid from our Long Beach TCEC Tournament. A pic from this made it in our last issue (see page 64)

[GeneChing]

Lu-OW!
Starring Reveille and Kannik
Performed at Further Confusion 2009
Doubletree Hotel, San Jose, CA 1/25/2009

[GeneChing]

Tai chi polar bears for climate change.

U.N. Climate Talks Greeted With Polar Bear Doing Tai Chi In Tianjin, China (VIDEO)
Posted: 10- 8-10 04:54 PM

International delegates meeting in Tianjin, China this week for U.N. climate talks were met with a friendly, albeit peculiar, surprise. Our friends at Mother Nature Network brought to our attention this video of a polar bear taking part in a Tai Chi class with Chinese youth in Tianjin.

So what in the world does this have to do with the climate negotiations? According to MNN, the Tai Chi class was practicing "the art of balance," and the polar bear's involvement was a part of TckTckTck campaigners' efforts to highlight their belief that U.N. negotiators are pursuing "the balanced package" rather than actually making successful progress toward an international agreement on tackling climate change.

The polar bear's tactics paid off, as the man behind the mask, Paul Horseman, was interviewed by China's largest TV network, and was able to deliver a clear message about the serious and urgent crisis climate change poses while U.N. climate talks continue to falter

Polar bear does Tai Chi for the climate

[jdhowland]

I'd really like to see Furry Fu vs. Wombat Combat.

[MasterKiller]

[sanjuro_ronin]

LOL !
Take down for the win and a well done one too !

[lkfmdc]

that's just a pic from our last instructor training seminar, me doing single leg

[sanjuro_ronin]

that's just a pic from our last instructor training seminar, me doing single leg

Hey, you got electrolysis done, good man !

[Yum Cha]

I'd really like to see Furry Fu vs. Wombat Combat.

Now you're talking.

[GeneChing]

Shanghai Disneyland showcases Chinese influence throughout park



May 16, 2016
Disney’s newest theme park will be opening in Shanghai in one month and visitors can expect to see Chinese elements in its newest park.

CCTV’s Ding Siyue reports on how The Walt Disney Co. is incorporating more Chinese elements into the park.

While Donald Duck is known around the world, few people know he’s a practitioner of the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi.

“We were thinking we could let Disney characters tell Chinese stories. I think ‘Donald Duck practicing Tai Chi’ is a wonderful combination,” Xu Chang, assistant producer for Shanghai Disney Resort said.

“I hope we could create a feeling of familiarity to the tourists through interaction between characters and tourists.”

There’s even the Garden of 12 Friends with Disney characters representing the Chinese Zodiac signs.

Chinese elements are not just in some of the storytelling or the characters, but also in a lot of the design.

The Walt Disney Grand Theater, located in a shopping and dining area and modeled after local architectural styles, will host the Chinese version of the Broadway show “The Lion King”.

I've been saying "Grasp the bird's tail" in a Donald Duck voice under my breath.

It's a good thing that there is no Year of the Duck.

[GeneChing]

Do you know the way to San Jose? I went to college there. Nothing like this ever happened back then.

San Jose: ‘Furries’ pulled assaulter out of vehicle, sat on him
A group of furry bystanders stepped in when they saw man ‘whaling on’ female driver
By FIONA KELLIHER | fkelliher@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: January 20, 2020 at 3:32 pm | UPDATED: January 21, 2020 at 5:40 am



SAN JOSE — First came the man to the rescue. And then came the dinosaur, the tiger and the cowboy.

It was just before midnight Friday in San Jose, and the downtown streets were thick with “furries” — anthropomorphism aficionados dressed in fur costumes — who had poured into the city for San Jose’s annual furry get-together known as FurCon.

Conversations were relaxed as people drank in the night air and cooled off from “suiting” inside fur costumes all day, said Steven Rodriguez, 26, who was taking a smoke break outside the San Jose Marriott hotel.

But suddenly a car screeched to a halt in the middle of South Market Street. And from inside came a woman’s horrified scream — “Get out, get out, get out, get out,” Rodriguez recalled.

“It was pretty intense,” said Rodriguez, a self-described “silent observer” of furry culture who traveled from Azusa in Southern California to attend the convention’s after-hours hotel parties. “We saw the passenger just whaling on her. Just a full-on punch.”

Rodriguez and his friend yanked open the unlocked passenger’s door and began dragging the man out, he said. The driver had been visibly beaten, and as they grabbed hold of her assaulter, he quickly tried to turn his ire onto Rodriguez.

At that moment, a group of about five people — still in their furry suits from the day’s festivities — sprinted over and restrained the man as he attempted to hit Rodriguez.

Among the first on scene was the pink dinosaur, who wrested the suspect by the head and shoulders while a massive tail bobbed in his wake, according to a brief video Rodriguez captured of the encounter. Then a tiger knelt to restrain the man from the torso as a platform-heeled cowboy watched on.


The video ends quickly — blocked by a man in a cat-emblazoned jacket — as the driver took off in another screech of metal, Rodriguez said.

Within a few minutes, San Jose police arrived and took over for the six people restraining the man, confirmed Sgt. Enrique Garcia, who added that the report did not detail the attire of the rescuers.

San Jose resident Demetri Hardnett, 22, was arrested and booked into Santa Clara County jail on suspicion of domestic violence; a preliminary investigation showed that the driver was his girlfriend, Garcia said.

The furries slowly dispersed after giving police statements, Rodriguez said, both disgusted by what they had seen but pleased with the way things played out.

Over the weekend, posts about the incident accrued thousands of views from both furry supporters and those unfamiliar with the subculture — many of whom were tickled to see a group of befurred rescuers tackling an assaulter on city streets.

“It happened very, very fast and it was just a horrible thing to see,” Rodriguez said. “But overall, everyone was very happy that we stepped in.”



Fiona Kelliher Fiona Kelliher is a breaking news reporter at The Mercury News. She previously covered housing and real estate for the San Francisco Business Times. Originally from Minneapolis, she is a fan of almost any food that is fried and eaten on a stick.

[GeneChing]

I just can't resist ttt-ing this thread, even though this is somewhat off-topic, mostly because I have some Kung Furry shidi.

Furry Kung Fu fable is mutated, but certainly not evolved
By Tim Biggs
May 28, 2021 — 2.44pm


With a promising premise but an unfortunate lack of identity, Biomutant is a much-anticipated game that introduces too many features and systems while not fully realising any of them.

Since 2017 the furry Kung Fu fable has consistently attracted praise for its bizarrely different characters, promises of open-ended systems, beautiful world and apparent focus on player choice and customisation. But while all of that is present and accounted for in the final game, the connective tissue that brings it together is either missing, insufficient or feels unfinished.


Dressing your rodent-like avatar in cute little people clothes is just one of the many forms of customisation in Biomutant.

Set in a post-apocalypse where humans made a world hostile to their own existence, but gave rise to new mutated animal species, the setup here is part Horizon Zero Dawn, part Zelda: Breath of the Wild, part Borderlands and with a healthy blend of Kung Fu and environmental flavours on top. The mangy character and creature designs give Biomutant something all of its own, with the bipedal protagonist presenting as anything you can come up with in the versatile character creator; from a lanky battle-scarred raccoon to a chonky Cheshire Cat.

Customisation is a big focus of the entire experience here, with layers of upgrade points, crafting, scavenging and building giving you control over what traits your character develops, its fighting style, its clothing and of course its melee and ranged weapons. But a lack of coherent tutorials or introductions to these systems, as well as painful nested menu designs, makes it all tough to access.

The first several hours are particularly tough to grapple with, because the run-of-the-mill open world quest system begins dumping objectives on you with a similar lack of clarity or context, the story struggles out the gate with vague backstory and endless unearned philosophising, and the overall presentation vacillates between beautifully polished and work-in-progress.

Even once I’d brute-forced my way to an understanding of how the world and systems worked, my overall impression was of elements that all individually had a lot of promise, but none of which really worked.

Developing the ability to spawn bouncy mushrooms, or leave a trail of fire after you when you dodge, are cool ideas. But a lack of finesse and emphasis in the combat system means nothing else in the world really reacts to those elements or sells the drama, and I ended up just mashing the attack button.

Most guns and melee weapons are fully modular, so you can rebuild them with junk and resources you scavenge or create them from scratch. But there’s no good way to see an overview of all the stuff you’ve collected, or to tell which upgrades will actually make a difference in combat.

Meanwhile repetitive and arbitrary tasks water down any interesting parts of the narrative, and it’s undercut by the constantly talking narrator — who even delivers the dialogue of all characters you meet, bizarrely in the second person — with his patronising and contextless faux-deep aphorisms about memory and forgiveness. The script’s inconsistent use of juvenile noun replacements (“find Moog the Munsterhonter to locate sqvips for Gizmo’s Mekton, then use the ping dish to find the Oxygen Suit and fight the Jumbo Puff”) make the whole thing sound like Teletubbies for the chemically intoxicated.

Building weapons and paragliding around the varied landscape makes for some magical moments, but there were many more instances where a confusing playable flashback or interminable quest line had me scratching my head. From the story about life forces and feuding tribes to the Kung Fu fighting combat, almost everything in Biomutant left me wishing things were a little more evolved.

Biomutant is out now for Xbox One (reviewed), PC and PlayStation 4.

[GeneChing]

But too weird not to post here...

Man who spent $14K to transform himself into collie steps out for first-ever walk in public
By Brooke Kato
July 28, 2023 8:43pm Updated

The dog days are just beginning for this man.

A Japanese native has transformed himself into a canine after forking out more than $14,000 for a custom-made collie costume.

The private citizen, who goes only by Toco online, says the unusual garment has helped actualize his dream of “becoming an animal.”

Footage shared to Toco’s YouTube channel, where he boasts more than 32,000 subscribers, shows him clad in the costume as he frolics on a lawn, rolls on a floor, and plays fetch.

Toco has even uploaded a video of himself venturing out in public as a dog for the very first time.

Bystanders appeared to be in awe of the man’s doggy debut as he paraded down a busy street in the viral clip, which has racked up 1.7 million views.


His hyperrealistic dog costume cost $14,000.
YouTube

The $12,000 costume was created by Zeppet and took 40 days to create.
YouTube

Toco completed the costume with a harness strapped around his furry abdomen, but admitted he was “nervous” and “scared” of venturing out in public.

“Do you remember your dreams from when you are little? You want to be a hero or a wizard,” he wrote in the clip, describing his life-dog dog dream as seemingly “unrealistic.”

“I remember writing in my grade school graduation book that I wanted to be a dog and walk outside.”

As an introduction to his unusual hobby, Toco answered a series of questions in a video posted last year, admitting he always “had a vague dream of becoming an animal” ever since he was a child.

“When I fulfilled that dream, this is how it turned out,” he wrote in the clip, adding that he chose to become a collie due to the negligible size difference between the breed and humans.


He recently embarked on his first public walk.
YouTube

Toco performs tricks in exchange for treats.
YouTube

Zeppet, the company that manufactured Toco’s collie costume, says it took 40 days to create the furry fashion item, which cost a cool $2 million Yen (USD $14,161).

“Modeled after a collie dog, it reproduces the appearance of a real dog walking on four legs,” the company’s spokesperson told news.com.au.

Despite garnering online fame with his puppy pursuit, Toco conceals his unusual proclivities from most of his friends and family.

“I rarely tell my friends because I am afraid they will think I am weird,’ he said in a separate interview with the Mirror. “My friends and family seemed very surprised to learn I became an animal.”

Meanwhile, the Japanese man said last year that most of his colleagues are also unaware that he dresses as a dog outside of work.

“I don’t want my hobbies to be known, especially by the people I work with,” he told the Daily Mail.


Toco sits with a sign that reads “I’m human.”
YouTube

“They think it’s weird that I want to be a dog. For the same reason why I can’t show my real face.”