91 thoughts on “Thursday Night Bar Fight #9: Furries Unite!”

  1. Obviously it has to be “The Fighting Bowler Hats”.

    And since that’s already such a winner, I’ll freely waste my animal suggestion on “Duckbill platypuses”.Report

    1. Down-vote. Platypus’ do not have the image of elegance and sophistication that we on the League wish to cultivate and project. We are gentleman.Report

        1. That picture is soooo adorable.

          I believe Lee meant to say that we are gentlemen AND ladies. But seriously, chicks love baby animals. I have heard people whispering about increasing the female presence around here. Baby platypus in a tiny hat might just do it.Report

    2. Along the lines of platypus, but perhaps more noble, what about Griffins?

      I’m partial to mythical beasts, because this place is surreal sometimes.Report

  4. Animal: Betta fish, duh. Relevant self-deprecating pun + they’re puffing antisocial fighters that can’t get along + would look excellent in a bowler. Win-win-win.

    Non-animal: A luge: another pun, that can imply either speeding sleds & spandex, or personal firearms, depending on your preference.Report

    1. Come to think of it, I don’t think we should choose on the luge one, I want a bowler-hatted luger speeding down the course while simultaneously firing a Luger. The most bad-ass icon the LoOG could get.

      I am somewhat surprised to find no pictures of Betta fish wearing bowler hats (though we can apparently get rather nice baseball caps). Get on it, internet.Report

      1. Man, they blew that. What they REALLY should have gone with was “The Privileged Few” and, as a mascot, used a guy in a bowler h… wait a minute…Report

  6. OK, for the animal we need to be the Fighting Tarsiers. I think it goes without saying that the tarsier looks good in a bowler hat, because the tarsier looks good in anything.

    For the non-animal nickname, how ’bout the Dandies.Report

        1. Irina Derevko wore many disguises.

          And yeah, Olin is just stupendously sexy.

          By which I mean, she is so sexy, that she makes me stupid.

          More stupid. Stupider. Muy estupido.Report

              1. I have now watched every single one of them, masterpieces all.

                If I had been meant to have thought up a cure for cancer in the time I otherwise spent watching hilarious videos of fruit bats and ducks, well… I hope you’re proud of yourself, Chris. I hope you’re proud of yourself.Report

    3. Upvote the Tarsiers.

      Down the Dandies; though it does work with certain recent bloggy-name calling, it’s still too gendered for me to feel included. After all, I’m already dealing with ‘gentlemen.’ (I could change this with an appropriate suggestion of female dandies, however.)Report

  7. I think we should embrace the whole “little guy” concept. There are too many “Oooh, I want to be the Tyrannosauruses!” or similar in these arguments. We should find some small mammals. Voles, maybe. Marmosets. Mice, perhaps. Let’s run with mice.

    So we’d be the mice. Our essays, then, would be *FROM* the mice. “Here’s something from the mice!”, we could say at the start of any given symposium.

    We should also give it a bit of class, though. Something “European”. Make it sound classy. There have been a number of problems with Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal… we should avoid those. Germany seems to be doing okay. So instead of “from”, we could use “von”.

    They’re a bit stern, though. We could add a bit of levity by appealing to Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks and change “mice” to “Meeces” (pronounced pretty close to “me says”).

    So the “von meeces” would be my first vote. I think it’d go over pretty well and people would like it.

    As for the non-animal icon, I vote for “The Corkscrews”.Report

  8. Awesome! Does this mean I can start calling myself “Professor”?

    I love the “Fighting Betta” suggestion, but am also drawn to the charms of being “the Voles.” If I were to come up with my own “animal” idea, it would be the non-specific term “the Vectors” because we’re always trying to transmit something and it’s a triumph when something goes viral on the Internet.

    For the non-animal, I don’t think you could beat “the Tumblers.”Report

  9. For the animal, I’d nominate a Mad Cow bacterium.

    For the non-animal, I like Christopher’s idea of the fighting bowler hats.Report

  10. 1. Animal: The English Sheepdogs. Because I like them and it would be unique.

    2. Non-Animal: The Monocles. Goes hand in hand with the gentlemen motiff but is less obvious than the bowler hats.Report

  11. I like Jonathan’s “Fighting Betas,” but I think I can improve on it:

    The Fighting Metta Betas. The non-animal embodiment of this nickname would be Metta World Peace* wearing his Cookie Monster pajamas whilst wearing a bowler hat.

    For an animal? I nominate this guy, just because I can.
    https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2009/11/friday-afternoon-open-thread/

    *For those who are not sports fans, Metta World Peace is the name of a basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers whose birth name was Ron Artest. Under the name Ron Artest, he was legendary for his penchant for technical fouls and ejections, as well as his leading role in this: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=1927380

    A summary of his antics both before and after he changed his name to Metta World Peace is here: http://newsok.com/metta-world-peace-timeline-of-antics-accomplishments-and-outrageous-behavior-by-lakers-forward-formerly-known-as-ron-artest/article/3668898/?page=1

    That summary does not include a recent incident where he successfully mediated a potentially violent confrontation between some of his friends who were shooting a movie and the police….while wearing Cookie Monster pajamas.

    Clearly anyone who changes their name to something including the words “World Peace” and runs around wearing Cookie Monster pajamas is a Beta male. Paradoxically, it is also clear that someone playing the leading role in the infamous Palace Brawl likes to fight. And the propriety of using as a mascot for this site someone with the word “Metta” in his name should go without saying. That the man is also about the most unpredictable human being on the planet is just icing on the cake.Report

  12. How about the Idiocrats?

    You’ll remember that in the movie Idiocracy, Luke Wilson’s character was completely average in every category. But when he went into the future, we was surrounded by fools, and was the smartest man in the world. Just like the Ordinary Gentlemen who look so much smarter as the online world grows dumber.Report

  13. I nominate The Oily Gladiator as team mascot. Not sure if I lean toward Steve Reeves, Kirk Douglas or one of the new HBO Spartacus guys. Maybe we could have revolving series of oily gladiators. To be PC, we may want to have some female oily gladiators, but this may actually backfire against us. It may be un PC to be PC, if you know what I mean.Report

    1. This may sound rude and attacking. If it is, please note that I count myself first and foremost in those who the attack would be true of.

      Animal: Peacock (Is it just me, or is there a lot of pride here? Not just in all you, or some of you, but in me too. A kind of pride at saying wise things, or something.)

      Non-Animal: A bespectacled nerd, like Professor Frink from the Simpsons.

      A nerdy peacock with glasses and a pocket protector might be the best possible mascot.Report

      1. Is it just me, or is there a lot of pride here?

        I think it’s something of a prerequisite for posting in a public forum like this, even under a pseudonym. But I’m assuming there are plenty of lurkers here — should the mascot be expected to represent them as well?Report

  14. I think that the best animal mascot for the League of Ordinary Gentleman University would be the fox. In folklore, foxes are known for their cleverness and wit. The League is known on the internet for their cleverness and wit. Foxes are often associated with upper-classness and would naturally look good in bowler because of that. Another advantage to foxes is that they are under-represented in the world of mascots.

    For the non-animal mascot, I’d go with the a bowler since we already selected it as a mascot.Report

    2. Upvote for otter, I immediately thought it too. Otters are smart, fun and playful creatures who can’t help but engage in a certain amount of naval gazing.Report

          1. Diana Rigg has that effect on many of us. According to TV Tropes, Emma Peel has her origins when the writers were told to create a character with Male Appeal. This was written down as M. Appeal and eventually Emma Peel. The writers certainly did a good job.Report

  17. Non-animal: The Ordinary Bowler. I like the pretense of being ‘middle class,’ and it’s a construction of leagues going all the way from the trailer park to the boardroom. (Candle pin or big ball?)

    Animal: Water Buffalo. Big creature gets treated with respect, there’s some wisdom on board. Plus the cheese is awesome. No factory farms for water buffalo; they range free and independent and dispense both fertilizer and wisdom; sorta libertarian, in my view. But from a conservative culture with religious practices that can vere toward the liberal. I see this Water Buffalo as an incantation of the bull in Guy Gavriel Kay’s Sarantine Mosaic, so a bonus mythical creature.

    I am, of course, one of the mechanical birds.Report

  20. I’m upvoting the Bowler Hat and the Betta Fish too. In fact, if we could put a bowler hat (and a monocole! and a cane!) on a Betta fish, that would be about perfect.Report

  21. For the animal i choose the Great Auk. mostly because i was in knowledge bowl in HS and remember the great dead bird in a professors outfit. which fits the place. cultured, smart, and judging from the rest of the internet dead.

    non-animal? i got nothing. but love the metta world peace ideas dogs.Report

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