Thursday Night Bar Fight #9: Furries Unite!

by · May 9, 2013

Tod Kelly

Tod is a writer from the Pacific Northwest. He is also serves as Executive Producer and host of both the 7 Deadly Sins Show at Portland's historic Mission Theatre and 7DS: Pants On Fire! at the White Eagle Hotel & Saloon. He is  a regular inactive for Marie Claire International and the Daily Beast, and is currently writing a book on the sudden rise of exorcisms in the United States. Follow him on Twitter.

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91 Responses

  1. Christopher Carr says:
    May 9, 2013 at 11:02 am

    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

  2. Patrick says:
    May 9, 2013 at 11:05 am

    A platypus, for the animal.Report

  3. Jonathan McLeod says:
    May 9, 2013 at 11:09 am

    Clearly, for the non-animal we are the Betas… or maybe the Fighting Betas.Report

  4. Glyph says:
    May 9, 2013 at 11:09 am

    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

    • Glyph in reply to Glyph says:
      May 9, 2013 at 11:56 am

      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

  5. Kazzy says:
    May 9, 2013 at 11:10 am

    The Whiteskins.Report

  6. Chris says:
    May 9, 2013 at 11:10 am

    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

  7. Jaybird says:
    May 9, 2013 at 11:14 am

    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. Russell Saunders says:
    May 9, 2013 at 11:24 am

    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. Snarky McSnarksnark says:
    May 9, 2013 at 11:28 am

    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. NewDealer says:
    May 9, 2013 at 11:33 am

    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. Mark Thompson says:
    May 9, 2013 at 11:33 am

    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. Pinky says:
    May 9, 2013 at 12:02 pm

    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. Roger says:
    May 9, 2013 at 12:16 pm

    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

    • Shazbot4 in reply to Roger says:
      May 9, 2013 at 3:51 pm

      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

      • kenB in reply to Shazbot4 says:
        May 9, 2013 at 5:33 pm

        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

    • MikeSchilling in reply to Roger says:
      May 10, 2013 at 1:52 am

      Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?Report

  14. LeeEsq says:
    May 9, 2013 at 12:52 pm

    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

  15. Anne says:
    May 9, 2013 at 1:34 pm

    I don’t know why but the first animal I thought of in a bowler was an otter and lo and behold I found this image http://ggermaine.blogspot.com/2010/06/bowler-hat.html

    That said I’m down with Tarsiers as well non animal mascot the Bowler followed closely by the MonoclesReport

  16. Patrick says:
    May 9, 2013 at 1:53 pm

    For the non-animal, John Steed seems to be the obvious choice.Report

  17. zic says:
    May 9, 2013 at 2:43 pm

    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

  18. Damon says:
    May 9, 2013 at 2:44 pm

    The Tasmanian Wombat. He spends a lot of time with his head (and body) in the ground.
    They also happen to be cute, something I’m sure most of LOOG are surely not. 🙂

    http://king-animal.blogspot.com/2012/08/wombat.htmlReport

  19. Shazbot4 says:
    May 9, 2013 at 3:55 pm

    There is a picture of a nerdy, glasses wearing peacock, here (I like the hearts, too):

    http://www.picturesof.net/pages/081025-022444-742042.htmlReport

  20. Burt Likko says:
    May 10, 2013 at 12:43 am

    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. Russell M says:
    May 10, 2013 at 8:21 am

    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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