HUNTINGTON BEACH – Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing – a movie. From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film.

After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.
The company flew an employee with a DVD of Up, which is only in theaters, to the Curtins’ Huntington Beach home on June 10 for a private viewing of the movie.

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Another year, another Anthrocon draws near. Recently there has been some turmoil in the fandom because someone out there wanted to make a fursuit out of real fur. This was frowned upon by most and eventually it died down. But eventually PETA got a hold of this piece of information and decided to write a letter to the Anthrocon CEO. Unfortunately their research was a bit lacking, which resulted in a rather hilarious response.

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After Frank Gembeck, a babyfur in the US, who was the aide of Senator McCandless, known for her tough stance on sex-crimes, was arrested for soliciting for sex with a minor. According to the Post Gazette.

He used the screen name "alan_panda_bear" in his messages. He also used that name for an online personal ad that depicts cartoonish panda bears, one wearing a diaper.

"I'm a Daddyfur and Caretaker and I am looking for a babyfur to be my mate and my companion in a long-term committed relationship," the ad says. "I am a hopeless romantic and very affectionate, freely giving hugs, scritches, cuddles and kisses."

According to the ad, he wanted someone 20 to 25, who has a car and would call him Daddy. He and the victim had planned to meet Tuesday night near the boy's house, but he never showed up, said Nils Fredricksen, spokesman for Attorney General Tom Corbett.

Read more: "Orie aide accused of soliciting teen for 'furry' sex" - [link]

The winners of the 2008 Ursa Major Awards are out. And amongst one of the winners is the graphic Alex" >[link] Vance. The Dutchfurs staff would like to congratulate him with this well deserved victory.

Quentin 'Cubist ' Long here. Last week, I announced a special pre-order deal for THE FIRST BOOK OF LAPISM, by Phil Geusz... and I made a mistake. When I calculated the postage for this deal, I was counting the number of *pages* in the book... but what matters for postage is mass, and that means counting the number of *sheets of paper* in the book.
In other words, I overestimated how much it would cost to ship the thing to most places on the planet (US pre-orders will be shipped via Media Mail, hence aren't affected by my error).
Fortunately, this means I can cut the cost on FIRST BOOK OF LAPISM pre-orders... and that's what this here message is about! The book is still going to be on sale on 1 June 2009, and anybody who pre-orders it *before* 1 June 2009 is still going to receive a copy which has been personally autographed by the author, Phil Geusz himself; all that's changed is the cost.
And yes, the contents of THE FIRST BOOK OF LAPISM haven't changed. The book will contain these four tales...

* DRAMA CLASS, the story of one of the first people born into the faith.
* FULL IMMERSION, about what happens to a man who converted to Lapism for all the wrong reasons.
* SCHISM, the tale of Lapism's first major crisis.
* IN THE BEGINNING, in which you'll discover intimate secrets of how and why Lapism came to be.

...and the way you get your hands on a copy is also unchanged. All you need do is send the pre-order price via PayPal *before 1 June 2009* to cubist[at]aol[dot]com; when the book is released, we'll print up a copy that Phil Geusz will autograph especially for you!

USD $20 ($15 + $5 shipping/handling) for residents of the United States
USD $26 ($15 + $11 s/h) for residents of Canada
USD $32 ($15 + $17 s/h) for residents of Mexico
USD $35 ($15 + $20 s/h) for residents of all other nations

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get an autographed first edition of a book by one of furdom's finest authors. Can you afford to miss it?

--
ANTHRO fantasy & science fiction -- It's furry. It's the *good* stuff.
Online: [link] -- always free!
Offline: [link] -- ANTHROlogy One: 602 pages; 4.1
cents a page, cheap!
Offline: [link] -- THE HUMAN MEMOIRS: Stranger in
a *really* strange land...

Allwine got the role in 1976. He was only the third person -- Walt Disney was the first -- to voice the character. 'It's really not about me; it's about Mickey, and Mickey is Walt's,' he once said. Wayne Allwine, a Walt Disney Studios voice-over artist who was the voice of Mickey Mouse for more than three decades, has died. He was 62. Allwine, an Emmy Award-winning former sound effects editor and foley artist, died of complications of diabetes early Monday morning at UCLA Medical Center, said his voice-over artist wife, Russi Taylor.

The Glendale couple had a unique distinction: In 1991, Allwine, the voice of Mickey Mouse, married Taylor, the voice of Minnie Mouse. "Wayne was my hero," Taylor, who began voicing Minnie in 1986, told The Times on Wednesday. "He really loved doing Mickey Mouse and was very proud that he did it 32 years." Since Mickey Mouse first hit movie theaters in the cartoon short "Steamboat Willie" in 1928, only three people have supplied the iconic cartoon character's distinctive falsetto: Walt Disney himself, Jimmy Macdonald and Allwine.

In 1947, Disney turned the job over to Macdonald, the studio's sound-effects wizard. Allwine was hired for the job in late 1976 while working in sound effects under Macdonald and continued to supply Mickey's voice until his death. Allwine made his debut voicing the world's most famous mouse on "The New Mickey Mouse Club" (1977-78) and went on to supply Mickey's voice for Disney movies, TV specials, theme parks, records, toys and video games.

(Source: LA Times)

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Two sources have told that 3D Realms is shutting down, both Tom's Hardware and The 3D Realms Webmaster say that the company is no more.

So it turns out Duke Nukem Forever will be the ultimate vaporware after all. Literally more than a decade of development hell, different engines and waiting has finally come to an end. Unfortunately not with the ending we wanted to have.

UPDATE: Apogee Software and Deep Silver have just issued statement to Shacknews, confirming that there is a "situation at 3D Realms" but stressing they are not affected.

"Deep Silver and Apogee Software are not affected by the situation at 3D Realms. Development on the Duke Nukem Trilogy is continuing as planned."

A Kent library has been visited almost every day for two years by its own "puss in books", the council has said. Fidel, an eight-year-old black cat, turns up at Deal library almost every day while his owners are at work. He spends the day on his favourite blue chair, only leaving the building when he sees his owners arriving home. Staff say they have never tried to encourage Fidel with food and even used to put him outside when he first began to visit them, but he always came back.

Heather Hilton, district manager for Deal Library, said: "Fidel certainly seems to like coming here and he's very popular with our customers. "I think he's a bit of an art critic too because we sometimes see him examining the pictures on the gallery wall," she added. A spokeswoman for Kent County Council which runs the library said Fidel was such a "dedicated customer" that he sometimes arrived before staff and could be found waiting at the front door. Fidel is a rescue cat, whose owners chose him from a local sanctuary after he was found abandoned in a flat in Deal.

(Source: BBC)

WARSAW (Reuters) - A Polish politician has criticized his local zoo for acquiring a "gay" elephant named Ninio who prefers male companions and will probably not procreate, local media reported Friday. "We didn't pay 37 million zlotys ($11 million) for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there," Michal Grzes, a conservative councilor in the city of Poznan in western Poland, was quoted as saying.

"We were supposed to have a herd, but as Ninio prefers male friends over females how will he produce offspring?" said Grzes, who is from the right-wing opposition Law and Justice party. The head of the Poznan zoo said 10-year-old Ninio may be too young to decide whether he prefers males or females as elephants only reach sexual maturity at 14.

(Source: Reuters)

BUILDINGS were evacuated, a street was cordoned off and a bomb disposal team called in after workmen spotted a suspicious object. But the dangerous-looking weapon turned out to be the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, made famous in the 1975 film Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

Police and a fire crew were first on the scene in Shoreditch, east London, when water company workers found a copy of the film prop under a fire hydrant cover. They evacuated a pub and another building in Tabernacle Street, while office staff in another building were stopped from leaving.

But when the bomb squad arrived, they quickly established there was no danger and the street was declared safe. In the film, the grenade was used to slaughter a killer rabbit. Python actor Eric Idle had filmgoers in stitches as he said: "Oh Lord. Bless this hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy."

Alberto Romanelli, who owns the Windmill pub nearby, said the police action in ordering his pub to be evacuated had been as ridiculous as the film scene. "They evacuated the pub while they were doing X-rays and stuff," he said. "It all lasted about 45 minutes before they decided it was nothing - which I thought was pretty obvious from the start. I lost a good hour's worth of business." Emma Eve, a training centre receptionist, said: "It was scary. They wouldn't let us out of the building." Office worker Graham White said: "The situation was nearly as crazy as the film."

(Source: This Is London)