All posts by fontfolly

About fontfolly

I've loved reading for as long as I can remember. I write fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and nonfiction. For more than 20 years I edited and published an anthropomorphic sci-fi/space opera literary fanzine. I attend and work on the staff for several anthropormorphics, anime, and science fiction conventions. I live near Seattle with my wonderful husband, still completely amazed that he puts up with me at all. View all posts by fontfolly →

Sunday Funnies, part 16

March 13, 2016bloggingcomics, funnies, things I like, web comicsfontfolly

Another in my series of posts recommending web comics. I haven’t posted one of these in several months, which makes me feel more than a little guilty. Anyway, here are a couple of new strips for your enjoyment:

Scurry by Mac Smith is the story of a colony of mice trying to survive a long, strange winter in a world where humans have mysteriously vanished, and food is becoming ever more scarce. The artwork is really good, with an interesting cast of characters and a very intriguing premise. You assume that something apocalyptic has happened to the humans, but you aren’t sure what it is. Whatever has happened, it clearly has set up an apocalypse for the mouse colony. Which made me think of the observation Terry Pratchett made in more than one book: every day someone’s world ends. Scurry is a very good comic. And I’m so glad I found it relatively early in the story. I’m hanging on the edge of my seat, waiting for the next installment! Also, thanks so much to my friend, Atara, for recommending it!

Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu. I discovered this comic recently when several blogs I follow on tumblr featured what looked like fan art from a show or comic that I’d never heard of. And what really got me were some of the excited comments of these fans. But they weren’t mentioning the name of whatever this story was, just some for the character names, so I had to google a bit until I finally found out that Check, Please is the story of Eric “Bitty” Biddle, a former junior figure skating champion from a southern state who is attending fictitious Samwell College in Massachuseets, where he plays on the men’s hockey team. Bitty is the smallest guy on the team, and in the early comics is dealing with a phobia of being body-checked in the games (before college he played in a co-ed league where checking was not allowed). He’s an enthusiastic baker, and a die hard Beyoncé fan. The comic to date covers his Freshmen and Sophomore years, featuring an endearing cast of characters, and mostly low-key drama. There is an associated twitter account (though it is currently locked as private because it contains spoilers for the coming episodes). I was immediately hooked and zoomed through the whole series of comics in a single evening. I can’t wait to find out what happens next!

Some of the comics I’ve previously recommended:

“Mr. Cow,” by Chuck Melville tells the tale of a clueless cow with Walter Cronkite dreams. If the twice-weekly gags about a barnyard of a newsroom aren’t enough excitement for you the same artist also writes and draws (and colors!) some awesome fantasy series: Champions of Katara and Felicia, Sorceress of Katara. If you like Mr. Cow, Felicia, or Flagstaff (the hero of Champions of Katara) you can support the artist by going to his Patreon Page. Also, can I interest you in a Mr. Cow Mug?

“Deer Me,” by Sheryl Schopfer tells the tales from the lives of three friends (and former roommates) who couldn’t be more dissimilar while being surprisingly compatible. If you enjoy Deer Me, you can support the artist by going to her Patreon Page!

And I love this impish girl thief with a tail and her reluctant undead sorcerer/bodyguard: “Unsounded,” by Ashley Cope.

Muddler’s Beat by Tony Breed is the fun, expanded cast sequel to Finn and Charlie Are Hitched.

The Young Protectors by Alex Wolfson begins when a young, closeted teen-age superhero who has just snuck into a gay bar for the first time is seen exiting said bar by a not-so-young, very experienced, very powerful, super-villain. Trouble, of course, ensues.

Tripping Over You by Suzana Harcum and Owen White is a strip about a pair of friends in school who just happen to fall in love… which eventually necessitates one of them coming out of the closet. Tripping Over You has several books, comics, and prints available for purchase.

If you want to read a nice, long graphic-novel style story which recently published its conclusion, check-out the not quite accurately named, The Less Than Epic Adventures of T.J. and Amal by E.K. Weaver. I say inaccurate because I found their story quite epic (not to mention engaging, moving, surprising, fulfilling… I could go on). Some sections of the tale are Not Safe For Work, as they say, though she marks them clearly. The complete graphic novels are available for sale in both ebook and paper versions, by the way.

Weekend Update 3/12/2016 – there’s always silence

March 12, 2016newsgay, lgbt, news, personal, religious right, rightwing, wingnutsfontfolly

I already ranted last night about it: Blood stains on their hands, but it is really difficult to let it go. People I knew and loved went to early graves as a direct result of the indifference, contempt, and utter lack of compassion of an entire administration. It wasn’t just them, I know. One of the examples I gave last night was a preacher who had nothing to do with either one of the Reagans. But they were in a position of leadership. They were there when one of the world’s leading experts on epidemics made the case for why government action was desperately needed, and they responded by saying that it wasn’t actually a health crisis. Never mind that it is a virus, never mind that it was killing hundreds, then thousands of people. They laughed. Go listen to that recording I linked to last night, and think about it for a minute: hundreds of young people dying in horrible pain, and they laughed.

Why Is Hillary Clinton Trying to Rewrite Nancy Reagan’s Shameful Inaction on HIV/AIDS??

Hillary Clinton’s Reagan AIDS Revisionism Is Shocking, Insulting, and Utterly Inexplicable.

It’s hard for one ugly episode to stand out among so many ugly aspects of the Reagan administration, but Nancy and Ronald’s deliberate silence on one of the defining public health crises of the era is surely near the top of any list. What Clinton is saying isn’t just untrue, but erases the deadly legacy of the Reagan era.

I agree with each word of the headline. Especially the inexplicable part. Why? When Bill Clinton was running against George H.W. Bush for President in 1992, Bill and Hillary both talked publicly about the inadequate attention that the Bush and Reagan administrations had given to AIDS/HIV research, and assistance to people both inside and outside the U.S. suffering and dying because of HIV. Queers came out in unprecedented numbers to support and donate to Clinton’s campaign, because they made us believe that they saw us as human, which is something we didn’t see from either Bush or the Reagans. She knew that the Reagan administration had not just ignored AIDS, but actively impeded medical research and aid programs.

The Reagan Administration’s Unearthed Response to the AIDS Crisis Is Chilling.

Clinton Just Said Nancy Reagan Helped Start ‘A National Conversation’ About AIDS, Which Is Insane.

13 Times The Reagan White House Press Briefing Erupted With Laughter Over AIDS.

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan Watched Thousands of LGBTQ People Die of AIDS.

Hours later, Clinton offered a tepid apology: Hillary Clinton apologizes for praising Nancy Reagan’s response to HIV/AIDS. She misspoke? If it had been a brief comment where she had merely mentioned AIDS alongside Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, which were illnesses Nancy Reagan spoke out on later in life, breaking with Republican rhetoric against stem-cell research at the time, I might be able to believe that she misspoke. But Hilary had a long lead up to that. She said how difficult it was for anyone to talk about HIV/AIDS during the 80s, and so on. That wasn’t just a poor choice of words or a matter of mentioning one disease along with others. That was a well-thought out, planned talking point. And it was more than just a minor factual error, it was a whole pile of lies!

I know that there are other big things going on in the world that we could be talking about. The Nazi-salute throwing lady at the Trump rally, or the insane attempt by the big bully himself and his supporters to claim that their decision to cancel an appearance rather than face protestors means that they are victims (when they’ve been the ones literally attacking, punching, and violently tackling people who they only suspect might be protestors). Or people dying in floods in Louisiana and Texas. There are refugee crises and consequences and many more things to worry about, yes.

The Black Sheep. May, 1990 - April 1991, First Avenue between 1st Street and Houston. Photo © Dona Ann Mc Adams — The Black Sheep. May, 1990 – April 1991, First Avenue between 1st Street and Houston. Photo © Dona Ann Mc Adams

And I know if I keep giving in to my anger over this, it does me no good. Fortunately, I was reminded yesterday that there are other ways to remember and mourn those we lost. Other ways to indict those who sat silently by, or laughed, or offered public prayers thanking god for giving such pain and suffering to us. A friend reminded me of this poem, which was published on a bronze plaque mounted in a park in New York City for many months back in 1990-91, where it was erected by Creative Time, an organization that sponsors public art. The friend actually saw the bronze plaque while it was on display.

“Black Sheep” was written by Karen Finley and intended as a public poem. It opens with:

After a funeral someone said to me –
You know I only see you at funerals
it’s been 3 since June –
been 5 since June for me –
He said I’ve made a vow –
I only go to death parties if I know someone before
they were sick –
Why?
cause – cause – cause I feel I feel so
sad cause I never knew their life –
and now I only know their death
And because we are members of the
Black Sheep family –

In the middle it observes:

We’re related to people we love who can’t say –
I love you Black Sheep daughter
I love you Black Sheep son –
I love you outcast, I love you outsider
But tonight we love each other –
That’s why we’re here –
to be around others like ourselves –
So it doesn’t hurt quite so much –
In our world, our temple of difference –
I am at my loneliest when I have
something to celebrate and try
to share it with those I love but
who don’t love me back.
There’s always silence at the end
of the phone –
There’s always silence at the end
of the phone –

The full text is available at the Creative Time archive here.

Blood stains on their hands

March 11, 2016newsbigots, gay, history, lgbt, religious right, rightwing, wingnutsfontfolly

Silence = Death became a rallying cry that led to the formation of ACT-UP as the queer community declared, ‘silence about the oppression and annihilation of gay people must be broken as a matter of our survival.’ " — Silence = Death became a rallying cry that led to the formation of ACT-UP as the queer community declared, ‘silence about the oppression and annihilation of gay people must be broken as a matter of our survival.’ “

I included three links in this morning’s link post that were less than complimentary of former First Lady Nancy Reagan. That was a limited list. A whole lot more went across my social streams this week. I tried to limit it only to criticisms of things she had been directly involved in. I wasn’t going to say anything more about her. I hoped to avoid any coverage of her funeral. I tried. Oh, I tried.

Every year on December 1st, because it is World AIDS Day, I post a list of names. They are the names of people I knew personally who died from complications of AIDS. Those names are: Frank, Mike, Tim, David, Todd, Chet, Jim, Steve, Brian, Rick, Stacy, Phil, Mark, Michael, Jerry, Walt, Charles, Thomas, Mike, Richard, Bob, Mikey, James, Lisa, Todd, Kerry, Glen, and Jack.

Let me be clear, that isn’t every single person I knew who died from the disease. Those are only the ones I knew well enough that I cry when I type their name. Yes, I’m crying now. I have been alternating between crying and shaking with rage since reading that Hilary Clinton said, “The Reagans, particularly Nancy, helped start ‘a national conversation’ about HIV and AIDS.” And then went on to describe her as an advocate for AIDS research!

I get it. Nancy Reagan just died, and Hilary’s a politician on a national stage and is expected only to say nice things about the recently deceased. Fine. Compliment Mrs Reagan on bucking the rest of the Republican establishment and coming out in favor of stem-cell research. Never mind that it was for selfish reasons, at least it was for a worthy goal. But the Reagans absolutely did not open a national conversation about HIV and AIDS. We in the queer community had been shouting, begging the powers that be to do something, anything about it for five years (while tens of thousands in the U.S. were infected, and thousands died) before President Reagan actually mentioned the name of the disease in public. It took another two years before he referred to it as a health crisis—and don’t forget that Reagan recommended a $10-million cut in AIDS research spending the same year that the U.S. death toll reached 5,500.

When the Reagans’s close friend, Rock Hudson, was dying of the disease, trying to get into a hospital in Paris to try an experimental treatment, Nancy, after receiving a desperate telegram asking for her help, wouldn’t even authorize a staff member to call the hospital on her behalf to ask if they might let Hudson (who wasn’t a French citizen, of course) in.

Listen to this recording of a Whitehouse press briefing when a reporter asks about the Whitehouse’s reaction to a Center for Disease Control bulletin about A-I-D-S, “also called the gay cancer” officially labelling it an epidemic:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

You almost can’t hear the reporter ask, “In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?” because everyone keeps laughing.

As I mentioned above, that list I post every year consists only of the people I knew well enough that I still cry thinking about them decades later. Through the early nineties, my late husband and I went to more funerals and memorial services than I can count. Many of them were people he had known before we met. Some of them were friends, lovers, or relatives of people one or the other of us knew, but we hadn’t been particularly close to the deceased ourselves. We went to the services to support the people who were mourning the death. We went to the services because sometimes the deceased’s own families wouldn’t attend. Sometimes we held services separate from the family’s because the partner/lover/life-long companion was barred from the official funeral by the family.

There was more than one time that we had to choose which memorial service to go to, because more than one was happening at the same time, and too far apart for us to attend a part of both. So many people were dying, we had to choose who not to comfort, because at the point when research and medical intervention could have limited the spread of the disease, people at the Whitehouse had been laughing at our suffering and dying.

And then to have Clinton, who has tried to portray herself as an ally of the queer community, praise Nancy for being an advocate for AIDS research? That’s when I lost it.

I was deeply closeted in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I had only a very small number of sexual encounters with other men during the time when so many were getting infected with the virus that no one knew existed. Even with that limited exposure, it is shear luck that I’m alive to bear witness to those years. Even though I wasn’t out, once the illness had been identified, I was keenly aware of how ordinary Americans perceived it. One of the most chilling moments for me came while sitting in a pew of a church in 1984. Our heads were all bowed in prayer, and the visiting pastor leading the prayer actually thanked god for the “plague of AIDS which you have sent to exterminate the homosexuals.”

Reading Clinton’s comments took me back to that moment. People like Nancy Reagan were not having a conversation about how to save people from AIDS, nor were they advocating for research for a cure. People like Nancy Reagan were thanking god for our suffering.

Never mind that Jesus commanded his followers to take care of the sick. He didn’t say to care for the sick that we deemed worthy. He didn’t say to care for the sick that lived a specific lifestyle. He specifically said to care for the sick, and people in prisons, and other outcasts of society. He said that the way you treated those outcasts was how you treated him. And he said that anyone who came to him on the day of judgment and had not cared for the sick, prisoners, outcasts, and the other “least of these” would be cast out of heaven and into the eternal fire; because they were not following his commandment.

But we’re not supposed to say anything like that about a famous person who has died. Even if she refused to raise a finger to help one dying friend get medical treatment. And apparently especially if she helped impede access to treatment for hundreds of thousands of people who were sick and dying. We’re apparently supposed to lie and say that she helped the very people whose blood is on her hands.

Friday Links (repurposed fence edition)

March 11, 2016bloggingfriday, friday links, linksfontfolly

Thank goodness it’s Friday. Both my husband and I are still on antibiotics. I’m starting to feel less miserable. I’m really hoping we both feel actually well, soon.

Anyway, here are links to some of the interesting things I read on the web this week, sorted into various topic areas.

Links of the Week

You may remember a link from a couple of weeks ago where a writer lamented that a publication’s call for submissions didn’t want any stories from a native american or indigenous point of view. The editor responded, but not by being defensive:
Just Wait Until Twitter Comes For You: Addressing and Fixing Unintended Privilege and Bigotry.

“TL;DR: When a social justice criticism was brought to us, we acknowledged the mistake, engaged with those criticizing, and fixed the problem instead of doubling down or protesting that wasn’t what we meant. It worked to resolve the problem and helped us clarify the message we meant to send.”

News for queers and our allies:

Last Men Standing – They had the remarkable luck to survive AIDS, and the brutal misfortune to live on.. “In the darkest years of the epidemic in the 1980s and ’90s, AIDS was almost always fatal; the prognosis was a few years, maybe a few months. These men, then in their 20s and 30s, weren’t supposed to make it to 40. Now some are 60 years old, even 70, still alive but wounded physically, psychologically and economically.”

What the EEOC’s lawsuit against Scott Medical Center could mean for Pa. state law.

Lambda Legal Wins Lawsuit Against Feds For Social Security Benefits For Lesbian Widow.

200 years of LGBT rights in 1 map.

Lack of a singular vision for LGBT rights isn’t a cause for despair, especially when competing visions drive innovation.

Bisexuals, Passing, and Straight Privilege: A Deeper Look.

NYC Guarantees the Right to Enter a Bathroom Matching One’s Gender Identity.

Kenmore Jr High improves bathroom access for transgender students.

Irish TV show to feature first-ever same-sex marriage.

Federal Court Says That Title VII Does Not Prohibit Anti Gay Bias — Yet.

EXTRAORDINARY PHOTOS OF A GAY MOTORCYCLE CLUB IN THE 1960S.

Happy News!

President Jimmy Carter announces end of cancer treatments.

Science!

Huge Population of Rare Whales Found off Madagascar. Video of the rarely seen Omura’s whales (sort of a dwarf fin whale)

With Seattle Aquarium’s help, stranded sea turtle makes dramatic comeback.

Factoring of numbers achieved through scalable quantum computer.

This Scientist Crunched The Numbers And Discovered The Monetary Cost Of Not Being A Straight Man.

Scientists Say Some Birds Are Just as Smart as Apes.

Chew On This: Slicing Meat Helped Shape Modern Humans.

99 million year old fossil found in amber in South East Asia.

New micro-CT scanner allows inside view of even the tiniest fossils.

Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculation!

Men of Their Times.

It’s HERE! Get over a million words of fiction from this year’s Campbell-eligible authors!

THE WRITER WHO MADE ME LOVE COMICS TAUGHT ME TO HATE THEM.

‘The Expanse:’ Best Science-Fiction Show In A Decade.

This week in Writing

“You can teach craft but you can’t teach talent.” The most useless creative writing cliché?

Idra Novey Recommends….

Fargo turns 20 today. Its fans are still arguing about this scene.

Culture war news:

Christian Activist Theodore Shoebat Supports Violent Vigilante Attacks Against Gay Rights Activists.

US Supreme Court overturns Alabama court ruling against same-sex adoption.

When Falling In Love Can Put Your Life In Danger.

Supreme Court to Shitty Hate States: Get Over It Already.

The War On Cars: Pedestrian Deaths Skyrocketing.

NFL still in closet about anti-gay culture.

Federal Judge Rules Marriage Ban Still Good Law In Puerto Rico, Governor Disagrees.

Missouri Religious Protection Bill Passes After 37 Hour Filibuster.

Rafael Cruz: ‘Gay marriage shall destroy society’.

Bisexual Man Convicted Of Hate Crime In Killing Of Gay Man. People don’t understand hate crime laws. His sole defense was that since he’s bisexual, it couldn’t be hate…

This Week in the Clown Car

Debate Recap: Cruz, Trump and Kasich Double Down on Anti-LGBT Rhetoric.

Money Pours In as Move to Stop Donald Trump Expands.

Ted Cruz’s Michigan Campaign Co-Chair Wants to Criminalize Homosexuality.

A Final Attempt to Understand Ben Carson’s Deeply Weird Presidential Campaign.

Donald Trump says everybody loves him. This chart proves him very wrong.

Defending Islam Isn’t Political Correctness, Marco Rubio Tells Donald Trump.

Cruz balks at campaign-loan disclosure.

John Kasich’s (not so) secret extremism: How the “moderate” alternative to Trump led a Planned Parenthood witchhunt in Ohio.

This week in Other Politics:

In Response to Question about Republican Claims that Obama is to Blame for Trump and Extremeist, President says GOP leaders to blame for party ‘crackup’. In other news, water is wet…

Inside the first-ever summit calling for an end to the “suicidal death pact between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia”.

The Obama Doctrine – The U.S. president talks through his hardest decisions about America’s role in the world..

Farewells:

Gary Hutzel, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica VFX artist, dies at 60.

Ray Tomlinson, email inventor who picked the @ sign for addresses, dies.

Rev. Robert Palladino, Scribe Who Shaped Apple’s Fonts, Dies at 83.

And Another Departure:

Nancy Reagan dies aged 94, LGBT community remembers her shitty history on AIDS crisis.

Nancy Reagan Turned Down Rock Hudson’s Plea For Help Nine Weeks Before He Died.

Cat’s Story: Straight, Inc. and Why I Despise Nancy Reagan.

Things I wrote:

Weekend Update 3/4/2016 – When a dog whistle becomes a bullhorn.

Trigger Warning: misogyny, racism, Frank Miller (but I repeat myself).

Is it worth the outrage? – part three.

Confessions of a cluttering packrat.

Uniques and Reborns, Computers and Telepaths – more of why I love sf/f.

Videos!

Years & Years – Desire ft. Tove Lo:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Menow – Baby You’re Like A Drug:

http://cache.vevo.com/assets/html/embed.html?video=QMGR31602370&autoplay=0

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Ben Carson: GOP DROPOUT – Song Parody by Randy Rainbow:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

BAND-MAID / Don’t let me down:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Orkestra Obselete Blue Monday 1933:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Gives Us The Bi Anthem We’ve Been Waiting For:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

R.I.P. GOP (Part 1) | Full Frontal with Samantha Bee | TBS:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

R.I.P. GOP (Part 2) | Full Frontal with Samantha Bee | TBS:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

[Eng Sub] McCafé’s Gay Ads in Taiwan:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War – Trailer 2:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Uniques and Reborns, Computers and Telepaths – more of why I love sf/f

March 10, 2016genregenre, memories, sci fi, science fiction, things I like, Throwback Thursday, ThrowbackThursdayfontfolly

Cover of Arthur C. Clarke's -The City and the Stars- (Click to embiggen) — Cover of Arthur C. Clarke’s -The City and the Stars- (Click to embiggen)

I think I was 16 when I found a battered paperback copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars in a used bookstore. This was not my first Clarke novel. That had been 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I had found in a library a few years before. I wouldn’t see the movie until many years later. I had also read many of Clarke’s short stories, so I was familiar with his work and his reputation as one of the best.

I had never heard of this particular novel, but the description on the back cover was intriguing, and since he had such a reputation, I felt almost obligated to read more of his work.

The story is set a billion years in the future, in the city of Diaspar, which is the last home of mankind. Humans are effectively immortal. Individuals are “born” nearly full grown in essentially replicators, and they live in the perfect unchanging city creating art and exploring philosophy or literature or poetry for hundreds or even thousands of years, until they decide to rest, at which point their memories are transferred back to the central memory banks and their bodies un-replicated. Until some random interval later when the computer will determine they need to be reborn again.

Into this world is born our protagonist, Alvin, who has no memory of a past life… Continue reading Uniques and Reborns, Computers and Telepaths – more of why I love sf/f →

Confessions of a cluttering packrat

March 9, 2016lifeclutter, life, packrat, personal, teafontfolly

Fuzzy phone picture I took shortly after moving about 14 boxes of tea into this organizer.

I have mentioned many times that I am a packrat, son of packrats, grandson of packrats, great-grandson of packrats. On top of that, my husband is also a packrat son of packrats… so I hang onto things. I save things that other people would give away/take to Goodwill/throw away because “we might need that some day!”

It’s the reason we found multiple old microwave ovens hidden in the closets of my maternal grandmother’s house after she died. It’s the reason that clearing out the first bedroom in grandma’s house filled up the beds of three of my cousins’s pickup trucks more than four times each for trips to thrift stores and the dump. And it’s the reason that any time I replace an old appliance or gadget or household item with a new one, I hear that phrase, “you might need that some day!” in my Grandma’s voice. I essentially have to have an argument with Grandma’s ghost every single time I even contemplate discarding an item.

And Grandma’s ghost is stubborn!

Another eccentricity I have is They’re All My Favorite syndrome. For instance, I like tea. I admit to being a cultureless American who grew up on Lipton tea bags, I have made real tea with loose leaf teas, but 99.8% of the time I make tea from tea bags. And I have favorites. I love Numi Aged Earl Grey, for instance. And Stash Double Bergamot, and Stash Earl Grey Green & Black, and Revolution Earl Grey Lavender, and Numi Jasmine Blosson Green Tea, and Stash Lemon Ginger Green, and Twinnings Darjeeling, and Revolution Peach Ginger Black, and Revolution Dragon Eye Oolong, and Revolution Jasmine Blackberry Oolong, and Twinnings Orange & Cinnamon Spice, and let’s just admit that absolutely any blend that has Bergamot or Lavender in it will be bought by me and tried at least once, so there are always about ten Earl Greys of one sort or another…

And don’t get me started on Bigelow Raspberry Royale that used to be carried in all the grocery stores around here but I have to order it online—when it is in stock, which isn’t often!

The problem is, I love all of these teas, and I buy boxes of the teas, but I have tended to buy teas faster than I drink them. I take some boxes in to work, but I drink the free office provided coffee in the morning, switching to tea in the afternoon. Because I really need the strong caffeine hit of the coffee! Making tea with a kettle on the stove, particularly since most of the time I’m only making it for one, has always been more of a hassle than making a pot of coffee in the morning and reheating it as needed, or grabbing something premade out of the fridge if I want something other than water.

And for various health reasons, I’ve been cultivating a habit of drinking a glass or mug of plain water whenever I head into the kitchen looking for something to drink. As in, I don’t allow myself to pour some coffee or grab a bottle out of the fridge until I’ve drank water.

I have almost bought myself an electric tea kettle many times, but then feel guilty because the house is already cluttered everywhere, and do we really need another appliance that has only one purpose?

The last time our coffee maker died, my husband talked me into buying the model that had a separate tea maker. All it really is is a second separate water reservoir and separate heating element and so on that makes hot water that you can dispense in a cup in the separate location from the coffee pot. So now I make tea much more often.

Unfortunately, this had the effect of making me start buying even more tea. Thankfully, some weeks back my friend J’wyl sent me a link to a tea bag organizer thing that was selling pretty cheap on Amazon. Another friend she shared the link with bought it right away and waxed rhapsodic about how much it cleaned up his big pile of tea boxes. So I bit the bullet. I shared the picture at the top of this post with them the day after I moved tea bags out of boxes and disposed of about 14 boxes. I wish I’d taken a picture of the pile of empty boxes.

You can see in the picture I did take that I couldn’t get all of the tea bags into the organizer. For one thing, the larger Revolution bags don’t fit (and if you don’t keep them in their airtight resealable ziplock foil bag, they lose a lot of their flavor fairly quickly). But it does help. The compartments only hold about 12 bags each. The are another six compartments on the back side, so it holds about 144 tea bags, which I realize is a lot. Most of the teas I buy come in boxes of 18-24, so it would be nice if the compartments were a little bit bigger, but it is definitely an improvement over the pile of boxes. Particularly since a box that only has a couple of bags in it takes up just as much space as the brand new, completely full box.

It is a teeny, tiny step against the clutter. But an improvement!

Is it worth the outrage? – part three

March 8, 2016culturebigots, culture, equalityfontfolly

A couple of years ago I set myself a personal goal to “Reduce the Outrage.” I modified it and combined it with another last year, and carried it over again this year¹. I’ve been sick off-and-on² for about nine weeks, which means I’m cranky and prone to overreact a lot of the time. In one of the social/cultural spheres I inhabit, certain events are underway which increases the number of things being said about topics in which I have a lot of personal investment. Add to that the histrionics of the U.S. presidential campaign season, and it is really easy for me to find myself in an outraged state.

I’ve written before about letting oneself become outraged in unproductive ways, becoming resentful rather than doing something constructive, for instance. And I’ve quoted before the old proverb, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.”

The whole reason I set those goals about reducing outrage is because unproductive outrage is toxic and self-destruction and does no good to anyone.

But anger is a symptom of pain, and it is just as self-destructive to ignore pain. Finding something to do to alleviate the harm isn’t always easy. Root causes of many problems are beyond our control. I’m a writer; language is my primary toolset for tackling many problems. Unfortunately, analysis is something of an obsession with me, so I will over-analyze things and easily fall into a toxic spiral of writing, revising, ranting, revising, trying to be reasonable, revising some more—feeling increasingly frustrated and more outraged at every step.

I’ve been stuck in one such spiral for about two weeks.

Then, through a series of fortuitous clicks (reading one article, clicking a link in it, reading the referenced blog post, clicking a link in it, et cetera), I came across this post from Steve Saus⁴ from last May that said one of the things I’ve been thinking about so much perfectly: And you shall know them by their works. It says it so well, and more importantly, so succinctly, that I’m just going to quote the whole thing here:

There are two sides in our current culture wars.

But don’t decide which side is which by their names.

You will know them by their actions.

One side works so that everyone should have an opportunity to do something – get married, be nominated for an award, pee in whatever bathroom, be on television.

The other side already can – and has – done all those things. That side works so that only their group can get married, be nominated for an award, pee in a bathroom, or be on television.

Forget the labels for a second.

Are you working to give more people the same chances and opportunities… or to deny chances and opportunities to someone else?

It all comes down to that. Are you working to give people opportunities, or are you trying to keep opportunity out of their hands?

Footnotes:

1. A post has long been brewing about my failure to post monthly goal reports the last two months of last year, and how I’m handling my goals this year.

2. Or maybe it’s continuously and those stretches of several days when I thought I was well in between the symptoms were just pauses in the illness. We’re not sure.³

3. Adding to the uncertainty is the fact that my husband has been sick much of the same time, though frequently our symptoms are out of synch. So when I’ve been feeling almost recovered, he’s been at his worst.

4. Steve Saus is a writer, editor, and publisher who blogs at Idea Trash. A blog which has now joined my regular reading list.

Trigger Warning: misogyny, racism, Frank Miller (but I repeat myself)

March 7, 2016genrecomics, genre, homophobia, misogyny, rightwing, wingnutsfontfolly

Five years ago when Miller compared Occupy protestors to terrorists and filthy lazy hippies, Ty Templeton responded with a comic that included these panels. https://tytempletonart.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/special-bonus-frank-miller-bun-toons-extra-yay-yay/

I had somehow missed that fact that we’re at the 30 year anniversary of The Dark Knight Returns, a comic story by Frank Miller that told of a dystopian future Gotham City where various events cause Batman to come out of retirement. It was a big deal, everyone who had any interest in comics read it. There were rave reviews. And it changed the course of Batman comics for years afterward.

I was 25 years old when The Dark Knight Returns miniseries came out, and although my comic reading had entered the long decline from the days when I would visit a comic book store as regular as clock work to pick up my weekly latest issues, I read the series and generally loved it. Generally. There were things about it that bothered me. But then, there had been things about Frank Miller’s writing and artwork that both compelled me and repulsed me for years.

He revived Daredevil, taking over as penciller and writer in 1979. By the time he left the series in 1983, he had definitively transformed a character that had been a B-list hero at best in Marvel’s pantheon, into a top tier character. But he had transformed the character through one of the most brutal acts of senseless murder of a female character apparently created for the sole purpose of becoming the hero’s mysterious love interest to be then brutally murdered to imbue the hero with the necessary man-pain to justify a lot more brutal gore-splattered comic frames later.

I could go on, but Susanna Polo has a great article about this whole thing up at Polygon.com, and you really ought to go read it: THE WRITER WHO MADE ME LOVE COMICS TAUGHT ME TO HATE THEM.

I found the article thanks to a tweet that came through my timeline, which included the tag line, “TW: misogyny, racism, Frank Miller.” Even before I clicked on the link to read the article, I thought, “But you repeat yourself. ‘Trigger Warning: Frank Miller’ already tells us about the misogyny and racism. And you left out the homophobia!”

I mean, Miller is the guy who told the story of the Spartans by completely removing every hint of their well-documented homosexuality—it wasn’t just that such relationships were tolerated, it was considered tactically vital that soldiers be lovers! And Miller turned their enemy into a sissy villain straight out of a bad 1950s story!

And don’t get me started on what he did to the Joker in The Dark Knight Returns! It makes the portrayal of Baron Harkonnen in Lynch’s Dune look like a nuanced macho, misunderstood anti-hero!

As the final panel in Ty Templeton’s comic about Frank from a few years ago notes: I used to love his work. In my case, when I was still closeted and so deeply in denial about myself that I had no clue about just how deeply messed up and hateful some of those recurring tropes that Miller used again and again were.

Weekend Update 3/4/2016 – When a dog whistle becomes a bullhorn

March 5, 2016newsnews, rightwing, wingnutsfontfolly

Trump wearing hat that says "Make America Hate Again" — Make America Hate Again (Click to embiggen)

Often my Saturday posts are about news stories I saw after posting my regular Friday Links that would have gone into the links if I had seen them earlier. Others are literal updates to a news story I had linked to on Friday which has had further developments. This is sort of the latter case, in that I had several links about this yesterday, but this isn’t really about new developments. Rather, I want to more explicitly gather my thoughts about the Frankenstein’s Monster that the Republican party has been creating for about fifty years.

Look back to the 1964 Presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater. As a Senator, Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, while claiming that he didn’t oppose civil rights for racial minorities. He just wanted civil rights to be handled at a state’s level (sound familiar?). A lot of his campaign rhetoric was about state’s rights and law and order. These were dog whistles for those white voters who felt their personal safety and economic security were threatened by non-whites.

Nixon carried on the tradition. Nixon is often credited with formally crafting the Republican’s Southern Strategy, which was to convince white working class “Dixiecrats” to abandon the Democrats and support Republicans by appealing to their racial anxieties. Nixon’s talk during the 1968 campaign of state’s rights, local control, and law and order in regards to civil rights questions and so forth seemed almost tame because George Wallace was mounting an openly segregationist campaign as the American Independent Party nominee. In private conversations with his campaign manager and supporters, Nixon worried that Wallace would capture too much of the anti-desegregation and anti-civil rights vote for the Republicans to win.

Reagan capitalized on the racial dog whistles even more, giving his strongest pro-state’s rights speech on the 1980 campaign trail in the very county in Mississippi where three civil rights activist had been murdered in 1964 for protesting the state right to segregate the races. By dog-whistle I mean political messaging using coded language which appears to mean one thing to the general population but has a different and more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup.

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*gger, n*gger, n*gger.” By 1968, you can’t say “n*gger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. …I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N*gger, n*gger.”

— Lee Atwater, Republican Party strategist in an anonymous interview in 1981

I could go on and on about how the Republicans have played a wink and nod game of saying things that didn’t sound racist in a way that clearly communicated to the racists that they were welcome in the party. Which brings us to this: Polite Hypocrite Angry that Rude Hypocrite Might Become His Party’s Nominee .

Mitt Romney lecturing Trump for being racist! Mitt Romney, who used the phrase “self-deportation” to politely say that he thought all those darn Mexican workers who are here doing jobs American citizens actually won’t take (at least that the pay that the American employers want to pay) that they aren’t welcome. Mitt Romney, who said that Obama only beat him by promising poor and black voters “free stuff.”

Here’s the thing: at no point in the campaign before the recent kerfuffles did any of the other Republican nominees differ with Trump on the notion of opposing any pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Heck, earlier in the campaign they were all fighting to show which of them was willing to be tougher about things like “anchor babies” and securing the border. At no point did any of the nominees differ with Trump on the notion that the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality was wrong. At no point did any of the nominees differ with Trump on the notion of using enhanced interrogation techniques.

They’re been upset that he’s been blatant about it.

But every one of them is just as racist, just as misogynist, just as homophobic, just as eager to bomb entire countries out of existence, just as eager to torture people, and so on.

They aren’t upset about his beliefs. They’re upset that he isn’t talking in their polite code phrases. They’re upset that instead of using dog whistles, he’s using a bullhorn.

Friday Links (March Forth on March Fourth)

March 4, 2016bloggingfriday, friday links, links, newsfontfolly

I’ve written before about an acquaintance in college who was shocked that I’d never heard the pun about this day: March Forth! It’s a date and a command!

For the last few years I’ve been observing my own March Forth tradition. I urge you all on this March Forth, to go please donate to The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

Meanwhile, thank goodness Friday. I’m seeing my doctor again today, because the last round of antibiotics didn’t knock out the infection.

Here are links to some of the interesting things I read on the web this week.