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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 →

The stages of truth

April 7, 2015lifeculture, life, societyfontfolly

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is very often quoted as saying, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” I have usually personally preferred Mahatma Ghandi’s take on this from the point of view of a person struggling for freedom and equality: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Although I have also read that Ghandi probably never said that, or if he did he was quoting a speech by labor activist Nicholas Klein.

And I’ve been quite fond of the way that blogger Driftglass merged the two and customized it to refer to a particular gay conservative columnist: “First they ignored you. Then they laughed at you. Then they fought you. Then they got gigs in national magazines repeating as breathless epiphany things you had been saying for thirty years.”

Personally, I’ve always felt as if it was more, “They erase you through ridicule, harassment, hate crimes, and criminalizing your nature; then they ridicule and violently oppose you; then they claim you’re hurting them and try passing laws that claim to be about something else but whose effect is to essentially to re-criminalize you; then they pretend that they agreed with you the whole time (while privately still ridiculing you and cheering every time a “lone psycho” commits a hate crime against you).”

Now, you may think I’m talking about gay rights, but it’s a much bigger thing than that. My topic includes:

GamerGate trying to drive women out of gaming;
the Sad Puppies trying to “take back” sci fi fandom from women, people of color, and queers;
the Teabaggers trying to “reclaim our country” from women, people of color, people who aren’t fundamentalist christians, and queers;
the Reagan revolution trying to bring back “traditional family values”;

All of those things are part of the same reactionary movement trying to shut out the other and keep the old guard in power. And while I like the beautiful simplicity of Schopenhauer’s origin, “ridicule, violently oppose, accept,” I can’t quite embrace it as the truth. Violent opposition is evident in every stage. The only thing that is different in each stage is how the violence is talked about in polite society.

The truth is that humans are a diverse bunch. But that isn’t the entire truth. We’re weird, and we disagree, and we don’t all like the same things, and we don’t all thrive in the same way, and we have different skill sets (and strengths and weaknesses), and we are hardwired to be social animals. We can’t survive without communities. Whether we call those communities families, churches, social circles, or like-minded people, we need them to survive. But we also need the bigger communities, because surviving the thriving in this world requires sharing the world.

And it’s the sharing part that irks the people fighting us even more than the fact that we’re different.

Why I hate hay fever reason #5912

April 6, 2015lifeallergies, hay fever, personalfontfolly

icanhascheeseburger.come — Except I’m too tired to remember to say please.

For the most part, I love living in the future. I carry around a computer in my pocket that is thousands of times more powerful than the computer that accompanied men to the moon, for instance. But one of the things I dislike about the current state of our modern capitalist society is that it is nearly impossible to buy certain kinds of over-the-counter medicine.

Because of all the corporate mergers, selloffs, partial acquisitions, and so forth, you can’t go to a drugstore or pharmacy section of the grocery store and quickly find a familiar medication. For instance, when you’re suffering a particular set of allergy symptoms that you know used to respond best to Comtrex. You may find boxes labeled Comtrex on the shelf, but now instead of having he ingredients that used to be found in Comtrex, they contain exactly the same ingredients that used to be found in Tylenol Cold.

Similarly, in the old days, I could buy Tylenol Cold & Allergy, and be certain that is contained an analgesic for the headache, a decongestant for the sinus congestion, and an antihistamine for the hay fever. It doesn’t, any more. Now it contains analgesic, decongestant, and an expectorant (to help you get mucous out of your lungs). Lung congestion is not typically an allergy symptom, it’s a flu symptom. They should have the expectorant in the Tylenol Cold & Flu… but they don’t. What they have in Tylenol Cold & Flu is a cough suppressant, which might also be useful with the flu, but what would be better is the expectorant which is over in the allergy-labeled brand for absolutely no good reason.

And don’t get me started on why you can’t buy a cold or allergy medication containing actual pseudo-ephedrine any longer thanks to misguided anti-methamphetamine regulations that did absolutely nothing to slow down the cheap manufacture of meth. Now we get “Sudafed” (the brand name belonging to the company that first patented pseudo-ephedrine and named by phonetically spelling the name of the active ingredient) that contains no “sudafed” at all, but rather phenylephrine, which clinical trials have shown is not an effective substitute for the vast majority of people.

On really bad hay fever days, as I’ve been having for about a week, what I need is a medication that contains acetaminophen, pseudo-ephedrine, and diphenhydramine or chlorpheniramine (analgesic, decongestant, antihistamine), in a tablet that is a nice, safe dose. And I do mean the safe dose. Back when I could find that combination, the recommended does of 2 tablets every 4 to 6 hours was seldom what I needed to take to get relief. One tablet every four hours was usually perfect.

The closest I found on the day last week I was shopping, was Nyquil-branded “Night Time Cold Caps” which contain phenylephrine instead of the pseudo-ephedrine. It’s close, but much more expensive that any generics.

I can buy plain acetaminophen, plain pseudo-ephedrine, and plain chlorpheniramine. To get the pseudo-ephedrine you have to wait in line at the pharmacy counter, tell them what you want, then wait for them to dig the giant notebook out of the secure location. They will then scrutinize your photo ID, fill out a form, make you read a statement and sign the form before selling you this drug which was FDA certified for over-the-counter sales decades ago (and is still perfectly safe if all you are going to do is swallow a pill every 6 hours as recommended). But here’s the thing: box of 24 generic cold tablets with two of the ingredients I want and one I don’t costs just a little bit less than the stand-alone pseudo-ephedrine. Likewise, the stand-alone chlorpheniramine, and the stand-alone acetaminophen.

In other words, to put together my manual version of the generic tablet that has the right ingredients costs a bit more the three times as much as buying any of the already packaged tablets with nearly the right ingredients. And I have three times as many pills to keep track of, and the real kicker? They often recommend different times between doses. So I’m trying to keep track of one pill that I’m only supposed to take every six hours along with some that I’m supposed to take every four…

The answer is, obviously, to buy the Nyquil branded stuff, which has most of what I want, is more expensive than generic but less expensive than the collection of stand-alones. Which I did. It annoys me that the box is covered with all these dire warnings about taking them at night because they might cause drowsiness. And they there are sold in enormous gel caps, which seem to degrade more than the regular tablets. At least I don’t have trouble swallowing the giant capsules. Unlike my poor husband, who gags on the big gel caps.

Not that the meds are helping as much as I’d like.

Goal check-in for April

April 4, 2015lifegoals, personal, resolutionsfontfolly

I set goals for the year and promised to update monthly. More or less. I’m doing Camp NaNoWriMo right now, so every minute I’m updating this blog, I’m not moving toward my goals with revising my novels, so I’m going to do a truncated check in:

My specific tasks for March were:

Finish the re-plotting of what was formerly book two into book two and three. Done.
Keep plugging away on the edits for book one. Almost no progress.
Write the fight scene I keep procrastinating on. Started it twice. Ended up writing a fight scene for book five instead of book four…
Write at least four blog posts about things I like instead of rants or critiques. Only managed two! But I also posted a little less often than usual.
Draw something. Failed miserably.

My bigger goals for the year are:

Write more, rant less. I mostly did well on this, though the craziness in Indiana and Arkansas (and other places) near the end of the month pushed me more into ranty than I’d like.
Take care of myself. Did mostly well on this one.
Enjoy time with friends. I did enjoy the time we spent, but didn’t make much effort to do more than the usual sorts of get-togethers.
Paint, draw, and make music. The closest I came was making a few new playlists.

My specific goals for April are:

Complete Camp NaNoWriMo: specifically, write 25,000 words worth of scenes to make 2 and 3 work as separate books, finish re-arranging the subplots for subsequent books in the series.
Finish draft two of the Cthulhu Ponies map.
Run episode three of the Cthulhu Ponies game.
Complete layout and upload that book to the on-demand publisher.
Write at least two blog posts about things I like, rather than ranting about things that outrage me.

Friday Links (foolish laws edition)

April 3, 2015bloggingfriday, friday links, links, newsfontfolly

It’s Friday. March is gone, we’re into April. And once again my husband and I are not at NorWesCon with a bunch of our friends.

Anyway, here is a collection of some of the things that I ran across over the course of the week which struck me as worthy of being shared:

Tim Cook: Pro-discrimination ‘religious freedom’ laws are dangerous.

A SMARTER TAKE ON SEX COULD HAVE SAVED ‘LOOKING’.

Sociologist Michael Kimmel explores the history of the aggrieved American male, but fails to capture what drives our age’s most prominent discontents: the men’s rights movement.

Anglo-Saxon remedy kills hospital superbug MRSA.

A Truce in the War Over Family.

My personal Libertarian hell: How I enraged the movement — and paid the price.

When men are afraid to pee: The bizarre, scientific reason why urinals cause stage fright.

Gay Passion of Christ Envisioned and Attacked.

Alan Stern on Pluto’s Wonders, New Horizons’ Lost Twin, and That Whole “Dwarf Planet” Thing.

NC Lawmakers Want Hospitals To Be Able To Turn Away Gay Patients.

What Indiana Could Learn From Utah About Gay Tolerance.

Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think.

State Attorneys Tell Supreme Court That Gay People Are Too Powerful To Have Equal Rights.

How Conservatives Hijacked ‘Religious Freedom’.

I’m a Transgender Woman, and This Is What It’s Like.

US Senator: Hey Gays, Get Some ‘Perspective’ – ‘In Iran They Hang You For The Crime Of Being Gay’.

Astronomers Solve Decades-Long Mystery of the “Lonely Old Stars.”

Ted Cruz goes ballistic over “radical” idea that gay people should enjoy equality.

This infographic breaks down the top five misconceptions about evolution.

Oakland A’s Pitcher Sean Doolittle & Girlfriend Buy Tickets To Fill Stadium On LGBT Night.

Anti-Gay Activists Furious People Joined Dan Savage’s ‘It Gets Better’ Campaign Against Bullying.

The right’s made-up God: How bigots invented a white supremacist Jesus.

“You Were on the Right Side of History After All.”

I wrote about Indiana’s license to discriminate bill, Bullied bullies: Indiana’s license to discriminate hurts more than queers.

And followed up with Indiana law worse than ‘similar’ bans.

And pointed out that isn’t the only assault worth figthing: Putting the bigotry into the school bathroom.

On a less dire note, I wrote about (among other things) my favorite writing tools: I’m the Cheerful Fairy (no joke)!

SPECTRE (next James Bond movie) – Domestic Trailer:

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Calling My Nanna #RingYourGranny Tag – JAMESMITCHELL[TV] (You’ll need a kleenex):

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Eli Lieb – Lightning In A Bottle:

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A Capella Science – The Surface Of Light! (Lion King Parody):

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Beyonce End Of Time Target Flash Mob :

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Bullied Bullies: Putting the bigotry into the school bathroom

April 2, 2015newslgbt, news, trans, wingnutsfontfolly

I admit, it’s heartening to see the outpouring of outrage over the latest so-called Religious Liberty laws and that clueless politicians are paying a price for pandering to the bigots. And it’s nice to see that some of the other bigots are starting to realize that pandering no longer works to their advantage.

But there is still plenty of fight left, so we can’t relax or pat ourselves on the back, just yet: Nevada Lawmaker Proposes New Anti-Transgender Bill Pushed By Out-Of-State Lobbyist. And that’s just the latest in this wave: The growing trend of transgender ‘bathroom bully’ bills – Nevada, Florida, Texas and others have proposed bills that would bar trans kids from using certain school bathrooms.

The religious liberty bills are toxic. They address a non-existent problem. Freedom of conscience is already protected thanks to the Constitutions’s first amendment and loads of Supreme Court rulings. And the religious liberty bills can be used to discriminate against a whole lot of people, including trans* kids who just want to got to school and while at school sometimes they need to pee just like everyone else.

But these bathroom bully bills are just as toxic. They are also addressing an imaginary problem. It really is imaginary, and we can prove it:

mediamatters.org — None of those bathroom or locker room horror stories have a basis in fact. (Click to embiggen)

Media Matters has a nice compilation of statements from law enforcement officials and other experts from the 12 states that have had laws protecting transgender people on the books for a while (some going back to 1993!) about whether or not all those predictioned sexual assaults in bathrooms and locker rooms have occurred. Shockingly, no such assault has occurred in any of those twelve states. Who would have thought?

Please look at that chart, and repeat this to any people who start repeating those claims about bathroom assaults: some states have by law allowed trans* people to use whichever bathroom matches their own gender identity since 1993, and not once, ever, has anyone used that law as a means to sneak into a bathroom and assault someone. Not once.

The problem is that while it’s pretty easy to get people worked up about a really broad-based license to discriminate law, it’s a little more difficult to get those same people to rally against these bathroom bully bills. Because a lot of people who think of themselves as liberal and open-minded, who label themselves “gay allies” still have problems with transgender people. And they still get irrational about anything having to do with “children.”

They wring their hands and say vague (but very emotionally laden) things like, “I don’t want my kids seeing… um…”

Here’s part of how you respond to that. “I get it. But think about it, none of us want to actually watch what people go into bathrooms for, right? You want to go in, do your business, wash your hands, and get out, right? Well, so do they.”

I’m the Cheerful Fairy (no joke)!

April 1, 2015writingnanowrimo, personal, tools, writingfontfolly

In Sir Terry Pratchett’s brilliant novel¹, Hogfather, one subplot³ is that an excess of belief causes the temporary creation of a bunch of minor godlings/fairies, such as the Oh-God of Hangovers or the Sock-eater. And one of those beings is the Cheerful Fairy. She is said to “look just like your first schoolteacher”⁹ and wasn’t very good at her job. She kept trying to get the wizards of Unseen University to engage in party games and other activities suitable for Hogswatch Night¹¹.

I am once again embarking on a Camp NaNoWriMo project¹². I’ve recruited several friends to join my cabin¹⁴. I’ve had most success at NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo where I had writing buddies to check in with, and sometimes have word count races with. Camp NaNoWriMo is supposed to be a low-key version of National Novel Writing Month, where you either set a lower word count than the standard 50,000 words in a month, or you work on an editing or revising project. So I’m going to try to be more cheerleader rather than competitor with my buddies¹⁷. Thus, Cheerful Fairy!

Also… Continue reading I’m the Cheerful Fairy (no joke)! →

Bullied Bullies: Indiana law worse than ‘similar’ bans

March 31, 2015newsculture, gay, lgbt, news, wingnutsfontfolly

I mentioned that the Indiana license to discriminate law is different from and worse than others that have been passed before. The person who explains this best is, of all people, a Fox News anchor:

Indiana’s RFRA is categorically different from other “religious freedom” laws, because it includes for-profit businesses under its definition of “persons” capable of religious expression. The Indiana law also allows private individuals and businesses to claim a religious exemption in court “regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.” Those differences — which the ACLU has called “virtually without precedent” — expand the scope of Indiana’s RFRA and provide a legal defense for businesses and individuals who refuse service to LGBT residents.

Watch the video for more details:

http://mediamatters.org/embed/static/clips/2015/03/30/39299/fnc-hn-20150330-rfra

Bullied bullies: Indiana’s license to discriminate hurts more than queers

March 30, 2015newsculture, gay, lgbt, news, wingnutsfontfolly

Image posted to Twitter by @seamonkey237. Click to embiggen. Links to corroborating information in the post. — Image posted to Twitter by @seamonkey237. Click to embiggen. Links to corroborating information in the picture itself.

Indiana is the latest state to pass a so-called Religious Freedom Act, and they’re getting a lot of heat for it. Large conventions which bring a huge amount of money into the state have stated they’re considering pulling out. Corporations are canceling some activities and investments. Some corporate leaders have pointed out that bigotry like this law leads to an economic death spiral.

At the moment, Indiana’s governor is feeling heat because the law was clearly intended to give legal permission to people to discriminate against LGBT people, which he keeps denying. Because the fact that the bill was written by a notorious anti-gay activist, and is based on similar bills that have been promoted by the equally anti-gay Ethics and Public Policy Center, no one is believing the governor’s denial. It doesn’t help that he invited a bunch of notorious anti-gay activists to the private signing ceremony. (I’m kind of disappointed that it is even legal for a governor to have a private ceremony when he or she signs a public law into effect, you know?) But it’s worse than that… Continue reading Bullied bullies: Indiana’s license to discriminate hurts more than queers →

Weekend update

March 28, 2015newslinks, newsfontfolly

I’m sorry that I’m not going to be as funny as the Saturday Night Live crew, but I had to share a few updates on some of the things I linked to just yesterday:

While Indiana and Arkansas have passed so-called Religious Freedom bills, a democratic legislator in Georgia may have successfully derailed the bill there simply by proposing an amendment to add language that the bill isn’t meant to condone discrimination. The amendment failed, but: How To Kill A Discriminatory ‘Religious Liberty’ Bill: Call The Bluff.

Several companies, conventions, and associations have gone on record that the passage of the license to discriminate bill may lead them to pull their business from states that pass them: 8 Entities Protesting Indiana’s New LGBT Discrimination Law and Apple CEO Tim Cook Warns Arkansas Not To Pass Anti-Gay Bill Like Indiana.

Blogger Amelia put the proposed initiative in California allowing private citizens to execute gay people into even starker perspective: A Man in California Wants to Kill My Son. And people are proposing changes to the state constitution to make such ridiculous bills less likely: Must Sadism Be Cleared to Gather Signatures?

Will ‘Religious Freedom’ Bills Backfire on Christians?:

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Friday Links (persecution substitution edition)

March 27, 2015bloggingfriday, friday links, linksfontfolly

It’s Friday. We’re nearly through with March. Is it too early to comment on how fast the year is flying by?

Anyway, here is a collection of some of the things that I ran across over the course of the week which struck me as worthy of being shared:

The improbable, 200-year-old story of one of America’s first same-sex ‘marriages’.

Let’s Get Some Things Straight About Aaron Schock.

An Open Letter to My Biggest High School Bully: My Teacher.

This is article is a couple of years old, but How Many American Men Are Gay? is still a difficult question to answer. “More than one quarter of gay men hide their sexuality from anonymous surveys. The evidence also suggests that a large number of gay men are married to women.”

It took until 2014, surprisingly, but music streaming services have finally outsold CDs.

Mystery of Darwin’s ‘strange animals’ solved.

New data on the changing face of religion in America.

The Worst Taboo In Urban Fantasy.

Women-led companies perform three times better than the S&P 500.

Emmy Noether revolutionized mathematics — and still faced sexism all her life.

35 Years After Saying Gay People Should Die, Bob Jones III Apologizes… While At Event Opposing LGBT Rights.

CA attorney general vows to halt ballot measure that would legalize killing gay people. I posted a link to a story about this when the lawyer first filed it, but now that the state Attorney General has determined that she is legally obligated to let this bill (which explicitly authorizes any citizen to murder someone they believe to be gay and forbids any state or local official from arresting, charging, or punishing said murderer) onto the ballot, the rest of the news world has noticed the story.

4 reasons I’m glad I came out as an atheist.

18 Science Facts You Might Have Believed In The ’90s That Are Wrong.

Wood Bison Roam the U.S. for First Time in a Century.

Indiana’s religious freedom law shows the new frontier in the battle over LGBT rights.

Religious Freedom? Nope, Just Plain Old Discrimination.

Blast From the Past: States Using ‘Religious Freedom’ to Justify Segregation.

A PROSECUTOR SEEKS REDEMPTION. CAN WE ALLOW PRISONERS THE SAME?

Richard III: ancient DNA solves a 500-year-old mystery.

It’s Not Easy Being Scientology: Since its founding in the 1950s, L. Ron Hubbard’s organization has put a premium on controlling the flow of information—an increasingly impossible enterprise in the Internet age.

NOM resorts to blatant lying in its 2015 #March4Marriage materials.

I wrote a long review of a book written by one of my favorite childhood/young adult writers: Book Review: Many Waters.

And Talent doesn’t mean what you think it means.