All posts by fontfolly

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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.

We skipped NorWesCon

science fiction, , , ,

Some of my bestest friends hanging out at the convention this year. I didn't take this picture, because I wasn't there.
Some of my bestest friends hanging out at the convention this year. I didn’t take this picture, because I wasn’t there.
So we didn’t go to the Northwest Science Fiction (NorWesCon) again this year. Quick background: I started attending the convention back in 1987, after being envious of friends who attended the previous few years, and I didn’t miss a single one for the next 25 years. Michael and I met at a NorWesCon. For years he has referred to NorWesCon as our anniversary, since neither of us can ever remember the date of our Commitment Ceremony (of course, both have been superseded since we were able to finally legally marry on December 9, 2012). For a couple of decades it was my habit to buy our memberships for the next year before we left the convention.

Since NorWesCon has been on Easter weekend since 1989, I have kept track of Easter by remembering when NorWesCon is going to be. I have habits built around NorWesCon. For many years, now, I spent a lot of time during the rest of the year plotting what new cocktail I will buy Keith on Saturday night at the con, because Keith almost never drinks, and it amuses all of us, including his wife, to watch him react to alcohol (and it’s tricky to find ones he will actually agree to drink more of). During the weeks leading up to the convention I start longing for the evening I’ll sit in the bar or restaurant with Juli-sans-e (not to be confused with Julie-with-an-e, who might join us with the wings, but is more likely to find ways to trick us into saying “nipple” at inappropriate times) eating plate after plate of hot wings and exchanging stories.

I could go on and on.

But, for a variety of reasons, the last few NorWesCons we attended were not much fun for either Michael or myself. And when I realized that four out of the last five we attended, I had found virtually none of the programming interesting (except for Auntie’s costuming panels). I had found it so unappealing, that I had wound up spending all of the time I wasn’t sitting in a bar or restaurant with our friends, sitting at my laptop writing.

To be fair, I got a lot of writing done each of those conventions. More than I usually get done on an ordinary weekend. But it seemed a little silly to both of us the spend all that money on a hotel room, memberships, and all of those meals at hotel restaurants, if all I was going to do was sit in a hotel room tapping away on my computer keyboard.

The one exception out of that span was the year that both Jim Butcher and Patricia McKillip were guests of honor. It’s pretty difficult for me not to enjoy hearing either of them talk about their writing.

So we skipped last year. We gave a few other local conventions we haven’t attended in a long time a try, and we enjoyed those. We would have enjoyed them more if our usual gang had been in attendance. I did miss hot wings with Juli. I really missed hanging out with the gang.

We were leaning toward coming back this year, but when we weren’t able to get certain answers we needed before the hotel room block filled up, we decided to skip again.

As it happens, another friend that I’ve been trying to get to attend finally went for the first time this year. So not only didn’t I hang out with our usual crowd and do our usual things, I didn’t get to hang out with Sheryl at the con.

I also regret missing this year because Michael Moorcock was Guest of Honor. I really like his writing, and given his age and the distance to travel to a west coast con, it’s highly unlikely I’ll get another chance to see him.

NorWesCon is almost always the same weekend as SakuraCon. My dear sweet husband was actually one of the founding SakuraCon committee members many many years ago. It’s been several years since we’ve attended it. So we had talked about the possibility of getting memberships to SakuraCon for this year, though by the time we had decided not to do NorWesCon, neither of us was feeling enthusiastic about anything. We had a couple of conversations this weekend about next year attending either SakuraCon or NorWesCon. I know we could both have fun at either. Most of our friends will be at NorWesCon, but we’ll have a few friends at SakuraCon.

A lot of people seem to be excited because George R.R. Martin is going to be the Guest of Honor at NorWesCon next year. Frankly, that makes me slightly less likely to attend. Not that I have anything against Mr Martin, it’s just that I suspect a lot of people who don’t normally attend fan-run conventions will decide to attend this one because of the television version of Game of Thrones, and the atmosphere may be more like a corporate con than a fan con. Yes, sometimes I am a fan-snob.

We need to decide soon enough that we can get the hotel rooms and everything else in order either way.

In related news, thanks to some suggestions from friends, since we were already planning to attend EverfreeNW again this summer, but we’ll stay at the hotel next door that many of us like a lot better, and since that same weekend a gaming convention, PaizoCon will be happening in that next door hotel, Michael and I now have memberships for both conventions, the same weekend. And several of our friends are doing the same. So, we’re going to be two-fisted congoers (or dual-weilding badge-holders, or something) this July.

So even though we’ve skipped NorWesCon two years in a row, I think we’re holding onto our geek/nerd/fanboy cred.

“I don’t know how to love him!”

culture, , ,

Muppet Christ, Superstar is a parody depicting what it might sound like if the Muppets did a version of Jesus Christ, Superstar. Christo Graham sings all the parts. His Kermit is a bit of a stretch, but his Miss Piggy is pretty spot on.

.

I nearly died while listening to Miss Piggy Singing “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.”

The songs are available for download from Bandcamp. Or you can listen to them here.

Happy Easter!

Good Links for a Good Friday!

blogging,

cattime.com
Wanna egg?
It’s nearly Easter! And it’s Friday once more. Here’s a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

President Obama pulled a surprise move Monday at the White House’s Easter Prayer Breakfast when he selected Gene Robinson (the first openly gay Episcopal bishop) to lead the closing prayer.

How we found the giant squid. I know it’s over a year old, but it’s cool. Other than the dig against space research at the end…

‘Oh, I’ve got to write? Time to clean the stove first’. Thanks to Seashellseller for the link!

Salt Lake Tribune: Utah takes a nasty step against same-sex couples.

Peter LaBarbera came to a college to “expose” the “gay agenda.” He wasn’t expecting what would happen instead. Money quote: “As an institution, we have a duty to protect free speech, hateful or not. But we don’t have to listen to it.”

LOUISIANA: House Votes 66-27 To Keep Unconstitutional Anti-Sodomy Law.

Living the dream: 3-year-old kid escapes from home, climbs inside claw toy machine at bowling alley. Sounds like a kid who knows what he wants!

Fake Geek Guys: A Message to Men About Sexual Harassment.

In Sickness and in Health: A Couple’s Final Journey. You’ll need to have some tissues handy.

Epigenetics Helps Explain Early Humans’ Appearances.

I’M A GAY GUY AT A CHRISTIAN COLLEGE.

Zoologger: Gender-bending cave insects found in Brazil.

Daffy Duck, Glorious Archetype of Selfishness, Is 77. Here Is His First Cartoon.

The Gay Father I Never Knew.

US radio host: Advert featuring gay dads is like axe murder.

Revealed: Samsung misled investors, pundits with shipments vs. sales. ‘Market share’ is never what you’ve been led to believe it is.

Meet the Ten Most Endangered and Distinctive Birds in the World.

Former monk pleads with Pope Francis on behalf of LGBT youths.

Tony Perkins’ Disingenuous Boycott ‘Outrage’.

Stop twisting the Bible: There is no message against same-sex marriage.

President Obama kicked off Holy Week at the White House Monday with 150 Christian leaders at the fifth annual Easter Prayer Breakfast.

Matt Gold “Appreciated” (a sweet, fun song):

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

Mike Munich covers Kylie Minogue’s SEXERCIZE, then makes an all male version of the video:

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

Self-made martyr

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Canadian Broadcasting Company www.cbc.ca/news
“Porno Pete” LaBarbera tried several times to goad Canadian authorities to arrest him. They finally did.
Pete LaBarbera, head of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (an organization designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2010, among others), has the colorful nickname “Porno Pete” among gay and liberal bloggers because he is famous for going to churches and showing slide shows of photos he takes at places like the International Mister Leather Conference and similar events of men scantily clad in leather and fetish gear. He makes a big deal in his talks and on his website about how he disguises himself and sneaks in undercover to these events to get these shocking pictures and reveal the hidden truth. Which he then posts all over his organization’s website, includes in all his mailings begging for donations, and displays in those slide shows.

Why that is so hilarious is that the IML conference, the Folsom Street Fair, and the pride events he “sneaks into” are all open to the public. Furthermore, all of those events encourage their members to send in the pictures they themselves take at events to post on their web sites. You can go to the IML website and find links to attendees’ Instagram streams of themselves and their partners in all their naughty gear. In other words, he doesn’t need to go in disguise. He doesn’t need to sneak in. He doesn’t even need to attend in order to get all these shocking pictures. He can just go to a few social media sites and search on a few hashtags to gather all the shocking pictures he wants.

So in addition to being a hate monger (he and his organization continue to quote long-debunked and wholly disproven “research” claiming that all gay people are pedophiles, that being gay is caused by incest, that kids who come out as gay will rape their siblings, et cetera, et cetera) and a sleazeball who leverages prurient imagery to titillate and shock in order to manipulate people into donating to his cause, he’s also a liar. Because he isn’t sneaking into any of these places. He isn’t uncovering things that people are trying to keep hidden.

On Friday he was briefly detained at the Canadian border because the literature he was carrying with him appeared to violate Canada’s hate speech laws. Not surprising, given how hateful his stuff usually is. Eventually they decided to let him and his papers enter the country, but he spent the entire weekend appearing on every rightwing radio show and so forth that he could, talking up how horribly he was treated and how the Canadian policies violated his religious liberty.

He has since escalated, having gone to a university to distribute his literature and spout off his hate. And when he was asked to leave, he refused, then proceeded to kicked up a fuss until the police were called to arrest him. I think he assumed he would be released on his own recognizance right away, just like the Canadian anti-abortion/anti-gay activist who was arrested with him. But he’s been held in custody until he can face a deportation hearing.

Given his long-running history of using lies, titillating imagery, and shocking “facts” to attract attention and donations, one must conclude that this was all on purpose. We know from tax filings of most of the other anti-gay organizations that donations have been plummeting the last several years. Support for gay rights in general and gay marriage in particular has been going up, up, up throughout the country.

We also know he’s done this sort of thing before: picking fights with audience members at the speaking events of gay rights activists, getting removed by police, then going on the rightwing talk circuit to explain how he was abused “merely for stating his religious beliefs.”

He isn’t merely stating his beliefs. Demonizing gay people has been his livelihood for about two decades. For nearly twenty years he has earned his living by doing things like convince evangelical and fundamentalist parents that they must kick their gay kids out or bully them (often leading to suicide), then turn around and use those gay homeless teen death and gay teen suicide statistics to beg for more donations and convince more parents to abuse and reject their children.

And now the money seems to be drying up. So, sitting in a jail cell in a nice, civilized country like Canada is probably a smart move. It will amp up the sympathy from that shrinking rightwing base. It will get him appearances on radio and TV shows where if he doesn’t get paid, he’ll at least get free advertising. It will probably land him some new paid speaking gigs. Donations will take an uptick for a while.

A few nights being held by the mounties in a low security cell is a very small price to pay for that.

Rinse, don’t wash

life, , , ,

goantiques.com
This is really close…
One of my grandfathers had a coffee mug that was “his” mug. No one else used Grandpa’s mug. It was a yellow mug, but not a really bright yellow. Very similar to the one pictured here.

It was nearly identical in shape to a set of sage green and brown mugs that matched grandma’s everyday plates. That particular shape of stackable coffee mug was very popular when I was a kid. My other grandparents had a set that was very similar in a dark blue—though the bottom, narrow section of the mug was a little taller. And my parents had a set that was a darker, brownish-yellow than grandpa’s, was a gradient of the dark yellow at the top of the mug, becoming dark chocolate brown by the bottom. I remember seeing similar mugs at the homes of many friends.

etsy.com
This set is very similar to my other grandparent’s set, though theirs were all one color, and the blue was a different shade.
But, as I said, Grandpa’s mug was different. It was only for Grandpa to use. No one got yelled at if you used Grandpa’s mug by mistake, it was just someone would say, “You can’t use Grandpa’s cup!” or something. Grandpa would laugh if someone else used it. He’d say something like, “Just tell me you didn’t put it in the dishwasher! Never wash my coffee cup, only rinse it!”

Continue reading Rinse, don’t wash →

(A whole lotta) Friday Links!

blogging,

It’s Friday again! Where does the time go? Here’s a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

THE FALL OF BRENDAN EICH HAPPENED WITHOUT ANY GAYS DOING MUCH OF ANYTHING.

Head of Anglican church: We must discriminate against gays lest someone think we’re gay and bash us. “Yes, because everyone knows that Jesus’ principal message for those confronted with dangerous exposure was to have you “deny” it, preferably three times.”

FBI Smashes Alleged Radical-Right Terror Plot in Texas.

Check out the all-American lunar eclipse on April 15!.

The less Americans know about Ukraine’s location, the more they want U.S. to intervene. (Thanks to Chip Unicorn for the link!)

Elizabeth Warren schools Paul Ryan on poverty in 80 seconds.

New method confirms humans and Neandertals interbred.

“Anti-Christian religious bigotry” is apparently what conservatives are now calling LGBTQ rights.

These Are The 10 Biggest Myths In Psychology.

Tramp stamps, racism and “icky” pronouns: 8 new life tips from “Bell Curve” author Charles Murray. Surprise! Surprise! Racist author is bigoted about other things, too.

OP’s woman-haters club swells: Why their hatred is actually getting worse.

The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it. The Bank of England’s dose of honesty throws the theoretical basis for austerity out the window.

Atheists are adoptive parents, too! Why agencies must stop discriminating.

German Neo-Nazi Party Rocked by Interracial Porn and Penis Cake Scandals.

Mike Huckabee: Same-Sex Marriage Supporters Not ‘On The Right Side Of The Bible’.

Senate Republicans Block Bill on Equal Pay. But remember, the war on women is a myth!

How the “Gooey Universe” Could Shed Light on the Big Bang.

I Have No Idea How I Ended Up in That Stupid Geocentrism Documentary.

All set for our first comet landing.

Why Stephen Colbert is dangerous — and invaluable.

Noah: the movie and the myth. And the power of stories. (Thanks to Seashellseller for the link!)

Utah Gay Marriage Opponents Drop Debunked Research, Reduce Argument to Gibberish. (Though, let’s be honest: it wasn’t much better than gibberish to begin with)

Homophobe in denial: Why it’s important to call Mike Huckabee the H word.

Ludus Imperatorum. Or, The Latinist Dies Hard.. Game of Thrones’ family’s slogan translated to Latin. (Thanks to Foalie for the link!)

13 Year Old Liza Minnelli sings OVER THE RAINBOW :

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

Brendan Velasquez – Things That Go Bump In The Night:

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

Karmin – Crash Your Party:

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

Persuadable?

life, , , ,

cnn.com
Explaining that he’s “not homophobic,” but believing marriage should be between one man and one woman is being “on the right side of the Bible.”
I get tired of people telling us that it’s intolerant of us to point out when certain people make bigoted remarks. Especially when they insist that the reason we should not call a bigot a bigot when he or she says such things, is because we’ll never be able to change their mind. As if people who say things such as being gay is “an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle” are open to discussion on the topic.

The folks who quote Leviticus are so deeply mired in superstition and fear of an angry god that logic is just lost on them.

I say superstition instead of faith because the ones that are choosing to fight for the six or so times that English translations of the Bible seem to be talking about same sex sexual activity, but not the dozens of times that Jesus said to love one another, to stand up for the downtrodden, to place compassion over a literal interpretation of the law—those people don’t have faith. They are not engaged in a spiritual journey of discovery in hopes of a deeper understanding of their fellow humans. They want something that justifies their dislike of anything different. They want assurance that they are right, and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong.

Unless they are willing to pull their heads out of the dark place they’ve shoved it, there is no reasoning with them. There is no persuading them. And it’s really not worth our time and energy to try to convince them. Nothing any of us can do or say is going to be able to trump the very simplistic (and limited) notion of god they have enshrined in their head.

This is why I get so tired of people admonishing us with arguments that begin, “You can’t persuade people if you…”

Because folks like Mike Huckabee or Brendan Eich are not persuadable. They have demonstrated that they are not making their decisions based on any semblance of rationality. When Huckabee says that marriage equality opponents are on the right side of the Bible, he’s saying that he rejects logic, science, and even the possibility that any other perspectives are worth consideration. When Eich said that he had nothing to apologize for his participation in an effort to not just ban marriage equality in California, but to literally undo the marriages that had already taken place, that demonstrates that he’s not open to other opinions. When he doesn’t see how giving money to the campaign that went to court after Proposition 8 passed and demanded that judges declare the marriages that had already happened null and void, goes beyond “holding a private opinion,” he proves that he is not using anything a rational person would call logic.

There is nothing private about forcing other people to divorce. And demanding that the courts and state officials undo all those marriages was precisely that: forcible divorce. Forcing other people to end their marriage is not “expressing an opinion.” Forcing children of some of those same sex couples off of one parents’ health insurance (which was another thing that Eich’s money was used to ask the courts to do) is not “expressing a private belief.”

And not being able to see that people would feel hurt by that, and that perhaps some acknowledgement that he contributed to the pain and suffering of a lot of people shows that he isn’t able to see things from another perspective. That means he’s not persuadable.

Not seeing that people would be loathe to trust someone who would do that sort of thing six years ago to make fair and equitable decisions about promoting and compensating his current employees? Not willing to even admit to the possibility that he might owe an apology some of the people who were hurt by the campaign to pass the law and the law itself? He refused to even issue the classic non-apology, “I’m sorry if someone was offended.” He even refused to say something along the lines of, “When I donated, I had no idea that the campaign would go to go and demand this other things.” Instead, he insisted that it was just an opinion, and not anyone else’s business.

Forcing other people to divorce isn’t the business of those other people? Or their friends and family? It isn’t the business of any of your customers or employees who might be members of that community? Really?

Where, in any of that, do you see a person who is willing to be persuaded?

The more things change…

culture, , , ,

@HistOpinion
I keep telling people it wasn’t that long ago that opposition to interracial marriage was stronger than the current opposition to same sex marriage.
A common point of contention in discussions of gay rights is whether it is appropriate, logical, or even accurate to compare the struggle for equal rights for gay people with the struggle for racial equality. There are a wide variety of rationalizations given for saying they are not comparable. Rather than pick each of those apart, I’m more concerned with two undeniable ways in which they are similar:

  • The arguments that opponents to gay rights use are identical to arguments that the opponents of racial equality use or have used in the past.
  • The demographics of the people who most adamantly opposed racial equality are nearly the same as those people most opposed to gay rights.

A friend shared the graphic I’ve included above from @HistOpinion on twitter recently, and I was most amused by the people who were shocked to learn two things: as recently as 1970 there were still several states with laws against interracial marriage, and as recently as 1970 a lot of people approved of those laws.

I was alive in 1970, but even more important to this discussion, I was alive in 1967, the year that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that those laws against interracial marriage were unconstitutional. It is true that I was only in grade school when that ruling came down, but I remember the time clearly. Suddenly, it seemed as if every adult in my life was talking about interracial marriage. None of them—not my parents, not my parents’ friends, not my Sunday School teacher, not my friends’ parents, not the pastor at church, not any of the adults at the monthly church potluck, not my grandparents—bothered to tell me why they were talking about it, but they were all talking about it.

And these are things I heard with my own ears at the time regarding interracial marriage: Continue reading The more things change… →

A 70-year nap sounds tempting

life, , , ,

We saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier with a bunch of friends Saturday, and it was fun. If you liked the 2011 Captain America movie, or The Avengers you’ll probably like this, as well. I thought it was awesome. I confess I’d been a teeny bit worried because I liked the previous movie a lot, and that one got so much of its appeal from the 1940s setting; I was afraid they’d try to grit Cap up and ruin him. They didn’t. The story has plenty of darkness, but the script and Chris Evans make you believe someone can face that darkness, fight it, and come out with an old-fashioned sense of honor and justice intact.

A major part of Captain America’s story is that he is a man out of his time because survived being frozen for 70 years after crashing that doomsday plane at the end of the first movie to save the world. Lately, I’ve been thinking a 70 year long nap might be a good thing.

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to figure out why I’ve been tired all the time. When we were both suffering from the Martian Flu it made perfect sense why we were tired, taking frequent naps, and so on. But it’s been about a month since either of us had symptoms, yet almost every week night since, I have to take at least a short nap after getting home. And at least once a week I conk out for several hours, only to wake up just in time for bed time!

Part of it is that with heavy pollen season underway, I frequently have severe enough hay fever that I’m not sleeping very well at night. But the other thing is just that while we were sick I let my sleep schedule go to whatever it wanted. If left to my own devices, my body likes to stay up until about 3am or 4am, then sleep until noon. It’s just the way my diurnal cycle is wired. I haven’t managed to land a job that lets me work that schedule (and still pay the bills plus give me the sorts of mental challenges to keep me from being bored), so once I finally accepted that this is what the neurochemicals are going to try to do, I realized the rest of my professional life would be a battle to keep the sleep schedule from drifting to default.

This means that I can’t let myself stay up as late as I want on weekends, as tempting as it it. And it also means that about once a week I have to take a melatonin tablet at about 10:30 or 11pm, lay down, and trick my brain into sticking to a sleep schedule compatible with work.

I haven’t done that in months. And I’ve been staying up way to late working on writing projects on the weekends.

So, I need to hammer the neuroreceptors with some melatonin. I’ll probably need to do it a couple of nights in a row to make any progress. Unfortunately, that means I have to both remember to do it, and be awake at the right time in the evening to take the pill. Which I haven’t managed to do since having the realization.

I’d like to stop having these random nap attacks. So I need to get this done.

Never thought I’d be happy to do the taxes

life, , , ,

Us, at our reception.
It isn’t primarily about the legal stuff, of course. Except when it is.
The last few years our taxes have been very unpleasant. When Washington state voters approved the “everything-but-marriage” domestic partnership referendum a few years ago, our separate incomes became community property. The so-called Defense of Marriage Act forbade the federal government from recognizing our relationship, except that other parts of the tax code (voted in by the same congress critters who passed DOMA) required that anything which your home state considered community property had to be taxed as jointly owned property.

The upshot was that we had to file extra forms, but none of the forms that existed had places for folks in our situation to list the name or social security number of our partner. The first year that was the case, the IRS didn’t properly inform their own people, so same sex couples in the relevant states who filed early had their returns rejected and received letters threatening fines and penalties.

That got straightened out quickly, but the IRS never put out comprehensive instructions for taxpayers in our situation. Even after three years. Everyone was having to refer to one article from a gay rights lawyer posted on the web that walked you through all the different IRS publications—a few rules from this publication, the form from that, and these instructions from this other one. Yes, even the tax professionals were referring to that site.

It was a mess. And we weren’t even allowed to mail our separate filings in the same envelope.

Continue reading Never thought I’d be happy to do the taxes →