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.

Friday Links with the Best Gay Possible

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http://icanhas.cheezburger.com
It’s Friday!
It’s the last Friday before St. Patrick’s Day. Here’s a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

All 7 of Texas’ openly LGBT congressional, state legislative candidates win primaries.

Scientist Scan Brain of Woman Who Claims Out of Body Experiences While She Has It. And prove why the delusion feels so real.

Hal Douglas, 89, Superstar of Movie Trailer Narrators, Dies. In a world without Hal Douglas… how do they make movie trailers?

White Man March Coming To NYC To Fight “Anti-White Agenda”. One newsblogger from New York says that last time this group tried this, it wound up being two guys with badly made signs.

The 17 Equations That Changed the Course of History. Somewhat misleading title. Yes, they show an important logarithmic equation, but then what they talk about changing the world is the entire concept logarithms. Similarly with Calculus…

Clues to Genghis Khan’s rise, written in the rings of ancient trees.

I didn’t come from no monkey, updated.

Diamond Traps Rare Mineral, Brings to the Surface Tantalizing Clues from the Deep.

Dozens of Insect Species Living Only On Two Types of Flower.

Darren Hayes: ‘Come out. In your own time.’.

In One Sentence, Michele Bachmann Proves How Ignorant Republicans are about the Constitution.

Study: Police see black children as less innocent and less young than white children.

CALIFORNIA PUSHES TO FINISH DRIVERLESS CAR RULES.

VLT Spots Largest Yellow Hypergiant Star.

Creatures from Your Dreams and Nightmares: Unbelievable Marine Worms Photographed by Alexander Semenov.

Tea Party Activists Aren’t Gearing Up For 2016 — They Want To Refight 1964.

Op-Ed: The outcry against Rayon in Dallas Buyer’s Club is less about Jared Leto playing a trans woman, and more about an industry where Rayon is the only trans woman allowed to exist.

Twins tell story of coming out to each other (yes, a repost from yesterday):

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

The dance of the strategically placed towels:

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

Bright Light Bright Light & Elton John – “I Wish We Were Leaving” :

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

The ever fabulous Pet Shop Boys have created a lovely dance track from the “Noble Call” speech by Irish drag performer, Panti Bliss. It’s a lovely song, includes the whole speech, and yes, you can dance to it:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here — And it’s available on iTunes here!)

Confessions of a re-blogger

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shutterstock.com
Always check the dictionary.
I’ve been beginning my blog posts for a while now with an image. Sometimes, such as the two recent posts about the “white homo demons” preacher, they have been images used to illustrate the news article to which I was linking. Others have been editorial cartoons, memes, photos I’ve taken myself, or images from other sources on the internet. Whenever possible, I include the copyright holder or source of the image in the ALT tag of the image.

Occasionally the place I got the image from is a tweet or other re-blog that doesn’t have the original source. When that happens, I try to track down the source with Google Image Search, but some images have been re-blogged so many times, the original source doesn’t come up in the search. Then I try to the read the EXIF data from the image, but often there’s nothing useful there, either because it’s been stripped out along the way, or in the case of web comic images and the like, it was never there.

My lynx plushy seated at my laptop.
I know the source of this one. I took the picture myself, in my living room. That’s my laptop. The cute lynx plushie was a gift from my husband.
If I were being really scrupulous, I oughtn’t to use the image at all at that point. After all, I have more than one artist friend who has found their work being used, without their permission, on t-shirts or other items for sale somewhere, and heard their rant about their failed attempts to get the people who stole their work to, at the very least, acknowledge who made it.

But, often I go ahead and use the image. I rationalize that I’m not profiting from it and that I’ve done due diligence trying to locate the source to give credit. But it’s a rationalization. Should I feel guilty about that?

Probably. And maybe I should start going the ultra-scrupulous route: don’t post it if I can’t find the source and link back to it. I’ve certainly ranted enough about people using the excuse the “everyone else is doing it” in the past. There’s such a rant about a recent news story sitting in my draft queue right now. I had been looking for a good “hypocrite” image, and had found a great one (much more interesting that the Shutterstock image above), but couldn’t find the original source to give credit.

Then I got an email from someone wanting permission to use an image I’d used in a post months ago. I had to explain that I’d found the image on iLounge, and so didn’t have the right to give permission, because it wasn’t my image.

Even though that image did have the URL for the source of the image, the URL is in the ALT tag, and most people don’t even know how to view that. So, even when I am pointing to the source, most people don’t realize it.

What to do… what to do?

Confessions of a white homo devil, part 2

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A church sign, posted his sermon on youtube, repeated it in his podcast. Gee, I wonder how people heard about it?
A church sign, posted his sermon on youtube, repeated it in his podcast. Gee, I wonder how people heard about it?
I wrote earlier about the preacher who claimed that the reason there are more gay couples living openly in Harlem is because President Obama had unleashed “white homo demons” to steal black men away from good black women. His crazy church sign and the sermon that accompanied it went viral and was reported all over the place. And then, as the news-of-the-weird cycle does, everyone moved on. He now claims that the reason the story was only a brief blip was because Obama has ordered the media to ignore the pastor.

It would be easy to just dismiss this as more crazy talk, or a sad cry for attention, but I have to agree with radio host, Elon James White, that dismissing this delusional and divisive rhetoric as “crazy” makes us forget that it’s also dangerous… Continue reading Confessions of a white homo devil, part 2 →

Lost in time

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blamcast.net
Why aren’t you up?
I wrote last year about how the time change was messing with me worse than usual. This year I can at least blame the frickin’ high pollen counts that have coincided with it. I prefer to blame the pollen, rather than think about the possibility that it might simply be because I’m getting old, and bouncing back from things, even a simple time change isn’t going to be as quick as it was when I was younger…

Continue reading Lost in time →

Telling…

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Cat looking at a Macbook.
This may or may not be an accurate representation of me writing.
I’ve been bogged down at nearly the end of this novel for a while. I had thought, once I’d finally written the scenes where several of the characters die, that my difficulty finishing would be over.

It was a struggle writing those scenes. I was literally crying while writing one. I’ve opined many times before that in order to write a character convincingly, there’s a part of you that has to believe the character is real. There’s some neuroscience to indicate that the part of our brain from which emotions and gut reactions originate literally cannot tell the difference between real people we know, and ficticious characters we become attached to. So it made sense, when (for plot purposes) some of my non-villain characters needed to die, that it would be upsetting.

In wrapping up the plot, some of the bad guys need to make a similar exit, and I find myself just as conflicted about writing those scenes. Again, it makes sense in that, in order to make them interesting characters, I have to see them as well-rounded people. They aren’t just bad for badness sake—they have reasons they believe that what they’re doing is justified.

But I can also see that it’s not just that I empathize with them. There is more than one kind of finality, here. Once I finish them off, once I complete this conflict and move to the denouement, there’s no turning back. Oh, yes, as the author, so long as the book hasn’t been published, I can go back and change things to go a completely different way. If I really want to, I can comepletely rewrite the entire book.

But… Once I actually write the scene, it’s harder. If the scene works, if it feels real as I write it, I’ve committed to this sequence of events as a viable way for the story to unfold. I can revise it, yes, but there will always be part of me that knows it could have gone this way. And unless an alternate scene that I think of gets written, and unless it feels as solid when I write it, the first version way will seem like the more likely option, the more real option.

At least as real as a fictional narrative can get.

So, as much as part of me is reluctant to kill off these next five characters slated for a big defeat, there is another part of me that’s just as reluctant to commit. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” a voice whispers from my subconscious. “There’s still time to go another way.”

The problem is, if I give in to this impulse for too long, it will become even more tempting to go back and undo a few things. “Why does that innocent character have to die?” The voice will ask. “Why does any of this have to happen?”

On one level, it’s my story and I can change anything I want.

On a completely different level, I’m its author, and it deserves to be told the best it can be. It’s fiction, but all fiction is about making sense of the world, of finding meaning in events big or small, profound or mundane, pleasant or unpleasant.

Contrary to what some will tell you, a fiction writer’s job is not to lie. A writer’s job is to tell the truth. And to tell it the best we can at the time.

So, I have to stop equivocating, stop spinning excuses for avoiding the tough part, and I need to tell this story, this discovery, this truth.

What’s your favorite End-of-the-World movie?

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REM disc art.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it… and I feel fine!
I finally watched Iron Sky, which is a very silly movie about a secret colony of Nazis hidden on the dark side of the moon, that has been plotting the “liberation” of earth for 70-some years. It’s got some nice, diesel-punk (that’s like steampunk, except moved forward about 40 years) sets and devices. It has some nice homages to a couple of movies (Dr. Strangelove, Downfall, just to name two) without beating you over the head with it. It was fun.

I especially liked the song that played over the end credits, “Under the Iron Sky”—not just because its chorus line, “We will meet again, under the Iron Sky,” was a nice nod to Kubrick’s choice to play “We’ll Meet Again,” over the end credits of Dr. Strangelove. While I was checking to see if the song was available to buy online (it is, along with an entire album of music inspired by the movie released by the Finnish band, Kaiti Kink Ensemble), I got thinking about other end-of-the-world movies and why I like them.

I wound up polling my twitter followers for more suggestions of end-of-the-world movies. That spawned a side conversation about the difference between a post-apocalyptic story versus a story about an apocalypse. For me, not all post-apocalyptic stories are end-of-the-world stories. And though I’ve been thinking about it for a whole week, I still haven’t been able to clearly articulate why I think of Mad Max as an end-of-the-world story, but Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome are post-apocalyptic but not end-of-the-world in my head.

However, since I polled my twitter followers, I’m going to poll you! Note that you can choose Other and type in the name of your favorite if it isn’t listed.

Also, please feel free to add a comment with your own thoughts on the subject. I want to post a follow-up on the subject. Maybe by then I’ll have a better idea of how to explain my definition of end-of-the-world movie!

Friday Links! (Captain America, dark matter, and fake bestsellers)

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Yay!
Yay!
It’s the first Friday of March. It’s March already? Wow! Here’s a collection of news and other things that struck me as worthy of being shared:

The Shamelessness of Professor Mark Regnerus. Designed his study intent on proving that gay parents are bad. When he couldn’t find the proof, he waved his hands and said his study proved it, anyway.

Religious right’s new panic: How can we practice religion if we can’t discriminate?.

Genetic and environmental evidence indicates that after the ancestors of Native Americans left Asia, they spent 10,000 years in shrubby lowlands on a broad land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska.

Virginia Legislature Unanimously Repeals Unconstitutional Oral Sex Ban.

Senate Rejects Blocking Military Commanders From Sex Assault Cases.

Unreal sales for Driscoll’s Real Marriage. Megachurch spent $210,000 to put pastor’s book on bestseller list. How many homeless people or poor children could have been helped with that money?

The Signed Contract That Helped Get Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage on the New York Times Best Seller List. It details the methods of how the copies would be ordered, how fake gift messages are generated on the Amazon orders, many payment types used to disguise the bundled sales…

If only GnuTLS had been open source! Wait..

If the moon were only 1 pixel. A fun, interactive toy. Go try it. Scroll. Click on things. It’s pretty awesome!

It’s “Embarrassing That The United States Has To Thumb Rides From The Russians”.

Dark matter looks more and more likely after new gamma-ray analysis.

Why Can’t Hollywood Get Computers Right?.

The Captain America sequel is looking very good:

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

The song is beautiful, and just released on iTunes. I’d heard the audio and liked the song before I saw the video, which is quite a downer:

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

Steve Grand does wistful well:

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

This year’s entry for Eurovision from Lithuania is a fun number:

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

Though Finland’s entry is a bit more my thing:

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

If the Captain America trailer above isn’t enough for you, here’s a longer scene:

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

Why I hate hay fever reason #5867

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Cat needs to sneeze meme.
I hate that feeling!
I had a very different post queued up for today. But between the high pollen count all week, a deluge last night, and an inexplicable heat wave inside our house, things have been weird here.

Late Wednesday afternoon at the office I was looking out the window wistfully at the rain. I’d been out earlier in the day (a small group of us walked to a nearby restaurant to have lunch with a former co-worker). It had been really pleasant. No rain, overcast enough that I didn’t need sunglasses, and not cold or breezy. The rain that was coming down later just looked nice. Yes, I like the rain, so sue me.

Continue reading Why I hate hay fever reason #5867 →

Contemplating one’s transgressions.

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Traditionally, Ash Wednesday is a day to contemplate one’s transgressions as the beginning of the 40-day observance of Lent. Except, of course, I was raised Southern Baptist, where rituals like a priest smearing ashes on one’s forehead are frowned upon. On the other hand, I’m taoist, now, and taoism is always open to the any traditions we find useful. Therefore, Ash Wednesday is a good day to post my monthly check-in on my goals/resolutions for the year!

When I set my goals for the year, I tried to set very concrete steps for achieving them. I tried to model the tasks on the notion how one trains a pet: if a dog shows a penchant for chewing up shoes, it isn’t enough to scold the dog and try to keep the shoes out of reach; you must give the dog an acceptable chew toy. In other words, replace a bad habit with a better one.

Goal: Reduce the outrage.

Step: Listen to the Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me podcast once a week, limit the amount of time I read news during work breaks.

Progress: I keep getting interrupted while listening to Wait! Wait!…, but I am still spending less time reading serious/upsetting news throughout the day.

Goal: Write more regularly.

Step: Spend the reclaimed break time writing. Find other ways to motivate myself to write rather than twiddle the keys.

Progress: I’m still only doing so-so with this. I still spend more time typing potential posts than working on my fiction, for instance.

Goal: See friends for fun more, as opposed to all of my social interactions being driven by various projects.

Step: I still haven’t thought of a good concrete step for that.

Progress: We were sick slightly less often during February. I did make it to a friend’s birthday get together in the middle of the month, but we’ve missed other social events we’d planned to go to because one or the other of us was sick.

We have failed to get the weekly get-together going again. Illness takes a lot of blame for that. There’s at least one vicious circle of related difficulty. If people are coming over, we need to clean up the house. If we’ve both been so rundown or tired after workdays that we don’t do minimal cleanup, there is so much to do before people come over (and just to be clear, here, since folks are always saying, “Oh, we’ll understand a little mess!” it isn’t just dealing with clutter. It had gotten a lot worse than clutter.), that trying to do it in just a few evenings after work left us both so exhausted, we needed to sleep through the period that friends would have been here.

Goal: Paint, draw, and make music.

Step: I was counting on the monthly Drink ‘n’ Draw gathers to help with this.

Progress: We were actually well enough that we could have attended, if half the region hadn’t gotten snowed in that day.

March Fourth!

life,

http://icanhas.cheezburger.com
Since cats are notoriously hard to herd, what makes you think they can march?
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! Turns out some party poopers people have adopted March Fourth as a day to set goals to help you realize your dreams, and promise a bunch of people to get back together next March Fourth to check in. Hello? Have these people never heard about New Year’s Resolutions? We don’t need to do it twice a year. Really.

Much more amusing, there’s a musical group out there called the MarchFourth Marching Band (slogan: “A date. A command. A band!”) that appears to be a lot of fun.

However, last year, because of an article I read just before March 4 about homeless veterans, I decided to start my own March Forth tradition. So, I urge you all on this March Forth, to go please donate to The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

March forth, and spread the word.

Thank you.