Man, that bitch 2019 was extra

What a roller-coaster. Fucking hell.

During 2019 we lost Tardar Sauce - the One and Only Grumpy Cat. We also mourn the passing of Peter Mayhew, the ONLY good thing about Blade Runner - Rutger Hauer, Toni Morrison, Godfrey Gao and Marie Fredriksson.

So what happened in my life during 2019? Well...

• I cut my hair again. Shorter than ever. Finally found a hairdresser that gets me.
• I saw Dylan Moran again together with my very best bestie.
• I bought 18 new books during the Big Book Sale... It's not a hoarding problem if the shelves don't buckle under the weight...
• I can happily inform you that Dara O'Briain is still hilarious.
• Had my backpiece finished with a brutal 6 hour(!!) sitting. (...and then an additional hour or so for more detail...)
• My ginger room-mate Sengir turned 7 years old.
• The White Buffalo was a great experience.
• I went to Berlin(!) to see Loreena McKennitt. Magical is what it was. AND she played my favourite song.
• The Medieval Week on Gotland!
• I turned 31 and had a party on Hobbit Day. It felt epic.
• Amanda FUCKING Palmer!!!
• A Halloween fancy dress party. I LOVE THIS STUFF.
• Hannah Gadsby was brilliant.
• My childhood favourite band Nordman was in town to celebrate the 25 years since they released their first album and I was there.

 Ok, so 2019 has been a year of many firsts; of highs and lows. Coming into summer I felt like I had neglected myself by trying to survive a bad work place situation. I managed, by some miracle and a little help from my boss, to get myself away from that situation. Within weeks I had gone from absolutely no energy to energy to spare. And I had the rest of the year to enjoy it!
   And did I enjoy it.

Top picks of 2019

   Movies: I didn't have the same amount of time to spare to get myself to the cinema but the best experience of my cinema year was, hands down Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. I absolutely adored it. Other movies I enjoyed was The Favourite and On the Basis of Sex. 

   TV shows: I have so much love for The Umbrella Academy! Finally got a third and a fourth season of Queer Eye and I cried my damn eyes out (THE FEELS!). A new season of Killing Eve that won all of the awards well deserved. I was thrilled to discover Warrior. A last and final season of Elementary and how I'll miss it now that it's gone... Handmaid's Tale gave us a confusing and frustrating third season. Gentleman Jack was great. STRANGER THINGS, OH MAH GAWD.

   Books: So many books (a total of 84), and I made even more of an effort to read books not written by men (37 this year). Autonomous by Annalee Newitz. The next novel in the Newflesh series by Mira Grant; Deadline. Sarah Gailey's American Hippo turned my insides into pink fluff and made me want a hippo ranch. The thrilling steampunk zombie air ship ride that is Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. Some oldies but goldies; Maskerade and The Last Continent by Sir Terry Pratchett. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch, and I finally got my hands on the legendary short story collection I am Legend by Richard Matheson. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler made me more certain of how much I adore her writing. I would also highly recommend Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape - an anthology edited by Jaclyn Friedman.

   Comics: Sunstone #6. MY HEART. MY FEELS. I've been recommended Southern Bastards on Goodreads so I gave it a go and actually enjoyed it - but I've been known to enjoy the 'Violent Old Bringer of Justice' before.

   Events: Life expectancy has risen. Child poverty has gone gone. A man in London is the second person to ever be completely cleared of the HIV virus, once and for all proving that living with HIV is neither a death sentence nor incurable. Researchers have found a plastic-eating mushroom that is edible to humans; not only giving us the opportunity to get rid of our massive amounts of plastic garbage but also offering us a hopefully tasty food (with our normal human luck though this mushroom with develop immense intelligence from eating our garbage and kill us all, but heeeeeey! That sounds an awful lot like a problem far into the future). Researchers have also found a way to convert all blood types into the universal type O that all people can safely receive. YouTube has finally actually officially banned white supremacist content (lets not question why it was allowed to begin with...). Humpback whales have come back from the near brink of extinction! Globally, renewable energy sources make up around a third of our power capacity. Global suicide rates have dropped 38% (though trans youths are still four times more likely to attempt suicide than their cis counterparts - help protect our trans kids! Support them! Save them!).

   Now's the part of the review when I tell the old year to fuck off and invite the new year, and decade, in with wishes for more hugs, love, sex and friendship.

  Get your ass in here 2020 and join me in the fun.

Spooky Halloween

   I love fancy dress parties. I really do. So when a friend of mine invited me to a Halloween party I immediately started planning my outfit and I knew exactly what I wanted to be for Halloween - the scariest stuff of nightmares: a Handmaid.

   I bought the fabric and then... I did absolutely nothing. Well, not entirely true I suppose since I procrastinated the everloving fuck out of that poor costume. A week before the party I still had done nothing with my costume, but had a nice angry ulcer coming along. Awesome. In pain I started making my outfit and realised again just how quick I can be under a certain amount of pressure. Some mistakes were made with the dress but after correcting them I was truly pleased with how it turned out:

   The Wings had me concerned though. I had no clue how to make them look as good as they do in the tv show but I wanted them as similar as possible. I YouTube'd a few truly awful videos containing a lot of hot glue and then decided to just dissect some pictures of the costumes and let my imagination do the rest. As a result I never used any glue for my wings but they look great and are easy to slip on and off the cap I wear underneath. For next time I think I'll have to use something stiffer for structural lining material...

   Having finished the last stitches and ironed out the last creases the same day as I was going to the party I'd have to call it a success nonetheless! Later in the day I met up with my beautiful friends:

   We played some board games and had a lot of fun. Pictured below is me not being the werewolf in One Night Ultimate Werewolf:

   I need more fancy dress parties. Give me fancy dress parties. I'm an adult. I promise.

Now give me fancy dress parties.

The Hutt (kind of) Recommends: Autonomous

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

   Our hero Jack is a drug pirate. She pirates drugs and distributes them to the less fortunate like some pharmaceutical Robin Hood, but has lately run into some unexpectedly bad drugs which has put her reputation in danger of being ruined entirely. She has to salvage what she can, all the while running from law enforcement.
   The agent and the A.I. on her tail will not only have to sift through all the disinformation Jack leaves behind, but also deal with their growing affection for each other.

   I enjoyed the story and most of the characters, but I have so many opinions (no, really? me?) on the gender issues of this book - to simplify, in my eyes it makes a mockery of trans* experiences. The relationship between Elias and Paladin is weird and frustrating and I wanted to scream from the top of buildings that Elias is a testosterone-damaged homophobic prick and Paladin deserves their autonomy just for having put up with Elias' garbage for so long.
   But that might just be me, right? (Hint: it's not just me.)

   It's an entertaining read with lots of thrilling heroics and some new exciting ideas. Though I have issues with some aspects of the book I think Newitz is on the track towards something amazing if only lessons are learnt and themes improved upon.
   I will recommend it nonetheless.

Ugh, the levels of procrastination

Aight.
   I need a new Halloween costume and I was planning on making one for myself this year.
   Then I agreed on working extra because cash is a good thing. Especially this time of year (oh, how I fucking hate X-Mas...).
   The amount of stuff I can get done when I'm supposed to be doing something else will never cease to amaze me - I've mended and reconstructed things I've had lying around since last year. A whole lot of those "I'm gonna. Eventually" garments.

Still the Queen of Procrastination.

Random thoughts on dates and body hair

   I really hope that the people I date, and I'm talking about men in particular here, realise just how much energy I put into primping and preparing for said dates. Because if they don't - they should, and if they do - thank you for your appreciation, it's duly noted and taken into consideration.
   I don't shave my legs for just anything. Or anyone.
   Usually you can tell how long it's been between dates by measuring the length of my leg hairs.
   And now I have a cold.

HAPPY HOBBIT DAY

   Today I'm celebrating my 31st birthday (though I was actually born on the 18th) and I've invited a few nerd friends over to eat and play board games with me. My partners are here to help with all the preparations, and we're going to be joined by my family members, and my best and closest friends a little later.

   In two years time I'll be an adult hobbit. And that's when the big party'll start for real.

Part of the Hobbit Generation

Backbreaking work

"Brutal".
   That's how I'd describe getting the backpiece done. It's nothing I'd like to do again, because PAINFUL, but then on the other hand I kinda don't have much room now... The piece is colourful and lovely and sore and sweet and finally fucking finished after yesterday's grueling six hour sitting. (I am going back to fill in the tree one more time because apparently I bleed a lot in the neck area, so that's not going to be fun...)

BUT LOOK AT MY LITTLE PIECE OF HOBBITON:

by the super talented and super sweet @filthyswede

Soooo, I wonder what the next one is going to be?

A Game of a 100% DONE WITH THIS

   Thank the Gods it's over and done with now.
   A Game of Thrones has finally aired its last episode and it was, just like previous episodes of this last season, a great mess of "MEH..."
   Congratulations to Benioff and Weiss for making the conclusion to the great epic that was GoT uninteresting and bland. I've never felt so rushed through the story before. Ugh.
   #DISAPPOINTED

If we wish hard enough, do you think G.R.R. Martin can fix any of this in the next book?

"BOKREA" got me going crazy

Yes.
It's that time of year.

Here. Have a picture of this year's haul.

Happy Valentine's Day Folks

This is when I write another scathing remark on how Valentine's Day is bullshit but, though it is and I am, I also need to remind all of yous that Valentine's isn't all about romantic relationships.
   It can also be about all kinds of love.
   At the time being I find myself in a situation I've never been before.
   I send more love to my close friends and my family than I have ever done before, at the same time as I'm in a romantic relationship that absolutely smashes all kinds of norms applied to what relationships should be.
   Lets celebrate love my friends. Lets just do that. Lets show each other what the power of love can do to people.
   Tell your friends how much you appreciate them. Give some flowers to a loved one, be it your mum or a sibling or your best friend/s. Remember: life is chaos, be kind.
   And y'all motherfuckers need love, I can tell. ❤ 

The Hutt Recommends: DEADLINE

DEADLINE by Mira Grant
#2 in Newsflesh

I don't read zombie fiction very often but stumbled over the first book of the Newsflesh series (FEED) and found the description quite captivating. A book written by a female author about a female blogger in a zombie-infested world? Could this really be what would let me enjoy reading about zombies?
   Answer? YES. Yes, it was.
   I devoured Feed (haha...) and put Deadline on my to read-list for later. 
   In January I finally bought Deadline and finished it in three days. If I hadn't had to go to work I'd have finished it much sooner seeing as I couldn't put it down once I had it in my stubby lil' hands.

BEWARE, SPOILERS AHEAD (make sure you've read Feed first):
   Ex-blogger Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. These days. His mission used to be poking zombies with a stick while someone filmed it, but then his sister died and suddenly playing with dead things wasn't as much fun anymore. His news team is still the best at what they do, but assuming the wheel after Georgia was never something he strove for.
   And then one day a researcher from the Center of Decease Control shows up on his doorstep with a scoop that can make even Shaun's shrivelled heart beat extra hard.

   We know the characters. We know the fight. We all want to know what the ever-loving hell is going on at the CDC. And Mason is the exact right amount of sarcastic little shit paired with whiny but brave hero that I enjoy. His inner struggle and the friendships portrayed in this series are engaging and down to earth.
   I have books #3 and #4 in my bookshelf.