Save us 2021...

   ...you're our only hope.

   I'm not the first to admit that 2021 didn't have much competition from its most recent predecessor. The bar was set so low... and yet... here we are at the end of 2021 and what happened to that bar? Well, for the first six months of the year we certainly didn't go to any bars. (Well. I sure didn't. Because I'm not an unempathetic asshole.)

   Not wholly unexpected, we lost a few important people, such as Christopher Plummer and Helen McCrory. The legendary Richard Donner. The passing of Una Stubbs hit me hard. Ed Asner. Michael K. Williams - fucking hell, only 54 years old he was. Speaking of passing away way too young; Keiko Nobumoto. And then the very much problematic but nonetheless legendary Anne Rice moved on. As did the feminist icon bell hooks. BETTY WHITE ❤️  

   Thank you for all the good things you've given us.

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  Perdibird at Kryptonite made it pretty

     My intense series of tattoo sessions continued in January, carrying on work on another HHGttG tribute on mah butt. Well. It's on my hip out towards my butt... In February I let another artist at the same studio go crazy on my ribs. And again to finish the rib piece in April.

•    In May I had another two sessions booked - at first one more in Gothenburg to finish up that butt tattoo and then I went on an adventure down to Halmstad, just down the coast from my beloved city to start the painful process of getting my stomach decorated with something pretty.

   I feel like I might have officially gone from A Person with Tattoos to A Tattooed Person. A small but significant development by my standards.

   I like it.

•    By April I had already unlocked the achievement "10k in under 70min" I had presented as a challenge to myself at the start of the year; by which I mean that I actually ran 10 km in under 70 minutes. 64:30 to be more exact, which was way better than I'd hoped for for the first time I ever managed to actually run 10k.

   Believe me, I was as astonished as anyone.

   Surprisingly, I also went on a few careful dates with (unsurprisingly) varying results, but no results anywhere near the butterflies and pink goggles variety.

•    June was terrible. Thoroughly.

   People all around seemed to think covid was over just because restrictions were starting to get rolled back. People really are staggeringly fucking stupid, but I finally got that much wanted first vaccination shot in July - go me! and got nothing more negative than some headache and an arm that felt like it'd been through a fistfight all on its own without involvement from any other part of me.

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  Piece done at Bishop's Electric Tattooing

     By August I was exhausted and needed a week of being on holiday just to get the hang of being on holiday. August was also the month of not going to the Medieval Week because covid sure had a field day with the tourists on Gotland right about then (as it turns out the Medieval Week, funnily enough, was entirely spared the covid plague which goes to show history nerds learn from the past). So I didn't dare go and stayed on the west coast (Best Coast) for the most part, but also went up to the Capital for a bit to visit friends. Back on the west coast (Best Coast) I went to a few heavily restricted parties, read books, visited museums, finished my stomach piece, got stabbed in the arm a second time and was thrilled nonetheless. 

Halloween party like it's 1921!

   September was birthday month! 

   I'm finally a Hobbit of age!

   33 years old and still kicking.

   Woop!

•    Covid restrictions were completely lifted in September and while I stayed cautious I need to collect my nerds around me, so I started doing just that more and more.

   Autumn was strange and flew by in a blur while I tried dating again and I still think dating is the weirdest thing. Social anxiety just adds another spicy layer to everything, amirite? However, cinemas were opening up again which meant that I could finally dive back into the Marvel universes, and boy! Them universes be wild!

   December was as awful as always.

My dislike for Krimmus lives on unmoved.

And then Covid restrictions were reinstated.

   But I persevered. Until I couldn't. I was completely decked over the New Year celebrations. No covid, just the common cold, but it was my body's response to having been too busy for too long. 

Best of the year:

Movies: Because of covid I didn't get the opportunity to see 'Just Mercy' in theatres in 2020 but I caught it on HBO the second it landed there and holy shit I wish I'd seen it in theatres - SO GOOD. Once cinemas re-opened I watched 'Dune' and didn't even manage to finish my drink because I was so enthralled by the film. 'The Harder They Fall' was a Netflix premiere and it was AWESOME. The MCU delivered us 'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings' and then 'Spiderman: No Way Home'.

Shows: I giddily discovered Letterkenny and The Rookie this year. The new seasons of The Handmaid's Tale and The Boys were a bit of a letdown though, while Fleabag was sweetly sorrowful, but also hilarious - a genuine recommendation.

Books: I've had a number of fantastic reading experiences this year. Continuing on the Newsflesh series with 'Feedback' by Mira Grant was a worthy ride, let me tell you. 'Monstrous Regiment' and 'Going Postal' by Terry Pratchett were fantastic. 'The Bear and the Nightingale' by Katherine Arden was lovely. I made time to re-read 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and for the duration of the first three books it's still the most hilarious stuff; beautiful nostalgia all round... just don't ruin your Guide experience by reading the rest of the series. Please? 'Cry Pilot' by Joel Dane was a 5 star-experience, as was 'The Starless Sea' by Erin Morgenstern. I adoooored 'The Vanished Birds' by Simon Jimenez. 'Karen Memory' by Elizabeth Bear and 'Queen of the Tearling' by Erika Johansen were both deep in the land of 5 stars. The classic tale by R.L. Stevenson about the duality of man; 'The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' is brilliant, and I was equal parts mesmerised and fucked up by 'The Echo Wife' by the amazing Sarah Gailey. I ended the year with the fantastic 'The Hollow Places' by T. Kingfisher and 'All Systems Red' by Martha Wells - both gifted to me by my best friends (oh, how I love you).

Events: Tattoo bonanza! Vaccination time! My ginger flat mate have learnt to put up with forehead kisses! The River Thames is no longer considered biologically dead! Experiments to neutralise nuclear contamination has been proven successful within the radioactive exclusion zone in Chernobyl. NASA has created oxygen on Mars which takes us one step closer to be able to bunch all narcissistic billionaires together and shoot them into space to exile them on Mars... humanely.

   The question remains; what happened to that low bar we set for 2021? I'd dare say that it got even lower for my faith in humanity. I know I said it last year as well, but people suck. I shouldn't expect anything good coming out of people with the past years' experiences to judge from, yet I persevere persistently to expect some basic human decency and receiving none of the sort. I am an idiot.

   But an idealistic leftist idiot I will remain. There is nothing else to it. I have no other choice.

   Next year is fucking election year and I already know deep within my bones that it's going to be beyond terrible. This fact obviously makes it even more important to gather my nerds around me and make good memories - long hugs, lots of kisses, grand movie experiences, delicious foods, nectarous drinks, hypnotising books...

   And guys, we survived 2021. I spoke to strangers. Those were my goals for this year and I made it.

We made it. We lived.

Maybe that's enough.

2021, in short

 

Review incoming...

The Hutt Recommends: The Diary of a Bookseller

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

"It is a strange phenomenon that, when customers visit the shop for the first time, they tend to walk very slowly through it, as though they are expecting someone to tell them they have entered a forbidden zone, and when they decide to stop, it is invariably in a doorway. This, of course, is incredibly frustrating for anyone behind them, and since that person is usually me, I exist in a state of perpetual frustration. Anthropologists insist that it is an instinctive human response on entering a new space to stop and look around for potential danger, although quite what sort of danger might be lurking in a bookshop - other than a frustrated bookseller whose temper has been frayed to the point of violence by the fact that somebody is blocking the doorway - is a mystery." 

   Shaun Bythell's diary of a year of his observations as a second hand bookseller in little rural Wigtown, Scotland, is both hilarious and, for me as another person working retail, very relatable. He's a lovely mix between the misanthropic Bernard Black (from Black Books) and an exasperated Giles (from Buffy) which is just my kind of dry sense of humour.

The Hutt Recommends: The Echo Wife

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

   Evelyn Caldwell is devastated after her divorce from her cheating husband. It not just that he was cheating and it took her so long to notice, but he used her research in cloning to secretly create a genetic replica of her that is everything Evelyn is not. Martine is gentle, obedient and most of all the kind of motherly woman Evelyn could never be. That she promised herself never to be. 

   Evelyn would choose to just throw herself back into her research and put another part of her life in the deep pool of forgotten things, but now her cheating husband is dead and both Evelyn and Martine will have work together to bury the evidence or both their lives are forfeit. 

   You'll remember Gailey as the author who wrote about cowboys on hippos, which I absolutely adored thanks to it being humorous, intelligent and absorbing throughout. In the case of The Echo Wife "humorous" is most definitely not the word I'd use, but it sure made my head spin. I adore the way Sarah Gailey use their words - I was glued to the pages all the way through. It fucked me up, it did.

Hit a snag

   Lately it's felt like I've done nothing else but read. The words have been the kind of flowing escapist magic I need them to be, and I've pored through 25 books in just the last two months but now all of a sudden my brain wants nothing to do with books... but also wants nothing to do with anything else either.

   So now I guess I'm... stuck. Eventually it'll come back to me but it seems for now I need a break and I'm at a little bit of a loss.

   We'll see.

   Also, life man. Pandemic life sure is strange.

Holiday time

 FINALLY.

   I've been on holiday for a week already, but it's only now that I can actually feel myself starting to relax. I needed this so bad. My plans are to remain in my PJ's, read books, eat yummy foods, and meet friends. I might drink a beer or two. Run a few miles. Might not do that in my PJ's but will definitely return to PJ's once running and being in pubs is done with.

   No stress though. Because I've got three more weeks.

   Stay safe my friends. Be careful and get vaccinated.

I got poked

 

   First one down. One to go.

   Get vaccinated ya filthy animals.

People

    People truly are astonishingly fucking dumb. Just because restrictions are being rolled back slightly doesn't mean there's no more covid you fuckwits. I'm furious. I've got shit to do and people acting stupid just pushes that further into the future. I want my life back, or at least some semblance of it, please and thank you.

What in the hell...

 

Whaddup nerds, I won.