Little old hobbit

The Halloween party was amazeballs.

I'm going to work on this outfit some more.

Halloween

Dylan Moran is a fucking genius. And apparently he understands Swedes pretty well since most of his show was about death, the absurdity of modern society and being fat.

And I have purple/pink hair now. And I have just finished my Halloween outfit (about an hour ago). Yes. I know Halloween was two weeks ago but there's no better reason than Halloween to have a fancy dress party. And for some of us, every day is Halloween. Or at the very least, tomorrow (that would be Saturday) is Halloween. I'm looking forward to this soooo much. I'm planning on taking a lot of pictures.

Lets say it again; "Halloween".

More and more

It's been a terrible day for me but this breakdown has been a long time coming.

I've always been a bit of a lone wolf even though I love having company. In the past I've chosen to be by myself because I've been able to be alone without feeling lonely, it has helped me recover and stress down. But these days I tend to isolate myself more and more because I don't want to be a bother to other people; any and all people but people I know in particular. Being by myself has become a source of stress in itself and I feel more and more lonely. I don't want to force myself on people and consequently make them grow tired of me. It's entirely counterproductive because I know that I feel better when I'm spending time with people; no matter how little I feel like I contribute or how tedious or stupid I feel I'm being.
I'm absolute shit at keeping up with people and staying in touch and seeing people, you know, doing the things friends do to and with one another. I think about doing them all the time but then I end up not doing them after all. I often feel inadequate as a friend because of this.
I enjoy the little things from my friends; a text message, a phone call, a postcard, some sort of confirmation that I'm on their mind from time to time and I imagine that my friends enjoy the same things. It's not that I lack imagination. I have ideas for messages, letters, outings and adventures but there's a mighty big wall to climb between communicating them to the people I hold dear and where I am.

Maybe I'm being silly, maybe it's my cold (or lack of coffee) playing tricks on my brain.
I'm too busy to have this cold. I've got shit that need taking care of.
This has been my day off. I've done absolutely nothing.
Work is a mess.
My Halloween costume isn't finished yet.
But I am going to see Dylan Moran this Sunday.

So it's a Tuesday you say

Tapas and sangria on a Tuesday, fuck yeah. I'll have to be at work at 6:30 tomorrow.

It'll be glorious.

Oh, Dara...

Dara O'Briain will be taking his show to Sweden in May next year. I've got tickets.

There's two weeks left until I get to see Dylan Moran from the front row. A fucking dream coming true for me.

Yes. I like Irish comedians. There's just something about them. I mean, Dara is such a nerd and Dylan Moran is a genius.

Countdown to 27

Three days left until my birthday. My twenty-seventh. I have a wishlist the lenght of my leg but I really don't want to bother anyone with it, especially not my friends because they have about as much money as I do; which is very close to none at all.
I'm trying to have everything prepared for my birthday party this Saturday (the way I see it it's my duty to feed my friends) but I just know I'm going to forget something. Probably something obvious.
The real mystery is how I got this old and how time can move so fast.
And of course I've caught a cold.
Aaaand I'm having a bit of an age crisis.

"The fight is within me, and I’ve been to all kinds of different rooms in my life. So the fight that I have on a constant basis is just to try and better myself. I struggle like everybody else to try and be the best I can."

- Tom Hardy (and a big Happy Birthday to Tom, 38 years old today.)

Muggles all around

There are many kinds of muggles. Sometimes we need someone to remind us that their lives are not ours. Our lives are our own to live. We create our own lives. It doesn't have to be extraordinary to be valuable. We do this because we are invaluable. Precious.

Work? Nah...

Oh, I just love how I seem to be the only one at my workplace without a life. You know, hobbies in my spare time that I need to take into account. The only person who can offer to cover for collegues when they have better things to do. Or just can't muster up the energy to make an effort for the group.
I went to work at 6AM today and left work at 5PM. Because they needed me there when others chose to not be there for one reason or another. Because going to the gym is more important, right?

The Hutt (kind of) Recommends: The Rapture of the Nerds

The Rapture of the Nerds: A Tale of the Singularity, Posthumanity, and Awkward Social Situations by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross.

In our future post-Singularity society our main character Hew attends a party at a friend's house. It's odd, mostly because Hew is a miserable luddite of a Welshman among people who've embraced the technology brought to Earth by the uploaded consciousnesses now gathered in the Singularity (basically a huge cloud of a supercomputer encircling Earth). He wakes up in a bathtub with a vague memory of a great party and having met a wonderful leather-clad woman with a shaved head. After being violently threatened out of the house by his friend he returns home to find that he's been arbitrarily selected for jury duty to assess new technological advances to determine their possible usage for what remains of the human race.
Showing up for jury duty turns out to be the least of Hew's problems.

WARNING: some profanity ahead.
From the very first page my brain asked the question "what the fuck am I reading?" and I continued to ask that same question throughout the entirety of the novel. It's absurd, there's no other word for it, but in a very good way. Well, partly. Well, mostly. I really don't know. It's been weeks since I read the damned thing and I'm still not entirely sure.
It has a lot of references to other works of scifi, among them the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Star Wars, the Discworld series and Doctor Who so of course it intrigued me. But plenty of references to other people's good work shouldn't be the only memorable thing about a book. I remember liking our main characters Hew and Bonnie (the shaven-headed woman at the beginning of the novel) but the story itself failed to catch hold of me. Of course I turned the pages because I wanted to know what was going to happen next, but more to the point I wanted to know how and if the story could get even more absurd and how the hell one could finish a story like that.

I also remember having many short outbursts of rage over the fact that our authors seem to equate certain body parts with a certain gender. Throughout the book several characters use modern technology to change bodies; from one body with a pussy and boobs to one with a flat chest and a dick or the other way around, and even though we find out that the character in one of these cases clearly identifies as male but happens to have a body with a pussy at the time they still refer to him as 'she'. It might seem petty but it fucking irritates me. On the other hand, I'm a part of the 'feminazi mafia' so maybe I'm one of the few to react to that.

Overall, I liked the novel but also feel that it got lost in itself, got unnecessarily complicated and slowed down at some point in the last third of the book. It's worth reading the book just for the conversations between Hew and Bonnie though.
Bonnie is fucking awesome.

Morning mood

I bought a new coffee cup the other week. It goes very well with my morning mood.

The friendliest picnic you've ever seen

Nordegravar, Visby, 2015

This must be what I look forward to most every Medieval Week; the huge annual Wednesday picnic in wait for the annual fire show (TRiX at their best, not very medieval but awesome, seen by about 7000 people this year. I don't have the words to describe it so go watch the 2013 performance here.). This is when round about 3000-5000 people sit down and eat together. Drink together. Sing and laugh together. I'm not usually a lover of crowds but THIS, this is the kind of crowd I love.

To Wisby my medieval friends!

I'll be off to Visby in the morning for the Medieval Week on Gotland. It'll be my tenth time attending and I will have to be honest and admit that it'll probably be the last time in a long while. I think I've said it before (a few years ago when I skipped a Week because of reasons, mostly life-related) but this time it's for real. I will most definitely visit Medieval Festivals and Fairs, but I'm aching for something new and invigorating.
So if you happen to know of a really nice, quirky and/or charming Medieval Festival I'm open to suggestions for 2016. Anything themed 12th to 14th century would be amazeballs. Or I'll just gather as much information as possible about some festival in the UK and throw myself right in there. What could possibly go wrong?

The Hutt Recommends: Johannes Cabal the Necromancer

Johannes Cabal: the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard.

Oh Johannes, you despicable little thing, how I’ve come to love you.

Once upon a time Johannes Cabal, necromancer of some infamy, had reasons to sell his soul to none other than Satan himself in order to attain knowledge of necromancy. Years later he realised that he might need same said soul to deepen his research and consequently took a stroll right through the gates of Hell to pay Satan another little visit and renegotiate that deal they made a while back. Seeing as Satan enjoys a good joke on humanity once in a while, and knowing full well the futility in trying to get your soul back once you've given it up, he agrees to give Cabal a year in which to sign over a hundred willing souls to Hell with the help of a travelling carnival. If Cabal succeeds he'll get his soul back, if not he'll be damned for all eternity. With precious little time to waste Cabal raises a diverse crew of carnies from the dead and somehow persuades his own brother Horst to help him finish his task with bizarre results and many a twisted turn.

This is a steampunk adventure with a side of death, demons and wicked deceit.

Johannes Cabal: the Detective by Jonathan L. Howard.

The adventures of the necromancer of some infamy, Johannes Cabal , goes forever on!

By some mishap Cabal finds himself abroad and entirely in trouble after some not wholly legal activities including a book that wasn't his but should have been if his plan had only worked. Now, he's awaiting execution and to no enjoyment at all. Unexpectedly, he's offered a chance for escape and takes on the identity of a government official to escape aboard a luxurious aeroship on its way across the border and away from trouble. Or so Cabal thought. Instead Cabal finds himself trapped on an aeroship where passengers disappear mysteriously and an attempt is made on him own life.

Johannes Cabal: the Fear Institute by Jonathan L. Howard. 

Johannes Cabal, necromancer of some infamy, takes on the Dreamlands! Ghouls! Witches! Zebras!

One day Cabal is introduced to the opportunity to take on a strange task indeed. Employed by the mysterious Fear Institute he is to lead an expedition of a handpicked few into the Dreamlands; a land beyond the veil of sleep that is entirely formed by dreams and dreamers. In these Dreamlands he is to find and destroy the dreaded Phobic Animus which is supposedly the very embodiment of fear and the source of all terrors. Will the group find the Phobic Animus and is it possible to wipe out fear entirely? But the real question is about something completely else because what does a man like Cabal, who's unafraid of death, really fear?

The third part of the story about the sarcastic necromancer Cabal takes a very Lovecraftian turn and kept me enthralled until the very last page. I read most of it in a day and could hardly put the book down once I had started reading. The only thing I could have wished for is the inclusion of more non-male characters because as much as I love Johannes, it would be nice to see a non-male character of importance once in a while.
Big plus for unexpected ending!


Howard's fourth book about Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by the title The Brothers Cabal came out in late 2014 but has yet to show up in Swedish bookshops.
But you can find it on Amazon. *hint hint*

It's... pink

If someone had come up to me a few years ago and told me that I would decorate my home in pink and all manners of different vibrant bright colours I would have laughed in their face and called them an idiot. But look at me now.

• My kitchen is white with details in different shades of blue, green and red.
• My bedroom is green with details in white, gold and silver.
• My living room is white with details in black, white, metal and neon pink.

It looks amazeballs.

This has been another quite irrelevant post.

Stay hydrated my friends.

The Hutt Recommends: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Many years ago I read a novel by the title Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I found the first chapters hard to get through because of the unsympathetic nature of one of the main characters, one Mr Norrell. After having put down the book for several weeks I finally found patience enough to continue the story. And I loved it. All thanks to Jonathan Strange and all that happened after the petty Mr Norrell finally took residence in London following the disbandment of The York Society of Magicians.

The story takes place in 19th century England during the Napoleonic Wars but with the added assumption that magic is real but haven't been in use by human kind for hundreds of years. We follow the two men Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange and the relationship between the two as they turn to their quest to return magic to England, each with their own goals. And consequences. An arrogant hoarder vs a naive yet seeking mind.

The reason to why I'm writing about this is that the BBC production of the novel is very close to the source material and has therefore been a true delight to watch. Rarely do I get to enjoy an adaption so close in both narrative and feeling to the original text.

Please enjoy either of them, both if you can and wish.