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.

• 
  

  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.

• 

  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.

Hindsight is 20/20...(?)

   We hear it all the time; that "Hindsight is 20/20" and it might be. It is only once we've stepped out of the past that we can look back and clearly see what we've left behind.
   So what are we leaving behind this year?

   First of all; we lost Christopher Tolkien, so the year started off quite poorly. Then there was Mike Resnick. And then Terry Jones. And Max von Sydow. Albert Uderzo. Then came the news of Sir Ian Holm's passing and every Ringer on the planet must have shed a tear or two. The musical genius Ennio Morricone passed on. Chadwick Boseman was ripped away from us way too young. Diana Rigg. Terry Goodkind. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. David Prowse. Jeremy Bulloch. Thank you for everything.

   As for me, I've had a... year. I know I called 2019 an "extra bitch" but holy hell... 2020 didn't have to go so hard. Was it revenge for having had a too good a time? Did I do too well in late 2019? Was I too happy? Was that the issue? Did I jinx it? All I know is that some stuff and things happened:

Some raised fists for Raised Fist at Pustervik


• I went to some really fancy parties in January and February - oodles of glamour, debauchery and rose-tinted glasses.

• Watching Dropkick Murphy's was a wild experience after which I had happy bruises.
• Imminence and Raised Fist was insanely good, I shit you not I think I had a religious experience.

• Enter: Covid-fucking-19. What a shitshow.

What's there to say? 

   Everything was cancelled or postponed. Life was put on hold. Feelings were held back only to explode uselessly into empty air.

    I would have gone to see Russell Howard, but that was pushed to 2021. I would have gone to experience Amaranthe, but that's now been pushed to the spring of 2022. The plan was to party all night long all through The Medieval Week, but as the crisis worsened in April I gave up on that... and then came the physical festival's cancellation announcement just shortly after; instead launching "the Medieval Week: Plague Edition" - an entirely digital festival I didn't spend more than perhaps ten conscious minutes on.

I was isolated. I was heart-broken. I sunbathed.

   The Faun concert I was going to use as a mental band-aid after not going to The Medieval Week was pushed forward a year. My second Imminence concert for the year was cancelled. 

• My skinny ginger flat mate turned 8 years old. He is officially middle-aged, and seem to be getting more and more snuggly with age.
• I turned 32, and as good as it feels to survive another year, them years are fucking getting to me.
• I started going to parties again in September. Meeting people, having fun...

   ...as it turns out so did everyone else, but on a much larger and intimate scale than I, so covid-19 really started to pick up speed and numbers again. Back into social isolation we went. Or at least some of us did. On top of all of this, the rotten cherry on the poop sundae that was 2020; smashing through the door came the X-Mas madness like the unwanted bastard it is. Instead of thinking too hard on what I couldn't do I finally started making good use of my time and so December was the start of a string of monthly tattoo sessions starting with a sperm whale and petunias.

Best of 2020:
   Movies: Jojo Rabbit, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, aaaaaand then there was covid-19 that shut down any and all cinema-going from March and onwards.

   Shows: FEMINIST FREQUENCY RADIO - GO LISTEN WITH YOUR PREFERRED PODCATCHER. The Witcher. I mean, COME ON ❤. I Am Not OK With This was kinda awesome. Killing Eve's third season left me quite disappointed to be honest, but the second season of What We Do In the Shadows made up for that. The Great was fuckin' hilarious. The Umbrella Academy season 2 was mindblowing. Every other episode of Lovecraft Country sent my mind spiralling. His Dark Materials.
   Books: I read 90 books during 2020, and this time around 40 of them were not written by cis men - a vast improvement from last year (but I can do better). Dmitry Glukhovsky's 'Metro 2034' was almost as good as the first book of the series (which is very). 'Chrysalids' by John Wyndham is a "Best of Scifi classics" I can get behind. Stina Wollter's 'Kring Denna Kropp' was frikkin fantastic. 'The Truth' and 'Night Watch' by Terry Pratchett were both hilarious and thought-worthy. 'Way Station' by Clifford D. Simak was good. 2020 marked my third reread of 'Lighthousekeeping' by Jeanette Winterson (still awesome). Continuing the 'Newsflesh' series by Mira Grant with 'Blackout' and it's still going strong. 'Moon Over Soho' and 'Whispers Underground' by Ben Aaronovitch, 'Creatures of Will & Temper' by Molly Tanzer, 'Horns' by Joe Hill were all great reads. Brent Week's 'The Black Prism' was a solid 5-star all the way through. If you, like me, loooove Aliens you should read 'Bug Hunt'  - an anthology edited by Jonathan Maberry. A worthy finish to a good book year was 'Women's War' by Jenna Glass.

   Comics: Spells on Wheels by Kate Leth, Saga vol 4, Skottie Young's Deadpool series, Matt Fraction's Hawkeye, SF SX (Safe Sex) by Tina Horn.
   Events: RAISED FIST. Yes. I'm adding that. When the rest of the year was misery, my early spring was fantastic enough, and that Raised Fist concert will for ever be my best thing about 2020. It's also pretty awesome how archaeological digs through Sweden in the last couple of years will force us to rewrite our history books concerning basically everything we're taught in school about those pesky little years between round about 700 to 1300 AD (hint: the east coast and Birka wasn't nearly as important as the historians of Stockholm would have us believe...). As for the rest of the world's good news; efforts to regrow parts of the Great Barrier Reef has seen great successes. The bees living on the roof of Notre-Dame de Paris survived the fire of last year and has thrived through the pandemic, just like a lot of other species of animal around the globe enjoyed the greatly decreased tourism flow. New European legislation will make it easier to have household appliance products repaired in an effort to make appliances longer-lasting and thereby saving on energy costs. With the dismantling of more coal-based power production, carbon emissions continue to decline in Europe. Human ingenuity created a bunch of different vaccines to combat this latest pandemic in record time.

So that's good I guess.

Is hindsight 20/20? Nope. We've learned fuck all as a species in 2020, which is about as much as we've learned every other time a pandemic has threatened to wipe out great masses of people. The sick, the poor and the marginalised will always take the brunt of the blow.
   People are truly stupid.

   2020 was a shit year.

   For next year I just want no more of 2020, and fewer things to bite me in the ass, please and thank you. But this newfound willingness to reach out to strangers can stay. Even if it started in pure desperation it might prove to be useful in 2021.

   So lets bring it. Lets survive. Lets get fuckin' vaccinated and rid of this thing.

Please, care for your introverts

 

We're not OK.

Holy shit y'all

   I didn't actually think I could do the thing, but I did the thing. 5k in 30min. That's the goal I set, but didn't think I could reach, this spring when I started running. Without Zombies, run! it would have been unthinkable and without a kick in the butt at the gym entirely impossible. This feeling is exhilarating. Revivifying. I met my goal for 2020 y'all. Holy shit.

C-c-c-changes...!

...or no changes at all?

   Things seem to be returning to normal, but not really, and things are weird, and the world is shit, innit? I'm trying my best to stay positive and keeping up my energies for the entirety of this last week of work before I'm going on vacation. No Medieval Week this year since they've gone digital (I might listen in on a few lectures, haven't decided yet). I'm planning on meeting up with friends, we might enjoy some table top gaming and I might enjoy a laugh and a beer or three. I might also enjoy a whole lot of sleep. And books. And crisps. And comics. And stuff.

   In short; I intend to try and meet up with people during my vacation. It might prove to be a somewhat shortsighted and selfish decision in hindsight, but since I'm not planning on having any organised orgies with total strangers I'm pretty much convinced that it'll be fine. I need to be with my people. My nerds.

Welcome to Hell

I work retail. Food-ish part of the spectrum.
And since the latest of the corona viruses' been around business has been a-booming.
So we have sales rocketing through the roof but only the one extra staff so far. Which means that everyone has had to do extra hours and extra shifts and work with somewhere roundabouts twice as much wares as we normally work with this time a year. It's like having Christmas sale rates for months on end.
It's fucking exhausting.
I was supposed to be out of the country this week and get myself a bigger tattoo. I cancelled the trip but kept the vacation time and I reeeeeeeally needed it. Some good food, lots of naps, some podcasts, some good drink, some books and comics, some of that glorious rest. Yeah. Yum.

...and then 2020 was like; "Here, hold my corona...!"

   So who else hasn't had to change much of their everyday life?

   I've had to change worryingly little.
   What I have changed though was substantially important to my somewhat frail but recovering mental health. I am absolutely fuming inside about how all the activities and parties I had planned on going to have been cancelled one after the other. I'm not saying they shouldn't have been cancelled; they absolutely should have been cancelled for everyone's health's sake. What I'm saying is that it's fucked up my schedule and I'm shit with changed plans once I've set my mind on something - so much so that everything else also falls to pieces. I'm deeply disappointed is what I'm saying. And it scares me to be reminded of the fact that I'll have to start again as soon as this shitstorm has passed.
That's what I'm saying.

   H-O-L-Y S-H-I-T, people, this is absurd.
   I'm expecting the zombies any moment now.