Awesome hair again

I have new and awesome hair again.
Which is to say it's exactly the same as most of the other years, dyed goth black and buzzed to a 3 cut up to my temples then left long enough it don't curl up on my shoulders.
But it had grown out several finger widths, and now it is tidy buzzed, and all the same color.
So, awesome hair.
Even if I did have to put it all in a hat to get home in the rain.

I also went to the supermarket and bought some random things like a new hair comb and moisturising hand wash and a mens navy blue thermal t shirt because they were selling ladies but only cami tops. What's the point of a thermal cami? Does nothing above your chest actually need warm? So hopefully the XL mens one will be nice. It's only £4 so I might as well.
I also have bread and ice cream. Which was all I could think of needing for food.

I ate breakfast in the cafe and read a short story, which I'd started in the hairdressers, which was The Thing from the point of view of the thing. It was cool.

Now I am home, warm, well fed, with awesome hair.

retro gender politics... I kind of hope

I've been reading my way through The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24
I just finished reading The Sultan of the Clouds, by Geoffrey A Landis. It took me all afternoon. I kept getting distracted by, well, any and every thought that wandered through my head. Not a great sign.
It felt weirdly retro though, like it expected me to need telling a lot about Venus that I thought wasn't very new.
Mostly the problem was the point of view character. I realised early on he's actually a creepy sort of person, and not long after that that the story doesn't know it. ( Read more... )

So I think this gender stuff is part of why it felt like an old story to me. I mean, surely in new stories women get to have a personality and decide things and maybe possibly have adventures?

But, in this case, no.

Translation issues

Does anyone here happen to speak Swedish?
Actually it's only Google's auto translate that tells me that's the language I'm after.
I was reading a thing on made up nerd words and it included Card's hierarchy of foreignness. I typed it into Google because I vaguely recalled they're not made up words, they're made up meanings. Which would make bringing them into wider use, er, potentially problematic. But google, as usual, presents me with a whole bunch of possibilities I can't make sense of. So, potential Scandinavian speaking people:

utlanning, framling, raman, varelse, djur

what do they mean?

because google reckons utlanning means alien, which is a bit of a pickle when it's meant to mean human you don't know.

( Read more... )