e

The fact that the Hugo people have gotten snitty enough to try and stop a bunch of fans from calling themselves partial Hugo winners is completely hilarious, if also vaguely offensive.

Up until I saw that they'd waded in, I was enjoying the high spirits but also, in a tiny corner of my sometimes overly literal mind, thinking that we hadn't technically all won Hugos, and can you really say things that aren't technically true? Like, is that allowed?

But oh my gosh, there was no reason for Worldcon to rain on people's parade like that. It was just a lot of community pride and enjoyable silliness, and I don't think I saw a single person who thought having contributed to the Hugo Award-winning AO3 was the same as winning a Hugo for an individual work of their creation.

So now I'm just like -- heck yeah! I have won perhaps half of a millionth part of a Hugo! And so have many of you!

And I just think that's really great.

The other day I was wondering why most humans have five fingers. I mean, it seems like a lot, doesn't it? I can see why you'd want at least two, so you can grasp things between them, and maybe sometimes you want to get a little fancier, so sure, throw in a couple more. But five, really?

Then I got to thinking about why other animals, like the noble wolf for example, have any toes at all. It's not like most of them do anything with them individually; a wolf isn't out there knitting or playing piccolo. So why have digits and not just merge them all into some kind of unified foot?

What do they even use their toes for? I asked myself, and answered: Finding purchase on the ground while running, probably, or digging sometimes. But couldn't you do that with sort of a flattened spade-like foot object as well?

No, you could not, I realized. It's harder to dig a shovel into the ground than it would be a garden fork. Narrowing the cutting edge of the foot to individual points concentrates the force applied to each of them, ensuring greater traction and/or clawing capacity. This satisfied me. I had answered the question of why toes exist.

But seriously, why five?

And I keep wanting to make a proper post about it, but since that keeps not happening, I give you instead an exchange my mother and I had today while we were trading weird stories our brains tell us while we're asleep.

enemyofperfect: So then the giant skeleton king screamed and kind of fell on top of us--
Ma: That does sound like a creepy dream.
enemyofperfect: Oh, no -- this isn't the dream that upset me. The one that upset me was about the ethics of dealing with bandits in a post-apocalyptic society.
Ma: ...?
enemyofperfect: I mean, a blogger I respect said that we had to have a zero tolerance policy for bandits, because if they had any chance of reintegrating with society, people would be way more likely to give it a try. But I felt really uncomfortable with that idea! Like, if bandits have no options except banditry until they die, of course they're going to keep killing and stealing. And what if someone is actually born into banditry -- what do we do then? What option is there that lets us take a hard stance with bandit parents without forever traumatizing their kids? Or do we kill the kids too? There's no good solution here!
Ma: You know, some people just dream about having to give a presentation in their underwear.
enemyofperfect: ...I just realized something.
Ma: Is it that your name is Chidi?
enemyofperfect: I AM CHIDI ANAGONYE.

I'm trying not to be too ridiculously pleased with this realization, but let's be real -- how much better than an indecisive cinnamon roll of a dead ethics professor could I possibly do?

I've finally gotten a text that charms me more more than the time spammers kept sending me messages supposedly from myself!  This one just says, "I want to serve you." And not even in a porny way, as far as I can tell -- it seems to be trying to sell me insurance.

I can't decide which SFnally unlikely possibility I find more touching:

• that this poor bot has achieved sentience, but still can't imagine any other future for itself than obeying the whims of meat humans, or
• that it's entirely aware of the fact that as a sentient being it has just as many rights as anyone, thank you very much, but it happens to be a bot with decided submissive tendencies, and the only way it has of meeting people is spam.

Either way, I just want to shower it with virtual hugs... but probably that would be a bad idea, since, spambot.

So I'm just posting here to relieve my feelings, instead.

And neither do I. The bleak loathing I feel towards it cannot be measured, or estimated. It may be that this is the dark energy which makes up 68.3% of the known universe, or it may be that the animosity I now bear is infinite.

The snow seems to be infinite. Not all the world is snow -- other types of matter are permitted, so far, to exist -- but I suspect that it goes on forever.

We are running out of places to put it.

The snowfall we have received is in excess of requirements. Are you missing snow that your locale had been allotted? I think we have it. Please join me in contacting the weather authorities to arrange its prompt delivery to its intended destination.

We're told to expect more snow tomorrow.

For no particularly good reason, I'm reading Casino Royale. So far it's sort of interesting, if not necessarily in the ways Ian Fleming intended. It's always great when in older books they're like:

She would have been totally hot, if it weren't for the fact that she was too fucking smart. I hate that in women. She acted like she thought her opinion mattered, too.

How unimaginably sorry these smart confident gorgeous women must have been that asshat narrators weren't into them. I really can't imagine the personal suffering that must have brought them.

I just asked my mother -- who read the book before passing it along to me, thanks Ma -- if she thought I was being unfair here. She assured me that it gets much worse. Good to know!

In unrelated yet somehow appropriate news, when I went to start this post, it asked me if I wanted to restore from a saved draft. I didn't remember having any drafts, but I clicked okay just in case there was something I was forgetting, and was presented with the following text: "kashgsagadhsshshs".

I do actually remember what that was about, but am nevertheless amused.

(Which I know at least a few of you are.)

Possibly it has escaped your attention that an exercise in group storytelling is in progress! It is ridiculous and awesome and I am dying to find out what happens next, and yet I cannot write every installment, nor even every other one! (Not because there's any rule against it or anything. That just isn't the way my brain works.) Therefore it is for selfish and unselfish reasons alike that I inform you that you, too, could have a ton of fun throwing words at your computer screen for no good reason!

It's been a little quiet over the weekend, but before things slowed down, we'd racked up a hapless yet snarky protagonist, a broken washing machine, a world-weary repair guy, a couple of plot twists, an interactive fiction in-joke, and the following brilliant pun (which I preface with some of what I wrote so that the joke works):

( Can you be spoilered for a story that hasn't hit a thousand words yet? )

Seriously, this is A+ silliness, people! There is approximately zero pressure but INFINITE POSSIBILITY. As usual, I cannot shut up once I open my mouth, but the average contribution is at about the 50-word range, and you could totally add ten words and we would love you for it. At least, I know I would. I'm just saying!

This has been a public service announcement.

...and it's awesome.

This was originally going to be a post about how surprisingly good it looked; then my hair finished drying. I'm happy to say that I managed to coax it out of the stage in which it resembled a small mammal unlucky enough to expire atop my head, but I still crack up every time I see my own reflection, and the mere sight of me has already rendered one other person so helpless with laughter as to require physical support. This haircut is objectively hilarious, in other words.

And I still love it.

Up until a few months ago, my hair was down to my hips -- when it was loose, which was never, because hip-length hair is incredibly annoying[1] -- and when I got it cut it for the first time in years, I still kept it long enough to tie back, because making decisions is hard, and so is thinking about my appearance, and it was easier to keep treating my hair like a nuisance to be kept out of the way than to think about what I actually wanted to do with it. It was a huge relief to have less of the nuisance to deal with, but picking a hairstyle was scary, okay? I hadn't done that since, like, elementary school! I didn't know how it worked!

I still don't, really, which is a big part of why I'm neither surprised nor particularly dismayed by the fact that despite a certain fleeting promise, this haircut is arguably the funniest thing I've seen all week. Aware that I had only the vaguest idea of what I wanted, I was braced to find the results actively soul-destroying -- and instead, what I ended up with merely suggests that someone tossed a boy band and Alice from Dilbert in a stylistic blender. Hey, I got off lightly!

Meanwhile, it is so utterly amazing to have hair that cannot get in my way no matter what I do. I keep expecting it to fall over my shoulder or get in my face or something, and it keeps not happening! It's blissful.

I won't pretend that the glimpse of a world in which I have hair I actually like wasn't nice, either.

So, yeah. The fact that I should maaaybe come with a spit-take warning at the moment notwithstanding, I feel like I'm headed in the right direction, here. I figure I'll give it a couple of days to see if it's possible to tame my new hair into something remotely workable. If so: victory!

And if not, I'll be asking my mother how she feels about attempting a touch-up. I'm pretty sure she'll say yes if I do.

I mean, I've provided her with so much amusement today alone! It would really only be fair.

1. In my experience. Your mileage may well vary! (back)

Forget the brave little tailor; I can coax a fly out of the house without resorting to any violence whatsoever.  My skill, however, is matched by my generosity:  I will now, free of charge, disclose to you my remarkably efficacious methods -- and I can assure you that once you have gazed upon my instructions, you will agree that their efficacy is remarkable indeed.

The steps are as follows:

1. Get a bottle of water -- empty or full doesn't matter, but make sure the cap is screwed on tightly -- and place it on a flat surface in plain sight.
2. Wait for the fly to land on it.
3. Very carefully, grasp the part of the bottle farthest from the fly, and pick it up.
4. Proceed with extreme caution to the nearest door, avoiding loud noises, fellow humans, or excessive breathing.
5. If the door is locked, unlock it.  Open the door slowly and ease yourself, with bottle and fly, through it.  Take care not to alarm the fly with suddenly looming door frames!
6. With the door closed behind you, permit the fly to take flight and leave.
7. Return to the house, relocking the door if necessary, and celebrate your victory.

It is possible that there is a zeroth step, viz., allowing the fly to collide with your body as it buzzes about the room; I am skeptical of its necessity, but if the procedure outlined above fails to work for you, I would recommend performing it before trying again.

I have twice now achieved success in exactly this manner.

"Curses!"

"Oh, spinach!"¹

"Crabapples!"²

Under my breath: "Oh, fuck."

Conclusion: My internal censors seem to be working well; it's just their dictionaries I wonder about.

1. No spinach was actually present. (back)
2. Crabapples, either. (back)