T-1 day
I have acquired all my pills save one scrip that needs to get picked up tonight. I have made sure I have the proper toiletries. I have done all my princess prep (hair, nails, waxing) with the exception of the pedicure because I need the broken calluses to heal a bit more before I have someone sand them off.
I have checked in for my flight, made a parking reservation, updated my hotel reservation by sanders because we're staying two nights, not one. sanders has made me a tattoo appointment for Wednesday. Morgan took Buddy to camp this morning.
What I have not done: Laundry, which I'll be putting up as soon as I finish eating. I haven't cleaned out my car and obviously didn't get it cleaned out today; however, the parking garage offers detailing services so I'll do that. (Prices are comparable to the Pro Club.) I haven't showered yet, although that can wait until I get up at 2:30am. (Or possibly before I try and get a little sleep.)
I haven't begun packing, or sorted out my electronics and their charging statuses and all that. But I have to wait for laundry before I can do some of the packing, and electronics are always the last things to get packed. I also need to find a couple books for the plane.
Tonight's goal is to get to bed by about 11pm, which will let me get about 3.5 hours' sleep before I leave for the airport at stupid o'clock. Fortunately my first flight is to Houston, so it's a little over 4 hours and I can sleep on the plane. I have about an hour layover and then a 2-hour flight to Louisville. Fortunately the flight to Louisville is a 2 and 1, and I have a 1 in the exit row. If I can get to bed before 11, I'll be happy, but I'm not counting on it. And if I have to stay up until 3am just to get it all done, well, I'll sleep on the plane.
I had the second root canal today. It was so much better than the first one; there was one point where it hurt a little and I let the doc know, upon which he promptly gave me more novocaine and I was fine. They also gave me nitrous, because I asked for it, and that also really helped me. Dr. W gave me a very small supply of Percocet, but I just got my normal pain meds refilled today so I'm good there.
Now that the novocaine is wearing off I'm starting to feel a bit achy, as to be expected, so I've taken ibuprofen and oxy and am waiting for them to kick in. I expect I'll be fairly sore tonight and tomorrow, but I'll manage, and we're not getting on the road until Thursday morning so I've got a bit of time to recover.
Dr. W did tell me that the two bottom molars are going to end up in the same situation as these teeth, so keep an eye on it and if they start hurting give him a call. Joy. Here's hoping they can last until my insurance rolls over...
And in other news, So, here's my take on the 2015 Hugos, now that the dust has sort of settled.
I am gratified that the voters rejected the Puppies, and I'm especially pleased that it was such a clear-cut and resounding rejection. (If you didn't get the breakdown, the Puppies' entire slate won one award, for Guardians of the Galaxy which might have won anyway.)
But. There were a lot of authors who got hurt very badly by this debacle. Several authors withdrew their nominations because they didn't want to be associated with the Puppies. No one wins in that situation, really. Meanwhile, the Puppies' slate prevented many really talented and qualified authors from making the ballot in the first place, which is also a loss, both for the authors and for the readers who might not get exposure to said authors now. I can't be the only one who looks at the Hugo nominations every year to find out what new works or authors I might like, and this year I didn't have anything to find other than The Three-Body Problem. (Speaking of, I have a question on that one: does Cixin Liu win, for writing the book, or does it get shared with Ken Liu who translated it?)
markbernstein56 has a really good idea for the Puppy-Free Ballot, which would help to remedy some of the above problems. I hope to see more people doing similar things.
I'm worried about next year's nominations. The Puppies are not the kind of people to take this dismissal and actually learn from it. They're not going to say "Oh, hey, no one agreed with us, maybe we should rethink this and consider if we've been assholes." They're going to loudly and vehemently proclaim themselves an oppressed minority, and blame it all on us awful SJWs (social justice warriors). And they're going to figure out how to do this again, next year; how to turn an established, respected award for sf into a political fight.
They didn't, technically, break any rules in how they gamed the nomination system. And the Hugo committee has said that no rules were broken and they won't be changing anything about the system for the 2016 awards (I think; if I'm wrong, please let me know).
So what do those of us who actually like diversity in sf do? The idea of competing slates has less than zero appeal, but how else do we prevent the Puppies from running the Hugo nominations in 2016? I don't know enough about how the Hugo award system works to really know how to work it to our advantage, unfortunately.
I'm just depressed that it came to this, that the 2015 Worldcon and Hugos are going to be forever tarnished by this stupidnes; that every author who won this year has to consider whether he or she would have won had the ballot not been rigged; that every author who didn't get nominated will have to wonder if they should have been.
Five categories were completely rejected by voters and no award was given. In the history of the Hugos, five awards had been rejected before Saturday. In one night, the Hugos doubled the count of awards rejected by voters. That's not the kind of memorable you want for an award that's basically the sf version of an Oscar.
So I don't know what's next. I don't know how the Puppies will react overall, I haven't seen anything online yet so if you have, please link me. I don't know how we deal with this for next year. I don't know if the Hugos can even fully recover from this. I like to think they can.
But--as I said before--there was a very clear message Saturday night, and it was that the sf community as a whole said "Fuck you" to the Puppies, that they found the entire situation to be deplorable and distasteful and rejected it entirely. And that I like. I've mostly found the sf community and fandom to be inclusive, welcoming spaces, and I'm really pleased to see this. So it could have been worse; the Puppies' nominations could have swept the awards. And whether or not you agree with their politics, the quality of the works they nominated were pretty dreadful. (There were a couple exceptions, but mostly it was subpar.)
For example: Jim Butcher was nominated this year, for Skin Game, the latest Dresden Files book. He was on the Puppy slate, and did not win. Butcher himself has said nothing about the controversy one way or another, which on the one hand I understand and on the other leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I also, honestly, don't think the Dresden Files books are Hugo-worthy. Maybe if the award was given for the series as a whole, because Butcher has done a really good job creating a coherent mythology and universe and rules and things for Dresden, and the books are usually engaging at least. And to be fair, I haven't read Skin Game so I could be wrong, but if its writing is on par with the rest of Butcher's books I stand by my assessment.
There's nothing wrong with Dresden, but the series is junk food for your brain, basically. Meanwhile, The Three-Body Problem blew my mind and still has me grappling with its concepts. That's the kind of work that should win a Hugo (and did!).
There's room for all kinds of writing, and I freely admit I read a lot of junk food. I just think the Hugos should be better quality.
So I don't know. But I need to get the laundry going, so more later.
This entry was originally posted at http://blueraccoon.dreamwidth.org/1350747.html. Please comment there. |
comments
I have checked in for my flight, made a parking reservation, updated my hotel reservation by sanders because we're staying two nights, not one. sanders has made me a tattoo appointment for Wednesday. Morgan took Buddy to camp this morning.
What I have not done: Laundry, which I'll be putting up as soon as I finish eating. I haven't cleaned out my car and obviously didn't get it cleaned out today; however, the parking garage offers detailing services so I'll do that. (Prices are comparable to the Pro Club.) I haven't showered yet, although that can wait until I get up at 2:30am. (Or possibly before I try and get a little sleep.)
I haven't begun packing, or sorted out my electronics and their charging statuses and all that. But I have to wait for laundry before I can do some of the packing, and electronics are always the last things to get packed. I also need to find a couple books for the plane.
Tonight's goal is to get to bed by about 11pm, which will let me get about 3.5 hours' sleep before I leave for the airport at stupid o'clock. Fortunately my first flight is to Houston, so it's a little over 4 hours and I can sleep on the plane. I have about an hour layover and then a 2-hour flight to Louisville. Fortunately the flight to Louisville is a 2 and 1, and I have a 1 in the exit row. If I can get to bed before 11, I'll be happy, but I'm not counting on it. And if I have to stay up until 3am just to get it all done, well, I'll sleep on the plane.
I had the second root canal today. It was so much better than the first one; there was one point where it hurt a little and I let the doc know, upon which he promptly gave me more novocaine and I was fine. They also gave me nitrous, because I asked for it, and that also really helped me. Dr. W gave me a very small supply of Percocet, but I just got my normal pain meds refilled today so I'm good there.
Now that the novocaine is wearing off I'm starting to feel a bit achy, as to be expected, so I've taken ibuprofen and oxy and am waiting for them to kick in. I expect I'll be fairly sore tonight and tomorrow, but I'll manage, and we're not getting on the road until Thursday morning so I've got a bit of time to recover.
Dr. W did tell me that the two bottom molars are going to end up in the same situation as these teeth, so keep an eye on it and if they start hurting give him a call. Joy. Here's hoping they can last until my insurance rolls over...
And in other news, So, here's my take on the 2015 Hugos, now that the dust has sort of settled.
I am gratified that the voters rejected the Puppies, and I'm especially pleased that it was such a clear-cut and resounding rejection. (If you didn't get the breakdown, the Puppies' entire slate won one award, for Guardians of the Galaxy which might have won anyway.)
But. There were a lot of authors who got hurt very badly by this debacle. Several authors withdrew their nominations because they didn't want to be associated with the Puppies. No one wins in that situation, really. Meanwhile, the Puppies' slate prevented many really talented and qualified authors from making the ballot in the first place, which is also a loss, both for the authors and for the readers who might not get exposure to said authors now. I can't be the only one who looks at the Hugo nominations every year to find out what new works or authors I might like, and this year I didn't have anything to find other than The Three-Body Problem. (Speaking of, I have a question on that one: does Cixin Liu win, for writing the book, or does it get shared with Ken Liu who translated it?)
markbernstein56 has a really good idea for the Puppy-Free Ballot, which would help to remedy some of the above problems. I hope to see more people doing similar things.
I'm worried about next year's nominations. The Puppies are not the kind of people to take this dismissal and actually learn from it. They're not going to say "Oh, hey, no one agreed with us, maybe we should rethink this and consider if we've been assholes." They're going to loudly and vehemently proclaim themselves an oppressed minority, and blame it all on us awful SJWs (social justice warriors). And they're going to figure out how to do this again, next year; how to turn an established, respected award for sf into a political fight.
They didn't, technically, break any rules in how they gamed the nomination system. And the Hugo committee has said that no rules were broken and they won't be changing anything about the system for the 2016 awards (I think; if I'm wrong, please let me know).
So what do those of us who actually like diversity in sf do? The idea of competing slates has less than zero appeal, but how else do we prevent the Puppies from running the Hugo nominations in 2016? I don't know enough about how the Hugo award system works to really know how to work it to our advantage, unfortunately.
I'm just depressed that it came to this, that the 2015 Worldcon and Hugos are going to be forever tarnished by this stupidnes; that every author who won this year has to consider whether he or she would have won had the ballot not been rigged; that every author who didn't get nominated will have to wonder if they should have been.
Five categories were completely rejected by voters and no award was given. In the history of the Hugos, five awards had been rejected before Saturday. In one night, the Hugos doubled the count of awards rejected by voters. That's not the kind of memorable you want for an award that's basically the sf version of an Oscar.
So I don't know what's next. I don't know how the Puppies will react overall, I haven't seen anything online yet so if you have, please link me. I don't know how we deal with this for next year. I don't know if the Hugos can even fully recover from this. I like to think they can.
But--as I said before--there was a very clear message Saturday night, and it was that the sf community as a whole said "Fuck you" to the Puppies, that they found the entire situation to be deplorable and distasteful and rejected it entirely. And that I like. I've mostly found the sf community and fandom to be inclusive, welcoming spaces, and I'm really pleased to see this. So it could have been worse; the Puppies' nominations could have swept the awards. And whether or not you agree with their politics, the quality of the works they nominated were pretty dreadful. (There were a couple exceptions, but mostly it was subpar.)
For example: Jim Butcher was nominated this year, for Skin Game, the latest Dresden Files book. He was on the Puppy slate, and did not win. Butcher himself has said nothing about the controversy one way or another, which on the one hand I understand and on the other leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I also, honestly, don't think the Dresden Files books are Hugo-worthy. Maybe if the award was given for the series as a whole, because Butcher has done a really good job creating a coherent mythology and universe and rules and things for Dresden, and the books are usually engaging at least. And to be fair, I haven't read Skin Game so I could be wrong, but if its writing is on par with the rest of Butcher's books I stand by my assessment.
There's nothing wrong with Dresden, but the series is junk food for your brain, basically. Meanwhile, The Three-Body Problem blew my mind and still has me grappling with its concepts. That's the kind of work that should win a Hugo (and did!).
There's room for all kinds of writing, and I freely admit I read a lot of junk food. I just think the Hugos should be better quality.
So I don't know. But I need to get the laundry going, so more later.
This entry was originally posted at http://blueraccoon.dreamwidth.org/1350747.html. Please comment there. |
comments