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lovingboth1. What did you do in 2020 that you'd never done before?
See The Last Jedi - I wasn't expecting to think it was good, but it turns out to be everything I don't like in Star Wars in a single film.
To give just one tiny, tiny example, you've got the last rebels in a cave. They know they're going to be attacked, so they build some defences against a land assault in the form of a trench (not useful against the attack that's likely, but, hey...) The opposition has total air superiority, so they build the trench... in a straight line. Do the opposition just fly along it, strafing everyone in it? No.
To give a bigger example: was anyone surprised at the conclusion to the big confrontation between Rey, Kylo and Snoke?
See The Rise of Skywalker. Better, but it clearly thought Last Jedi shouldn't have happened too.
2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
The pandemic put paid to the main one. No.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
People I know, yes; close to, no.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Penny, the cousin I was a few months older than. She'd had mental health issues for decades.
I don't think I infected anyone with Covid-19 at the funeral in February, which was the first opportunity to see a bunch of other cousins for several years, because while I wasn't ill, it was about a week after my presumed infection during a visit to London.
One's not a bad total for 2020. I found this year that David Burkle, the main founder of the UK bi community had died a couple of years ago though.
5. What countries did you visit?
Looking through photos reminds me that I went to Wales in January, for Cardiff University's offer holders' day with JA. It had ended up as her first choice, but the A-Levels fiasco robbed her of that happening.
Covid-cancelled: Belgium (Easter) and Germany (summer)
I did get as just about as close to the Netherlands as it's possible to get in the UK...
6. What would you like to have in 2021 that you did not in 2020?
Competence in government.
7. What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I'm not sure any will. Erm, 31st Jan for (temporarily) leaving the EU?
8. What was your biggest achievement of this year?
As well as the usual answer this year of surviving it, a couple of house things (curtains put up / replaced), doing a bunch of stuff for bi history month at very little notice, becoming a director of a health promotion organisation that was founded in the 1990s specifically to crap over provision for bisexual men...
9. What was your biggest failure?
Not getting to spend some time with Ludy. There were about three attempts to sort out a visit to very rural Gloucestershire to do a book for someone, which would have been an ideal opportunity, but all got cancelled by the person whose name would have been on the cover.
Not doing said book. They're not happy about that, but I repeatedly told them what I needed - to be there, not here - and they always avoided that. I did do what we both think is an excellent outline for it, but that was something we worked out the last time we were in the same place.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Something that was almost certainly, given that L caught it off me and later repeatedly tested positive for antibodies, Covid-19 back in the start of March. Fortunately, it was the 'no cough, 'flu-like' version, but still pretty urgh and it left me feeling drained for a long while afterwards.
I also had a 'flu-like thing in December, and tested negative for having Covid-19 then.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
A big external hard drive.
I also switched from the M570 trackball - lovely but has a known fault with the button switches that means they don't last - to their MX Ergo trackball - same basic thing, but built Better. Then bought two more for the other two PCs, because JA likes them and even L has come round to using them.
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Lots of people I know. I'm going to pick out Natalya for her disability activism.
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Oh, where to start?
The UK government response to Covid-19 wasn't just late, it's been appallingly bad on multiple levels.
It's been obvious since the South Korean call centre case reported in April - on a floor in a tower, the half with the call centre had lots of infections, the other half didn't despite using the same lift etc - that Covid-19 is overwhelmingly airborne. It took until July for England to make masks compulsory.
Add in the 'who cares about people in care homes' policies, educational fiascos, cronyism contracts, outsourcing disaster areas... Johnson et al should be in jail for life.
Far too many - but still not many - transphobes.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Three bikes were bought - JA, L27 and his partner - but they were all cheap.
It wasn't my money, but getting the latter two a boat to live on.
Photography software, in a year where I took thousands of fewer photos...
15. What did you get really, really excited about?
Brexit, not in a good way.
16. What songs will always remind you of 2020?
Although I don't rate the album as much as almost all of their other work over the past forty something years, I do love Self-Effacing from Sparks' A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip.
I accidentally discovered that German dance band U96 had done albums in 2018 and 2020 a couple of decades after their last work a bit too late for listen to them properly.
A couple of opera productions from the New York's Met, because they got streamed for free.
17. Compared to this time last year,
* are you happier or sadder?
Both
* richer or poorer?
Probably a bit richer, despite my income falling off a cliff (selling anything to businesses that can't operate in a pandemic will do that...)
I still wish I'd over-declared my income on past tax returns!
* older or wiser?
Certainly the first, hopefully the second.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Lots.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Be ill. Be unable to travel, even within the UK, for so much of the year.
20. How will you be spending New Year's Eve?
In my favourite way, I hope: in bed. Certainly at home.
I'm currently listening to the "HACIENDA NYE 24 HOUR HOUSEPARTY | UNITED WE STREAM GREATER MANCHESTER" stream.
21. Did you fall in love in 2020?
No, although I loved having L27's partner here from March to July.
22. How many one-night stands?
None. There are things I am definitely missing, and when it's safer, I will be looking to do them again.
23. What was your favourite TV program?
Lovecraft Country. I May Destroy You. Better Call Saul.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I don't think so.
25. What was the best book you read?
The Tank War: The Men, the Machines and the Long Road to Victory on my grandfather's regiment.
26. Did you have any encounters with the police this year?
No.
27. What did you want and get?
A holiday of some sort - we went to the Suffolk and Norfolk coast for most of a week in September, during the Covid lull. One reason for picking there was the weather forecast was better than for Northumbria (the other option) but the last but one day coincided with a major storm. Fortunately, after looking at the waves crashing over the sea defences at Cromer, we were able to spend a lovely day in a warm cottage.
28. What did you want and not get?
An in-person BiCon.
29. What was your favourite film of this year?
I saw Parasite last year, so.. erm.. I'm Thinking of Ending Things (on Netflix) which I saw yesterday - not so much unreliable narrator, as unreliable everyone! (".. must have been arduous to make, and it's excruciatingly tedious to watch" - Time magazine.)
Also liked I Predatori (The Predators) and The Social Dilemma a lot. Having seen the comments about the sound mix, I'm waiting for a version of Tenet with subtitles...
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Can't remember. 58.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Some actual competence in terms of government reaction to Covid-19. When Rachel first started talking about postponing an in-person BiCon, I thought it was way too soon to decide to do that - surely they'd be a working test, trace, and track system in place months before August?!?
Similar incompetence around education fucked JA over too.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020?
Ha ha.
I am amused by being able to go into a bank wearing a mask and asking for money..
.. in a way that doesn't get you arrested, as when one of the cousins tried it in Canada and ended up doing several years in jail for armed robbery.
33. What kept you sane?
Living with a partner was very useful, and I go argh for those who couldn't / were with someone they didn't want to be with.
Masturbation helped a lot too, as ever, as did showing a bunch of Dutch people how to play a particular game - thirty tournament wins (and four second places) out of fifty three played in the past fourteen months.
34. What's wrong with the world?
Too many unfunny clowns in charge of things.
35. What's right with the world?
People are, in general, much nice than their leaders.
36. Who did you miss?
Way too many people to mention. Not seeing David Burkle before he died.
37. Who was the best new person you met?
Online, Erin Thompson, artcrimeprof on Twitter.
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020.
Experts advising government can be too cautious.
39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Come together as one.
See The Last Jedi - I wasn't expecting to think it was good, but it turns out to be everything I don't like in Star Wars in a single film.
To give just one tiny, tiny example, you've got the last rebels in a cave. They know they're going to be attacked, so they build some defences against a land assault in the form of a trench (not useful against the attack that's likely, but, hey...) The opposition has total air superiority, so they build the trench... in a straight line. Do the opposition just fly along it, strafing everyone in it? No.
To give a bigger example: was anyone surprised at the conclusion to the big confrontation between Rey, Kylo and Snoke?
See The Rise of Skywalker. Better, but it clearly thought Last Jedi shouldn't have happened too.
2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
The pandemic put paid to the main one. No.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
People I know, yes; close to, no.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Penny, the cousin I was a few months older than. She'd had mental health issues for decades.
I don't think I infected anyone with Covid-19 at the funeral in February, which was the first opportunity to see a bunch of other cousins for several years, because while I wasn't ill, it was about a week after my presumed infection during a visit to London.
One's not a bad total for 2020. I found this year that David Burkle, the main founder of the UK bi community had died a couple of years ago though.
5. What countries did you visit?
Looking through photos reminds me that I went to Wales in January, for Cardiff University's offer holders' day with JA. It had ended up as her first choice, but the A-Levels fiasco robbed her of that happening.
Covid-cancelled: Belgium (Easter) and Germany (summer)
I did get as just about as close to the Netherlands as it's possible to get in the UK...
6. What would you like to have in 2021 that you did not in 2020?
Competence in government.
7. What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I'm not sure any will. Erm, 31st Jan for (temporarily) leaving the EU?
8. What was your biggest achievement of this year?
As well as the usual answer this year of surviving it, a couple of house things (curtains put up / replaced), doing a bunch of stuff for bi history month at very little notice, becoming a director of a health promotion organisation that was founded in the 1990s specifically to crap over provision for bisexual men...
9. What was your biggest failure?
Not getting to spend some time with Ludy. There were about three attempts to sort out a visit to very rural Gloucestershire to do a book for someone, which would have been an ideal opportunity, but all got cancelled by the person whose name would have been on the cover.
Not doing said book. They're not happy about that, but I repeatedly told them what I needed - to be there, not here - and they always avoided that. I did do what we both think is an excellent outline for it, but that was something we worked out the last time we were in the same place.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Something that was almost certainly, given that L caught it off me and later repeatedly tested positive for antibodies, Covid-19 back in the start of March. Fortunately, it was the 'no cough, 'flu-like' version, but still pretty urgh and it left me feeling drained for a long while afterwards.
I also had a 'flu-like thing in December, and tested negative for having Covid-19 then.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
A big external hard drive.
I also switched from the M570 trackball - lovely but has a known fault with the button switches that means they don't last - to their MX Ergo trackball - same basic thing, but built Better. Then bought two more for the other two PCs, because JA likes them and even L has come round to using them.
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Lots of people I know. I'm going to pick out Natalya for her disability activism.
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Oh, where to start?
The UK government response to Covid-19 wasn't just late, it's been appallingly bad on multiple levels.
It's been obvious since the South Korean call centre case reported in April - on a floor in a tower, the half with the call centre had lots of infections, the other half didn't despite using the same lift etc - that Covid-19 is overwhelmingly airborne. It took until July for England to make masks compulsory.
Add in the 'who cares about people in care homes' policies, educational fiascos, cronyism contracts, outsourcing disaster areas... Johnson et al should be in jail for life.
Far too many - but still not many - transphobes.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Three bikes were bought - JA, L27 and his partner - but they were all cheap.
It wasn't my money, but getting the latter two a boat to live on.
Photography software, in a year where I took thousands of fewer photos...
15. What did you get really, really excited about?
Brexit, not in a good way.
16. What songs will always remind you of 2020?
Although I don't rate the album as much as almost all of their other work over the past forty something years, I do love Self-Effacing from Sparks' A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip.
I accidentally discovered that German dance band U96 had done albums in 2018 and 2020 a couple of decades after their last work a bit too late for listen to them properly.
A couple of opera productions from the New York's Met, because they got streamed for free.
17. Compared to this time last year,
* are you happier or sadder?
Both
* richer or poorer?
Probably a bit richer, despite my income falling off a cliff (selling anything to businesses that can't operate in a pandemic will do that...)
I still wish I'd over-declared my income on past tax returns!
* older or wiser?
Certainly the first, hopefully the second.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Lots.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Be ill. Be unable to travel, even within the UK, for so much of the year.
20. How will you be spending New Year's Eve?
In my favourite way, I hope: in bed. Certainly at home.
I'm currently listening to the "HACIENDA NYE 24 HOUR HOUSEPARTY | UNITED WE STREAM GREATER MANCHESTER" stream.
21. Did you fall in love in 2020?
No, although I loved having L27's partner here from March to July.
22. How many one-night stands?
None. There are things I am definitely missing, and when it's safer, I will be looking to do them again.
23. What was your favourite TV program?
Lovecraft Country. I May Destroy You. Better Call Saul.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I don't think so.
25. What was the best book you read?
The Tank War: The Men, the Machines and the Long Road to Victory on my grandfather's regiment.
26. Did you have any encounters with the police this year?
No.
27. What did you want and get?
A holiday of some sort - we went to the Suffolk and Norfolk coast for most of a week in September, during the Covid lull. One reason for picking there was the weather forecast was better than for Northumbria (the other option) but the last but one day coincided with a major storm. Fortunately, after looking at the waves crashing over the sea defences at Cromer, we were able to spend a lovely day in a warm cottage.
28. What did you want and not get?
An in-person BiCon.
29. What was your favourite film of this year?
I saw Parasite last year, so.. erm.. I'm Thinking of Ending Things (on Netflix) which I saw yesterday - not so much unreliable narrator, as unreliable everyone! (".. must have been arduous to make, and it's excruciatingly tedious to watch" - Time magazine.)
Also liked I Predatori (The Predators) and The Social Dilemma a lot. Having seen the comments about the sound mix, I'm waiting for a version of Tenet with subtitles...
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Can't remember. 58.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Some actual competence in terms of government reaction to Covid-19. When Rachel first started talking about postponing an in-person BiCon, I thought it was way too soon to decide to do that - surely they'd be a working test, trace, and track system in place months before August?!?
Similar incompetence around education fucked JA over too.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020?
Ha ha.
I am amused by being able to go into a bank wearing a mask and asking for money..
.. in a way that doesn't get you arrested, as when one of the cousins tried it in Canada and ended up doing several years in jail for armed robbery.
33. What kept you sane?
Living with a partner was very useful, and I go argh for those who couldn't / were with someone they didn't want to be with.
Masturbation helped a lot too, as ever, as did showing a bunch of Dutch people how to play a particular game - thirty tournament wins (and four second places) out of fifty three played in the past fourteen months.
34. What's wrong with the world?
Too many unfunny clowns in charge of things.
35. What's right with the world?
People are, in general, much nice than their leaders.
36. Who did you miss?
Way too many people to mention. Not seeing David Burkle before he died.
37. Who was the best new person you met?
Online, Erin Thompson, artcrimeprof on Twitter.
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020.
Experts advising government can be too cautious.
39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Come together as one.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-02 12:03 am (UTC)I suspect we won't get a competent government in 2021 :(
Thank you for the namecheck. I sometimes think I didn't do much, but as part of our "FFS we need to reboot meeting for Reasonable Access we did a 'achievements' section" and it was REALLY LONG. Your kind namecheck and replying has
I suspect we won't get a competent government in 2021 :(
Thank you for the namecheck. I sometimes think I didn't do much, but as part of our "FFS we need to reboot meeting for Reasonable Access we did a 'achievements' section" and it was REALLY LONG. Your kind namecheck and replying has <a href="https://barakta.dreamwidth.org/843975.html"prompted me to DW those</a>.
What Photography software did you get?
I am glad you managed to get a holiday in the middle of all this year.
I hope JA has managed to get over/past/round the A-level results fuckery and it hasn't held her back too badly. It was a shitting disgrace and the education sector seems to be fuckery and bad decisions from bottom to top.
I am glad to have been in lockdown with Kim, I have felt sorry for those living alone, not having another human to just bounce 'stuff' off - or worse, living with other humans who are abusive or just unpleasant.
I don't think I know much about David Burkle which sounds like a big omission. I have <a href="https://bistuff.org.uk/bisexual-lives-1988/david-burkle/">found some one of your BiStuff articles</a> which clued me in a bit more. Did you know him well? That article in 1988, so, a long time ago. I would love to know how David fared in the 30+ years after that. How well did you know David?
(no subject)
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