food and theory

I have run out of vegetables. It's annoying. I couldn't figure out how I could run out. My Tesco food arrived this week. But then I checked, and Tesco won't sell me the steam bags of vegetables any more, they have vanished. So I have run out. And I'd already cooked the things that go with vegetables when I realised. So that was a very boring meal I just had half of.


In better news, I have finished reading the Reader for The Short Story.
... which I should have done weeks ago, but it's so boring.
It spends most of its time talking about how The Short Story does not mean just stories that are short, oh no, nor does it mean tales, or sketches, or stories by them other dudes over there who are clearly doing it wrong. The Short Story is a genre. ... now if any two of the writers could agree which writers were in or out, I might have a better idea which genre.
Some of them count Poe, some of them only count him as a theorist and think his stories are popular. Yes, it's the kind of theory writer who uses popular as a rude word. Everyone counts Chekhov, which is nice. ... I can never spell that dude right, the usual way I write it is the other guy.
But then people go on to talk about people who copy Chekhov, which according to someone is everyone ever, only they're all Doing It Wrong.

You know what I think about the short story?
It is a story which is short.
The teacher and these theory people are making up rubbish about The Short Story when they might mean modernist short stories, impressionist short stories, or even on occasion magical realist short stories. But the genre splits into many genres whenever different people talk about it, so it is not a bloody genre.

It is especially not lyric poetry, and the book that spent many many pages explaining which poems were novels and which were secretly Short Stories was in fact off its nut.

Also, the science fiction short stories I was bringing in, or the ghost stories others brought in, or any number of other stories we all were encouraged to bring in, would not be short stories by the theory dudes definitions, and yet we studied them.

:-ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp

I will write 500 words just as soon as I get a quote from Frank O'Connor rather than a sentence of a powerpoint slide that mentions Frank O'Connor thinks short stories are about isolation.

Then I will forget about this stupid theory stuff and keep on writing stories that are short.

So bored

This time I managed to stay attempting sleep for four hours.
Didn't noticeably help.


The thing is, usually I could just say it's the weekend and ignore my sleep cycle, but this weekend is The Greatest Show in the Galaxy and my employee is booked to get me there on Sunday. Employee cannot do Saturday and so neither can I. And I don't know how far my budget will stretch when autographs cost bunches each. But anyway, booked, planned, sorted.
Involves getting up in the morning.
So my ongoing inability to sleep at night is highly inconvenient.

I might end up going on zero sleep.
I've done college like that. It's trippy. Plus I'm sure employee will stop me walking out in front of cars.


... life would be so much simpler if sleep worked as advertised.

And also waking up.

mild what?

Am still awake. Am aiming at staying awake long enough that if I get eight hours sleep I'll wake up on Sunday. That will mean Saturday is a complete write off. And I haven't finished my essays.
No work should be done on essays after I've been awake around the clock. That just would not end well.

ANYways, was looking for things to read on Ao3.
Found someone tagged something 'mild cross-dressing'.
Mild?
So now I'm wondering what they think they mean. Like, is it if the guy's wearing a kilt and a t-shirt that's secretly in ladies' sizes? Maybe wearing something under their uniform? Or... actually I can't think of or. What?

... oh great, now my plot bunnies are interested...

Tags are helpful and informative, but not necessarily the ways the author meant. like, if someone tags everything with 'vague xyz' or 'something like defg' or 'sort of k' then whatever the alphabet soup is, it gets massively less tempting. I mean, if you can't even tag it clearly, how did you write it?

Writers don't make stuff as fast as I could read it.
Fair enough.
Logically I could read many other things instead.

... yet I keep poking the archive for more like that only different.



I need an icon that's sort of bzuh.
Maybe some icons that are not Torchwood, given the ongoing not watching of the latest eps.
But I think the sleepy Giles and the bored Blue Beetle are the icons I use the most, and I'm not sure I even watched the cartoon BB in the first place.


Okay, I'll go be bored somewhere else and try and stay awake some more.

photos photos signed and unsigned photos

I just went through my stack of photos acquired at conventions to find some that have not been signed yet that I might get signed tomorrow.
That is a very large stack.
And it's the next thing to write only. I mean, there's whole inches of that stack I haven't looked at in years. It's entirely possible there's bits I haven't properly explored this century. I have many many photos, and yet, they stay in their folders, all stacked up.
So why do I go get more of them?
Simples. The photo and/or autograph is the excuse for interaction. Because if you just go stand next to a famous person and grin and tell them your name that is socially awkward.

I have a bazillion things I could take.

If I take very few then I won't go spending lots and lots for autographs.
... right?

... whyyyyy am I doing this? I could stay home and hide instead...