You keep using that word, slash, but it doesn't mean what you think it means.

Some funny things. John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton are having a contest to benefit some organization and people are supposed to write about this cartoon-ish caricature picture of them as an orc and a unicorn. 1) They're calling it a fanfiction contest. 2) It says, "No slash" in the instructions.

1) It's not fanfiction if you look at a picture and write your own story to go along with what you imagine unless the original work is part of a fandom. Scalzi and Wheaton are not fictional characters in a world owned by someone else. It is, Real Person Fiction if someone were to write about them by name, but I do not approve of RPF--- it's making shit up about real actual people and telling everyone.... that's libel for all normal people (only famous people are prohibited from complaining about that. If someone writes RPF about me and the yoga instructor or something... I can sue.)

1a) The picture they've proffered for inspiration looks like a Shrek ripoff. So the contest is already in violation of fandom rules--- someone (their chosen charity) is going to profit from creative works originally derived from copyrighted and restricted material.

2) No slash. Um. If you call it the John Scalzi/Wil Wheaton whatever contest, you've pretty much guaranteed that's what people are going to be thinking of. Convention says Harry/Draco is a story with a romantic pairing between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy.

2a) Supposedly Scalzi issued a clarification that says they meant no explicit sex, not that there couldn't be slash. Scalzi clearly does not understand the conventions. It should have been, "No squick, no explicit sex, no non-con, no drug use, no illegal actions." Or "PG-13 rating, maximum." Or something which specified the warnings. Not all slash is explicit.

Given how idiotic they've been about this, I will suspend my boycott of RPF and my anti-preference for slash.

I can do better. But not today.

How does one get accredited as an aerobics instructor? Moreover, how does one get "defrocked"? The instructor I hate at the gym is now teaching the beginning step class--- step classes already look like an orthopedic surgeon's jizz dream, but this would give a knee doc wet emissions for several waking hours. OOOhh oh oh oh oh oh my BOOOOAAAT payment! Ah ah ahhhhh my kid's going to Princeton!

I think I should probably do my own choreography because I know what hurts me. I also know what kind of music I like. Maybe there's a website somewhere that lists the kinds of moves that are "aerobical" so I could specifically incorporate things which encourage a well-rounded musculature. I know I could come up with an actual routine coordinated with the music better than the idiots that the gym hires.

Although it would be weird to be standing in the mirrored studio room and dancing to music only I can hear, the gym does allow people to use the room whenever it's not scheduled for classes.

Anyway. I went to the gym. I elliptical'd for 10 minutes which was a half mile. Then I biked to nowhere for 7.5 minutes and 1.65 miles. Then I came home. No weights. My arms are still giving me twinges from the be-damned yoga. I've been feeling bad this week for other reasons, so it's been a light week. I'm still within my 5/7 ratio, but my two byes came early in the week and today was just the half workout. I might just do the half again tomorrow, I'm going to see how I feel.

I'm still not sleeping right and mornings are almost painful. So I have been going back to bed after breakfast... then I get up at 11am or so and it's been difficult to get everything into my day.

book: The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett

I finally finished The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett. It is the sequel to The Warded Man, which I adored. I mean, I liked TWM enough to email the author and actually do it.

The Desert Spear, however, is the unfortunate product of an overworked author in the midst of all the publishing-required dreck of the previous book.
( This goes on for a while and contains spoilers for a book which is still only in hardcover. )

I won't be reading the third book or anything else by the author.