I fail at mcshep_match!

I was debating signing up for mcshep_match again; I had sort of assumed I would, since I had such a good experience with it last year, but then just when it was gearing up, I fell of the face of the planet. (Apropos of that: hi, flist! How've you been?) Yesterday I checked for first time in weeks and the first post was the announcement that sign-ups were closed, so that answers that question! But it's a great competition and I expect it will produce lots of great fic EVEN THOUGH I AM NOT WRITING IT.

I love that this year's teams--"home" and "away"--provide such a different division of kinds of fic you can write than last year's angst vs romance; and that is such a big decision, isn't it, when you write SGA: is this going to be on Atlantis, or in, say, some kind of alien wilderness, torture chamber, or wedding chapel?

However, team angst always had the best songs.

The (Very) Adult Beginner's Grade Five-Sentence Challenge

In other news, I was reading The Education of Hyman Kaplan--amusing short stories about English as a foreign language night school in 1930s New York--and I came across an assignment that I think we should all take on.

From The Return of Hyman Kaplan, Leo Rosten (Leonard Q. Ross), 1959:

"I shall write five words on the blackboard," Mr. Parkhill said, picking up a piece of chalk. "Use each word in a sentence, a--er--full sentence, that is. Five words, therefore five sentences." He smiled. There was no harm in leavening the bread of learning with the yeast of levity. [...]

In large block letters, he printed:

1. CHISEL
2. LAMP
3. GROAN
4. POTATOES
5. CLIMAX

Any fandom, any pairing. Go.

( I'll start us off. )