I could get quite annoyed about this

I have never actually used eBay for anything, either buying or selling. On the other hand, I have poked about a bit heretofore, and it's not at all impossible that I might have registered an account there, in anticipation of a future need.

I've come quite close these last days to buying a camera, and I just noticed an instance of it is being sold on eBay, with an hour to run on the bidding and current bids significantly below retail price. Far enough below to make it worth dropping a bid in. So I thought I'd do that, see what happened.

What happened on my regular browser was that, when I tried to register, eBay told me it was refusing to accept cookies. Which was quite likely, because I'm fairly rigorous about those things, so I went into the settings and told it to accept anything from eBay.

Went back to the bidding, and it told me it was still refusing to accept cookies.

Pfui. Change browser. Okay. Register. Can I use chazbrenchley as a username? Nope, somebody else is using that. Which there cannot be another Chaz Brenchley in the world - indeed, I know there is not - so either somebody's using my name for their username, or I did indeed register before. Pick the most likely, and toss in my default password. Not recognised: wrong password for that username. Okay. Click the I've-forgotten-my-password button. Get a form asking for my username. Give them chazbrenchley.

Username invalid. Huh, what? They just wouldn't let me register under that, because it was in use already, which makes it, um, valid. Doesn't it...?

Click the I've-forgotten-my-username button. Get a form asking for my e-mail. Give them that. They tell me my username has been sent to my e-mail.

Not so far, it hasn't, and that was twenty minutes ago. Er, guys? This is bollocks, y'know?

And yes, of course I should busily be registering under another name because time's ticking away on that camera, but if their system can fuck up this badly this quickly, I'm not much inclined to start funnelling money through it.

I don't need a camera. Hey look, here I am not spending money credit. Compulsory virtue. Be nice to me, I saved money today...

Penny Plain or Tuppence Coloured

I can often be heard, at gigs and such, opining that the great themes of literature are the great themes of life, which are love and death; and that the great themes of fantasy literature are also love and death - but that we get to play with dragons and magic on top. It's all gravy, sez I.

But then last month I posted about how I was working on a slew of stories, all of which were indisputably fantasies, secondary worlds and all - and there really wasn't a hint of magic in any of them, they were just stories about people, only not in this world, quite.

Which I was having so much fun with, when it came to writing a story for a specific antho, yes indeed. I wrote a fantasy story with no magic in it. My subject is war, and the provisions of war. Oh, and Shere Khanage at the end. (I'm sorry, I had to say that, only that no one out there right now is going to get it. It's a pun in waiting, 'k?)

And of course it came back from the editor yesterday, with a rewrite request: please could I put some magic in?

So, because I am a complaisant kind of guy, I put some magic in. Hell-cattle and firewhips and such. And, y'know? I think it works really, really well. I still love the first version, which is pensive and quietly vengeful; but once I'd spotted it, the magic slotted straight in there as if the slots had been pre-cut ready for it. It's not so much a remake, it's the same artwork in a colour print. I don't think I've ever had a story before that existed in two such complementary versions. It's cool.

Unless the editor doesn't like the rewrite, of course, because then I wouldn't know which version to take back to the marketplace.

[ETA: I guess she liked it. See deborahjross, below...]