I don't know why I'm writing this.

[cosmolinguist]

Last night I dreamed about being on a train that turned into a roller coaster. The track did things even real-life roller coasters can't do. It was fun. Then I dreamed that I saw a sign in a bookstore advertising a book I'd written. I thought about buying it, but it was $30. That's just uncalled for!* Then I dreamed about seeing cans on a shelf that looked like tuna but had beef in them.

Then I woke up, and I thought about what always happened when my brother and I were little and my mom asked us to sign birthday cards and things. The signatures changed from scrawled, childish characters to perfect cursive (well, that was my brother (the anal-retentive one); I never could write legibly that way) as we got older, but the one thing that did not change was our endless quest of making sure our name was the first of the two.

Usually this would be solved by getting the pen first and writing "and" after our name. I'd first thought of that, but then, I had a two-year heard-start on thinking of things in general.

The person relegated to inferiority of position would often try to compensate with greater size. My brother did that more than me, though. But then, my brother also seemed to more often be afflicted with being after the "and."

I felt perfectly righteous in this, as I was of the belief that "Holly and Chris" sounds better than "Chris and Holly." The syllables and the stresses favoured my position, I was sure of it.

---

* And a bit pretentious of me (or, more accurately, my subconscious). I've never written anything that good! I suppose that's why I passed on it.

Comments

[karaksindru.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I might buy your book for $30 ... certainly not softcover though ...

[cosmolinguist]

I've never bought a book that cost that much. Except textbooks. And I wasn't happy about that, most of the time. :-)

(It was a hardcover book. Such is my subconscious mind's pretentious nature.)

Maybe by the time I write a book, though, US currency will have undergone such inflation that $30 isn't much, though ... ;-)

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

See, in our family, we all just put our names, didn't put things like 'and'

Although, had any of you been really brilliant, you could have told the first person that if they put 'and' after their name, you'll still put yours first, with either a comma, or an 'and' yourself, thus making the other look highly silly.

[gentleman-lech.livejournal.com]

And since I like to sign my name upside-down in a corner just to be different, whoever puts "and" after their names, expecting me to blindly conform to whatever standard of name-signing they're using, is going to look awfully silly. :)

And I've bought plenty of books for $30 or more. I'd buy yours, too. I'm thinking you probably didn't buy your own book because you had the copy your publisher provided you with as part of your contract.

[cosmolinguist]

Like I said, I only buy textbooks I have to buy, at that price. But that's partly because I am very poor.

And it actually occurred to me, in my dream, that people who write books are usually given a copy. But my dream-self didn't have one. It also seemed a bit surprised to see the book in a store at all. At least that much would be consistent with reality.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

> Then I dreamed about seeing cans on a shelf that looked like
> tuna but had beef in them

The contents will taste like chicken, then. Everything new tastes more or less like chicken, except chicken flavour crisps.

[cosmolinguist]

Interesting theory.

Chicken flavoured crisps? My ex-boyfriend would love it here; he likes new, different or odd flavours of crisps, and there seem to be a lot more in Britain than in Minnesota.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

He won't like chicken flavoured crisps very much, mainly down to the fact that they are crap. Now prawn cocktail or Worcester sauce flavour ones, on the other hand....