FWIW, I have a bias toward the more general drabble topics, because I like drabbling as my characters, but that's just me. Which is to say the painting topic sounds fun, but I'd hate it if the topics were that specific week in and week out, because I couldn't use them the way I've been doing.

Huh. Problem is, most of the paintings I like are Renaissance-era. I just don't see St. Anne in La Vierge de la Roche putting an ad in the paper. Not to be a killjoy, but again, I absorb art in a fairly weird way, so I'd probably pass on this one.

Ooh, does it involve some Hollywood magnate receiving a blow job when suddenly she stops sucking his dick and starts SUCKING HIS BLOOD?

Nope. Backers (big Hollywood money backers) circa 1957 or so, visiting an ego project somewhere in Africa that's gone wildly over budget. They really didn't know about not eating the local delicacies back then, so if you were insisting on a local delicacy of, say, monkey, and said fellow/soror primate was carrying one of the bazillions of level four pathogen in it when this wealthy little collection of people much done, jumping species, triggering a mutation in both sperm and egg...

Hey, has Laurell K. Hamilton done that before? I should write her.

I keep thinking I should read her. Then I realise I don't much like soft porn disguised as storytelling - just call it porn and have done - and I decide not to.

I've not read any Laurel K. Hamilton, and feel no urge to do so.

Deb, the White Sands thing does sound very sf-y. Probably a good call to avoid it and raise expectations you don't intend to write to.

At Christmas, they put Santa hats on them.

Um... where?

On their heads, of course, Betsy. Where else could they go?

I must confess to some confusion on that, La Tep, but then I am not deep. I'm a shallow person who pretends she's deep and reads IJ looking to get lucky and keeps reading it because no book written can stump her. That's the kind of person I am.

There is a short story out there about a couple of guys in vietnam who are invited to see a very exclusive show. A vampire woman who sucks (literally) the life out of a guy by making him orgasm until he dies. One of the guys ends up being her victim. The other one is gay and in love with the victim. He goes home, becomes a doctor, lives a long, full life, ends up with AIDS, goes back and finds her, pays 5k (eta: or some very large amount, I'm not sure of how much) to be done by her (long bit about buying faked statements of being disease free, etc.), and the disease kills her after she kills him, so he dies having gotten his revenge and is satisfied. I don't recall who wrote it or the name of the collection. And yeah, LKH has done something similar, though not exactly that.

Tep, my participation is, unfortunately sporadic anyway, but I don't think that would trigger anything exciting from me...or anything dull, either. If it were an assignment, I could do it, but it doesn't grab me/thrill me. Which is not to say it couldn't be really cool in the right brain, just that mine isn't feeling brilliant right now.

I think (sorting it out in a very tired, very scared brain) that my problem with the painting/personals challenge is that it feels purely like head-stuff: I don't know, intellectual, amusing, nothing from the soul. That would make it a writing exercise, rather than a challenge to my creativity.

And I'm passing on anything resembling a writing exercise right now, since I'm not in a place where I feel it would be useful to me personally. Also, I don't write purely intellectual stuff, any more than I generally read it. It doesn't engage me.

But I'd love to see what everyone else comes up with for it, since everyone here is someone I know.

Man, does the above not read right. It sounds pompous as hell. Sorry. My own brain is firmly fixated today and won't deal with anything else.

Steph, maybe a personal ad from an inanimate object generally, and then the painting thing could be an example?

(Um yeah, I write and don't post drabbles about half the time.)

I still like the idea simply because I think it would be interesting to try and capture the voice of the painting (or other inanimate object). And I'm all for writing exercises lately, because my head is being stubbornly resistant to the writing I'm supposed to be doing. But if it's just me shouting yay over here, we should do something else.

And you don't sound pompous at all, Deb. {{Vibes}} if you need them.