My sunflowers are doing very nicely, thanks, crazedturkey. I need to repot one of them (I grew two in one pot, in case one of them didn't work), so I should have two lovely (dwarf) sunflowers in my window this summer, hoorah! Pritty fleurs...

 

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has proved popular enough over here to have a UK edition, geneeste. Which basically means he's recorded tags talking to the UK audience, but still... It's certainly done wonders to counter the idea that Americans don't know the meaning of the word 'irony'. ;)

 

And I've had further thoughts about the Mac / time-travel / Sam/Jack thing, triciabyrne1978: geek!Sam and, um... what do we call the Moebius AU Jack? abitofaslob!Jack might have tried to return to the present day, after the events of Moebius, to see if it worked (with or without Daniel and Teal'c... hey, in fact, with Teal'c, who'd need a new symbiote at some point, and would have a better chance of acquiring that ethically if the Stargate programme is up and running). Or maybe they messed up and Sam gets pregnant. She wouldn't want to risk damaging the timeline, so they'd have to either have to get her an abortion, go to another planet, or head back to the 'present'. And I bet I know which one Jack would vote for. After all, there's only one time and place he'll get to see the Simpsons...

 

And then they might have an accident with the ship and miss by a few decades - potentially the worst thing they could do (far more likely to cause havoc to their own personal timelines, I'd think), but if they're stuck, they're stuck.

 

Also, Sam might go along with the idea of travelling back to the present, because, if they're in the present - however subjective that is in a time machine - the only thing they're altering is the future. Which is currently unknown to them, so for all they know, they are predestined to go back to their time, meet the alternate versions of themselves, etc.

 

But then, if you have a time machine, what is the 'present'? The time they left? The time they left plus the exact number of hours they were in the past? Any old time that's near enough?

 

Is very confusing. Argh.

 

Am going to stop thinking about it now. Is horrible, terrible, badfic idea. Plus my brain hurts.

 

---

 

And in looking for a title for a story, I came across this. It took me a second...:

 

Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.

~ William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"