If you use an indefinite type like "a*", you must add at least one
element so that GVariant can compute the correct type. Otherwise,
you need to specify the right type from the start.

The empty list is an edge case that can happen if gnome-shell crashes
at startup: gnome-settings-daemon notices that the shell is coming
up, it builds the internal list and calls GrabAccelerator the first
time; this fails because gnome-shell is not ready yet, so g-s-d
installs a timeout to retry; meanwhile g-s goes down again, so
g-s-d clears the list, and the next time the timeout fires g-s-d
crashes.
This fix is not correct, we should actually rebuild the internal
list if we ever get in this state, but as this is only possible
with a shell crashing at startup, let's go with the simple way.