My Writerly Blog

The portion of the blogosphere devoted to digital/new media writing and e-publishing is filled with concerns, despairing, and a truckload of theories about how this emerging (emerged?) literary genre is to be organized, recognized, distributed, and brought into the canon of literature. The importance of creating/accepting a canon for any given genre has been discussed much , as has the difficulty of establishing a central depository for works that often have no physical form. The technology is evolving quickly - works that are considered part of the canon are often just old enough that modern machines can't run the files, like a collection of the world's greatest films on Beta tapes. Concerns have also flown about who exactly is to do this deciding. In the past, we (humans in general) have left canon-building to the scholars. Not even film or novels, so closely tied as they are to box office numbers and bestseller lists, derive their canons from public opinion. Blade Runner was...

I have a sore throat. For this malady, I requested popsicles, preferably anything resembling Jell-O Pudding Pops (click the link, seriously. It's more than you bargained for). My Australian husband, who has never known the joy of pudding pops or Bill Cosby expounding their benefits (J-E-L-L-O!), got me these: Let's ignore for a moment how creepy I find the whole Jelly Babies phenomenon. I mean, you're eating babies , for chrissake. Stalin didn't even eat babies (AFAIK). Of course, the concept is babies; the reality is they're about the size and shape of a 9-week-old fetus. Even if you aborted a fetus that size, you wouldn't eat it. I hope. But Wobbly Lollies aren't baby/fetus shaped. Rather, they've flown backward in the reproductive process, back through growth phases and cell differentiation. Back through mitosis, through fertilization. Swimming backward through the jelly-lined uterus through the cervix, out the vagina, right back up the ...