birthdays

Happy, happy birthday to LitCritters Andrew and Alex, born a day apart (with many years in between)! Here's to more stories and endless talk.

Mommy or Daddy wrote this for me at 9:41 AM :: ::

vignette: dazzling

MAIA:

Ok, then. My turn, right? I have to confess. There is this blog I visit once in a while that makes me smile.

RAM:

There you go. You're a secret stalker, laughing at other people's lives.

MAIA:

No, no. The author isn't trying to be funny, but the sheer mega-ego of the blogger is breathtaking - even putting my own ego to shame, I think, but my loving detractors would probably take umbrage.

RAM:

On behalf of half the blogging community, I take umbrage.

MAIA:

Right. But you know what I mean, right? Don't get me wrong: a certain level of ego is needed to keep writing blogs - it's the equivalent of "character" in terms of discourse, without which the blog is a dull read.

RAM:

Stop, stop with the erudition. You're losing me. Nobody I know talks like you.

MAIA (smiling):

Review-style, then. "In a nutshell, this one delightfully takes the baton, rushes through the course once, twice, thrice, and runs all the way to ends of the earth."

RAM:

To the ends of the earth?

MAIA:

And back. Ten more times.

RAM:

Oh boy.

MAIA:

Dazzling, so dazzling.

RAM (laughing):

So judgmental. I'm shocked.

MAIA:

The blog has such character, such delicious and unabashed narcissism, that I immediately forgive the intellectual arrogance -being an afficionado of such myself-

(RAM laughs.)

RAM:

Wicked, wicked woman!

MAIA:

- and, and simply revel in the me-me-me nature of the author's immense -though lonely-ponderings, sometime poignantly self-aware, but more often blithely oblivious.

RAM:

You sound like you've thought this through, like you knew I'd ask you something like this.

MAIA:

Do I?

RAM:

You do.

MAIA:

Maybe I have. I love the site.

RAM:

But?

MAIA:

But I've never commented, never engaged. But I return and return.

RAM:

You're horrible.

MAIA:

I know.

RAM:

Wait. It isn't my blog, is it?

(They laugh.)

Mommy or Daddy wrote this for me at 2:11 PM :: ::

where are you, pinoy crime fiction?

An ice cream-free Ichi Batacan (author of "Smaller and Smaller Circles", Palanca Grand Prize for the Novel) considers the question and offers her first answer (with the promise of more pondering to come).

This would be of interest to Kenneth Yu of Philippine Genre Stories, since the scope of his publication includes crime, romance, and other genres, in addition to fantastic genres of fantas, scifi and horror.

Yes, one day Kenneth Yu and I will simply have to mudwrestle over terminology (genre vs. spec fic).

Anyway, this is a wonderful post and has successfully made me guilty enough to return to my ruminations on Philippine spec fic - next week.

Mommy or Daddy wrote this for me at 9:53 AM :: ::