• A.L. Kennedy weighs in on how we should adjust our attitudes to lost keys.
• Apparently, quelling indecency over the airwaves wasn’t enough. Now the bastards are going after pay TV. If there’s any positive spin on this, perhaps this will stop Anna Nicole Smith.
• A principal has banned a lesbian student from appearing in a yearbook. Her crime? Wearing a tux. No word yet on whether neckties are the next to go.
• Forget the fact that Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep is a coming-of-age tale. Eileen McNamara walked away from the novel convinced that that it contributes to the deviant sexualization of minors. Yup. We all know how Lolita led to an unprecedented spate of professors sleeping with twelve year old girls in 1958. America is still reeling from that dark chapter in the history books. Stop these novels from being published before it’s too late! Dammit!
• D.H. Lawrence’s legacy is being re-evaluated. Lawrence was not, in fact, a water skier, but a writer of several stories and novels.
• Zora Neale Hurston’s lost plays have been located and published.
• Pulp fiction isn’t enough for Stephen King. An anthology series based on Nightmares & Dreamscapes is in the works.
• Tim Dolin lists the top 10 books on George Eliot.

There’s some fascinating food-for-thought from the ever-dependable Gwenda. She quotes F&SF editor Gordon Van Gelder on the state of current story-centric magazines:

As I’ve been reading through this thread, the comments of one veteran editor keep ringing in my head—he said to me, “Of course Analog is selling better than any other magazine: it’s the least risky.”

I bring up that comment, I guess, to defend against the charge of a conservative attitude in F&SF. I don’t particularly like that word, “conservative,” but I’ll be the first to say that I’ve got to balance the artistic side of things with the commercial side. For every reader who appreciates the challenge that a story like John McDaid’s “Keyboard Variations” offers, there are two or three readers who favor less challenging work like Ron Goulart’s lighter fare.

Which is one reason why I’m happy to second Sean’s sentiment when he says “I’m all for it!” to the writers blazing their own trails. I think the zine explosion of the last couple of years is very good for the field and I do my best to keep up with all the various magazines and anthologies, but I feel like someone needs to inject a note of commerciality into the discussion. Considering there are two threads running on the board now about declining circulation in the digests, it might be worth remembering that experimental fiction (“experimental” is another word like “conservative” that I don’t particularly like, but I can’t think of a better term right now; “riskier”? “less traditional”?) isn’t necessarily commercial.

There’s much more, of course, at Gwenda’s stomping grounds. But, at the risk of sounding like that assclown Wenclas, it begs the question: When “experimental” is a four-letter word and magazines are inveterately associated with sturdy sales, is it any wonder why today’s fiction remains sadly safe and predictable?

It’s been too long. The time has come for another bold ’em if you experienced ’em experiment. This time, we’re taking on the Top 100 AFI films. I’m almost ashamed to reveal that I’ve seen 96 of ’em.
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Calling all squad cars! Calling all squad cars! New DFW, with weirdass color-specific footnotes no less! Frabjous joy! (via Scott)

Perturbed by the Google Autolink nonsense? Zeldman points to a solution.

And en passant, there really doesn’t seem to be any difference between the unquestioning Google freaks and the unquestioning Apple freaks, is there? If the technological mantra of the 90s was “You’ve got mail,” I propose that this decade’s answer is “You’ve been branded!”