Hi everyone, First up, belated thanks to Maddie and Anakin Sky for their comments about the bands I mentioned in my last post. In the event I didnt go to The Spitz to see Of Montreal last night on account of the work do, of which more later. Many of you will be familiar with the term troll to refer to someone who goes onto message boards and stirs things up among the regular contributors, usually by posting hostile and abusive messages. I dont think that its a particularly appropriate monicker; conjuring up the burly unattractive characters that turn up in the works of Tolkien and Rowling, or who lurk about under bridges salivating at the thought of a caprine bill of fare. But a message board I post to regularly has recently been plagued by a troll, whom I misjudged totally to begin with, not least because she invented a slang term for bottom which made me LOL. So I started engaging in what began as harmless banter, or verbal sparring if you will. In so doing, I encouraged the troll, who became more vitriolic and abusive and upset quite a few people. Now Im feeling really guilty that I did not see the person for what she was and that I hadnt tried to be witty in my responses (most of the time I ended up just being puerile, anyway). I fear that I may have annoyed quite a few people by not ignoring the troll and that there may be a few people on the board who strongly dislike me now as a result. Although Ive posted a couple of times on really innocuous uncontroversial topics since the incident, Im a lot less sure of my ground and I am very wary of engaging people in conversation over boards now. So anyway, I dont often reveal very much of what Im thinking to you guys, playing my cards quite close to my chest and being quite shallow perhaps, but its really nice to be able to share something like that with the good folk of sinister, where I feel a lot more sure of myself and where everyone is far more friendly. My girlfriend has recently become very keen on ice skating. Now you may think that ice skating is one of those things that *everyone* has done, like riding a bike or going on holiday, but I have to admit that I have never actually skated. I remember when I was on a sixth form Geography field trip my teacher referred to one of my peers as being "as sure footed as a one-legged mountain goat" as he watched the poor blokes attempts to cross a Welsh mountain stream. Even though I wasnt the target that time the remark could equally have been directed at me. Things have if anything got worse in the ensuing years. From what Emma was saying she appears to be on a one-woman crusade to keep the Oxford ice-rink open, as its up the creek financially. If it does close, I hope they dont demolish the building, as the architecture is rather striking, looking rather like a ship with its masts and cables resembling rigging. Yesterday we had our grand opening party at work. A little late, seeing as the building opened at the beginning of the month, but never mind. The office closed for work purposes at 3.30 and I suppose the party went on for a couple of hours. The food was absolutely fantastic, though most people in my department were shrinking violets and didnt actually venture forth from our place on the top floor to sample any. One of the managers was just offering me some of his home-made rhubarb wine when our department made its collective decision to slope off to the pub next door. As there were no clean glasses and I was hardly going to swig from the bottle I declined perhaps I had a lucky escape. Top marks on the Unsubtlety Front goes to the colleague who walked Straight Out Of The Front Door And On To The Pub whilst the top brass were still making their speeches. After the pub and another one we wound up at the Wheatsheaf (the music venue upstairs was packed to fire-regulation bursting point) to see the ok-ish, but appallingly named Pokey and the surprisingly good Transmission. I think the Trans word led to a discussion of the Zodiac indie night Transformation, which apparently was already called that in 1994. I wonder which club night in the country has been going the longest under the same name? Answers on the back of a flyer, please. Wow, Sam Walton: TV Star! Its hard to believe that William G. Stalwart also thought up The Price Is Right. This is true versatility he bestrides the gameshow world like a Collossus, with the cerebral at his left foot and the banal at his right. Do you think people are either Countdown or Fifteen to One people, like you get dog people and cat people? Rosamund Iorns, ex- of this parish and employee of the big uni based publishing house that supplies the people for Dictionary Corner, once told me that shed "sooner have pins put in her eyes than go on Countdown", but maybe shed prefer to answer questions. Or nominate. Archel wrote: "Which means that it will NOT rain, snow or spew bizarre jizz from the sea." etc, which made me wonder whether therell be anything left of the West pier by the time of the picnic. There used to be a band called Westpier quite good as I recall. And no Im not getting confused with Westlife. So Radiohead think they have *swagger*, do they? Bye for now, Mark. ______________________________________________________________ For up-to-the-minute music news, reviews and specials visit http://www.nme.com Get free e-mail (anyname@nme.com) now at http://www.nmemail.com The sender of this e-mail is NOT an employee or associate of NME, nme.com or any other IPC magazine. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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