hello sinister :) ...i dont like autumn at all...the worst thing in the world is having to turn the light on at three o clock in the afternoon because its too gloomy to see anything and hearing the rain pelt down on the windows...the situation is worsened when you have a first class hangover,no cigarettes and strange pains in your feet...ah well..the weekend was trying,tiring,sometimes fun but ultimatly unproductive...it involved a slightly bizzare trip to Oxford...one of these spur of the moment things fuelled by a need to escape your surroundings for at least a few hours..belting down the ring road at a silly speed in a decrepit green beetle with the moldy peaches blaring into the night air was extremely fun (especially if you arent the one having to drive)...alas it was downhill from there...slightly naively we expected to find a wealth of lovely,alternative places to drink with decent music and interesting people...of course every city centre in the world is usually crawling with scary people and loud but joyless pubs..how we managed to forget this fact is beyond me...where were the students in scarfs cycling along the pavement? where were the distinguished buildings and elegantly unhinged public schoolboys? I must learn to broaden my horizons..there was actually just KFC's,chain pubs and roadworks...among the ACTUAL people we met were a strange bum in a flat cap who badgered �2.50 out of me for a cappuccino...a cappuccino??...why do i give into these people?...even the down and outs had expensive tastes...there was also the inevitable scattering of tanked up football fans waving their stupid flags and screaming like ape-men who'd just discovered the miracle of fire...so we ended up in a lifeless establishement (i think it was called 'the mitre') with warm beer and tasteful muzak playing at the lowest volume possible without being turned off...a quick stumble round some extremely rich-looking buildings with the sound of affluent student parties ringing above and then it was back home again...but not before discovering that Oxford does in fact have FOUR park and ride areas leading to an hour long round-trip on the bus with some scary people yelling on the bottom deck...thus i discovered four things this weekend... i) i should abandon all preconceptions when travelling ii) i should get out more iii) most places are the same iv) i should stop giving money to rich tramps ...are there any Oxford dwelling sinisterines who could give me information for future reference on nice places to go?...on a scarier and more distressing note, it appears that air strikes have begun in Afghanistan...at least there was some kind of restraint shown and it has been nearly a month since the attacks...but there was still a forlorn hope in my mind that things would just get sorted in time and that the taliban would see sense without the need for military action..pretty stupid i guess...i know that military action was inevitable and probably neccesasary but still....the recent debate about the IRA has just made me think though...terrorism is centuries old...once bin laden is captured or killed and the immediate threat is percieved to be over..things will just go back to normal...not NORMAL because things can never normal again...but i'm scared that all this talk of a war against terrorism is just hot air and it wont be long before another tragedy on the same scale or worse will happen again...oh i've gone on too long..um... ta ta... __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? NEW from Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month. http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1 +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+