Hello kiddies . . . Hmmmm, new listee Zoe writes . . . In Greece B&S are like all the time on the radio and in clubs etc.Well,not in all clubs but in most of the rock clubs . . . Athens is sunny. Hmmmm (again), Greece is sunny, in Greece they play B & S on the radio and in the clubs (though not all clubs), and Greece is the cradle of the Western Poetic tradition. Sounds like the place to have the Splinter meet-up of the Millennium (it could be of Olympian proportions!). Then again, small fragmented gatherings in cold overcast places where no one knows or understands our obsession and where "Bohemian Rhapsody" is considered high art (it was the theme song to Wayne's World for gosh sakes) and mentioned in the same sentence as Keats is much more to our liking. Hmmmm I was in Ameboa Records on Haight Street (in San Francisco, California, (where it is not always as sunny as the travel agents say)) over the weekend and they were playing IYFS. I asked the clerk about it, and she said that someone had returned the week before and it had found its way into their playlist. But it was "defective" it would have to be removed before the week was out, much to her disappointment. I smiled. I have not posted in a while because i have been nursing a bruised heart. A friend of mine sent me an essay written by a friend of his. I read the essay, which was about how this girl got into pop music, and was struck by how closely her story resembled mine (of course some of the details were different, as were some of the bands she liked, but the general curve of our stories were amazingly parallel). So I wrote my friend to tell him this, he passed my gush on to the girl (without my knowledge), and much to my surprise, she wrote to me. For the better part of three weeks, we exchanged e-mails, often to the tune of three or four lengthy ones daily. During that time our correspondence grew much more personal than just "oh yeah, you like them too!" or "So who was the first Sino-Japanese band to cover a Matthew Sweet song in Serbo-Cruasian?" It was beginning to feel something like "89 Charing Cross Road" or certain Looper songs. And though we seemed to be spiritually joined at the ear, and were growing closer and closer emotionally, we were physically living a few hundred miles apart. Then an opportunity arose. My job had me traveling to a city very near by this girl, who had wormed her way into my heart. We made plans to meet-up and spend all the free time we had on the weekend together exploring the possibilities of this new strange town. As I arrived in the city a few days before her, I rang her and we spoke for four or five hours each of the four nights before she arrived. It would appear that we were made for each other, soulmates as it were separated only by distance. We both were very excited at the prospects of meeting each other. She even told me that I was "too perfect". And meet we did. But something wasn't right. I think we both tried (I know I certainly did) to make it work. I had the feeling that the person I was meeting was not the same person I had been writing to or that I had spoken to for all those hours. I assumed we were both a little nervous about meeting, and that things would be better the following evening. We chattered lightly on the drive back to my hotel, and at the end, just before she, quite literally, kicked me to the curb, he asked, rather rhetorically, "We didn't hit it off, did we?" Before I could answer, I found myself sitting on the curb in the faded neon glow of a theatre marque, looking up through a cloud of exhaust at her taillights disappearing into the night. I made a few valiant attempts to call her the following day, but to no avail. And upon returning to San Francisco, I send her an e-mail which remains unanswered. So I'm left wondering how I could go from being "too perfect" to less than gum beneath her shoe in fewer than 24 hours, and am I such a hideous person in person that I should restrict my social life to pen-pals and posting to e-mail lists. If such is the case, so be it. I'll be a manifestation of my words only. Well, a little wound licking can be a good thing. And as that old Mexican proverb says, "Those things that don't kill us build character." Now I'm indebted to our S. Murdock for the perspective granted by repeated listenings to "I Don't Love Anyone." I can categorically state: "I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. And doggonit, people like me." But is it wicked not to care . . .? Thanks for your indulgence. I didn't mean to blather on like this, but confessions are a bit like cashews: once you start you just can't stop. I hope there was enough B & S content to pass muster. Oh by the way, a new pair of cashmere socks goes a long way to mending a bruised heart. All the Best Daniel Hooper +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the reborn Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". WWW: http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "jelly-filled danishes" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+