a conversation between me and my brother, some time last week: my brother- you cant lend little naomi 'the boy with the arab strap'. me- how not? my brother- cause its... perverted ! at the time i was quite impressed at his knowledge of the lyrical content of a record he has never heard, but later i thought he was probably just getting confused with, well, arab strap. a conversation between me and my mother, around teatime last night: my mother (after a cursory glance at the cover of the melody maker)- so, which ones belle and which ones sebastian? me-......never mind. another conversation between me and my brother, this one as we waited at the bus stop in the freezing cold on monday morning: me- is that the postman who goes to our house? my brother- dunno, why? me- i was just wondering if he had a copy of the new belle and sebastian ep for me in his bag. my brother- oh. do you think he has to wear that santa hat, or is he doing it out of choice? me- dunno. my brother- do you think theres time for me to run to the shop for a bottle of barr bru before the bus comes? me- dunno. that is the extent of my B+S related conversations with my family recently. anyway, the reason i was waiting at the busstop at a time when i should have been in bed waiting for the post was to go and do my christmas shopping, which posed the question: was i looking the other way when the argos shop mutated into some bizarre bingohall/fascist police state? shopping in argos is a stressful experience at the best of times, but now there was a load of people sitting in rows of chairs, comparing the numbers on their bits of paper with the numbers coming up on the computer screens. they all looked a bit stressed out and/or confused so i was going to cheer them up by pretending like id won the bingo when it was my turn, but i couldnt remember what to shout (i remembered later, its house isnt it?) so instead i pretended i was at the stock exchange by waving my bit of paper in the air and shouting BUY! BUY! SELL! at the tv screens. for some reason this did not cheer the shoppers up but only made them more stressed out and confused. i must have been doing it wrong. bye for now, from tjohn +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". For list archives and searching, list rules, FAQ, poor jokes etc, see http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +---+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" +---+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+