some things first: * there is a girl at the paper named scarlett herring.i find great joy in this. * someone asked about love, and what it is. mentioned high fidelity and bagged on bon jovi. i'd like to think love is a mix of what we are and what we'd like to be, what we like and what we are like. i like bright eyes. many people find bright eyes similar to the bleating of goats or other similar animals. and if i admit i like hanson as well. well. all hell might break loose. maybe this is why i have such trouble with you lot of boys and love. my unsolicited: if you stop liking someone because of his or her tastes, there's probably some other undefined reason. it wasn't meant to be. you might be shallow, but i don't think less of you for it. every rose has its thorn. * most important of these small notations: i heard from my friend bron today. some of you know her, i think. she is home. and i am happy about that. *** lately i have found myself listening to a lot of the exact same music i listened to at this time last year, though then it was for the first time, and now it is like revisiting. or trying to recapture. something like that. at any rate, i've drug out the superchunk again, and am waiting for superchunky days of snow and late century dreams, followed with i love my car and a little dose of now it's overhead. strange, the things i attach to music. i was so happy then. this time, i am still happy. i think. in a different way, to be sure, and perhaps not a better one. but who am i to rate the quality of happiness? isn't happiness just happiness all the time? does it come in different kinds and colors? should i think of it like little jolly ranchers, individually wrapped but all in the same candy dish? when the peach-flavored run out, the other flavors will do almost as well. *** my purse got stolen last night. i went to a coffee shop at home (for i was home for the weekend), and i put my glorious blue suede plus fur collar coat on a chair behind me and my bag on the seat of the chair. i was talking to this craggy older guy named mark. turns out he was to be the first person i've met yet who has the same disease as i. he held his hand out next to mine and we compared the crippling, smiling and laughing and knowing that life was just as good for us as anyone else. and i saw a kid sitting in the chair with my coat. when he got up i looked for my bag, and it was gone. generally, i'd expect myself to fall to more pieces than i did. police were called. mark and another coffee shop patron, a wonderful suburban-father-type, jumped up and ran outside to, i assume, hunt down the thief john wayne-style, retrieve my bag and save the poor little lady. turns out the thief's friend was the man sitting with my coat, and, after a bit of me saying, "i want my bag back NOW, fucker," the thief came back and returned my bag with everything in it except my cigarettes. o to have lost my nat sherman mints! the funny thing was, sitting on the corner of the street in a mini-skirt and fur, digging through old grocery receipts and check stubs, taking out my credit cards and compact and tubes of lipstick, license and magic marker and lighter from korea and mobile, i thought suddenly that everything i was at that moment was in that bag. and that everything i ever really was would be in that bag, five rectangles of plastic and a phone, all those receipts for food and cigarettes and whatever bank statements i had in there. a pen. a bunch of makeup. keys. in there: a girl, with an affinity for writing in red ink and a shitload of debt. if i lost everything last night, i would have. i would have turned over my identity, my money, my connection to everyone, my way around town and home. all those numbers and keys -- we are all that. strip us of it, and what we are then is just another naked person, without a name or number, some sort of something. without my bag i would just be a girl in a mini-skirt and unfortunate fur, holding out her hand to compare crippling with the next nameless man next to her. thank goodness i got it back. what would i do if i lost myself? where would i be? cue the pixies: thank fuck this thanksgiving if you know where you are, and who, and are happy. *rae __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus � Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+