I got another phone call from Jerry Singer on Friday, but I wasn't in. He's certainly persistant. Thanks to everyone who emailed me about my dilemma; it seems that everyone's a closet inventor. I was thinking about how stupid I am, phoning up for things just because they're free, when I remembered that my Dad had told me once, how he'd done something similar when he was twelve, and nearly ended up joining the army. He'd been on a school trip to an army assualt course, and had eagerly filled in a form to join their Youth Recruits, thinking it would be like the Dennis the Menace club and he'd receive a membership card and badges and pictures of sweaty young men in uniforms. Instead, he'd unwittingly signed up to the army for five years and they kept sending officers around to his house, trying to conscript him. I've just been into town, thinking that I might go to the bank, then as I stepped from the bus I remembered it's a Bank Holiday. So I went into a shop and read the letters in the NME. There was a quite intelligent letter defending B+S by a chap with the rather excellent name, Trevor. The NME's angry reply was that Trevor was too "intellectual", and used lots of big words, like these bastard Belle and Sebastian fans do. So it seems that their main argument against Belle and Sebastian is that they're not stupid enough, which seems like a rubbish argument to me. Out of protest, I read the paper in the shop, and put it back on the newspaper stand. This is a good way to protest. In fact I've been doing it for years, even when I haven't really got anything to protest about. I like to think of myself as being one of the old skool protesters. Give me Papercuts any day. Someone told me last night, that when she first met me she thought I was gay. Apparently, this is because "you take care of your appearance". "Which makes me gay?." "Of course." Actually I think I'm the only person who doesn't think I'm gay, so maybe I am. Even my Dad used to think so, but I think he just used to hope it was true so I wouldn't go and join the army. Jeepster have put sound samples from FishyFlaps on their website, if you haven't heard any of it yet, and I saw today that Virgin already have it on their listening post. Although I wouldn't bother with the one in Nottingham because it doesn't work very well, and sounds like the headphones are made from a couple of tin cans and bootlaces. Only a week to go now. I'm getting quite excited. Robin x +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead 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 +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+