i'm a little foggy from an extreme night out, so you'll have to bear with me. i've got to write an essay and a scientific report in this state, so if anyone takes pity on me and would like to send me anything that falls into either of these two categories, that would be appreciated. about school: i never had an easy time in school. when i was really young, up until about age 10, i was The Bully, which meant that nobody wanted me on their team, nobody would work with me in class, and nobody came near me at recess. which i guess was really fine because i was a miserable kid anyways, but it's left me with a school record thicker than my arm and only one memory of a sleepover. i didn't have any friends and i never once thought that suburban life was idyllic. i discovered music in a big way once i entered junior high, there was a boy i had a crush on that gave me a tape of the cure and i was instantly obsessed. this led to me spiking my hair a la robert smith, wearing loads of black eyeliner and being beat up and thrown against lockers because i was different and strange. thank goodness i grew out of that by the time i got to highschool (although i still hold the cure in a fond place in my heart). oh, i was also a riot grrl during junior high and the earlier parts of highschool which didn't make me any friends because nobody knew what it was. it just scared them. i made a couple friends in highschool...mostly boys, the two girl friends that i had later went on to sleep with my boyfriend, who ironically was horribly jealous of any of my male friends. i got into more indie music, like dinosaur and pavement and the pixies and stereolab, but nobody knew who they were. which doesn't really matter, but it's so nice to be able to share good music with other people. i later found out that people thought i had this amazingly cool life because i wrote record reviews and put out a zine and went to concerts and got paid to take photos of bands. which i guess sounds cool in retrospect, but i was doing all this stuff by myself (well, the possessive boyfriend went to concerts with me to prevent me talking to other people) and still didn't have anyone to eat lunch with or hang out with if class was cancelled. music was really the thing that saved me...kids can really be cruel over the smallest differences, and although my mother maintains that "you would have had friends if you didn't listen to that strange music", i don't think that's the case at all. i've never really fit in, even when i was little i didn't have friends that i played with or could invite to my birthday party...as a matter of fact, i haven't had a birthday party since i was 5. but from when i was really young, i learned that it's easier to pretend that you don't care, and if you do it long enough you end up cold and really not caring at all. yeah, i was completely evil in grade school, but in highschool i was just quiet and kept to myself, which was likely the result of being beat up for saying anything. it's only recently that i've had friends that i can talk to, people that i can tell about good bands and that can tell me about good bands and that i can phone for no reason. i've never had a saved by the bell or degrassi existence. my life right now is the closest i've come to that, and it's still not at all what we're meant to believe is the way things should be. oh dear, i'm hungover and feel quite shit at the moment, which i'm sure you can tell by reading this. congratulations if you've made it this far. my belle and sebastian content is that i've made more good friends because of this band than i've had in my whole life. love, jessicaxo * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * someone had spied on us, i suppose, as we sat beside the canal and ate the sandwiches, drinking not even orangeade or coca-cola but hot milk out of a thermos. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * t i n y s t a r @ w o r l d y . c o m (it's lovely being a girl) +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+