Connections. Connections are important. We wouldn't be human if we couldn't make connections between things and derive results. Or if we couldn't make connections between things and derive beauty. Some connections are straightforward -- connect Badly Drawn Boy to St. Etienne via daytime television. Others are a little harder to grasp immediately. IF I WAS A SEAGULL I had a strange dream the other night. I dreamt that I was creating a TV series, adapted from a book. When I woke up, I remembered what book it was: "Foucault's Pendulum", by Umberto Eco. A bunch of men, working at a publishers, are fed up with conspiracy theorists sending stuff in to their slush pile, so they create their own conspiracy theory based on all the best bits they get sent. It's easy to do. If two things look like coincidence, it's because they're related. If two things look similar, they must be the same. You go from there. Coincidences are the times when you didn't spot half what's going on. THE CENTRE OF YOUR SO-CALLED PENIS Spotted on TV recently: "The Truth About Gay Sex". A wonderful programme, if only for the nature-study aspect of it. After showing us round all his favourite public toilets, a man takes us onto Hampstead Heath at night, prowling with a torch in the best David Attenborough fashion. Whispering all about the nocturnal mating habits of the gay man, he suddenly says: "Shh! Listen!" We go quiet, on the edge of our seats, and hear: TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP! "Someone's having a spanking session!" he says. I fell off my chair giggling. THOUGH IT'S NOT GOOD FOR THE BABY Incidentally, that TV programme is where the topic line came from. They wheeled on a doctor. He must know what he's talking about, because he has a nice diagram, a cross section of the male abdomen, in colour. "There's definitely a risk that a penis could damage the recto-sigmoid junction." Other tips picked up: the best lubricant for anal fisting seems to be a type of lard. It looked like it was intended for pastry-making. Yum. I hope you understand, I wasn't trying to suggest that David Attenborough likes to go cruising on Hampstead Heath. I'd never suggest a thing like that. He might try to sue. PAY THE GUARD TO SWITCH THE SIGN "So, how do I get from Grimsby to Leeds?" "Oh, it's easy. Get the Manchester train, and change at Recto-Sigmoid Junction" TAKE THE SAME TRAIN INTO WORK Of course, in the dream my adaptation fitted perfectly to the book and all made sense. It even did for a few minutes after I woke up. It was only after my brain started to run smoothly that I realised I'd missed out huge parts of everything, completely changed all the characters and locations, scrapped all the dialogue, and written an entirely different ending. All in all, then, it was a typical TV adaptation. If you don't want to know what happens near the end at all, spank me now. TEN BIGGEST WANKS The whole point of the TV show seemed to be: men can never get enough sex, even if they're gay. This is the real one I'm talking about, not the one from the dream. If you're gay and bored in your lunch break -- it implied -- you can just pop down to your local public loo, stick your dick through a hole in the partition, get some stranger to give you a tug and be back at your desk five minutes later. Lesbians (there was an earlier programme in the series) spend hours in bed together per session. Gay men, on the other hand, take five minutes out of every day and aren't choosy. Don't blame me if you disagree with this, because I know it's a broad sweeping generalisation which is entirely untrue. But it was just the feeling that the programme put across. CARAVAN IN HULL By the end of the book, of course, the men have fallen into the trap of believing that their theory is true, because it fits history so well. It fits history so well because they have picked the bits they want to fit, and misinterpreted their starting point. But it takes the narrator's girlfriend to point this out. In fact, the only rounded-out female character in the book is the one who is sane, sensible, and tells everyone that conspiracy theories are all a load of bobbins. As Dimitra would say, "Stupid Boys!" THIS IS NOT WHO WE WERE Last night, on the other hand, I dreamt I was travelling to Mull. Maybe if you give me a few hours I'll be able to connect that to Brookside, and female smoking as a symbol of women's rights. It's all a big conspiracy, I tell you. love xx caitlin +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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. 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