Sorry Sinister, but I am about to use you. No, not for any sort of query. Purely for selfish personal purposes. Of the diversion variety. Hmm. I guess there is nothing new there, really. Anyway. You are to be my vorpal sword as I attempt to slay this frumious bandersnatch commonly known as insomnia. My battle plan, see, is to try to beat the beast at its own game - by purposely staying awake as long as possible (preferably until at least 5 p.m.) until the ferocious foe has no fuel upon which to feed. In other words, until I collapse in a heap of exhaustion and sleep until dawn. Yes. It’s a tall order. But I’ve got you. And Valley of the Dolls (mwah mwah Magnificent Miss Maddie McNeil). So I’ve been writing since morning. Well, since the time most people define as morning, being about 8:30 a.m., since I’ve been up since... 7 p.m.? Er. Time is very confusing to me right now. I confuse my days and often the weird logic I utilized when developing my insomnia attack (“So, if I got up at 7 today instead of 3, that will help because I will go to bed later tomorrow and get up later and then soon will be on track, right? Wait a sec. That’s backwards. Er. What?”). Writing. Yes. And not that crazy word processor shit. I’m talking REAL WRITING here, like, with your hands, on paper, legibly. In fact, more than legibly. It had to be perfect and pretty, it was for a present. Only it wasn’t of course, perfect and pretty that is, for my hand was hurting so badly it began to throb and shake; the letters danced deceptively across the page. And even worse, the special brown pen I was using began to run out of ink and had to be pressed down in just the right way or else it didn’t flow and left big scratches instead. Sigh. I was up against a deadline, the deadline being the insanely early post office closing time - 2 p.m. - and needless to say, I did not make it. But I did not despair, for I had a slew of stamps and figured I could smother the envelopes in them, guessing at weight and all that. Then, after all was finally finished and I ventured outdoors to walk to the post box, I realized the big envelopes did not fit in the wee slot. So I have to wait until Monday anyway. And my sister will hate me for not only missing our family Christmas for the first time ever, but failing to deliver my cheap handmade present on time. Pathetic. Especially considering I haven’t exactly been a busy little bee lately. Ah well. I’ve ingested so much poetry over the past week, I’ve begun to regularly regurgitate in random circumstances. As I stumbled down the street to the post box twenty minutes ago, I started to recite ‘I go my myriad ways, blundering, bombastic, dragged..’ On the way to the bakery at 8, ‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.. should I presume, should I presume?’ and once inside, spotting a doddering old woman, I happily repeated to myself ‘I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled.’ I suppose there are worse things. In fact, it might make me seem more educated than I in fact am. Or crazy. Especially since discounting Elliot, most poems I can be heard quoting are not commonly known. If I were to actually converse in poetry, I might say: ‘We were tired, we were merry, we had gone back and forth all night on a ferry. I am living without you because of a terror, a far-fetched notion that I cannot live without you. Love is not all: it is not mean nor drink. Let us put on our appropriate galoshes. I must suffer everything being poor. My childhood cities, by now I’ve forgotten them all, and you in one of them. I have lost all desire to communicate with men. I have a bird in my head and a pig in my stomach. Positively on my own again, heart broken so long ago I hardly notice. You call that sex? Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. It’s true, I weep too much. Like this before you, just as I am. Our story is how still we stood, how fast. Let us go then, you and I. In a mayonnaise jar I keep the tiny people I shrunk with my magic. Mothers of America, let your kids go to the movies! Lately I’ve become accustomed to the way the ground opens up and envelops me each time I go out to walk the dog. We are the chin-choppers and the golly-woppers and soon we shall discuss the amputation of your head.’ See? It’s a bit frightening. I can only recite a few poems in their entirety, but several snippets of others lodge themselves in my brain and shoot out at me in sing-song. Anyway. What else have I been doing during this sleep deprivation interval? Well, actually, I went shopping. Yes! I had not intended to, really. Well, of course I did, you don’t just stumble into online cheese stores by accident generally. But I mean, it wasn’t my initial intention when pondering what to get my parents for Christmas. I couldn’t give them poetry. It’s been done before. No books (they don’t read). Umm. And everything else requires money, which I do not have and which they did not want me to spend anyway. Good. So I was preparing to be lame and pull out my digital camera and microphone and make it a merry internet media Christmas, but then I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have a little something delivered to the door? Something small. Something cheap. Something unexpected. Something.. peculiar? Yes! Like.. um.. ha! Wouldn’t it be funny to have a nice juicy steak delivered to their doorstep in a Styrofoam box of ice! Oh yes, it would. What followed was hours of searching for the perfect cheesy gift (and yes, a hunk of black currant vodka cheese WAS an option under consideration). Sorry, #sinister, for subjecting you to this, but you were good sports. And a special shout-out to Vociferous Vodkabird Vic, for her constant stream of very valuable advice. For those of you who weren’t there for the blow-by-blow, my options were as follows: -Ten monthly shipments of genuine Latvian rye sourdough bread; seemed to be the best option at $12.95, but then it turned out that shipping bread fresh from the oven of a Latvian farm matron to NYC and then by airplane to the nearest airport was a bit more expensive - to the tune of $49. Damn. - One loaf of special strawberry bread from Illinois. $8.95. Their online ordering site was down! Egads! - Polish Party Pack!!! Yes! If it weren’t for the prohibitive price - $50 - I would have been all over this one. Party Pack from Millie’s Pierogies of Chicopee, Mass., includes 6 pounds of pierogies in assorted flavors, two rings of kielbasa and a jar of horseradish. Damn, I REALLY wanted to get this. - Other sausages; first stop was an Italian sausage place right down the street from my parents! Best part of this shopping experience were the photos that accompanied the company profile (Ooooh look! There’s Rod packing some sausages with a devilish grin!) and the individual product descriptions (extreme close-up of hand-stuffed sausages in various shapes and sizes. Ew.) Unfortunately, this too was expensive and I just couldn’t bring myself to send a sausage, being a vegetarian and all. - Gallons of Utz Potato Chips or Snyders Pretzels. Oh, lemmie tell ya, I was PSYCHED to learn that my favorite ghetto potato chips ARE ONLINE! UTZ! Not only did they sell mass quantities of junk food, but an adorable beanie doll and weird sports merchandise. I also stopped at Snyders long enough to become an official member of the Snyders of Hanover Pretzel Eaters Club - yup, my membership card is IN THE MAIL, BABY! That one is going in my wallet. - Amish Shoofly Pie. Is it just me or is there something inherently wrong with Amish online merchandising? Hmm. And they were OUT OF SHOOFLY PIE! Wassup wit dat???? High demand for the holidays, I guess. Right. Yeah. So there are some great finds out there. If anyone wants actual links, I put them on my site, www.dreamwater.net/slithytoves under ‘beamish boy.’ After all that, tho, I didn’t get anything. Yeah, go figure, eh? I checked out beer of the month clubs too, because I liked the idea of forcing my parents to drink beer and picturing them kicking back with a brewski, but those things are fucking expensive! I was going to settle on a big hunk of that weird vodka cheese, but the shipping was almost twice as much as the actual product, and it seemed just silly to spend that much money on um.. cheese. Ah well. I learned some valuable things in the process. Like where to get some scary pecan sculptures (an onion factory, of course!). And where not to by bread (an Eastern European country). I really wanted that bread tho. Maybe when I’m rich. Oh yes! I had something else to say! About Honey! Just when I think Honey can’t possibly get any cooler, she goes and puts up a #sinister radio station!!! Yes! It is absolutely genius! I mean, we’re a bunch of music fans presumably getting together to discuss music (although how much this actually happens is questionable) so it makes sense that we should have a venue to not only make music recommendations to each other but actally LISTEN to the music too. What happens is this: individual #sinister folk can peruse a massive collection of 5,000 mp3s and select songs for the radio playlist which the rest of the channel can tune in to on a streaming sound connection. I’ve been enjoying being DJ, forcing people to listen to Aden and Scud Mountain Boys and Kingsbury Manx and, yes, Crystal Gayle, Barry White and TLC. Hehe. I think I’ve made some converts, and I’ve discovered some new music meself as well. Anyway, having said all that I’m NOT going to give you the direct link cause then the station would be flooded with users which would be NO GOOD. So you’ll just have to go to #sinister to get the addy. Muaahahaha! This is really my sneaky way of getting more of you into #sinister. See how that works? Clever, eh? Oh yeah, my poppa don’t call me smartass for nothing. Er. Smart. I be off now. Behave! Wishing you lots of nog and snog this holiday season, ~dahling ps: is anyone asking santa for Athenian airfare for Christmas? Hmmmm? My latest picnic plan is to take over a wee club here for a sinister party. Mmm hmm. So let’s fill it! pps: I actually wrote this last night but fell asleep before I could send it. True story. But I made it to 6 p.m. I think! Thanks guys. _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.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 +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+