Fred Hoyle, who I never thought would appear on Sinister but now has, made a bit of an idiot of himself when I used to do astronomy - he kept haranguing the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh (where I "worked") for totally ignoring his research that proved colds and flu came from space. They were the deadly galactic enemies of the Sinex Nasal Sprayz from planet Vicks or something. Apropos of nothing. Anyway! THREE Sinister announcements. ONE! The latest edition of the B&S band "diary" appears below, sent on by Katrina - thanks you! It's mainly about footie so I don't understand a word of it; football was nearly a banned topic on Sinister, because I'd rather be knitting. TWO! As promised "earlier", a new Sinister photo gallery has appeared. It's Scarlet Erica's requested clothing gallery where you may display the best and worst items in your wardrobe (and nothing inbetween). Haute Couture! Go and have a flick through the racks at: http://www.missprint.org/cgi-bin/photo.cgi?gallery=slipups THREE! The Sinister search is back with its fetlocks flowing, and awaiting your commands, Sir. Just pop something into the box on the front page, or if you want to search for something more simple than a single word or a phrase, go to: http://www.missprint.org/sinister/search.html You'll find some cheeky random suggestions pop up in the box on the front page just like they used to. The idea is that they uncover hidden gems from the archives from our 2 and a half year history(*), but they're a bit out of date and I'd love more suggestions lovingly honed down to bring out just one or two lovely "posts of the past". Something really rude would be smashing. (*) and if you think two and a half years isn't long, in a lucid dream the other day I worked out how many emails Sinister is responsible for sending out to individual mailboxes. Go on, guess. Is it (a) 20,000, (b) 50,000, (c) 12,000,000 or (d) 25 billion billion trillion? Is that your final answer? Search tips while we're at it: if you want to look for mails containing more than one word, separate them with semicolons (;) and DON'T add spaces as it takes spaces very seriously. And if you want to look for complete phrases, just type them in, don't add quotes. Putting that together, if you want to look for a mail containing both the word "pornography" and the phrase "Nicholas Witchell", you'd type in: pornography;Nicholas Witchell Which will find this one as from tonight. It's actually rather fun putting in very odd unsinister things and see if someone somewhere's every mentioned them. I bet the answer's "cor blimey look they did!". Please do use the search before you post if you're asking a question you think there's the slightest chance might've come up before. --- Llywelynapgwilym@aol.com said:

Names. What is in a name? Quite a lot actually. but I do have a thing against names like "Fifi Trixibelle" ... ... or "2la" (-a real middle name)

It's true! Someone really did christen their daughter "21a". I rather like it... I heard on the same program (Radio 4, but not the shipping forecast heard through a haze of hallucinogens I promise) that in Brazil a father christened his children "Xerox", "Photocopier" and "Authenticated". Can any Brazilians confirm or deny this? I'm rather hoping someone called "Dishwasher" replies. Stu leaving. I'm wondering when we'll stop having to say "Stu M" and "Stu D" then? That should save a few megabytes. Finally - no! I don't want to be a Major in the Sinister village! I much prefer the idea of working behind the counter at the Ice Creame Shoppe. I'm told I'm very nippy with a scoop. Or be LJ's "intriguingly feminine" mummy. Or someone whose main duties were to do jigsaws, skip and pull tongues. Would that be ok? Honey xxx P.S. it's (c) ---

Belle & Sebastian's Chris Geddes writes about erm... football

I think I mentioned last time how much I was looking forward to the football season starting up again. Obviously now I'd have preferred it if the break had gone on a bit longer. It doesn't inspire confidence when it takes the worst result in the club's history... ever, to persuade Allan MacDonald to do what many fans had been casually demanding since October. Still, things seem to be improving on the park under Dalglish. Hopefully next time at Parkhead I'll be doing more singing than booing for the first time in a while, and maybe one day the shares will recover. If I'd spent my money on shares in some internet company instead of a crisis hit football club, I might now be looking at moving to Albert Drive. We were down that way the other day doing a photoshoot at the Sherbrooke Castle Hotel. It was the day it snowed, and it was very pleasant to spend the day in the hotel lounge drinking cups of tea. Anyway, I had never realised there was anywhere posher than Hyndland so it was a real eye-opener. A couple of years ago I got really upset at the depravity of the rich when our American label at the time put us in a posh hotel where the drinks at the bar cost about a tenner. It just seemed outrageous that folk with wads of cash have nothing better to with it than pay over the odds for normal stuff. I guess it was mainly expense accounts or something, so these companies fleece each other for cash while bored execs get pished. Woody Allen's jazz band played in the restaurant and some guy offered them thousands of dollars to do another set. Anyway this photo thing was quite a laugh, especially for Richard who had to spend the proverbial six hours in make-up. I think we're meeting the photographer on Monday to see how they turned out.

Chris Geddes

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