HELLO SINISTER!!! Matilda wrote: "How do you fall in love in that normal way all my friends are falling in love?" And this has nudged me out of lurkedom. Because it's a question I often struggled with, and whoever read my posts last autumn had to hear all about it (sorry!) My answer to the question you asked, Matilda, is a lame answer that I HATED hearing: It will happen when you least expect it. That answer was always frustrating to me because I always wanted love, so how could I *not* expect it? But since I am very much in love now, I can understand what people meant by that. Truly, for people to fall in mutual love, I believe you have to ask "are you happy with yourself? put the book back on the shelf" (there's my B&S content!) because a lot of times I think we so desperately crave love because we are dissatisfied with ourselves or our lives. I struggled for a long time to feel better about myself and about everything in my life. Those who have followed my posts will know that I identified with the song "Beautiful" because it said so much about my struggle with anti-depressant medication v. depression itself. And for me, I was able to feel better about myself by switching medications. When I started feeling better about myself, everything just clicked into place. It so happens that someone on Sinister had a "list crush" on me, mainly because of my post about the parallels between my anti-depressant problem and the song "Beautiful". Though list crushes have been debated before on Sinister as to their validity, I still firmly stand as "pro list crush". I couldn't figure out who had voted a crush on me that first time, and then ended up getting carried away with another list crush and then got "uncrushed" before I figured out who the first one was from. I remember posting on October 17th 2001 "Wait a minute, am I engaged to Ben Apps?" which is significant because now I ACTUALLY AM engaged to Ben! So it just goes to show that sometimes you find true love in the most unlikely of places. Something that is just "fun and games" like Sinister list crushes can turn into being the best thing that ever happened to you! Now, I have to say that I wouldn't ordinarily consider marriage after only 6 months of dating, and especially since my Benny lives on a different continent, and we've spent a limited amount of time together "in the flesh", so to speak. Anyone who is or has been in a long-distance relationship knows how difficult it is. Ben and I figured that to keep the momentum of our relationship going, we'd better make a move. So the paperwork is in process at this very moment with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and we expect that Ben will be able to legally move here to California (and marry me within 90 days) in July sometime. Now we expect to be married in August or September. We are so anxious and excited to be together for the rest of our lives. And it was all made possible by Belle & Sebastian and Sinister! Hooray! Now I wonder if I should change my email name to Rachel Apps or if Ben should just become known as Ben fruitloop? I also want to address a recent post from Ken in which he bid anyone who is interested in joining the Mixtape Battle to gang up with listees with the same name and challenge us... I just have one thing to say: ���VIVA RACHELS!!! We are going to kick the Chrises, Wills and Rob/y/ins butts, so don't even front, punks!!! ;) Last I heard, Joe "Rachel Pancake" Vester has sent the tape off to the next Rachel, so we're getting down to the end of ours. Sure, it's been going since November of last year, but we have 13 Rachels on our team, that's a lot of ground to cover and it's transatlantic to boot!!! Just so you know, the Rachels are: Rachel Sunnyset (Rachel Sunnyside-Up), Rachel Playforth (Archel Toast), Rachel Cornflake, Katie Odle (Rachel Cheeriodle), Shannon (Rachel Pop Tart), Lisa (Rachel Ranchero), Caleb Ben Moore (Rachel As Well aka RAW), Amy Longcore (Rachel Applejacks), Joe Vester (Rachel Pancake), Stuart "Piddlemonkey" (Rachel Griddlemonkey), and Ola Szkudlapska (Rachola Cinnamon). Then of course there's our cheerleader Rachel Grapenut and also myself, Rachel fruitloop. As you can see just by our yummy breakfast names, we are a force to be reckoned with (if you want your arse kicked, that is!) So brace yourself, Ken (and send me your new address!!!) That's about all I have to say for today. Thanks to all of you for reading this. And thanks to EE Fumblings for summarising the world of Sinister in the form of haikus. It's much more artistic than my summaries ever were, and much faster to read! Big hugs to you all! Love, Rachel fruitloop p.s. SOMEONE has a birthday coming up...we'll call him K. Chu. No, that's too obvious, let's call him Ken C... and undoubtedly, the perfect gift would be to have the treasure hunt clues revealed! __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.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 +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+