STORYTIME I once had someone ask me to beg people to use the Subject line in emails to the list sensibly, i.e. give an indication of the content. This struck me as 1. impossible to do usually, and 2. like asking for the moon on a stick(c) and so I'm striking out in the other direction. It's always struck me how interesting the presence of "Subject:" is in email communication, as we now use emails to communicate as a medium somewhere on the continuum between real speech and letters, and in neither of these cases does the medium require us to sum up the content we've made in a single line. I guess it's an interesting hang over from the early days when embryonic email was seen as a rather distant form of communication like waving flags or like a formal office protocol. I quite like the way we're still saddled with it, and the different protocols we adopt when we fill in (or choose not to fill in that pesky "Subject:" box). Honestly, I could talk for hours about this with even bigger and posher words. Instead I've decided to try using the Subject: line to tell a mass Sinister story. Here, I've started it above. If anyone wants to join in next time you post (and you'll be shot if you send a mail JUST for the sake of the Subject line!), start your line with a little star like me. Not a little star like me, the only time I've been on TV was when I was 8 for two seconds, no, a little star like wot I did. Then if you keep all the messages from Sinister in a folder you'll be able to read a little story down the page! Then I can put it in the Sinister library! Then we can publish it! Look, stop laughing, it seemed like a good idea when I started typing it. Oh and no cheating with huge long Subject lines, you're only allowed one line in your mail reader, which should be less than 60 letters, each time you post. Great art usually comes from a highly restrictive set of starting criteria, like those people who make models of ocean liners from lollipop sticks. Fubble's lonely, please help. BRITS BOING I see the Brit Awards (http://www.brits.co.uk/) have changed their voting policy since last year's interesting non-Sinister related results. It seems that they've been keeping a close eye on Sinister though, because like the List Crush, which used to be run via WWW votes like the 1999 Brits voting, they've moved to an email-verified system. I'm wondering if (a) you can vote for yourself if you're a member of S Club Seven, and (b) they match you up if two bands vote for each other. Miss Crush tells me she's matched up 10 couples on Sinister now, and I'm debating asking Damon, our Body Part Enforcer, to introduce a rule that any couple so matched must send a close, out-of-focus bodypart photo of them both conjoined. Shh, they could be touching ears. TOP OF THE POPS We seem to have suddenly become dead popular, like flares. We've just exceeded the 1200 mark of subscribers today, after hovering spookily around 1150 for about 4 months, which always struck me as odd, bearing in mind the constant flux of subs and unsubs. Has someone been putting something in the water? Hello everyone in the nursery, it's so packed out just now I don't know if I've got enough milk cartons, but I'll do my best. I've also been sent a stack of photos today so they're up too, including a few bodyparts. Nothing has quite eclipsed Tummy-02 yet, although I've been promised a picture of someone naked on a motorbike. Does the leather run smooth on the passenger seat, I wonder? Why isn't there a Toe-01 yet? There's also quite a few new faces on the other pages, and a couple of babies that quite make me gurgle. Look for the big border round new photos. TINGALING Wedding bells - congrats Ailsa! Would you like me to take your contribution out of the Bodyparts gallery now in case the inlaws see? Oops. Honey x +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead 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 +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+