I'd assumed I'd heard the worst of it when "chocky bicky" escaped my friend's lips. But now this . . . "christmas pressie." Robin, if you are up to it, please shed some light on the terrifyingly British need to diminutize everything. Was this the custom when the empire was still robust? Or is it a way of asserting the speaker's magnanimity in the face of her country's shrinking significance in the post-imperial era? My friend has cleverly coined the genre of Shag Pop for those ingeniously filthy sex-obsessed British bands such as Hefner, Pulp, Arab Strap, and Tindersticks. I helpfully pointed out the aptness of their member's names: Darren HYMAN, Jarvis COCKer, DICKon Hinchliffe. There must be more, and you are more qualified than I to generate them. In response to the newly-repeated Sinister phrase "fuck it, fuck it with knives" I'm tempted to contribute a story about sitting two feet in front of a sex performance artist at my favorite San Francisco lesbian strip club while she, well, you can imagine (don't worry, she was safe: it was neatly sheathed in a condom), but I don't know what sort of reputation I might garner in this parish. Whatever it would be, I would fall far short of its promise, that's for sure. Let's just say that the most terrifying part was immediately after the show, when she tore around the club in search of her huge glass-ensconced pillar candle (two guesses how this piece was incorporated into her act) screaming, "where's my candle? who took my candle?," seemingly unaware of the roomful of cloudy, averted eyes who wanted nothing more than extreme distance from the honeyed object. Pure hope, she had. Poor hope. Changing the topic considerably, the advice for clandestine workplace Sinister reading has brought to mind Jane Austen. Being a woman who wrote in the 1790s, she was not allowed to be a woman who wrote. So she hid her papers under her sewing, while she sat at a small circular table in the family drawing room. When afforded the opportunity to be alone, she pulled out her papers and wrote a few lines -- until approaching footsteps shamed her into burying the paper under cloth once more. Her grave, in Winchester Cathedral, marks her as a charming daughter. Not one word of her future status as Mark Twain's favorite writer. Now, should word get out that Kirsten Kenyon writes in secret, stealing a line or two at a time, I would be truly impressed. A massive Sinister fundraising campaign to rent the girl a snowy cottage somewhere frighteningly cold with absolutely no geese would be in order. A sort of Sinister fellowship, if you will, with a DSL connection, a cabinet full of liquor, and a free candy machine in the bedroom. You may submit your application at any time, dear. Happy Birthday today to my favorite Sinister lurker, Jacob M. of Superhero Resources International. -- kyla __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Find the one for you at Yahoo! Personals http://personals.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 +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+