Continuing my campaign to make you all love the mighty Whitlams... Well, who'd have thought it. My Valentine's Day has so far lived up to all my expectations. As in, the only thing that came through the letterbox this morning was my credit card bill. So I continue my unblemished record - 24 years without a single VD card, and counting... Archel said:

it's tiring being a sinister heart-throb. not that i'd know - men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses

And so I hereby nominate Archel as the official Sinister heart-throb for the day. Sorry Genevieve, I just feel it's time for me to move on, it's not you it's me, etc. (Is "it's not you, it's me" the most commonly used lie in the world? Come on, admit it, we've all said it at some point in our lives, when really what we mean is "what the hell made me even want to go out with you in the first place"...) Meanwhile, Vel and Llew brought a drop of sunshine into all our lives, and made us all wonder why two nice girls in their prime were still single, but then said:

It was none other than that feathery fatboy of love, cupid! He was donned in a trenchcoat to hide his wings and feathers. Not that that would have seemed odd since he was holding a vacuum cleaner.

What the f***? Am I missing something here? On a slightly more understandable note, Mark Casarotter challenged:

p.s. wonder if Big Stu fancies facing me on the footie pitch in the near future ;-)

Any time. Bring it on, big boy... Anyway, my plan was to give you all a lovely romantic poem for today, courtesy of the great Pablo Neruda (the best thing to come out of Chile since wine?), but I came across this one instead which I can identify with far more: Oh Earth, Wait For Me Return me, oh sun, to my wild destiny, rain of the ancient wood. Bring me back its aroma, and the swords that fall from the sky, the solitary peace of pasture and rock, the damp at the river-margins, the smell of the larch tree, the wind alive like a heart beating in the crowded restlessness of the towering araucaria. Earth, give me back your pure gifts, the towers of silence which rose from the solemnity of their roots. I want to go back to being what I have not been, and so learn to go back from such deeps that amongst all natural things I could live or not live, it does not matter to be one stone more, that dark stone, the pure stone which the river bears away. Big Stu +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+