Sinister: Sweary Mary

[Honey]

Hi I'm new to this mailing list, this is my first post, and I hope I
don't make a fool of myself.  I'm Agnes, I work on a sheep farm and
my favourite hobbies are joinery, eating yoghurt and humming.

Oh I can't do this, hello everyone, I hope you don't mind me sticking
my head in.  I'm still around, honestly, but very much part of the
wallpaper just now (think of me as a nice "flock"), and pretty
unresponsive unless you poke me very hard with a stick, due to
continuing illness, which really has gone on too long now, don't you
think?  But I'm doing list mummy things in the background, albeit
slowly, so don't think you're all orphans, and I'll bring home some
iced buns for tea, I promise.  Please only mail me administration
type requests if you've been through all the suggestions on the WWW
site and are desperate and crying your eyes out.  All of you who have
mailed me other nicer things, gosh, please don't think I'm an
ungrateful tart if I haven't replied yet, and please don't give up on
me, as I never chuck out an email that needs a reply, even if we
might all be living in space by the time you get one.

You all seemed to have rallied round, post-Christmas, and made this
place a much warmer, cosy and stimulating place to be.  Why is this,
were you all playing a trick on me?  I could of course be wrong as
I've only read a small number of the emails so far, but some seem to
be jolly fine to me.  Your mummy's very pleased, please keep it up to
stop this list going under.  And here's something dull to set off the
year in customary fashion.


-- Posting --

I've been playing with restricting the list to only accepting posts
from subscribed users, and the results show it's well worthwhile
doing, so I'm going to implement it.  Although it might be annoying
to a few, I hope it'll really help increase the quality of stuff we
all have to plough through, as only people committed to reading 30
posts a day will be able to send something back, so they'll
understand the pain of reading something inconsequential or
knee-jerky.  I know there might be some who just read the list from
the WWW archive, but the consequences of allowing people who
occasionally read a couple of messages a week to post is too much.
It's you loyal ones who are prepared to feel the weight of all the
mails or digests in your mailboxes, that I want fragrant, expressive
posts from.

There will of course be exceptions to this, people who read their
mail from one account and post from another (say a home account), and
I won't leave you high and dry - if you're WELL known to me, and have
posted lots of [worthwhile, funny, meaningful :) ] posts to the list
in the past, or you're Mrs Murdoch, then I'll make an exception if
you mail me privately, and I'll allow posting from a non-subscribed
account, but I'm afraid I can't do this if you're someone I don't
know who's reading this on the WWW or whatever.  Anyone who isn't on
the list and tries to send something will get a message back
explaining what to do.  I've added some people to the allowed list
already so don't be surprised if your mails get through OK - if you
don't hear anything, it's fine.

Just to emphasise, if you're subscribed to the main list or digest,
you won't notice any of this, and life will continue as normal, bar a
slight decrease in piffle, hopefully.


-- Underwear --

I quite like the word "panties", partly because it rhymes with
"Aunties" and "sea-shanties".  In fact, New Year Sinister competition
no. 1 is to send me a limerick with B&S content, which features these
three words rhyming on lines 1, 2 and 5.

Competition no. 2 is the one I forgot to send in over Christmas,
because I had my head under a quilt: write a short Christmas carol,
with B&S content, featuring the rhymes "Mary" and "hairy" and "Jesus"
and "cheeses".

If for some bizarre reason I get any entries, I will post the results
back to the list.  Linda will provide the prizes.  If I don't get any
entries I will remain embarrassed and silent, and try and pretend I
never suggested it.

(By the way, Charlotte/John, what happened to the remaining entries
to your poem competition, they were going to go on the WWW weren't
they?  If that plan's off, I'm happy to put them on the Sinister site
if you send me them.)


-- Swearing --

I've been most amused in recent months by a swear word detector which
seems to be in operation at Yale College, somewhere in Wales.
Someone from there is subscribed to the list (hi) and probably
doesn't know that she/he isn't receiving a small percentage of mails
to the list because they're deemed to have rude words in them, and so
get bounced back to me.  What's fun is trying to see what it counts
as a rude word in the returned mail, and wondering what it's like to
be the Yale College Rude Word Collector (hereafter known as the
YCRWC), who must have to actually type in all these obscene words in
the first place, just so that they can keep them out the doors.  Some
of these words were very respectable 100 years ago, and other words
like "pomegranate" which we unsuspectingly use happily today in
conversation with our grandmothers, will be obscene in 2055, as I
know from my time travel experiments.  You must really have to be
ahead of the game in terms of obscenity to be the YCRWC.

What I was wondering is: does anyone know any rude Welsh words?
Could they try them out please and see if the YCRWC is up on them?
I'd quite like that, but I've always had a small imagination.

miss honey xxx


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