Sinister: * Once upon a time there was a little girl called Fubble who

[honey at xxx.org]

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

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