Sinister: Dance me to the end of love

[Ian Nicolson]

Hello pussycats

'Eastenders - everyone's talking about it'.  Are they arse! No one at all at 
my work talks about Eastenders, and I've got so much to say. Isn't the whole 
point of working to partake in idle chit-chat about soap operas? I think I 
need a new job. But it's all gone a bit 'Who Shot Mr. Burns?', hasn't it? My 
bet's on Chloe.

Scouring the Scotch papers this weekend, I happened upon a couple of tiny 
mentions of Belle & Sebastian - neither of which is news in any way 
imaginable, but perhaps midly diverting none the less.
In the first one, from Friday's Scotsman, Craig McLean dreams up a Scottish 
alternative to the Brits, called, imaginatively, the Scots:
"The Cardinal Winning Holier Than Thou Tower (made from finest ivory) is 
bestowed upon Belle & Sebastian. This is to mark just how precious they are 
(to us all). Unfortunately band leader Stuart Murdoch can't be with us 
tonight, as he's still puggled after making an album and doing a press 
conference about a year ago. Instead, he sent us this video message: 'Could 
someone take my copy of My Ain Folk back to Azad please?'"
I chuckled.
Then in the Sunday Herald on, erm, Sunday, David Keenan's review of a Texas 
concert said:
"Stuff like In Our Lifetime is only narrowly saved from being soft-focus pap 
by guitarist Andy McErlane who insists on letting rip with this gnarly, 
endearingly stupid garage punk riff, but for the most part he looks as if 
he'd rather be playing in Belle & Sebastian."
I'm not sure what he means.

Ewan Dunbar babbled about the Blessed Sebastian. Two miracles isn't bad, but 
spare a thought for poor old St. Sebastian. Despite stopping a plague, which 
is pretty good going, Diocletian still ordered him to be shot to death with 
arrows. Bastard. But he recovered! Hurrah! So they beat him to death with 
clubs instead. Boo! And to add to his woes, God (and his Celestial Angel 
Committee, presumably) then made him the patron saint of archers! 'Bloody 
archers', he must have thought, 'I've had it up to here with archers!'
And two miracles is probably a lot better than St. Sithney managed. He, I'm 
sure you'll all agree, was a pretty crap saint. Sithney had a vision in 
which God told him to be the patron saint of lovely girls, but he didn't 
fancy it as girls would plague him for husbands and pretty dresses all the 
time, so he became the patron of mad dogs instead. So if your dog goes mad, 
offer up a decade of the Rosary to Sithney, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Next week on the Bibliotheca Sanctorum mailing list: The story of St. Zita 
and the angels baking her loaves while she was rapt with ecstasy and St. 
Leander's conversion of the Visigoths!

Tim Malone mused:
>I just love Leonard Cohen. I wish I could find
>the original 4-tracks of his albums though, cause I think
>they would be absolutely fab without the bloody awefull
>backup singers
Och, stuff and nonsense! Without the backing singers what would there be for 
me to whistle to make people think 'Ooh, he likes Leonard Cohen! What a 
pretentious twat'. And they provide a lovely counterpoint to our favourite 
randy mysoginist buddhist's tuneless caterwaul (and later growl). Anyways, 
he just wouldn't be as funny without his singers.

I think that's maybe enough. Can't wait for Eastenders tonight...

Ian N.
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