Hello again (I've missed you all), The other day there was a nasty storm in Ohio and whilst chatting with my chums on #sinister a lightning bolt struck rather close and fried my modem. Fortunately, I had a back up. Unfortunately, I'd managed to misplace my driver disk and my system disk, so I had to wait until today to install it. So basically I had to wait three days to get back on the Internet. Well without access or friends for that matter (they all seemed to leave town this weekend for some reason) and blowing my chance to go to ann arbor with this incredibly cute girl from Denver thanks to a prior commitment, I was searching for ways to waste time. I tried watching Return of the Jedi, but it is still my least favorite Star Wars film (including the Phantom Menace), and it didn't really work. I of course listened to music, but it has been so dreadfully muggy lately that it really sucked all of the fun out of music for me. Then it came to me. why not read a book? I had read books before and enjoyed them and I had just finished reading the brilliant Continental Drift by Russell Banks. So I picked up another book, this time Veronica by Nicholas Christopher and realized just how liberating reading could be. Now I don't feel so dumb for getting that degree in English. One last note on this reading thing. I just started reading Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko. I'm trying to figure out how long it is going to take me to read a 750 page book (and how long did it take her to write it?) Finally a last note on the Simpsons. I think the reason it is easier to watch a Simpsons episode that was made past season 2 is that sometime during season 2 the writers decided to deviate from matt Groening's "Life in Hell" format of the original Simpsons from the Tracy Ullman Show and instead decided to use the Simpsons as a forum for social critique. I think the most endearing quality of the Simpsons is that the Simpsons are probably the most effective form of satire on US television. It's really no secret that the Simpson's writers are aligned with the American left politically (and radically so I would say in some cases) but because it is a cartoon, no one views the show as threatening. I think this is best illustrated by the recent Easter Sunday episode of the Simpsons, which was so obviously critical of Christians, and yet really had no protest from the right wing or Christian Coalition at all. However, to the intelligent viewer, the simpsons is a serious satire of American life, and pretty much a good diagnosis of what is wrong with it. You can do these things with a smile you know. Well sorry to have wasted all of your time. Digest wise this should read: Check out Russell Banks and Nicholas Christopher Simpsons #1 because of SATIRE. Nothing about Brandt's crush. That's because it hasn't gone anywhere. When something happens, I'll let you know. I leave you now with the immortal words of Homer Simpson... Brandt "Animals crap on our floors and WE pick it up! What, did we lose a war or something?" --Homer Simpson +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the reborn Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". WWW: http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "jelly-filled danishes" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+