Goodness, but I'm excited! Spilling Ribena all over the show! Can't wait to be let out of the Nursery, in fact. So I'm writing this in crayon on the wall (hope Mummy doesn't see) to keep myself amused. I probably won't send this to the list when I get my voice, though. Be too embarrassed. Then again, if you're reading this now, it means I decided to prove to myself that I didn't really know it all after all. That's pretty odd, when you think about it. Actually, I'm not just writing this because I want to send it (or not...)I'm trying to avoid doing _real_ work for school. I'm supposed to be working on an essay. It's called '"Can't get enough of your love,baby...": Why Barry White could never be an Evolutionary Psychologist.' I study philosophy and psychology. Mostly, I spend a lot of time drinking tea and thinking and talking, about love and metaphors and brains and possible worlds and other cool things. I want to be a rich and famous philosopher when I grow up. My mother has lost all hope that I'll ever get a real job. And then there's the library. I work at the university library...oh, by the way, I'm in Auckland, New Zealand. Hi, Lawrence! Congrats on your impending matrimonials. Nice to know that when I say something like <gruffvoice>'Jesus, Murray and Joseph, that's not a fair suck of the sav!' </gruffvoice>, someone will understand. ;-} Anyways, I work at the library. I have lots of jobs there. One is to sit at a little desk by the entrance and exit and make sure people aren't stealing books. I'm pretty crap at catching thieves, though, so mostly I just talk to people and look at the girls. Another of my jobs is working in the book returns room. I have to check in all the books that come through the slots. People put some fairly strange things through the slots as well as books. We have a little collection on the wall. The shifts I work are quiet ones, so there isn't really much to do. No one returns books on Wednesday or Thursday nights, or on Saturday afternoons. So I have to find other things to do to amuse myself. Sometimes I wander across the road to see my friend Catherine, who works on the ticketing desk of the Maidment theatre. I have to be careful not to get caught, though. I'm not supposed to leave the book returns room while I'm working. So I pretend I'm a ninja, because no matter what movie you're watching, if it's got ninjas in it, you know it's going to be Quality Entertainment. We also have a competition in the book returns room to see who can find the funniest name. Some books have holds placed on them by patrons (we're not allowed to call them 'punters' anymore.) When we get a book with a hold on it, a little slip is printed out with the title of the book and the person who requested its name. The best one I have found so far is 'Venus Wing Man Mo'. But I don't like playing that game, because everyone else always brings up my own name. It is <deep breath> Andre Enrico Ciriaco Federico Ambrogio Alessi. My sister's name is Katherine Amy Alessi, or just 'Kat'. Go figure. Also, one of the other things I do to amuse myself is have singalongs. I call it 'DIY karaoke'. Tigermilk (my favourite album) is never far from the CD player, nor is If You're Feeling Sinister. I have a grand old time singing along to My Wandering Days Are Over (my favourite song most days) and Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying (my favourite song the rest of the time.) I have to make sure no one can hear me, though, because I'm a baritone. And singing B&S in baritone is just downright silly. The story of how I first heard of B&S is a little silly, too. I was living in Gisborne, which is a tiny little city that claims to be the first city in the world to see the sun each day. Mostly, people just surf. I had gone there for a birthday party one weekend, and spent my return bus ticket money on Guinness, so I ended up staying for a year. I couldn't surf, but I had a deep voice,so I started working on an 'alternative' radio station that was operating out the back of a bar. Instead of getting paid in cash, we got free drinks at the bar. One weekend, New Zealand indie legend Chris Knox (who does solo stuff and also has a side project called the Tall Dwarfs) came to play at the bar, and we interviewed him on air before the show. In one of the song breaks, he mentioned a "really cool band called Belle and Sebastian". Then he asked us if he could spend a few minutes alone in the studio to run the show his way. We were all a little tiddly from the vodka-and-Red-Bulls at the time, so we agreed. I don't quite know what he did, but from that time on, our computer programme with all our playlist on it started acting up. We'd programme Bic Runga's Bursting Through and get Tool's Stinkfist, or Beck's Loser and get Dean Martin's That's Amore. It made life interesting, anyway. After that, I moved back here to Auckland to start uni(again), and while wandering through Borders one day, noticed they had a Belle and Sebastian album on listening post. Remembering Chris Knox's enthusiasm, I popped on the headphones and...well, it was Tigermilk. 'Nuff said, really (except that my friends Ben, who's a Morris dancer, and Catherine, who isn't, both have copies too, because of my enthusiasm/nagging insistence.) Now I spend my days doing all sorts of things. Darcy, who's a friend of mine too, challenges me to a beard-growing competition every summer, and wins every time, so this year I thought I'd get a head start. I started three weeksago. People say I look a little like a fox with it, because of the lighter patches, and the grey. I already had the nickname "Cunning Andre" (well, that’s what I call myself, anyways-my friend Mia calls me "Machiavellian"), so it seems appropriate, somehow. I guess I'll have to send a picture too, because a beard is kind of a body part. I also spend my weekends dancing like a dervish and having more spontaneous DIY karaoke hours. There are a lot of really good local bands, like Goldenhorse, Handsome Geoffrey and Goodshirt, who are worth going to see when I can't get access to the CD player at the flat to play my B&S. Goldenhorse especially are faves of mine, partially because my friend Catherine (who works at the Maidment) is friends with them, and because they have a name that encourages people to shout out "Go the 'horse!" at random moments during their gigs. I'm toning things down a little now, though, because I'm getting on a bit (25 in December-eeeek!) I'm trying to be a Good Vegetarian, but I seem to fall off the wagon by eating lamb kebabs about three times a week, and the occasional Double Whopper. Darcy says that makes me a Bad Vegetarian. My mother is also worried I'll never find a serious girlfriend in time to have babies and settle down, like all my old friends. I don't really pay much attention to her when she's like that. Instead I just carry on haphazardly pursuing a Sexy Nice Jewellery Making Girl that I know and writing my Great New Zealand Novel. It's called Losing Hope, and it's about not being in love anymore. Or about how the people that aren't with us still affect us. Or something. I get to use my three favourite words, anyway: susurrus, bungalow and expunge. Well, I did go on a bit, didn't I? Bit too self-absorbed, too. Bugger. Never was very good at editing. Oh well. Must do better next time. Right-o, that's me, Cunning Andre +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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. 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