:: Subscriptions and mailouts... ::

Quick Report from last night: Plunderdelica at the ICA was ace. Met loads of new friends, bopped my socks off and gawped at the miraculous bootleg-interface software for real-time boot-DJing. Can't wait to get my hands on that. Also saw some awesome VJing stuff and am now greatly looking forward to going to SoxaN, an "Audio-Visual Club" on 7th June...

Serious bit: It struck me today that I've signed up/subscribed to a huge number of regular emails and mailouts. From the obligatory Popbitch, to listings for the Prince Charles Cinema and other cultural hotspots. Some I bin immediately (The Bookseller is invariably tedious in the extreme), but have learnt not to bother unsubscribing. Auto-delete filters are much less hassle. An interesting comparison is between sites which have a messageboard and/or daily content as well as weekly mailouts. b3ta seems to do rather well in this respect: regularly updated frontpage items mix with a "best of" secton from the very active messageboards. Of course there a fair amount of crap to wade through and the necessity of learning a new language. Where would I be without Woo, Yay, Houpla! and Hummus and Spong? Generally I find many of the links and the general feel of the site endearing, and shot through with occasional moments of Photoshop brilliance. Their Friday mailout is almost always a titter-fest of the surreal, the smutty and the geeky. Here's an example of a fantastic and absorbing mailout item (clicky for linky etc etc):

Those who find that last item a little serious should have a look at this. You'll need sound to appreciate it - look out for Oscar Wilde playing the pink oboe...

And so, to Popbitch. A typical post from today:

i was in croydon and i noticed that oasis have bought a shop
but it doesnt sell guitars and groupies like you would think but actually clothes for ladies maybe this means the band are secretly double dressers i thought i would ask them so i got the lady on the counter to fetch the manager who would obviously be one of the band it was liam though he had tried to hide from stalkers by having it say lianne on his badge and he was wearing a ladies clothes and make up i asked him how long he had been dressing like a lady but he looked confused so i did some of his trademarks to him like doing a v sign and saying fook off but he was not impressed and asked me to leave the shop i still needed to get some gossip so i thought i would find out what his fake breasts were made out of ie was it bags of cocaine or something i squeezed them but he hit me and then the police came does this happen to the rest of you when you go looking for gossip for your thursday letter or is it just me
captain_gossip, 14:54 16/5

Oh dear, PB has really gone to the dogs (as if it hadn't before). Whilst everyone moans about how it wasn't what it used to be, Popbitch's bastard child, Liphook, is populated by most of the same characters. A decided lack of pop and bitch gossip pervades on both, with liberal sprinkings of self-congratulation and past-it in-jokes. The mailout is what it's all about these days.

So (rather obvious) devukha awards for best mailouts:

Comedy/geekdom - b3ta
Comedy/gossip (though slipping fast ) - Popbitch
Current Affairs - Bitter Lemons for excellent coverage of Israeli-Palestinian issues and a laudable overriding mission to canvass the widest range of opinion possible.
Jobs - still the Grauniad

Rusty-Spoon-To-Gouge-Out-Eyes Award for consistent irrelevance, innaccuracy, requirement of exorbitant subscription fee - Evening Standard