out for a ride on ocean drive

there was a couple in new jersey recently found to have been starving three of their five adopted children. the boys. their two girls were fine and healthy. the boys had been supplementing their diet of pancake batter and oatmeal with paint chips and insulation. when discovered (not by the social services worker who regularly visited the home???) the oldest one at 16 years of age weighed a mere 43 lbs.

it takes a special brand of cruel to adopt a child to abuse. i'm almost rendered speechless.

on the talk radio station we have tuned in at work today there has been a great deal of discussion regarding the steps one must take in the event that they encounter a large animal in the road while driving. moose, horses and deer have so far been the most frequent highway walkers.

one man who called seemed to have hit an unusually high number of animals in his time. one time he even took the poor beast home that he'd hit for a some good eats. that just doesn't sit well with me. eating roadkill...

i have recently been thinking on the nature of catharsis. okay, truthfully, i've only been thinking about it for the last 4 hours or so but i think i've come to understand it just a little bit better. i have been brought to a whole new comprehension of the ways that people cope and swim their way through their sorrow.

i once had a friend who, in the midst of some enormously devestating life situations, found comfort only in watching holocaust documentaries. another, listening to the same cd of melancholy tunes over and over and over again. i spoke with a friend today who mentioned going to incredible numbers of rock concerts during a real bottoming out in his teen years.

the kind of trouble i've seen isn't important, but my new found water noodle is: the film "kill bill." i watched it tonight and i while i certainly haven't had my wedding busted up by a band of murderous villains, i felt like uma thurman was kicking ass on my behalf. kicking the collective ass of humanity because i don't get to. without mercy, compassion or any obligation to forgive.

i want to forgive and have mercy and have compassion at the end of the day. i know that you can't really just sort of run around killing people to make it all better.

but it's nice to dream isn't it?

i have never wanted a coffee so badly in my entire life.

ok that's not true.

but i am pretty washed. i can only remember being more tired than this for a few days about 2 years ago.

i don't know why i was getting so little shut eye during that cluster of days but sleep was hard to come by and, as a result i ended up drinking a 600ml bottle of jolt cola every day at work for a week. a co-worker of mine had found the only convenience store within a 5km radius that sold it and cleaned out their inventory in a matter of days to keep us both awake at our desks.

when the hole growing in my stomach lining began to approach the size of the storm on jupiter's surface, i quit the jolt and got some sleep.

right now though, i'd still like a coffee.

i am not a go getter. i wish i was. i would hate my job slightly less if i could manage to go and get a bit more.

i have a colleague who knows how to go and get. therefore he gets in on all the interesting stuff that happens around here. the million dollar deals (or should i say the million dollar pipe dreams--but they're fun while they last), the new prototypes being built in secret in the back of the building, the wheeling and dealing with new suppliers. he has this inexplicable drive to go after those things and it is those things that make his job a little less mundane.

i, in contrast, have no go get for these things. i don't care enough. it's my downfall. i don't care and i can't make myself care because at the end of the day if my office was launched off the planet in a chinese rocketship i wouldn't shed a tear. i curse this company that i can muster up no concern for.

today this colleague of mine met with one of the wonderful new suppliers he went and got one day and for his trouble received a box of krispy kremes and a gift certificate to the lcbo. i hate krispy kremes but i could certainly have used the lcbo gc (it would have been spent on vodka to drown my sorrows on this whole quandary).

i suffer a great deal of anguish over this issue. i wonder if there's something intrinsically wrong with me. am i just lazy? do i want for a good work ethic? does my lack of go get 'em mean i'm a bad person, not worthy of even the paycheque sliding across my desk every two weeks?

this horrible sense of "not measuring up" backstrokes its way through my bloodstream every time i hear this guy chuckling with our boss over the latest deal and handshake he's managed; everytime i am required to "cover the phones" cause he's in a meeting with an important client. i am struck by how someone as fun, talented and outgoing as myself just can't seem to measure up--in fact is still fruitlessly searching for the measuring stick to just see how far off the mark i might be--for reference if nothing else.

this yuck-mart feeling also courses through me when i think of my 10 year highschool reunion coming up. my friends from highschool are without fail, either wildly successful in their careers or in their personal lives. they're either doctors, engineers, teachers or some other variation of a saviour of the world, or they have these absurdly wonderful spouses and dreadfully cherubic offspring all happy clappy and running through the fields together holding hands.

i have no spouse. i have a job i hate with no room for advancement. i have finally, in a feeble attempt to catch up with the pace of the most other people my age, gotten my own place in the last few months, but struggle to furnish it. i write but i think i'm just good enough at it to know i'll never be great.

a friend recently asked me if i felt like i was an underachiever. i nodded the nod of the one who is guilty but grateful to be understood. he said i just hadn't hit my stride yet.

we shall see.

walking up the street one night on my journey home i saw a girl who had no less than six pounds of hair on her head. she couldn't have been any older than about 12 and i wondered how she even held her head up against such adversity. it was a windy day and this wee half black child was being nearly carried along by the gust; her hair being whipped about like a parachute, threatening to render her airborne. that big, chocolaty, hair parachute. it made me giggle on that nasty day.

sandy mctire. that's his name. sandy mctire.

so aren't you all lucky that i've chosen to bless you all with my online journal. pay homage to the internet gods tonight in honour of this moment. note use of the letter "u" in honour--pay homage only to the canadian gods. these include tim horton, the guy who's on canadian tire money, and mike myers.