LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU MY HEAD IS IN THE SAND LA LA LA!!!

Today Wendy alerted me to the shocking news that Tyrone had written a cute little comment next to one of my SANDYRULZ escapades. gulp.

No no 'gulp' doesn't quite capture it. When i heard these words i accidentally swallowed my tonsils. i think i panicked and had a subsequent minor seizure. When i'd relaxed however, it dawned on me that i actually didn't need them anyway, so i told the 911 helicopter to turn back. Sigh, Tyrone, tsk tsk [shaking my down-turned head], it was hard to get to grips with the fact that he still had the EXACT SAME effect on me after God knows how long.

Wendy had invited me out with her and Ty many times, and given me his various contact numbers before, but my history with this guy dictates that i hurl my arms over my face and sing loud, incoherent drivel every time she does this.

Why do i act in this silly, neurotic manner at the mere mention of seeing him? There must be a term for this type of manic, uncontrolled behavior. But sadly psychiatry has not progressed far enough to give me one.

So i'm going to give it the working title "NEUROTYMANIA": A manic neurosis that occurs everytime i'm exposed to Ty.

Tyrone and i worked together at Hunts and, well, from the NANO-SECOND i laid eyes on him my blood suddenly made a mad rush for my feet, like soccer fans pushing through the stadium gates and stampeding inside, mauling each other en route just to get close to the field. i thought i might pass out right there in the studio. Very similar to the way i'm feeling right now just writing about him. [sounds of breathing into a paper bag]

You know i don't think i'd have to have visibly SEEN Tyrone to have been so overwhelmed by him. The kind of ENERGY that exuded from that guy was enough to have sent me into a chemical meltdown all on its own. So if i was BLIND i would STILL have felt the full effect him. It is hard to reveal stuff like this. That's because it makes me feel weak and vulnerable. However in this case i'm going suck up my pride, and quote Robert Lowell when he posed the question, "Yet why not just SAY what happened?". And why not just say it? (plus Tyrone lives in London now. So I'm safe... ish...)

i remember most of the gory details of what ensued after that encounter because i just WANTED him and that was all i could see. i was seeing Damian at the time. Oh and Brad Lee behind his back (yeees, yes i know i know). He was seeing a very good friend of mine. i still feel really sick to my stomach about my behavior concerning this. Why she still speaks to me i'll never know but thank God she does. However, i don't think I could've cared if he was a mormon husband with six wives and seventeen children right then. i just wanted him. From that meeting onwards some hectic shit happened between the two of us and i will NOT go into detail here, or anywhere else for that matter. EVER! EVER EVER!

...Okay, maybe just ONE episode then... There we were at the Hunt Lascaris Xmas party. He was Elvis and i was Louise from Thelma and Louise. Out of nowhere Tyrone grabbed me by my arm and thew me into the ladies' toilet where we made a gargantuan effort to eat each other alive. After an hour or so we could audibly hear women's bladders bursting outside. But we didn't care. We were inside our own universe at that time.

But we DID eventually have to open that door. And there we stood, winded, out of breath. We looked like, well, two rock stars who'd just been released from a cage which they'd shared with a angry, starving wild bear for about a THOUSAND hours. i don't know if the women who stood before us were angry beyond speech, or in just plain shock at the sight of the two of us, because they weren't saying a word. Shew, scanning through memories like those either make me laugh, or kind of make me wish someone would deliver a striking blow to the back of my skull with a blunt instrument and leave me with total amnesia.

i'm sure you want to know what Tyrone looks like, and if you saw him you'd probably say, "but SANDY... he's just a guy for heavens sake...". But the particular kind of energy that oozes from Tyrone is the EXACT kind of energy that MY body sucks up on a cellular level. But don't confuse this with love okay? Because i don't quite remember exactly what Tyrone was like as a person (!), yes we were never actually close friends. Maybe the tension that stood between us when we were faced with one another was simply too HEAVY to allow us to actually get to KNOW one another.

It's sad when you meet someone that hits you with such a heavy impact at SO the wrong point in your life. Because in those days the only way I knew how to deal with my emotions was through the dreaded trio of Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll. So i did that. plus VAT.

So even today the mental image of me sitting at a table with Tyrone TERRIFIES me. But what's the worst that can happen? Well let me think, there i'd be, striding up to the table trying contain my mortification for later when i could decompose into a puddle of deconstructed DNA in the privacy of my own home. But i knew that whatever i was going to say around THIS guy was going to come out SUPER wrong. Everything i said would be interrupted by a series of silent Homer Simpson DOH!'s. THAT would be just TOO HUMILIATING for me to recover from and i would have to place myself in solitary confinement for about, THE REST OF MY LIFE [a PAGE of exclamations here].

Why am i writing this again? Oh ja, Tyrone left a cute little comment on my blog (sharp intake of air) - i obviously never read my blog - and i'm now going to have to go and read it.

Gasp! i really can't believe i just WROTE all these things! Either i've REALLY evolved as a person or else i've got a killer disease that i'm repressing and i feel like i've got nothing left to lose. Or maybe i'm NOT quite as brave as i'd like to THINK in writing such ENORMOUSLY self-implicating information (Tyrone lives in London remember).

However i do suddenly feel the urge to run to Camps Bay and back right now. To ensure myself that i'm in condition. Just in case he's standing behind me in the queue at Woolworths tomorrow morning...

CONCLUSIVE PROOF - GOD EXISTS!

After aeons of painstaking evolution, the White race had resigned themselves to the fact that the human oceans of marauding blacks would soon breed them out of existence and the only place left to emigrate to would be the International Space Station. Realizing their own mistakes like healing their sick, feeding their starving, raining money upon them, curing their diseases, and congratulating Hollywood stars living in La-La-Land who were blindly adopting their orphans (words fail but that crawling sensation up your spine indicates that you know what i mean). Finally seeing the folly of educating them (and i'm not talking about English Lit. and Particle Physics here - i mean introducing them to the power of firearms, money and ranking in the military forces), the now endangered White population threw their hands up in defeat as there was indeed no cure for the black plague they themselves had created.

Simultaneously sighing SO HEAVILY it caused a global change in wind direction.

Denying the existence of a benevolent god they sat, with no space left to run or hide in, waiting for death by human suffocation.

But then, on one fine day in the middle of May in South Africa, as they were performing their daily ritual of contemplating mass suicide, they found themselves in the middle of a war-zone of violence, death and destruction. But then suddenly they noticed that a white cocoon of protection had wrapped itself around them as raging blacks aggressively turned on other raging blacks, and they, the White South Africans, were left untouched. There they stood, in a maelstrom of rape, murder, arson and other UNSPEAKABLE forms of cruelty unique only to the black race. Unharmed and seemingly invisible, the killing frenzy had completely passed over the White race, like the Angel Of Death did the Israelites in the Exodus from Egypt.

With gaping mouths they collectively realized that they were witnessing a miracle, and they all fell to their knees and praised God, begging for His forgiveness for ever having doubted Him. The disease had turned upon itself and had become it's own undoing.

In honor of the week that saved the world of White South Africans, they named this Holy Event: "THERE-IS-A-LOVING-GOD-AND-DON'T-YOU-FORGET-IT!" week, which was celebrated with a nationwide White Foam Party to show their respect. And they raised their glasses and and cried above the thundering beats of the best House music ever recorded, "WE LOVE YOU FOR THIS GOD!"

Lazer beams on every single wall repeatedly scribbled: "Trust in the Lord and He shall deliver thee from the evil, dark, black Valley of the Shadow of Death!".

Property prices soared, inflation plummeted and peace reigned across the land, and God beheld them and saw that it was good.

This is White Sandy Green reporting live from her White padded cell where she is undergoing treatment for White Happiness Overload, or WHO for short.

HAS ANYBODY SEEN THIS WAVE?

WANTED! KILLER WAVE! DO NOT APPROACH! VIOLENT AND DANGEROUS! ALERT NAVAL FORCES IMMEDIATELY!

Today Nicki and i took Christian for a long walk along the prominade. It was a beautiful day, we were chatting while Christian was running along full of energy, panoramic ocean on the left of us, majestic mountain on the right, more perfect conditions have not yet been created by the Universe.

As we walked i was keeping an eye out for an apartment block that i had to go see later for my Dad. i spotted the building and called him to tell him what it looked like from the outside. Nicki was busy putting Christian's hat on. i finished my call and Nicki was giving Christian's hat it's final tweak when, from out of nowhere, we were TAKEN OUT from behind by a rogue killer wave!

We were instantly drenched! Nicki's handbag was soaked right through to the notes inside her wallet. We were stunned, bewildered, in shock, trying to make sense what had just happened. Our assailant had vanished without a trace, like it was never there.

When it finally sunk in that we had been assaulted by the OCEAN, we started to laugh. But it was more like panic-laughter as opposed to funny-ha-ha.

This whole ordeal took about three seconds. But in EXTREME slow motion.

Later over lunch we replayed the incident from all the onlooker's point of view. There we were, not realising that we were in fact standing in the ONLY WET SPOT on the ENTIRE prominade, avoided by EVERYONE ELSE except us. Not only were we walking though the Valley Of The Shadow Of Death, but we had paused in the middle of it to take in the view and make a few phone calls. The surrounding crowd had obviously seen this, but were too nervous to come over and warn us so they just sat there, frozen, waiting for the inevitable. Which indeed arrived shortly.

Anyhow we made our way back home, Nicki left and it was immediately time for me to start walking BACK to see that apartment. As i retraced our steps my mind started to wander back to that dirty, blood-thirsty, mugger of an ocean that had assaulted us without cause. It should at least get a suspended sentence for attempted murder. And sued for psychological trauma. It looked so beautiful and friendly. Like ice wouldn't melt in its mouth. Who would've thought that it could just turn on us like that? Without warning it struck us while our backs were turned, i mean how unfair is that? But i suppose a cold-blooded killer doesn't care about rules. By the time i approached the scene of the CRIME, i suddenly had images from the audience's perspective race through my brain like a slide show!

i started to laugh. People started to look back at me as they walked. i laughed more. i felt embarrassed. i tried to straighten out my face. i failed. The harder and harder i tried the harder and harder i laughed. Everybody that walked past me now was stopping dead in the middle of their conversations and turning around to stare at this delirious, staggering, imbecile, swerving and stumbling down the prominade. Thank heavens the estate agent called to cancel because who could've taken me seriously in a condition like that? i made my way back along that prominade falling into my steps in a fit of uncontrollable hysteria, my coolness being erased further and further every time my feet hit the ground. i felt totally helpless, out of control, held to ransom by my own laughter. i was eventually laughing without a smile on my face, i think it may have changed into a look of panic. It was a freaky situation i had found myself trapped in.

So, for all of you out there with an image to protect and decide to show it off to the world by walking by the seaside, be warned. The ocean can turn on you just like that, take you from behind, mug you and steal all your coolness. In an nano-second. And disappear into thin, well water. Like a ghost in the night.

I think we should appeal to the Coast Guard, the Navy, Air and Sea Rescue, Lifeguards, Navy seals, and whoever else we can think of, throw a fit and scream: "WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE GET THEIR A'S INTO G AND ARREST THAT GODDAM WAVE!".

If not just for us but for the sake of PUBLIC SAFETY for heaven's sake.

P.S. SANDY'S TIP FOR THE DAY: If you find yourself being held captive by your own laughter, stop, give into it, have a good laugh and get it overwith. Resistance just prolongs and amplifies the situation by about A MILLION PERCENT.

A STUPID QUESTION DESERVES A CLEVER ANSWER.

the 'L' sign plastered on my face is due to a conversation Wayne and i had yesterday. we were trying to come up with incisive responses to the three most commonly asked questions directed at heavily tattooed people. and always asked by a sub-species of beings i'd like to define as the 'Loser Brigade'. these entry-level humans mysteriously seem to possess a sort of starter-pack brain-like organ. there has to be SOME sort of control center in their cranial cavity. otherwise what coordinates their legs and their lungs to function at the same time?

i mean REALLY, what kind of person does it take to walk up to a total stranger and start asking them personal stuff? i have no idea. but what i DO KNOW is that there are a SHIT LOAD of them.

hang on a minute... i've just got the answer to that question right now! for every cool person on this planet there are HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of UNCOOL people. and they are genetically encoded with all the social skills of an irrational rouge bull elephant. who hasn't had sex for about a year.

these people find it socially acceptable to interrupt a person during say, a meal. with like, your PARENTS. and ask you to get up so they can take a look at you. or scream done-to-death platitudes like the old, hackneyed 'hey sexy!!!' line at you from across the street. or hanging out of a car - i have to pause and wonder if there's a SINGLE WOMAN in the HISTORY of women, starting with Eve, that's responded favorably to that line. okay, i can think of one: an inmate who's just been released from a maximum security penitentionary where she'd spent the last decade in solitary confinement.

'hey sexy!!! nice chops sexy...' ugh. yuck. super-gross. violating, contaminating and... SUB-HUMAN. gross...

so we engaged our right brains to find creative responses for these fools who find it EASY to barge in where angels fear to tread.

1) 'excuse me, what did that cost?' (this was particularly offensive to us).

answers: 'what's your salary? after tax...'. 'how much is that pair of pants?... and underpants?... and socks?... and so on'. 'what will it cost to buy you social etiquette?'. and, my personal favorite, 'it cost a HUNDRED TRILLION BILLION rand!'.

2) 'excuse me can we look at your tattoos?'.

answers: 'could you lift up your shirt and show me your breasts (or pull down your pants etc for men)?'. 'only if you show me your BACK walking in the opposite direction to me'. or, the one that'll probably be most successful, 'sure, that'll be R2 500 a minute thank you. starting... NOW' as you pretend to hit the stopwatch on your phone.

3) 'excuse me, wasn't that sore?'.

answer: (sorry but NOTHING can beat THIS) 'i have no idea. i was drugged and abducted by Columbian drug lords when i was a just a girl and, by the time they found me, i woke up looking like this!'.

we also DETESTED the way every common pedestrian dumb-ass with a string of barbed wire around his bicep or butterfly on her ass would walk up to us, pull off items of CLOTHING to show us their little piece of crappy... i actually don't know what to call these creations (because it CERTAINLY wouldn't pass as a tattoo in OUR own private Idaho THAT i can say without hesitation), and they'd act like they were on the same strata of Über-tattooedness as US! i mean REALLY. that's like me walking up to Douglas Coupland and asking him to read my blog. appalling. madness i tell you! and an insult to us of the highest order.

response to this: 'ooo shame dude you should never EVER tattoo yourSELF! but i guess you realised that when you sobered up' (thanks for that one Moorecroft).

Wayne and i are going to do some intensive testing of these lines when we take our bodies to the beach. the one who doesn't get to do all three is the LOSER. and the penalty? i think they'd have to do something like walk up and down in front of a troupe of Loser Brigaders - a group of construction workers springs to mind - wearing only their underwear. (i'm obviously confident that that person will not be me)



P.S. THIS JUST IN! i've just had a picnic (yes, you read correctly, i went to a picnic. but it was the HYDE PARK of picnics oKAAAY?! a FIVE STAR picnic!) with Wendy, Nicky and the-most-beautiful-boy-to-walk-the-face-of-the-planet. or Christian for short. it was there that i got the privilege to experiment with my first line!

here's how it went: when we got up to leave our waiter just COULD NOT hold himself back for ONE SECOND longer and, you guessed it, he asked me if 'that was sore...'. i was not feeling myself at that stage and, when your brain starts heading south, or east or west, who can be sure, you simply have NO ROOM for politeness - i'm glad it works out that way because i'm very fond of take-no-prisoners rudeness. and i can't always achieve this in real life.

i looked at him through my half-focussed-double-visioned-big-brown-eyes and delivered my FAVORITE LINE OF ALL (this was a very kind gesture on the part of the Universe. although it owed me because i felt like my temporal lobe could burst through my eye sockets every time i opened my eyelids after a blink).

i said: 'i have no idea. you see i was abducted by Columbian drug lords...'.

he stood there. stunned. staring at me. frozen. perplexed as to whether i was telling the TRUTH or not. this almost pulled my head straight it was so brilliant!

so i guess that's one - love to me my dear Wayne. tsk tsk, i sincerely hope you get the opportunity to catch up on the beach tomorrow, or the dress code is you-know-what paraded in front of you-know-whom...

VEINS CLOSED FOR RECONSTRUCTION. USE ALTERNATE ROUTE.

"What is it to be a nice guy? to be nothing, that's what. a big fat zero with a big smile for everybody." Kirk Douglas said that. but i'll bet you thought it was me. i almost did.

i'm in a no-more-mister-nice-guy mood today. but i got tired of being everyones pick-me-upper AGES ago. what a drain. to act like 'happy-Sandy' for everybody else's benefit is the worst form of self-betrayal imaginable. Judas'ing yourself to yourself.

how low does one's self-opinion have to be when one denies one's own state of mind for the benefit of everyone else? like there's only one dimension to your personality. with all the depth of a paper doll. not having the courage to BE how you REALLY feel, just in case people found YOU draining, which they probably WOULD because nobody likes a downer.

but what is it to be a drain? i'm going to tell you exactly what it is. coming from somebody who has BEEN drained. REPEATEDLY. for VARIOUS aspects of herself. i guess it was worth being sucked dry because now i can really appreciate and enjoy the left-overs: my rudeness, intolerance and bitterness. my 'Happy Sandy' costume eventually wore SO THREADBARE that i had no choice really when i threw it away. or it disintegrated. i can't remember which.

i'm recalling a night when i was working at Hunt Lascaris and a bunch of us went out for dinner after work to wind down. at that time i had one of my brother and David's fishing friends, Craig fall head over heels in fascination with me. Craig was a conservative, naive, re-born Christian pastor nerd who'd had sex with only ONE WOMAN in his 30 years of human life. the hardest drug he'd encountered was bioplus, because he believed in 'faith healing', and the most obscene language he used was 'darn'. he was adamantly, uncatagorically, vehemently AGAINST, but at the same time curious, about the wilder side of the wild side of life.

Craig took one look at me, the HEAD GAME RANGER of Wildness, sitting at David's desk and sprinted off to my brother pleading 'Brad, before i die i HAVE to have a girl EXACTLY LIKE THAT!'. the guys were like 'shjaa! whatever Craig, now run along to Bible study'. but he persisted, and one dire stormy night my brother called me and told me to come to Dad's restaurant because he 'missed me'. i was higher than the International Space Station at the time but i drove through the rain anyway to get to him.

however, when i got to The Grillhouse i saw my brother was NOT in fact alone and sad AFTER all. he was sitting there with Craig. he'd set me up. little shit! i was angry. so i made up my mind right then that i was going to scare this guy into his next life for wasting my time. and, out of spite, i proceeded to behave like Sid Vicious on the last leg of a Sex Pistols world tour.

i think even Sid would've been unsettled by my behavior that night.

so, you're asking, shocking and outrageous as i was, did i put him off? uh uh. i just intrigued him MORE and, to cut a long story short, today Craig's a cocaine addict who's been in and out of jail and rehab as often as i go in and out of the gym's turnstiles, and he has a child with a heroin addict who he met along the way.

ugh! what a novice. that much is clear. as clear as my conscience in fact.

here's my theory on people who are in two minds about what they WANT to do and what they SHOULD do: if you want to leap over an abyss, don't take two steps. you'll land up humming and ha-ing your way down the rock-face to a messy death for everyone to shake their heads and 'tsk tsk' at. that's if the humiliation doesn't kill you before you hit the bottom. if you want to derail just shut up, get on with it and do it. people will respect you more for it.

don't you think? you cannot stand holding a Bible in your right hand and a rolled up hundred buck note in your left. that's like standing with one foot on the edge of the pool and the other on a lilo floating on the water. you can end up in only one place - the pool.

Craig sank straight to the bottom and drowned. amateur.

but back to the Hunt-Lascaris dinner. there we all sat like little rock-stars applauding our own greatness when along came Craig. he'd tracked me down and wanted to SURPRISE me.

he surprised me. to the point of a near seizure.

i felt my blood drain into my Wizards boots. Craig was simply too uncool for this group to stomach. and he was about to get swallowed whole and spat out before he'd cast his opening sentence. however, he was so transfixed by ME that he didn't seem to notice all of them mouthing silent exclamations like 'who the hell is THIS dork?!' at me. my toes were SO TIGHTLY CURLED UP in my designer boots i could hear the leather straining under the pressure. i think Prince Charles was less embarrassed when his 'my-little-tampon' sms's to Camilla Parker-Bowles were published. of course THAT'S because HE had a coolness factor of ZERO on a scale of ONE to INFINITY to protect.

finally Sam took her infamous 'super-brave/throw-all-caution-to-the-wind' sip of wine. holding her back after THAT was harder than trying to hold back a stampeding horse with its tail on fire. she'd had just about all she could bare looking at this man-sized Paris Hilton puppy gazing into my face and she decided to put his tongue back in his mouth for him and send him yelping on his way.

she said: "excuse me but who exactly ARE you? and why are you hanging around Sandy?! wait! don't answer that, I'LL tell you why. because you're a total nerd THAT'S why! and you've come to PARASITE off Sandy's COOLNESS. a COOL-PARASITE, THAT'S what you are! now let me inform you, whoever you are, that Sandy has worked long and hard to achieve her level of coolness, and YOU come along thinking that by just BEING with her you'll automatically be granted the same coolness! well it doesn't work like that i'm afraid to inform you. go away, get your OWN coolness THEN come back and see if you can be with Sandy." she ended with a MASSIVE eye-roll and took another sip of red.

we all sat there stunned. not a soul could add a single word because what she'd said was flawless. that diatribe could not have been improved upon by Shakespeare. wow.

but coolness is not the only aspect of me that's been vampired i'm afraid. my happiness, my energy, my generosity and even my SADNESS and mental health have been extracted from my jugular by other people. that's right. that's what i said. there are some twisted people out there who are only there for me when i'm in trouble. probably because they get a high from seeing me low. i know this because those same people try their level best to break me down and put me in my place when i'm fine. sadly for them my 'place' happens to be an apartment on the beach with a view so panoramic you can almost see the curvature of the globe. THAT's MY PLACE.

and that's where i'd rather stay just to keep my blood in my veins. where it belongs.

and everbody's like, "but that's not YOU Sandy". oh REALLY. what IS 'me' exactly? i'll tell you what everyone's idea of me is. i am a person who's neck people want to sink their fangs into, extract whatever part they enjoy, and spit out the rest. THAT'S who i am to them. who am i really? only i know who i am. although everybody knows me, there are very few people who actually KNOW me. or would WANT to for that matter because that's just about too much reality for anyone to handle.

'sanity calms. but madness is more interesting'. John Russell said that. i say SORRY GUY, go get your OWN madness and entertain YOURSELF. THIS slightly left-of-centre girl's lost interest in being interesting. whoever wants to suck my life-blood, sorry for you, these sluice-gates are SHUT until further notice.

so, if i'm not acting like 'Sandy', i actually am but never had the courage to show it. and if you don't like what you see, move along, i promise i won't miss you. this, i'm afraid, is as good as it gets. and if you still want to go out with me, just to test if i mean what i've just said, sorry but this week's out. can we reschedule for never? how about never? is never good for you? come pick me up at around say, i dunno how's FOREVER o'clock?

i'm not here to win a popularity contest. i won lots of those ages ago. wearing the wrong personality and too much stage make-up. sounds like a waste but at least the experience helped me to define who should be dubbed 'Unforgiven' by me. but aren't. because they're not worthy of a shred of my emotions.

"i don't care if people hate my guts; i assume most of them do. the important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it." William Burroughs said that. but i'll bet you thought it was me. i sure as hell did.

KNYSNA: HOME OF THE PRE-DEAD.

today we went to the Knysna Junk-Food market - okay it's not called that but it SHOULD be. i found myself surrounded by a collection of alcohol ridden, borderline-diabetic, morbidly obese, badly dressed, uncool, unprocreatably unsexy, might've-been-beautiful-once-upon-a-time-but-who-the-hell-can-tell-NOW beings that i can best describe as a big fat waste of human tissue!

gross.

of course THEY all looked at ME but i couldn't look BACK because then i'd have to have looked DOWN at them and that would make me look like a snob and i don't want to appear that way because THAT's unsexy and uncool in itself!

but once we were sitting down in their super-gross beer garden on their super-rickety wooden benches - they had clearly gotten that way from the years of strain taken underneath all those super-sized Knysna asses - i could scan the scene more thoroughly.

i realised right then that THIS is where you come when you've given up on life and can't even impress YOURSELF anymore.

in fact, i almost think i overheard someone saying, "what the hell, i might as well look like crap until i die...".

it was then that Bryan sms'd me to have twenty oysters with a glass of champagne and to think of him while i was doing it...

well, oysters they had (as pictured above) but i think that ordering a glass of Möet & Chandon would've been as well understood as if i'd asked for directions to the nearest gym.

and the prospect of downing them with a beer in a plastic glass would've reduced me to, well, THEM, and the imaginary picture of MYSELF in THAT condition was more of a visual insult to me than they were. i made up my mind that second that the empty calories in Bryan's champagne was NOT going to make its way into THESE fat cells and i WOULD think of him when i was NOT drinking it because HE wouldn't want to do Clifton with ME if i looked like a Knysna resident who'd locked themselves away in a world without mirrors.

they all looked miserable, and so they should! i refuse to believe that there is a human being in all of creation, okay excluding blind, retarded, and comatose people, who is not mentally affected by the shape of their body. that's because your body is a integral part of the essence of YOU, and if you abuse IT you abuse EVERYTHING that is YOU. give up on your body, give up on yourself. and the damage is self-inflicted. a desecrated body therefore equals a semi-desecrated person who can only be angry at THEMSELVES for desecrating THEMSELVES.

look good, feel good. everybody knows this. 'beauty is skin deep' and all those kind of remarks are made up by people who'd rather scorn those that engage in the battle to maintain their appearance than face that battle themselves. and it's the hardest battle of all because it's YOU vs YOU. and everyone KNOWS that they WILL lose eventually. but some people do it ANYWAY because they want to get the best out of themselves before they decay and die.

Skin Deep, as trivial as they make it out to be, cannot be tossed aside so easily because it is the level that faces the world and creates that oh so important First Impression. it's also the level that greets you first thing every morning in the mirror. THAT image will make or break your day i don't care WHO you are. i'm telling you even the King of Rock 'n Roll must've felt like shit every morning at the end there. he OD'd. so he couldn't have exactly been over the moon about it. that makes Skin Deep everything BUT superficial because the surface permeates one's entire being. and the instant highs of the infamous Elvis deep-fried, peanut-butter, syrup and fried banana sandwiches never lasted long enough. every now and then he'd HAVE to have caught a half-glimpse of what he had mutated into and THAT image made him dive face-first into a smorgasbord of narcotics. i TOTALLY would've done the same.

so what does this mean? giving up your so called 'little pleasures' in life like dessert after dinner, full cream milk and sugar in your coffee etc etc?

absolutely!

life's too short to not enjoy these little treats you say? i say life's too LONG to spend day after day looking your personal WORST.

let me just say this to you now, all those 'little pleasures' of yours eventually add up to one big DISpleasure when you wake up one morning and you realise that YOU have been responsible for the wrecking of a MAJOR part of your OWN SELF.

so give up the crap or give up on yourself. those are your two choices.

and there IS no grey area. in fact the only grey in my eyes on this issue is the color of this oyster. and they're a hell of a lot easier to swallow than carrying around anything above 15% body-fat.

alrighty then, now that i've thought that through, let me slide these viscous little globules of protein down my throat.

(gulp x 6!) heavenly!

weird how something this ugly can taste so amazing...

maybe beauty IS skin deep...

but if so it's only in bivalve mollusks.

TAKE-AWAYS IN KNYSNA.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.........................BEFORE

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.........................AFTER

okay it doesn't get better that this: i'm in Knysna for a few days with Duncan, Natasha and their too-beautiful-to-be-real little Olivia. every morning we either run or walk on the beach, swim in the sea, catch a tan, then Duncan goes fishing and hauls something like the picture on top out the sea and we turn it into the picture at the bottom. couldn't get it fresher unless you ate it underwater.

then we go off to bed and start all over again the next day...

today's monday and we all noticed that we've only NOW finally and officially settled into total holiday mode. and i'm leaving the day after tomorrow! why couldn't we have been in this state from day one? there's got to be a solution to this problem for city people. actually there is:

HURRY UP and WIND DOWN!!!