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!!!

T MINUS 5 DAYS TO MELTDOWN...

WARNING! WARNING! BWAA BWAA BWAA! DECLARING STATE OF EMERGENCY! BWAA! BWAA! BWAA! DEFCON ONE! DEFCON ONE! BWAA! BWAA! BWAA! EVACUATE BUILDING AND PROCEED TO FALLOUT SHELTER! BWAA! BWAA! BWAA! RED ALERT! RED ALERT! BWAA! BWAA! BWAA!

BLAM!!!!

..........

..........

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system failure - system failure - system failure - system failure - system failure -

Sandy, today i am going to write a you check-list from YOU to yourSELF so that you can head off a mental-meltdown before you make your way into the fallout-shelter and NEVER RESURFACE - you don't have to read this, but you CAN if you've seen your behavior descend into a NOSE-DIVE and you get a sinking feeling by just LOOKING in your own DIRECTION.

HAZARD SIGNS:

WARNING 18) people who's crap you normally laugh off make you want to terminate the relationship. strike that, make you want to terminate THEM (this, on the positive side, is a very useful method for separating your A-List from your Shit-List. hold yourself back. but take notes.).

WARNING 17) botox-like paralysis of facial muscles that form a smile. this filters through your entire sense-of-humor faculty. Chris Rock's an idiot.

WARNING 16) heightened sensitivity, especially to noise and light (will that light beam please SHUT THE FUCK UP!).

WARNING 15) exhaustion. like you've over-trained. you have not over-trained. caution: DO NOT SKIP GYM!

WARNING 14) you wake up later and later with an ever-increasing hangover (you don't drink). you've got flu (you do not have flu).

WARNING 13) you're weak at gym. no matter WHAT chemical-Vic-Alley-concocted remedy you ingest to counter-act your wariness, it won't work. caution: DO NOT SKIP GYM!

WARNING 12) you look fat and ugly in the mirror so you feel unworthy of your cool clothes (if the clothes fit WEAR THEM). this makes you feel UNhot, UNsexy, UNbold, UNbrave, UNsure, UNdefiant and UNconfident (THIS is very VERY damaging).

WARNING 11) your food battles to digest. because of this, every calorie that touches your lips is one calorie too many. three words of advice here: STAY. ON. DIET.

WARNING 10) you feel out of control, unable to trust yourself. even with simple things. like tossing a salad (operation of dangerous machinery would therefore be a mistake). even mundane conversation is stressful (say what you have to, even if it sounds retarded).

WARNING 9) you start experiencing Altzheimers-level forgetfulness and disorientation (this is very frustrating. make lists).

WARNING 8) your knuckle-dragging posture is strenuous to correct. your back - and any other old injuries - return to laugh at you. you are not amused.

WARNING 7) you can't focus or concentrate. so doing everyday stuff - like writing this essay - become IMPOSSIBLE to manage. you therefore suffer stress, guilt and self-loathing. do them anyway. even if the results are imbecilic.

WARNING 6) you watch your IQ plummet, like a person watching the numbers in a lift as they approach ground floor.

DEFCON 5) you feel claustrophobic around people AND when you're alone (ugh stop FOLLOWING ME annoying shadow!).

DEFCON 4) this makes you irritable, intolerant, rude, impatient (not a big departure from your normal behavior but YOU'LL know).

DEFCON 3) you start having freaky hallucinations and start hearing voices. this is STILL scary no matter HOW well you recognise what's going on. whaaat? who said that...

DEFCON 2) ALL OF THIS drives you into the safety of the fallout-shelter, with its big red phone which dials only one number... "hello Raymond? i think i'm not okay..."

DEFCON 1) alright, there IS another level, you know what it is but you will NEVER allow yourself to go there again. EVER. so i'm not going to even SAY it here because it's too depressing to even TYPE.

that blast you heard was the detonation of extremely hardcore chemical weaponry. that will raze any resistance to the ground. innocent bystanders included. the collateral damage is immense. but it's worth it. the unleashing of the big guns is THE.ONLY.WAY (double dose Concerta 54mg. keep a hand-written script).

in the silence of the aftermath, you feel like dark-matter in deep space, a non-self, an anti-sandy. you'd feel bruised and beaten if you only weren't so NUMB, but you ARE so you just drift along with the current, like debris in the ocean after a cyclone. your personality goes away on a drinking-holiday for a week while its house is being rebuilt. it needs to recharge because it's DRAINED from making up jokes like, "what color is the sky when you're looking down from a ten story building? answer: who cares". your personality will start to deliberate on its feelings of JEALOUSY for the life everybody THINKS it's leading.

bzzt z z blip blip beeeeep crackle crackle EMERGENCY POWER HAS BEEN RESTORED. IT IS SAFE TO EXIT SHELTER. bleeeep

[gasp SO DEEP i almost inhale my own teeth, tongue and lips]

whoah THAT was a SUPER-kak exercise, THANK GOD it was only a dry run. stand down troupes.

now Sandy, if you actually have enough interest to READ this next time there's a blip on your radar, and you can put a tick next to more than FIVE of these alerts you WILL phone Raymond. IMMEDIATELY. and not sit there and wonder 'could this be....' because it IS! alert the armed forces. dumb-ass. have you learned nothing?!

you'd better watch it Sandy-girl, one day your personality will get BORED and STAY on vacation. and it'll be JUSTIFIED because who deserves to live on the silent toxic wasteland that was Chernobyl?


FYI, DEFCON is a measure of the activation and readiness of the United States Armed Forces. DEFCONS are matched to the severity of a military situation. standard peacetime is DEFCON 5, descending in increasingly severe situations. DEFCON 1 refers to maximum readiness. it is not certain whether this has ever been used. but in my case, it has.

whatthefuckEVER BUDDY!

'Fuck Buddies'. have you ever considered this ridiculously harebrained concept? it was probably dreamed up by a retarded downs-syndrome junkie on crystal-meth during his third night without sleep. because it sure as hell hasn't been thought through by anyone of sound mind. so, for all you guys out there who still imagine the 'Fuck Buddy' arrangement to be one of the greatest ideas since the clip-on tie, i, Sandy Green, will now think it through FOR you.

okay, so you feel like having sex with somebody cool but you don't want commitment, so you are presented with two alternatives:

1) go to the Autobank and proceed to Mavericks.
2) make an arrangement with someone you already KNOW that involves you and her having sex whenever you feel like it, as buddies, with no strings attached.

you select option '2' without giving your neurons enough time to fire, neglecting to consider the following set of 'given's':

2a) your strings are ALREADY attached because you KNOW one another.
b) your strings from this point onwards will tangle themselves into a knot SO COMPLICATED that the task of unravelling it will appear SO DAUNTING that you'll just want to grab the nearest set of scissors and cut it off, burn it and start over with a fresh ball.
c) you will regret having LOST that person because they were indeed cool and engaging to be around, or you would never have suggested having sex with them in the FIRST place.

allow me to paint a picture for you from MY perspective - there i am standing in a bar with all of my friends and, who should saunter through the door but my 'Fuck Buddy'. with his new girlfriend [sharp intake of air]. i feel my blood drain from my extremities. my knuckles burst through my skin one by one like popcorn kernels in a microwave, while my fingernails dig SO DEEP into my palms that they tear through the back of my hand, my wisdom teeth turn to powder in a single jaw-grind, i start to SMELL my optic nerve burning from visual overload and i...

...

who... what... where am i? sorry, i must've blacked out there for a second. cross-check. i can feel my legs, fingers, blink, speak. right now where was i? oh yes THERE. zheesh. now name me a person you know that could've handled THAT situation with accepting calmness and peace? psychopaths and sociopaths included. i think Saddam Hussein would probably have ordered HIS Fuck Buddy straight to the hanging noose for that. and even THEN he would've sobbed tears of betrayal into his pillow that night when no-one was looking.

just scanning through these loose thoughts render the term 'Fuck Buddy' as one of the biggest oxymoron's of ALL TIME, standing right up there shoulder to shoulder with GIANTS in this category like Act Naturally, Alone Together, Silent Scream, Sweet Sorrow and Crash Landing.

so what do you do if you really want to have sex with a buddy? i'll tell you what you do. you gather yourself together, take a deep breath and GO FOR IT! don't think of the future because it's going to happen SOON ENOUGH and in ways you could NEVER have anticipated anyway. repercussions there will be, but you can never know them. no matter how the situation presented itself in theory, the future will NEVER be that. so quit burning brain-power, all you can ever REALLY know is THIS VERY MOMENT. and look, that one's just turned into history...

and there'll be plenty of time to think about history in the FUTURE. live NOW.

now i know what you're thinking, you're thinking 'but what if it ends badly?' well, everything ends badly or else it wouldn't end. and EVERYTHING ends.

also, please spare me the flower-child philosophies like 'but i'm waiting for THE ONE', or 'soul-mates' [insert visual of me sticking forefinger down throat to tonsil level here], or 'fate'. these concepts are about as real as the man in the moon. prove them then i'll listen. but while i'm waiting for that forensic evidence to come in, random chaos reigns supreme down here. and if it doesn't then there's one helluva element of BADNESS out there which works very hard to balance out good.

it succeeds.

Derek: "ja but what goes around comes around..."

i say it's going to come around ANYWAY so get it out of your system and GO AROUND!

relationships should be simple. don't you think? i mean, why can't two buddies who enjoy each other's company, digging each other enough to want to spend time together, who think one another to be fuckable...

okaaay PAUSE GAME right here for a second. lets face it guys. NO-ONE'S going to spend time with, let alone have SEX with a Rozanne Barr look-a-like, sorry, even the most platonic of male/female relationships are not built on personality alone, "um, er, hi everyone, this is my friend Rozanne (sidebar - she's really clever with a great sense of humor)", i don't THINK SO! ain't gonna happen. i'm not saying that all your friends have to be Heidi Klum material but there HAS to be something attractive and engaging about them... go ahead, call me superficial, but so are you. everyone's shallow. deep down...

(FYI, to save you some energy, other people can secretly tell everything about the way you feel ANYWAYS so take a load off, relax, there's no use fighting it, surrender and be yourself.)

now don't get me wrong here puhleeeze, i'm CERTAINLY not suggesting that we all run out there and start having sex with our buddies! not at all! what i AM saying though is be AWARE of the dynamics involved in a male/female relationship and don't pretend they don't exist. once you've dealt with that it'll give you perspective and allow you to move forward with confidence. knowledge always keeps you on top of your game.

now where was i? oh yes, from MY corner it looks something like this: everybody knows that i'm RADICALLY AGAINST commitment and space-invasion and the responsibility - or should i rather say the BURDEN - of another person's happiness. so why can't guys develop some emotional maturity if they want to engage in a physical relationship with me, and LEAVE ME the way in which they FOUND ME? and not take it personally if i want to spend time on my own or with my friends? and accept that i like my apartment in a certain way - MY way? and never EVER suggest spending the night? without taking offense and becoming insecure about how i feel about them. and without having to go out there and FUCK AROUND because of all this! to spite me. or for whatever reason. THAT just stirs the Medieval atoms still coursing through my system from like, SIX CENTURIES AGO.

is this REALLY so hard to achieve? is that just asking TOO DAMN MUCH? isn't the freedom to be with someone you like half of the reason for you wanting them there in the FIRST PLACE? what ever happened to the 'if you love something set it free' premise? it never read 'if you love something squash it out of existence'. why can't relationships be more relaxed and trusting? hey? why can't they? give me ONE GOOD REASON. buddy...


(footnote: the woman at the top of the screen is Rozanne Barr. she's successful, funny, smart, wealthy, generous and ballsy with a BIG personality. but, to illustrate my point, i can't see any of you lying on Clifton 3 or sipping cappucino's at Vida with HER. can you?)

GOD DELIVERS A PROMISING KICK-OFF TO MY 2008!

alriiiiight, here we go, this is it, this is MY year!

i was feeling a bit dazed and confused this morning trying to unravel and make sense of all the activity at last night's Old Years Eve party, but so MUCH happened there i ended up just lying on the couch with the kids in jPod. i'm reading it REALLY SLOWLY now because i KNOW i'm going to miss every single one of the characters as soon as i turn the last page. i can foresee the feeling already - it's going to be like i've just spent an amazing week with six of the most interesting people i've ever met, but they're actually from a parallel universe and i'm eventually going to have to watch them vanish into thin air knowing i'll never see them again for the rest of my life. sob. like they're dead but still alive.

anyway, i decided to stop thinking about the end while i was still enjoying the middle and forced myself to shake the brain-moths out of my head and spin for an hour.

and the decision to do THAT was the turning point of my 2008!

i hadn't sat my ass on my bike for more than five minutes when i started feeling great! i had Green Day bouncing off my eardrums, the weather was stunning and the panoramic view of the ocean was marred by only ONE THING: the writhing mass of black bodies in the pool across the road.

[Sombody, i won't say WHO here, would like me to refer to this lot as 'kaffirs' or the milder version, 'coons' in this piece, mainly because i think she has repressed desires to use those very words HERSELF but is still trying to muster up the courage to. for me of course, these words have no novelty factor at all. in fact they have all the impact of the words 'tree' or 'flower' on MY conscience. buuut if she wants to live vicariously through me, who am i to begrudge anyone the joy of injecting a bit of happiness into their day? baby-steps are still steps Kyle, so we're getting there.]

so anyway, by now i was onto my third song - Depeche Mode 'Just Can't Get Enough' (Dirty South Remix) - when suddenly i felt the air around me begin to vibrate like it would if Han Solo were landing the Millenium Falcon outside my window. i turned to see the Vodacom 911 chopper flying RIGHT NEXT TO ME! behind it, the Coast Guard and a rubber duck were doing frantic laps up and down the beach. i was transfixed. the chopper spiralled into a nose-dive and hovered about 10cm above the ocean surface and hung there, spraying the water away like God parting the Red Sea for Moses, as the sea-crew came in for closer inspection. by the time i realised i wasn't turning my legs anymore, they suddenly split formation and started to repeat the same pattern over and over for at least an hour in what was to become an EPIC SEARCH to which i, Sandy Green, had RING-SIDE SEATS! i'm telling you guys if i wasn't on diet this would've been a 'couch and pop-corn' moment.

it was then that i realised that God loved me, and my life was truely great.

picture this: me sitting on my bike set to the visual of a drowned corpse being dragged from the ocean, cycling to the beat of Donna Summers' 70's classic 'Last Dance', brand spanking new pair of Bushnell binoculars in hand - i felt like i was the centre of the Universe for that hour, with all of nature revolving around ME! it was SO GOOD i wouldn't have been surprised if Richard Gere had walked through my front door wearing a white Navy uniform.

yip. there was very little that could've been added to improve THAT moment. thank you to the Cosmos for orchestrating that AWESOME kick-off to my 2008! my wish for the rest of the year? more of the SAME, don't lose momentum, don't take your eyes off the ball and, as any good coach will tell you, FINISH STRONG!