I've been sick. Not so much in need of medicine...... more like, sick in the head.

I've been an nasty person, and I apologize to everyone who's had to put up with me these last couple days. I think I know a couple of the things that're wrong with me, so I've given myself a prescription for the weekend.

First: Lay off the Grand Theft Auto. Something about shooting off a guys head and watching blood squirt out of his neck, mangling prostitutes with chainsaws, and killing cops just because they're cops....... drains one of human compassion. I mean lately, I just hate everybody. It's a terrible feeling. Because I don't really hate everybody. But I'd love to run them all down in a porsche.

Second: Find a place with plants. I think the the zoo is open, and with any luck that will include the tropical house, where it's so humid you can hardly breathe, real plants grow huge and birds fly around beneath the glass ceiling. If I could go there, I would feel like I could breathe again. I would feel like I could hear again. If I could wear only a t-shirt and be warm, I would feel like I might make it through this winter without losing my mind.

Third: READ YOUR BIBLE, DAMMIT!!!! "Grand Theft Auto" is to "The Message: Wisdom Books" as McDonald's is to sushi. You really are what you eat. I don't like to think like that because it means I have to change some of my entertainment choices, which I don't particularly want to do. But I never regret replacing McDonald's with sushi. So what makes me think shutting down the PS2 for a couple days will somehow subtract from the quality of my life? It won't. I'm delusional.

My Spirit needs some TLC. My Soul needs some nourishment.

Question for the Americans out there..... why does everything boil down to republicans and democrats? As a Canadian, I don't get that.

I also wanted to recommend the book "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller. I'll say more about that later.

You could ask me just about any question today, and I could honestly tell you "I do not care." I feel THAT emotionally bankrupt. Couldn't tell ya why. Yes, I'm tired, yes, I'm feeling a lot of financial pressure. Yes, I feel trapped, yes, I miss friends.

No, I have nothing to complain about.

I was fine all day until a rather unpleasant cleaning job having to do with someone's cigarette butts and ashes stuffed into a door jamb...... like smoking in one's apartment isn't enough...... so let's go smoke in the stairwell, and since butting out in..... oh.... say..... an ashtray..... well that's too much work so how bout if I just drop my smouldering butt on this carpet that isn't mine and then grind it in nice so it turns black because I'm a piggish sloppy white trash assface.

A situation which, aside from my snide comments, would typically just roll off my back. Indeed, it wasn't till I got home that I crashed.

Whatever. I don't care. I'm going to bed.

When you stand on a big rock in a forest, there's only one sound you can hear.

That is the sound of a hundred million beings endowed with the gift of life, worshipping their creator by fulfilling their purpose. Trees don't sin. The wind doesn't lie.

Stand on a big rock surrounded by sinlessness and pure unadulterated worship. Tell me you can't hear the voice of God in that place.

When it's cold like this I can't just go out anytime I want, and if I do, I certainly can't hear the rustling of the leaves. I can't feel the sun on my shoulders and rest my head on the ground, smell the grass. I never used to understand what the Bible talks about when it talks about creation bearing witness to God, but I do now. I could never really hear God until I scampered through a bush or across a field or up a tree.

Winter feels like a dark cold room. It's made of concrete, it's cold and gray, and I can't hear anything.

If I was in one of Tolkien's books, I'd have been an elf. Or a hobbit. I'm short like a hobbit but devastatingly beautiful like Orlando Bloom.
So it's hard to say.

NEW DOG NEW DOG!!

I started crying in the pound today. It's not right that dogs have to be there. It's not right for puppies to sleep on cement surrounded by their own poop. They become silent as you come near, sniff your fingers, jump up with their paws against the fence. Wiggle and sniff and whine, and then bark frantically as you turn away and move on.

Rows of dogs. Some are beautiful, some are scruffy. They all seem to know what's going on. They know it's an audition. They know they're competing. They what's at stake.

What is it about dogs? Why do they crave human companionship the way they do. Desperately begging for affection and touch and words of affirmation..... why?

Two pound puppies we have in the house now. North End scrubs.... The first couple days home are always weird. A dog that comes home from the pound seems sad. You think it should be happy, because it's acquired a home. In the case of both of our dogs, they were off the street. None of this nice-people-couldn't-take-care-of-me-anymore business, both of these were scooped out of an alley. Today's addition, Indy, is a black furry skeleton, and at 10 months old, no-one's really sure what her life was like before the pound. She was wandering the streets with two other dogs, on the brink of starvation.

Now she's asleep on a mattress, her head resting on a pillow, and she seems sad. Maybe she doesn't realize that she's home. Maybe she thinks she'll be returning to the cement floor amidst the raucous barking of the North End's misfit dogs. We're strangers to her, and who knows what sort of humans she's dealt with in the past.

Soon she'll understand. Soon she'll feel safe. Once we've fattened her up and the Dooders warms up to her.

No-one should be homeless. Welcome home Indy.