i can feel the thunder in my heart

i didn't do a lot of reading today, and rather worked for a few hours on the globe and mail holiday crossword(between 1000-1400 clues! it's a full two pages of broadsheet newsprint) before spending some time tracking down a bunch of 70's pop songs. now i'll read some atlas shrugged before sleeping. i'm tired.

we also watched two scifi movies. first a new b-movie called secret warnings, kinda starring billy zane and featuring both gratuitous boob shots and gratuitous alien shots. the ending was fantastic and unexpected. most b-movies wrap up tidily, everything done. at the end of this one, evrythign was just starting! fantastic! next we had the thirteenth floor, which reminded me of the island, in the 'everything is better than you think it is!' vs. the matrix's 'everything is much much worse!'. i liked it; it was nicely done, and kept much more compact than many similar films. science fiction on a small scale can be very enjoyable.

i still feel in need of a vacation. i think it's because my sleeping habits are so atrocious. i think that they are so atrocious because of stress, and i think that my job is the source of most, if not all of my stress. it's because the things that i take upon my shoulders will, in every case, rest on mine alone. it's because i wanted this job and persuaded a lot of people(2256 of them!) to let me do it, and i feel a huge responsibility stemming from that. i feel as though got the job because of who i am, and that if i fail in any capacity, however inconsequential, it is a sheerly personal failing. i told everyone that i would do this job better than the other guy. i also told a lot of people that the people on my team would do the job better than a lot of the people who won, and that i now work with. that makes things obviously difficult. i also think that i am doing a better job than most of the people i work with. then again, i WOULD think that, wouldn't i? if i didn't think that i would do the best job, i would not have sought a nomination in the first place. i am told that i am doing a good job, and ultimately need to place more trust in those who tell me that i am doing well.
the fact that i bellyache over these things leads me to think that i am not cut out for elected office. the nature of representation, the machinery, the personal drama, the decision-making factors, the trust placed or misplaced in an elected official fascinates me, and that fascination definitely drives what i do now, both in my job and in myreal life.

what drives me politically, in every capacity, is the cynicism and lack of trust that people hold in regards to public service. the less faith we have in politicians, the less faith we have in what comes out of government, and the less faith we have in the government's ability to do anything.
this is why i hate the liberal party of canada, perhaps more than the conservative party. corruption is a central issue for me, because its presence in the system leads to a slash-and-burn response that jeopardizes so much of what the liberal party of canada is ostensibly fighting for. rather than whine about steven harper, the best thing paul martin could do, if he believes any of what he is saying, is simply stop his party from being so fucking corrupt.

i'll be back at work on tuesday morning; i am both excited and daunted by the number of tasks i have set out. i am also excited to get my copy of kate bush's aerial back from sam. he liked the mountain goats and low. i liked his springsteen album too, esp. atlantic city and state trooper. it's playing with such different archetypes than i usually find that it's throwing me for a loop, which is part of the appeal. it says nothing to me about my life. or, rather, it says different things to me about my life than i hear from, say, kate bush or leonard cohen or cocteau twins or saint etienne or even fucking sloan. that's ok! i love records! i am reaching new heights of 'everything to everyone', or, rather, 'anything to anyone'. i am at the stage where i love (almost) everything. this is my end point of post-modernism. i don't know why i like it, but i do, and that is that. done.