Hubris.co.nz

You have reached the Internet mailbox of Joanna. Please leave your message after the end of mine. She will clear them when she comes back from FIJI, haha you sad still in NZ people.

PS: Auckland, Sunday 4th, wanna party between 10am-5pm? Or have hot hotel sex0r with me in the posh place I’m booked into on the night of the 3rd? You totally do, right? I’ll have my mobile when I’m in NZ.

Hi, I’d like to spend about a grand and a half with your store today. What’s that? You’d like to continue standing behind your counter? All three of you? Okay, I guess I’ll sit down on this big couch for a while. Boy, it is a comfy couch. I’d sure like to buy it. I wonder how I could go about doing that. Maybe you could tell me? Oh no, you’re still standing behind your counter. Okay. Maybe I’ll flounce on over to the fabric samples and flip through them for a while. In fact, why don’t I take them over to the couch and spread them out and stand back to admire them? And then go and get some more and try them too. Wow, that counter sure must be nice to stand behind. I guess I’ll park my fatass down. Boy, you’d think that crossing my legs like this would have got your attention…..

House update:
Two big purple couches ordered – finally. One washing machine purchased on trademe. I’m going over there tonight to talk about Storage Options. Oh joy.

Lunch update:
Raspberry coke tastes like cough syrup. It would be better with vodka in it. Then again, name me one drink that wouldn’t taste better with vodka in it. Wishbone risone pasta salad is still kickass, though I’d be curious to know what the supposed difference between orzo and risone is (Jimmy?). Vanity Fair is great, I would like a subscription.

Cat update:
Pixie, who has been hiding in Mum & Neil’s room most of the time lately, ventured out last night. Unfortunately, Sebastian wasn’t actually outside as I believed him to be, and so when he saw her and she ran for sanctuary he followed her back in before i could shut the door, and went and hid under the bed where I couldn’t reach him while Pixie sat and cried. He’s such a badass sometimes. He’s still my snugglewugglepoodlewoodle though and I will hate leaving him.

Holiday update:
Sarong hemmed. Three more sleeps!

Me update:
After having lunch with the Wellingtonist crew, I am feeling somewhat more pressure to write about Wellington. Of course though, since I’m a JOURNALLER rather than a blogger (motherfucker!), mine will be a long tale of woe and heartbreak and sanctuary. Naturally.

This morning I have Joy Division turned up loud while I spend an hour deleting all this horrible spam. You know who else got spammed by the Germans? THE NAZIS.

Last night I went to meet one of my ex clients at her hotel, so I parked it in her garage real good. Of course we went out for drinks, so I taxied home, and promptly forgot that the car was in town, which meant when I woke up this morning very tiredly, I had to run down to the train station in the rain, and then bus&run up to Ghuznee St to pick up the car and high tail it in to work. Bleh. And then there’s the spam. Aaaaaaaargh.

The weekend was good. Did I mention that? I doubt that I did, since on Friday I was all busy writing my first entry for Wellingtonist and raving about Nick Cave so much that I didn’t even mention the work function that I went to beforehand (and I still won’t, except to say that why is it that the times when there’s free liquor are the same times that you shouldn’t drink too much (and I didn’t)?)

On Friday night Anji came around to watch Next Top Model and The O.C with me, and I gave her my TV and video player, but of course not my cables because that would be too logical. Instead I gave them to her on Sunday night when we had ludicrously cheap and good Thai food at umm Arayana’s House? It’s the place next to the Rialto, anyways,

On Saturday Karen and I went to The Food Show and hot damn that was a clever idea of mine. It was $15 to get in, and we were drunk less than an hour after arriving, pretty much, because of SO MANY FREE SAMPLES. We didn’t even try like, half the wine stalls, and we didn’t try all of the wines at any of the places. And there was so much chocolate, and so many cheeses, and processed meats. Yum. I was stupid and kept buying bottles and then having to carry them. We’d been walking for two hours and eating and drinking everything in sight before we stopped to look at a map and realised that we were only a quarter of the way around. Boy howdy good times were had. But then we had to walk back across that looooooooooooooooooooong wide exposed raised pathway back to the station, which is pretty much like the platform from the trainstation to Tokyo Disneyland (yes that’s right, you can walk from Wellington Station to Tokyo – if you know where to look. Suckers!), and my feet were so sore I was just about to crawl. I did take my shoes off, although it wasn’t especially warm. We took the train home so I could soak my feet, feed the cats and get changed, and then we cabbed it into town because I expected to meet up with screeds of my friends. Of course, one by one all said friends piked, although I guess they didn’t have much notice to begin with. That’s fine, because Karen and I went and had food on sticks and then had drinks at her house where we were joined by Anji.

In an attempt to show us when she’d had her hair dyed, Karen busted out her old scrapbooks. Now, my family (well, Mum and Anji and Karen anyway – I don’t have the patience for it. Plus I have a website) keep the most amazing scrapbooks – lots of photos, scraps of programmes, cards from restaurants, birthday cards and everything all in chronological order, all beautifully laid out. Mum kept one (well when I say one, I mean a dozen or more) for me until I moved to Auckland and then she said it was too hard to keep up. There were photos of me from sixth and seventh form, and I’d always thought I was just this total scruffy nightmare, but looking back, there’s a couple of photos that I look Totally Sassy in, despite – or maybe because of the baggy tshirt/long skirt / no inch of flesh except for my forearms showing. I had reaaaaaaaaaaaaally long hair, and Jackie O sunglasses – plus I was a lot skinnier. Not skinny in any way, of course, but _er_. There’s a photo I love which must have been from around March ’97, and it’s of me sitting on my couch at Bands in the Square, and I just have a big grin on my face, and I know that would have been because I was doing something that I loved, and attracting the good kind of attention for having a couch, and revelling in it. I really like that Joanna.

This Joanna’s sometimes okay, but she’s very slow and tired today because last night, as she mentioned, she went out for drinks with an old advertising client, and there was much much much gossiping about that whole little world, which was fascinating, and really good crackling in one of those great snugs at JJ Murphy’s, and FUCKING HUGE pints of Hefe at Bodega, and then two bottles of bubbly for $28 at Good Luck. Then there was dreaming that I’d been to Fiji with Kateb as planned, but it was like I went to sleep and when I woke up we’d already been and all I could remember of it was that I’d slept with one of her arch nemisises from high school (eww). It wasn’t all bad though because apparently I’d also won an iPod Shuffle and had given it to a cute boy that I’d met in real life recently, and he gave me a pash for it. Wahoo, rock the $200 pash!

A couple of weeks ago my bus went past this guy walking along the street, and I thought ‘hey, he looks vaguely familiar’, and then I realised who it was, and it was someone that I slept with two years ago. As a matter of fact, he’s the guy that I slept with who I always forget about whenever I try to match up names with the number of people I’ve had sex sex with (sex sex as in penis-vagina. Sometimes I consider it to be sex if he goes down on me. But not always). This would be like another total “so what?” if he was just a one night stander, but he wasn’t. I wonder how my brain manages to shut off memories of him so often when it used to be that I talked to him every single day at great length and thought that without him as my best friend I wouldn’t survive (*), and we had a whole wealth of injokes and phrases and to this day I can’t remember if Paul Schaffer was my arch nemisis or his. I conclude that my brain is dumb.

My brain is dumb because when I was stuck in very slowly crawling traffic through the Terrace tunnel today and I was in a car piled to the gills with boxes and thinking about how at some stage I’m going to have to disassemble my bed (and while I might think “ooh, Daddy can do that for me!” last time when he assembled it, it took an hour and was SO MUCH HARDER for me to do bits of rather than doing the whole thing by myself in half an hour), and there was a honda civic in front of me and it made me think of a boy who once told me that his whole bed could be taken apart and folded up to fit into the back of his honda civic, and then I thought about how icky that boy was, and how stupid I was for sleeping with him, and then I thought about why I did that – because I’d just sold my ex boyfriend’s bed and used the money to pay for a party with a LOT of booze, and then I remembered all of that, which was about five years ago exactly and how fucking horrible it all was, and even though I’m still like woah I’m all good now, but then there was already a ten year anniversary this year that threw me for six (is that a real expression?) and that was pretty fucking crappy and aaaaaaaargh oh the pain the pain the pain that is my brain that just doesn’t shut the fuck up.

So in real world news, last night Brad came over for dinner and a pile of junk food, and The OC, Team America (fuck YEAH) and Bad Santa. I am in love with Therman Merman, I want to bake him in a pie. At my request Brad drank more beers than he could drive on and camped out in the guestroom. Today we got up in time to watch an hour of Home and Away before I had to take off to go to Oma’s. I love that my new place is five minutes walk away from him. Well, sort of – there’s a couple of hills in between, so it’s varied, I suppose. I went to Oma’s to meet up with Anji and Karen, and ate the fondue, and then loaded up the car and van before eating Crepes Suzette. Mmmmm heartattacky. Then it started to pour. I hate driving in the rain. I also hate shifting furniture and stuff in the rain. How do I have so much stuff? I wish I was like Ani di Franco says that she is. I of course also wish that I had some love letters to treasure, of course. At least now I will have my box of memory treasures back now (which, if you’re oldskool you would have seen in that mega big flash file I used to have which has now vacated my computer to somewhere else). Not that I need trinkets to remind me of things when my mind so obviously works overtime. Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

Have I mentioned to you that you need to be marking off June 18th in your diaries for my birthday / flatwarming party? Please to do so. I’d like everyone to come along, even if I don’t know you. That way it can be all awkward and stilted and I can feel bad when my guests don’t mingle! Heh.

EDIT: so there I am feeling sorry for myself when I get a text from Kateb saying “This time next week we’ll be drinking cocktails on the beach”. WAHOO!

A. Dreams:

1. My second best friend from High School trying to tell me that I had COE because I had bought a birthday cake and a lasange for a party I was throwing for her but she thought I was going to eat it all by myself. We had a very vicious fight after that.

2. A bunch of people sitting around watching me and Jesus (or maybe a guy pretending to be Jesus) getting ready to have butt sex and timing it so that we’d both come at the same time as the second big guitary bit in ‘Hysteria’ by Muse. Was this dream caused by:
a) discussions about a particular NZ novel that I FUCKING HATE but everyone except for Karen seems to love
b) downloading too much gang bang porn or
c) listening to Muse too often, too loud in order to escape flood of oppressive emails and the horrible ambient bleeps and clicks music that my officemate plays (and leaves playing when he goes off to meetings),
or d) all of the above?

3. Looking in the yellow pages for strip clubs to go to with Brian from I Keep a Diary. We were looking for one in his home suburb of London, which was Glastonbury (of course). I think the Yellow Pages was kind of Harry Potter like, because the ads all had moving pictures.

One day I will be a New York Hipster too. Wait, does this mean that I have to put a picture of Carrie Bradshaw at the top of my page, and write about the perfect Louis Vuitton handbag my perfect boyfriend gave me, and about how people who buy stationary at the Warehouse are third class citizens and how those homeless people obviously deserve it because they frowned at me? You know what I’m talking about. Some websites are total car crashes – you hate them passionately but you just can’t stop reading them.

Speaking of Reow, I just saw one of my friend’s comments to someone else on their journal, and hot damn, it was excellent – but very reow. I’m sure the reow was well deserved, from the sound of things.

B. Moving:

Last night I went to Anji’s to pick up my key for our new place, and she drove a vanload of her stuff over and I helped her unpack it. We used torches cos the power wasn’t on yet. It felt ever so vaguely X-Filesy. The place wasn’t quite as big as I remembered it being, but that’s okay, it’s still more than big enough for us. I just hope Sebastian will be okay with the move. Pixie will sure be glad to have him gone though.

I’m going to take some more stuff and Jessie over to it tomorrow, hopefully, and then of course on Sunday we’re going to Oma’s to pick up my fridge and fill up the van and car with more of my stuff. I hate moving. Still at least this isn’t being done on the hottest day of summer, and I’m quite determined not to be hungover for this move. Hopefully. Although if anyone has anything that they want to invite me to tonight, please feel free.

I haven’t told my parents yet that I’m moving out. I could text them, but that’d be pretty spac. They sent me some big long text message in Dutch to pass on to Oma. Altavista reckons that they said: “Kind mam. Congratulated warmly with your anniversary. Sorry that the photograph von me on camel gestuurt cannot become on Neil’s tel. von Moroko. Have the Sahara survives. Hops that you the little girls have gezein. Many liefs. Aimee and Neil.” So there you go, if you were curious about their trip.

C. Watching:
Trading Spouses: uptight vegan vs crazy alligator rassling Cajuns. Bless this show.
The Secret Life of Us – Season Two: arrived this morning by courier, less than 24 hours after I bought it on Trademe. Hurrah! More Evan goodness,
Scrubs: goddamit, isn’t Garden State out yet?
In My Father’s Den: I bought the DVD. Now I’ll finally get to find out what that Mazzy Star song is called.
The OC: Brad’s coming over tomorrow night. Good times.

It’s a good thing that Nick Cave only plays at being a Baptist preacher, because otherwise I would be converted after his concert last night.

The Town Hall was a lot smaller than I remembered it being, but eventually I figured out that was probably because the stage needed to be so large in order to accomodate all eleven people on stage – four gospel singers, two percussionists, a bassist, a guitarist, an organist (keyboard player? what is the prefered title these days?) a violinist, another guitarist/keyboard player, and of course Cave himself, who paced around the stage, sometimes cat-like, sometimes kicking out his legs in glee, dancing like a marionette or worshiping his fellow musicians.

The gig was sold-out, so I was hoping that everyone in the crowd would be feverishly worshipful fans, who would know to SHUT THE FUCK UP when he was playing, especially during the quieter songs, but alas, some dirty looks were needed to be dealt out when he was playing ‘Easy Money’ and the song that is a serious contender for the first dance at my wedding, ‘Babe you turn me on’(because when he says “I put one hand on your round ripe heart / And the other down your panties” I just about keel over in a swoon – plus it’s got dreamy waltzy timing).

As far as songs go, the set was dominated by their recentish Abattoir Blues / Lyre of Orpheus , (‘There She Goes, My Beautiful World’, ‘Abattoir Blues’, ‘Breathless’, ‘Supernaturally’ and one of the highlights for me, ‘O Children’), as well as obvious standouts from their long career – ‘Red Right Hand’; ‘The Mercy Seat’ which built up until the sound was so solid you could breathe it in; ‘Deana’ which made people dance like crazy; ‘Do you love me?’ which was just as dark and menacing as it could be; and a couple of ones that I didn’t know, one of which he said was on their b-sides album and a very soothing song about God being in the house. When they came back for their second encore, he played the first couple of notes of ‘The Ship Song’ and I felt pathetic because my eyes welled up. I have to say that “We talked about it all night long / we defined our moral ground / but when I crawled into your arms / everything comes tumbling down” is right up there with the most expressive and vivid lyrics ever. And then of course there was the song they played afterwards, ‘Stagger Lee’ whose lyrics are somewhat different – “I’m a bad motherfucker, don’t you know / that I’ll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get to one fat boy’s asshole / said Stagger Lee”, but fuck me if seeing that live wasn’t one of the sexiest things I’ve ever heard (it made me feel bad afterwards when I said to my sister “this is what it must have been like when him and PJ Harvey were fucking” and I bent my hands back and banged my wrists together to make that horrible ouch skinny sound). Plus, Stagger Lee shooting the devil? Fucking Rock.

I’ve never heard louder or more passioned cries for encores, and few bands have managed to pull off performances that deserved them quite so much.

Dear Ladies,

I am alright!Feeling well at the moment.I read in the email of Joanna, that you all want to take me out for an exclusive Luncheon?How sweet to spoil an old Lady this way. But may I suggest another way to celebrate my 85 birthday?
Way not have a try in a exclusive Restaurant ,Place (Oma’s House).
There will be a choise of diffirent menu’s :

Dutch food:
Pea Soup
Red Cabbage,potatoes,meat stewed
Sauerkraut,potatoes rookworst
Kale, potatoes, sausages

Indonesian food :
Rice with some special dishes
Nasi Goreng(Ind fried rice.)
Banan frittes,

Chinese food:
Bami (noodles).
Rice with foe yoeng hai.
Wontong soup.

Japanese food:
Miso soup + Tempura
Japanese style stew,seafood and vegetables
Boiled right at the table
Sukiyaki, meat, tofu,vegetables
Also boiled right at the table.

And ofcourse there will be Fondue Bourginon.
Chilli con carne,
Or just a quich wih asperges and ham.

Well what do you think.
You can make a choise, but please all three the same
of an menu

And if you like a bit of wine with the food, let me know what sort of wine the ladies are drinking.

And ofcourse when you are not to tired from eating, you can take all the furniture out of the garage.

So how do you like my suggestion? OK.But let me know as soon as possible. The old Lady has to do the shopping, Hobbeling through Pack and Save.
And to prepere a good meal for Very Important People.it takessome time.

And don’t forget to tell me at what time you are out of your bed and will arrive here at the gate, so I can open the gate for you.

I am really very happy to see you all here,I haven’t seen you for a lomg time.

And please one request. DON’T BRING ME BUNCHES OF FLOWERS, BOXES OF CHOCOLATE OR JARS OF, CHILLIES.
Bring only a pretty face because you are all glad to see me.
RIGHT! Kiss for you .Love OMA

Sorry for mistakes, I did my best to right correct English

On Saturday morning, after a bunch of stupid spam texts, and a stupider “don’t spam me!” text that I got before the others, I went flathunting with Anji. We looked at three properties and debated in the Aro Cafe for a while about the merits of the one in Mt Vic vs. the one in Hataitai. The Mount Vic one, while being full of character and featuring a built in liquor cabinet had a tiny skoddy bedroom, while the Hataitai one was HUGE, and so we took that one. Hurray for three bedrooms and a lounge AND a dining room. It will be very good for entertaining in.

Speaking of entertaining, after I spent the rest of the day cooking and cleaning, I went and picked up a vanload of she-males on Marion St, and took them back to my house for a “dinner party”. According to all reports, a good time was had. I didn’t even go psycho! That’s always good. I did try to get everyone to stay with me forever and ever, but I’d forgotten to make that wish with a vengence demon within earshot, so they took off sometime after 1am. I thought five courses (if you include canapes and cheese) would have been enough to render everyone unable to walk. Maybe next time I will have to cut off their legs.

Yesterday Karen and I watched Team America (fuck yeah!) and I ignored all the mess. I can’t de-stretch the dining room table by myself, so why should I clean the bottles and glasses off it? But I do intend to clean up tonight. And write my reviews that I promised to get to the lady by tomorrow. And change my sheets. And all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Thank god it’s only 20 sleeps or less until I’m on holiday. Of course before then I have to move two households, do a buttload of work and prepare a workplan for the time that I’m off (on leave without pay, I did mention that, right? Bah!). In the meantime, I will continue on my quest to find the perfect Mee Goreng at this end of the city. It’s not at Cintra, although Cintra’s is better (and much much cheaper) than Satay Kampong’s. Istana Malaysia is currently leading the pack, except that it’s not open on Mondays and Tuesdays and they say when I walk in the door “Mee Goreng Chicken, medium hot, no egg”. Knowing how I want my coffee is fine, but knowing how I want my noodles is just embarrassing.

Okay, so it’ll be eight people for dinner tomorrow night (and I hope that you, Mr Noizy, will be losing sleep over your lack of RSVP! I know you’ve been reading, I know you’re not in New York.). Now I’m sure that you’re already bringing wine, because you’re polite young people, but Jessie said that my last post on the subject was a little confusing, so let me spell it out – in addition to the wine which I have no doubt that you are bringing, it would be great if you could bring a piece of cheese. I think Jessie mentioned that she likes blue cheese, (unless she was trying to wind me up), so perhaps a brie and a something else could be dividied up between the two remaining of you? Tonight there will be much cleaning and cooking and planning of social introductions. As I just said in an email, sometimes I think I am a Stepford Wife.

In other things that aren’t my dinner party, on Wednesday I went to see In Good Company and consequently I am in love with Topher Grace all over again like the second season of that show. It was a really funny really nice movie, although Scarlett Johansson didn’t wear enough low cut tops. Um, not that I’m shallow or anything. But you should check it out.

Last night Anji and I went to look at a flat in Mt Vic. It was art deco with wooden floors. Luckily the landlady had a phobia of cats, because it was $375. In half an hour I’m going to go and look at a workman’s cottage in Mt Cook. It is sunny today so I can assess how damp and dark it will be.

The cats are stressing me out with their differing needs. I have finished reading Feel although I never wanted it to end. I must make a dinner party playlist of music. Today’s big drama at work was all about the total lack of toilet paper in our building and how it took the other building two hours to get us some. Shocking. There’s toilet paper now, however, so I might end this here.

Oh actually, just before I go – Karen and I had dinner at Coco last night, and when I ordered a glass of shiraz THE GIRL ASKED ME FOR I.D. Oh my fucking god. I will accept that in supermarkets and liquor stores, but in a cafe????