Hubris.co.nz

Sometimes it’s nice to know that your employer values you – or at least is happy to shell out a large amount of money on opportunity costs of having your entire company running around on Friday afternoon with DV cams making little videos about your company. Did I ever tell you that I work for a New Media company? I suspect that the previous sentence might have revealed that if you didn’t already know. Because we didn’t have any video production people in our group – we were mostly project managers and editors, we decided to take a really ‘organic’ approach and shoot our video in sequence to save on the editing. We went with my idea of making a recruitment video, and loaded it up with really bad puns and me hosting the video with signs, saying things like “To work at *, you’ll need to be great at juggling many projects” – to have the camera pan over to someone juggling potatos, and “it also helps to be really flexible” with workmates doing back bends and somersaults in the background. For the “you’ll be working closely with your colleagues” we had three sets of feet visible under the shower curtain. Hott.

After that (although quite a lot later, cos most of the other groups finished really late although we finished quarter of an hour early), there were drinks. Many many drinks in fact, and although I was supposed to go and meet Karen for dinner, we’d got pizza so I wasn’t hungry, and I was having far too much fun having very inappropriate conversations with my workmates (the word “quiffing” was used a lot, which they claim is a fanny fart. I’m not entirely sure that it’s a real word). But I knew Karen was pissy at me, so I headed over to her house just before 9pm. Arriving with leftover brownies, and also potato chips and wine appeased her somewhat, I believe. So we chatted, and I had a shower (and didn’t puke in it) and we trotted off to Indigo to meet up with Dave and his friend who turned out to be rather cute and exciteable like a puppy – but not Humpy-like, if you get the difference (or even the injoke).

I’m being stalked – again. Friday night, and then today outside my place of work, oh and also that one time in March 2002 (<3 google desktop, although if I ever decide to become obsessed with anything that I’ve been obsessed with in the past, I will be in a lot of trouble – assuming that you define trouble as “reading many old entries” as I sometimes do). But anyways, the stalker. I was at 24 Hour Party People, and I went to the bathroom, and there was a cute girl there who was like “HEY! You’re Joanna!” and I was like…….. and she was like “I’m blah blah blah, and we’ve actually met before” and I was like “oh yeah!” and I did actually remember who she was, which is incredibly impressive for me, and she said she was stalking me, and had a crush on me, and it might have been then that I picked her up and swung her around as much as I could, or that may have been later when she introduced herself to my companions as “Joanna’s stalker”. Awww how sweet! Except I think she was laughing at me today. But like with any stalkers – or indeed the very minute number of people who say that they have crushes on me, it’s like “and then?” (speaking of Chinese drive through people, Anji and I discovered that the Chinese takeaway in Hataitai is awesome. But back to the main narrative…). Or, as Katy – and the bard – put it “Would you leave me so unsatisfied? / What satisfaction can you get tonight? / Howsabout you lick my clit, bitch?” Ahh people who quote Shakespeare, how nice it is to know you.

I impressed yet more of Katy’s friends by not taking shit from them, and dishing it straight back (“Oh, you work at a cinema huh? So what’s your film script about then?”) and we hung out until around 4am when it was time to go home via the takeaway shop and some very amusing discussion with some very very drunk young boys.

Oooooh Nightline just played some remix of the Prodigy’s ‘Voodoo People’ and i got an involuntary flashback feeling in my stomach. Crazy. Nevermind. Let me catch up with myself. Hmmmm, where was I at? Saturday? Ahh yes. Saturday. The day was really weird and I had no idea of what was going on because I’d lost my cellphone – Anji kindly ended up picking it up for me from Indigo and I don’t have a clock in my room. In the evening after the aforementioned good Chinese, I drove her into town for SJD and swung past New World for brunch supplies cos I was hoping that either Anne or Brad would be joining me for Alf’s 60th birthday party the next morning.

As it happens, I ate my brunch alone, and got choked up when they showed a brief flashback of Shane dying on a rock. I am crazy! CRAZY! And I napped, and drove Ethel back into town to pick up Anji, who is the new proud parent of an iPod Mini so she’s gone Walking Crazy, and we did the supermarket shopping, and I made a tangine, and Brad came over for dinner, and Shiny Shiny Steve(n) sang CREED and Oh, I was overwhelmed with a strange combination of lust and amusement.

Work was a bit streesssssssssful today. They’ve put me on the schedule so that I can be booked like any common resource. Oh the pain. Then I had lunch with Mum, which was surprisingly pleasant. The Tasting Room does food + a beer or a coffee for $15. Since I am doing Hard Work (my email to limegreen today said something like “I am supposed to be writing a guide to the wazoo when I don’t even know where it is!” and he said something about how he’d heard how large and impressive my wazoo was, and I got offended, cos dude, who wants someone to say “my, what a large roomy asshole you have”?) so I had the coffee instead of the beer. The steak sandwich was served with really really good fries, and also two big onion rings in it, but it’s on very garlicy garlic bread, so make sure if you eat it you pick up some peppermints afterwards.

I just had a moment of remembering exactly why I used to be so in love with The West Wing when CJ told Josh she’d cook him dinner, and he asked if she’d wear an apron and she said she’d wear anything he wanted, and his eyes went !!!!!!!! I think I’ll stop this now. Oh, and some guy saying to Toby “what if they have seven or eight kids?” and Toby says “tell them to try renting a DVD sometime instead” – remind me again why I stoppped watching this show?

Mostly I like to bitch and moan about my own life, and only use links to other things on my site or my friends, to show you how cool/deep/SHRN/So No Longer Hott Right Now/whatever I am, because that’s what I think the interweb needs – fewer links. But today I’m going to spend a paragraph talking about Critic’s drug rape story. And no, I’m not going to take this opportunity to talk about how Salient uses comic sans non ironically, so you can see that this is like, totally serious. The scandalous article in question is actually really quite good. Sure, it’s vaguely stomach churning, but come on – I’ve read at least three books by Brett Easton Ellis that are much much much worse. Not to mention Blindness or an assortment of other Nobel Prize for Literature winners. When I was at Debate, for our first issue we published a guide to safety, which the International Student Coordinator type person loved, but we got no other feedback on. Cosmo seems to run a drug rape story every other month, as do squillions of other magazines, but they really are all the same, and with anything that’s all samey, you stop paying attention. The Critic piece is different. I think it was valid, and justified. Just because within student media rape is sometimes described as “surprise sex” (thanks to letter writers) doesn’t mean that it’s not understood to be a real issue. And Holly was certainly very very articulate in defending the article, as the media links from Critic’s weblog will show you, if you care. Thank god it wasn’t someone from Craccum trying to justify themselves (and not just because this way there were pictures of Shiny Shiny all over the news from the ad on the page). I think we all (by which I mean me) remember Honest Colin’s mumbleness.

Of course, all that said, as the woman from Rape Crisis pointed out, drug rape may be all the hot topic right now, but the big issue generally is still alcohol.

On a completely new subject, tonight is Go Out Drinking Night. Hurrah! Okay, that was a bad topic juxtaposition, but you know that it was intentional. It’s 24 Hour Party People tonight, hurrah. Before that there are leaving drinks at work for one of the many computer people who all have the same name. I wonder what his replacement will be like. Hopefully oggleworthy, although of course, after a conversation with Anne I have given up on all boys ever. In fact, I was tempted to call our quiz team last night “Death to the Y Chromosone” but then I couldn’t remember which were boys and which were girls. I think I remember Xander saying “your double Xs don’t look too bad in that dress either” to Willow (when of course they did, because Anya’s bridesmaid dresses were pretty hidi), but I’d like to think that everything I learnt about science didn’t actually come from a Buffy episode, so we went with “The McLeod” instead. Anji was going for “The McLeod’s Daughters” but I was like NO NO NO NO NO. We got 7/10 in Sports. Huh? What the hell? That was our average score for every round. We NEVER get that high in Sport. Very very strange. Nevermind.

Oh yes, but tonight. I need a new outfit. I always wear the same thing to Indigo it seems. Could a bar be bored of my boobs? Surely not. But there must be a new way to showcase them. Surely? Surely? Yeah. There, I mentioned boobs. That’ll be a good steady stream of shots for you all. Err, that’s shots as in drinking shots. Not photos. Thanks to Heather for being the only one to come up with any things for my drinking game, by the way. I hate the rest of you and I’ve flicked you all back to level one. Oh no wait, I haven’t cos I am lazy.

Work has become more amusing with the advent of having colleague (singular, and still spelt wrong, probably) on my MSN list. I am still loving being over with the young’n hips. I’m also doing more work that I’ve done before too. I have create a new style guide for us, compiling three together. Comic sans for Africa, I say! Oh no wait, no I don’t. Speaking of MSN, can I get a great big BOO HISS for Martha for putting a photo of the winner of Rockstar: INXS on her site without a cut, or hiding it or anything? AAAAAAAArgh. Stupid Internet.

Social plans for the week: 24 Hour Party People tonight, Home & Away omnibus on Sunday for Alf’s 60th, perhaps Jess’s picnic in the park. Coming up: Brad in some child’s play (I have been promised people in animal costumes), and also Brad in drag for his Caberet show. Hurrah! Also: I really must get my act together and plan my birthday party for some time.

I haven’t been writing as often as I would have liked to have been writing. I think that’s partly because my last entry was so fucking mammoth, and partly because some of the noise in my head is NOT FOR YOU (which is sad actually, that I feel the need to censor myself because now more than ever there are more people that I know reading my journal than there ever used to be). I need to do more writing though. Last week I wrote 14 album reviews in one day. That perhaps wasn’t the best way to do it, but oh well, you get what I’m paid for. And I don’t get paid for these reviews. Just a heads up though, I’m loving Ghostplane and The Cloud Room and Art Brut and rully not loving HIM. Strangely enough. If we’re going to get all the recent things I’ve enjoyed out of the way too, I must spend a couple of sentences talking about Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which kept me enthralled for weeks and weeks, the mountain of a book that it is, although it gave me a creepy undercurrent of unease every time I read it, in a way not dissimilar to House of Leaves. And I was a little unsatisfied by the ending I think, it all seemed to come to a stop really soon after all the build up, but it was indeed bloody excellent.

Okay, on with the show. What have I been up to the past week? Hmm. On Thursday, we had a quiz night at work. I think I impressed several people with my dazzling knowledge of mostly useless facts AND I managed to drink quite a lot too. What an achievement! While I wasn’t hungover the next day, I was full of cringe for arriving at work two hours late – when I’d woken up at 7.50am, I reset my alarm clock, as I always do, but I made it 7.30 instead of 8.30, and so it didn’t go off, and so I didn’t get up and oh the crapness that is me. That combined with things like Thursday Morning Teas, and taking off on the dot of 5pm on Friday to go up to the other building to polish off the beers left over from the quiz night has meant that my output is down. But I will also put that down to the fortnightly cycle. Yes.

Anyways, drinks on Friday were pleasant and amusing as usual. I went home around 8ish I think, cos we’d finished the beer, and I brought takeaways and put on my pajamas and settled down to watch TV. But then I was like “no! I want to go out!”, and I was still annoyed cos I was supposed to be hanging with Dave but he’d gone out with my sister the night before to an event I hadn’t been invited to and was too hungover. So I texted Katy, and found out that she was intending to go to Ghostplane, so I ran a hairdryer over my hair and dusted off my chucks. I was apprehensive about showing up and being a no-mates, but I didn’t want to stay at home any longer, so after texting Lisa Ratpony and discovering she was going to be on her way, and knowing that Kartini and Co would be there, I set off via eftpos taxi. Stupid no cashness.

I found Kartini & Mike and LisaB at the bar, and so I hung out with them. I really must remember what Lisa’s last name is more in the future, to avoid the sort of confusion that happened a couple of weeks ago with the girl whose birthday party it was not being that Lisa Lisa. Not that it was the end of the world or anything, but y’know, it just makes sense to know where you’re going or why you’re there. Meestar were playing, and they sounded pretty choice, even though I only know one song of theirs and that’s off a CD called Pimpu wa doko desuka? (Where are the pimps anyway?), so we sat outside and they smoked instead. It was a pretty damn cold night out in Wellington, and only two of the heaters were on, so I was glad to go inside when Ghostplane started playing. The stage was all set up with blue and green lights and waves and stuff, in keeping with the whole Under the Lagoon theme, and damn it looked purty. Then Katy showed up, and I felt like talking to her, so we went outside again, because as you know, people who talk near the stage at gigs are evil motherfuckers who need to be killed a lot. There was much discussion of graffiti in the toilets – including one particular piece that needed to have a last name censored out of it (by the way, has anyone found my KA messages yet?) and more beer was drunk, and blah blah blah, it was just a really good time, and I’m so glad I left the house again. Katy and I split a cab home via takeaway cheesecake from Midnight and I stayed up late watching watching taped Rockstar: INXS and getting teary at Jordis’s ‘Imagine’ and Marty’s ‘Wish You Were Here’. Awww bless.

Then I was forced to make a really hard decision in a two party system. Would I vote Newtown or Brooklyn for election coverage watching? Well, I went with the one with Hott Boy possibilities (Jimmy aside, of course, because obviously he’s SHRN, but not this particular Hott Boy). Saturday was DEMOCRACY DAY, and I was as excited as a kid at Xmas, except I was also terrified that there might be cunts in this country who would sell us out for an extra $20 a week who would result in us all getting a rather nasty lump of coal in our metaphorical stockings. But when Anji got home, I LITERALLY (not really) skipped up to the polling booth. We debated for a while about where to go (email suggestions telling me where to go are welcome) and since she wasn’t entirely sure if she was registered in Wellington Central or Rongotai we decided we’d give the school on Elizabeth St a go, since we were going to be going to Liquor King anyways. Since I’d spilled beer on my red top the night before, I was all about my green t shirt. I had debated with myself and others long and hard about whether or not to vote Labour or Green with my party vote, and the night before i’d finally decided to do what was in my heart, and on the basis of them being the only party ot talk about public transport, I went Green. I was going to be ticking the Annette King box anyways, so I was all red and green like an Xmas tree. Of course, I got to stick it in the special short box since i was out of my electorate – like many other green voters, I’m hoping. But perhaps we’ll come to that later.

Supermarket shopping was done and vodka was purchased, although I do kind of not like the fact that I got ID’d for vodka but not for voting – I mean, which one is more important? Then I made three flavours of vodka jelly (Raspberry Labour, Lime Green and Orange elections) and napped and blah blah blah, then it was a green scarf wrapped around my neck and red raspberry fizz to go with my vodka, and off to Kartini’s went I. You know what’s fucking choice? Watching TV with people who say things like “I think Steven Parker has a Giles-like past” and knowing what they mean, and then having those same people later compare Gerald Brownlee to Crab and Goyle. Ahhhh politics + pop culture = SHRN. We cheered and cheered every time Labour went up a .1, and cackled when National went down. We also drank in delight when the marvelous John Campbell threw shoutouts to the drinking game, saying “I just have to cut in now – oh and that means that all you drinking game players need to drink now”. How incredibly meta. I think I might try to develop a line of DVDs of cult movies with drinking game rules built in as subtitles. OI, BACK OFF, PREDATORS. Anyways. Maybe you should play a drinking game with my journal whereby you take a drink every time I do, and also every time I use my phrase de jour (such as SHRN). That’d rock. Rock! Okay, now you must drink.

After that, Katy tried to call her parents in Mexico so we missed out on a taxi with some people so we took another one in to a place in town which is a place of work where people were drinking, and the lovely Nial put a beer in my hands while some guy was metaphorically humping Katy’s legs, so I went to the bathroom and texted her that, and then when I came back he was literally doing it. Ahh it’s nice to be back on the Internet where I can make jokes about Humpy and know that youse guys get it. Or at least the footnoters do anyways. Go Level Two Hubrettes! I tried to be brave and stalk a hott boy across town, but when I finaaaaaaaaaaaally got to where he was, he was just on his way home. Sigh. Spring sucks! I am so in desperate need of being sprung. Of course I am on heat for many many boys but this is the only one that I could imagine actually telling. I think he’d be the kind to appreciate the straight talk.

Speaking of appreciating my pajamas (ha! see how I slipped in a masturbation joke right there? No? Well I’ve obviously not slept with you then), Sunday was a perfect day for duvets and pjs and DVDs. It was also good for getting texts with HOT GOSSIPICIOUS SCANDAL from Karen (for those in the know: it’s the same thing again), and roast dinners around the dining room table. How civilised!

But I’m still feeling a little sad, because on Sunday morning I dreamt I was at my book launch, and it was the most fantastic elaborate party ever – there were huge big trays going around with large slabs of expensive European chocolate, and kiwifruit champagne was pouring by the gushful, and lots of people I loved were there, but no one would give me a copy of my book, and I knew I wasn’t particularly happy with it, because it was something that I’d started writing in seventh form English, and I threw a tantrum at the publishers because they hadn’t arranged for me to actually get to read the book before it was published. Then after I’d stopped crying, and I’d left the party, I bumped into someone who used to be a big part of my life, and I wanted to show him my fabulous achievement, when he was all “oh, check out this book I just wrote” and I was trying to find a copy of mine and I couldn’t. Waking up and finally remembering that I haven’t actually written a book was even more devestating than the time I woke up and realised that I wasn’t actually recording an album in Bic Runga’s studio.

EDIT: Inspired by Heather’s comment, I now present A VERY EXCITING COMPETITION. Create ten rules for a Hubris drinking game. Best entries win hott prizes. Post them below.

Last week I was totally stressed out and in desperate need of a holiday – as evidenced by me crying in the toilets at work on Thursday morning, and not even playing Appetite for Destruction over and over in my headphones so loud that I couldn’t hear the phone on my desk ring helped. Nice one. Now I am back at work and am in desperate need of a holiday to recover from my holiday, but I don’t want to stop thinking about it or talking about it cos I had like the bestest time ever. This is how it went down.

Please note: I will gradually update this over the course of the day, so if I’m still not back in Wellington in the account, keep coming back.

My flight to Auckland was pretty bog standard, the only thing that made it slightly more interesting was that the main road out to Wellington Airport was closed, so the shuttle driver had to go a different way and it made me realise that if it had been me driving I would have been stuffed. On the plane I started reading Star Man, which is a biography of Michael Francis. You’re like, “who?” and I’m like “omg, you mean you don’t know?” and then I explain that he served as a security bodyguard type person for Led Zepplin, and Bon Jovi, and Cher and an assortment of others, and then you say “ahhh Jo, when will you stop reading those rockstar biographies and return to real literature?” and I punch you in the head.

The airport bus driver in Auckland was also head-punching worthy with the way that he threw away my perfectly valid ticket that i’d purchased from a machine when I got back from Fiji for a bus that had never shown up, and made me buy a new one. Grr. I should write a letter, but you know, that would be too constructive when instead I could just sit here and bitch about it. But at least the bus dropped me off right outside the Pulp offices, where I could go up to meet the new editor, and struggle to call her by her real name instead of Carla. I don’t think I’ve ever really chatted with someone who’s been on Shortland St for a significant period of time for a significant period of time before (ha ha, do you like what I did there with that sentence?), hence why it was so damn difficult. But she was very complimentary, and said that she hoped I would continue to write for them, and blah blah, and I said I want to, it’s just that i’ve had no ideas and I’ve been really busy. But I will continue to do the music reviews cos they’re easy enough to pop out.

After that, I couldn’t get ahold of anyone who wanted to play with me, so I went down to Queen St and parked my ass in front of Crash and proceeded to cry lots, of course. Some of it was a little predictable, and some seemed a little cliched, but the way that every character was given depth, and that everyone was a villan at one time or another was really interesting. I can think of lots of people who should go and see it (you know who I’m thinking of if you read NZm). I also find it vaguely amusing that on IMDB there’s a big thread abotu how black people talk too much at the movies. Ha ha, it seems like someone wasn’t paying attention…

Then it was back on the bus to Ponsonby and to my hotel via the liquor store on Williamson Ave. I stayed at the Quest on Ponsonby, and it immediately endeared itself to me when I didn’t have to give them a cash bond in lieu of a credit card imprint. I was less impressed by how warm it was in the room, but after a conversation with reception, I figured out (read: was told) that if I turned off the air conditioning and opened the windows (which I didn’t realise were openable) and that was choice. Of course, the water feature in the courtyard was pee-making, but the bathroom was black and shiny and great, and reminded me of the bathroom in Olivia’s old Living Cube ™. Plus, halogen lights! How rad does my hair and skin look under halogen? Much radder than in real life anyways, that’s for sure.

Eventually Penny showed up to show me her wedding photos and we had a glass of wine together:

It was lovely to see her and to hang out, even for an hour. I got to look at all her wedding photos, so I was like “awwwww”. I wanna get married too! Penny was like “did you get implants?” because I was already dressed up to go out. No no friend, I just discovered the metaphorical joys of architecture and airbags, and the literal joy of one air pocket for Mary-Kate. After all, if people are going to be talking to your boobs, they might as well have something for people to talk about. Umm, not that everyone was, of course. Ha.

Anyways, so then it was time for dinner at Sawadee which the lovely KateH had arranged for me:

I had Heather and Jessie to my left, although Jessie is mysteriously absent in this badly edited picture:

Then there were the Triple As, who arrived after our entrees but that’s okay. Actually to be perfectly honest, Amy wasn’t even eating with us, but flitted over with her pina colada every so often, because she had a work do too.

Luckily she made it into this picture too, so that I can pretend I have lots more friends. Although of course, since I’m cunningly cropped out of the KateH picture, you have no evidence that I was ever there at all, but here’s the view from around the rest of the table:

I was so fucking stoked that Bopha showed up. Just being near her makes me feel Zen. Of course I was glad to see everyone else too. And to eat tofu. Mmmm tofu. I did a lot of the Bridget Jones introducing people with a common interest thing, but some of my lines totally crashed and burned. Boo-urns.

Both KateH and Jessie had managed to secure a plethora of spare tickets to The Mountain Goats, so we tried to convince the Triple As to come too, but they declined, so the rest of us went back up to my hotel room for some more drinks before the gig. It was so choice just to have some of my favouritist people in the whole wide world piled on my bed.

KateH told a story about how her friend’s grandfather died being looked after by everyone he cared about in the house he was born in and made me cry. Oh the pain of having to retouch my makeup! There was much textage to assorted other people in assorted other places(*), and talk of sex but I can’t remember of what context it was in except that it was very very amusing. Oh yeah, perhaps we were talking about hairy people. Also I told the story of SUPER FUN VAGINA SURGERY for those who hadn’t read it. I suspect that might have been it. Eventually minus Bopha we piled into KateH’s car – which is no longer yellow, and that’s strange (well it’s not so strange, given that it’s a new car, it’s not like her old one metamorphesized, but I haven’t ridden in it before. So there) and headed on up to Shadows.

Apart from a couple of post AUT bar beers in 2003, I don’t think I’ve been to Shadows since the olden days of 1999, so it was strange to be going back there, but amusing to be actually asked for ID and being able to show valid ones, instead of doctored birth certificates and fake ISSIC cards. Also, dya know what’s great about Shadows? JUGS! I’d already dancing a jiggling jug jig for my friends back at the hotel, so I am of course referring to large amounts of beer for a mere $6.20 a pop. Hurray liquor!

Also, let’s have some hurrays for Interweb people coming to introduce themselves, like Chris who was absolutely lovely, and looked like Kayleigh from Firefly and then later Calum who is like, the definition of SHRN. I was very excited to meet them. Also Sam was at the gig and was texting to find us, but he couldn’t, and we could see him calling us, and it was very amusing for a while until I told him where we were. And Amanda was there too (and while I’m all happy with the pics, I wanted to cuddle up to her bosoms like this again, but didn’t, cos I’m sure that would have been inappropriate)

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and Nigel, and and and oh just so many people I know. Is it any wonder that I was later described as “holding court with the scensters”? No sir. So I didn’t actually see the Mountain Goats at all. I vaguely heard them, but you know how much I hate those motherfuckers who talk at the front of gigs? Of course I sat at the back. And then many hours later, they kicked us out cos we were the last to leave.

For reasons unknown or unremembered (*), Heather and I decided to go to Rakino’s, and so the lovely KateH dropped us off there. Rakino’s was packed full to the brim of hipsters, but we managed to find a spot on the balconey to sit and drink even more beer and try to find our friend via text who turned out to be at a strip club. But there were so many hipsters though. Perhaps it was the official after party? I don’t know, I wasn’t that aware of much at the time.

In fact, it took Heather reminding me the next day for me to remember that after Rakino’s we went and had a couple of cocktails in Deschlers. Ahhh Deschlers. The cocktails were still really excellent, and because it was who knows when in the morning, we got a booth and lovely service, and no one was watching the rugby, unlike the last time I was there which was just so wrong wrong wrong. I hate to think of how many cocktails I have had there – or more specifically, what else I could have done with the money. Oh the memories. I didn’t put my hand on her leg under the table though, because I am not that type of girl any more. And then we shared a taxi to drop me off in Ponsonby and her back at her house. It was an awesome awesome night(*).

I woke up on Saturday to a cacophany of noise, and I wondered who the hell was in my room, and then I wondered where the hell I was, and what the hell I was wearing. Sometimes it’s terribly difficult being me. Once I figured out the answers (1. The window was open and overlooking the cafe in the courtyard 2. I was in a hotel room in Auckland and 3. Pajamas. I must have fallen asleep before I had a chance to take them off) I felt a lot better. So much so that I got up and took a shower and texted Heather to see if she wanted to get brunch. She was still in bed so I went back to sleep and woke up feeling much much crappier. I wandered up and down Ponsonby Road for ages, clutching the Thai doggybag in my hand looking for a cab because thinking was hard, and the sun was shining, and oh my, my stomach had felt happier on other days. But eventually I managed to snag one, and smile and nod my way over to Heather’s, and collapse on her floor. She was in much of a similar condition.

I begged and I begged her to come out to a cafe with me, but they were so very far away (read: 100 metres or so) that we just couldn’t do it. She kept offering me eggs, because apparently she doesn’t realise that I am like DEATH TO ALL EGGS, but eventually she decided to go and buy some bacon and some coke and some potato chips. I puked and checked my email while waiting forher to come back. The lovely girl went and got coffee too! And orange juice. And ready salted chips AND salt and vinegar delisimo chips. Have you tried delisimo chips yet? They are very much the shit even if most of their flavours (like tzaiki) just end up tasting like sour cream & chives. It was the best breakfast ever. So we sat around listening to music, watching tv, chatting to people on the interweb and just generally chilling (*).

Eventually it got to be around 6ish, so I texted Shirley and she very kindly came and picked me up and I took her to dinner. We were going to go to Roasted, but couldn’t find a park so we ended up at Occam. The waiter was snooty, and they had Celine Dion turned up at levels that must surely have been intended to piss off the kitchen staff, so I yelled out my order. The hint wasn’t taken though. I thought about asking them to turn it down but decided just to bitch instead. My eye fillet was goooooooood though. Then it was to the supermarket for chocolate, and wine and a birthday present for Justin – I found him a magic eight ball. Excellent. I napped for half an hour back at my hotel room, and then walked to Shirley’s, via a little knee wobbling as I walked past a place where many years ago, I had received a most unexpected but very very wanted pash. Oh *IV! Oh the get the fuck over it!

Anyways, Shirley lives in a very cool big old villa near Ponsonby Road, and her flatmates have filled it with ex pantomime sets, including a light-up Sky Tower. Her bathroom is bigger than many people’s bedrooms. It’s pretty rad. So we had a drink – or at least I did, she had a half glass, and headed out to find Justin’s party. It was very much like First Year Uni, with Shirley driving, and me drunk in the front seat hanging on for dear life. Except that I wasn’t at all drunk cos of the hangover, but you know, close enough.

For Justin’s 30th, he and his friend decided to throw themselves a Howick themed party, since that was where they grew up (ha ha!). Luckily, they had it in Mt Albert instead of Howick. However, they did still come in costume:

Hot Toddy had found the outfits in lost & found for them since he teaches there now. Justin had put signs up around his house denoting various notorious Howick places, like Musik Point which I’d already seen when Brad took me and KateB and Clayton on a pash tour (and I’d just like to throw out a great big FUCK YEAH! to Google Desktop which found that phrase ‘pash tour’ as quickly as I could type it in. I will be doing this a lot more, I think. The linking to old entries, not the Pash Touring. Although I’d like to do that too please). Shirley and I sat down in a corner because we knew very few people (As I said to her, “Oh, none of the multitude of Justin’s friends that I have brought to orgasm are here”) and Hot Toddy told us facts about wherever it was, which was that George Bernard Shaw had stayed there. When I told Justin that, he was very impressed. But yes, there were lots of people there, and I recognised some of them like Hott Jason (hi, are you still reading my journal four and a bit years later?) and a girl who’d been on the PR Grad Dip with me (who had told me many things about another one of Justin’s friends from the second to last set of parenthesisisiisis), but I was soberish and just feeling really meh. It was strange thinking about how five years ago Justin had his 25th at Garland, and just how different then was to now. Plus, I wanted to go see Ryan McPhun and the Ruby Suns, so around 11pmish we left to go pick up Heather.

At the King’s Arms I was greeted with a “Hey Wellington!” by Matthew Crawley, who seems to always be everywhere (it was he who did a raid on Garland resulting in smoke bombs and Tom Jones posters in the toilet, although I was too busy sex0ring the skankiest guy in teh world at the time to realise. Actually, looking back, that’s a lie. It actually happened at Justin’s 25th, so I was busy doing something that is not ever refered to). Gareth was also there, strangely enough, given that he was playing. We went outside for Heather to have a cigarette, and then when we went back inside, Calum came up and talked to us.

This is where I go a bit squee and wax lyrical about the adoreableness of Calum. I’m not alone in doing it, Heather and Shirley too are members of his fan club. And now you’re about to be:

And one taken on an angle because apparently that’s what hipsters do:

That’s what I love about these (metaphorical) high school boys – I get older, they stay the same age….Ha ha ha, we are dirty old women.

The Ruby Suns were also very very awesome, and I enjoyed them immensely. If you’re not familiar with them, I will say that they’re from Lil Chief Records, which is also home to The Brunettes, so they’re vaguely similar, in the cute Americanisms xylophone instrument swapping kinda way. Yeah. How long has the I need to hurry up and get one of my own before every damn hipster in town has one installed. Also, since I had my handbag with me, and therefore a pen, I grafittied two stalls in the women’s toilets. First person to email me and tell me what I wrote gets a prize. But all good things come to an end, and when everyone else left to go to Die! Die! Die!, Shirley took me and Heather home via junk food. Hurrah.

The next day I checked out at 12pm, and had breakfast, and went to Kyla’s and held Felicity and cried. Then I walked to Shirley’s and hung out and then took a shuttle to the airport and then they stuck me in a business class seat and I listened to Bon Jovi on my iPod because of Star Man and I pretended I was a rock star and that was my holiday and yay I am done now.

Man, I am so fucking tired of it all. I’m tired of National being ahead in the polls, I’m tired of wondering why the fuck every single American isn’t protesting about the appalling treatment of the people who are left behind in New Orleans, tired of thinking about how awful it would be if that was me, tired of worrying about Sebastian with the couple of recent cases that’ve been reported of people doing awful awful things to cats in New Zealand, tired and bewildered at this world we live in. And of course, I’m doing very little to fix it.

Heal the world, make it a better place. Seriously. Meanwhile, I’ll be literally (ha ha, using the word ‘literally’ quite literally is like figuratively my favourite thing to do right now) sitting over here in the corner stressing out about a bunch of bullshit crap in addition to the great big woes of the world. But while I’m here, I suppose I can catch you up with some recent events in my life, yeah? Even though they’re pretty darn trivial all things considered.

Oh! Just before I do that, how much am I laughing at the fact that my favourite carcrash of a site to read is all “oooh go national!”. Although I hate to think that anyone is voting national, that post almost took the title of my favourite away from the previous “bitch scratches her beamer, no one cares”. And while we’re talking snipilly, who else saw 20/20? Miss Lisa Fur and Brad were over at my house then, so we watched it together in squealing squirming horror. It might just have been the television event of the year. But it wasn’t.

On Friday night, I got very very drunk with my workmates. I don’t know how it happened – I could have only had about two bottles of wine, maximum, but still. We were going to go and have drinks at my old work building, on account of the cheapness of BYO, and the balcony there for smokers so that nonsmokers wouldn’t have to stand around on teh street like we do at Ponderosa (as the new blood, I’m starting a quiet revolution) so a couple of us girls went to get wine from New World and we met up with others at the building, but it was all locked up inside and I never bothered learning the access code, and the boys were out of cellphoneage, so we went to Monsoon Poon instead, where my suggestion of its balcony was well received. We drank most of a bottle of wine before we saw the boys from one office walking down to the other, so we decided to catch up with them – ten minutes later they still hadn’t been let in. But we got it sorted eventually. Later in the night, people were guessing other people’s star signs, and they got to me and I was like “hmm, well you now how I don’t talk very much during the day and now after a couple of glasses of wine I am happy to talk about vaginas all night….” and they guessed Gemini. Clever. Also: there was much vagina talkage. Eventually I decided it was time to go, and waited forty minutes for a bus (while being texted updates on who sang what at the live Idol show, thanks Murray) but then abandoned that idea in favour of getting some J&M goodness instead. Shortly after I got home – or maybe after I’d watched an episode of The OC, I don’t know, Anji came home in a similar state so we got to watch the taped Rockstar together, but neither of us could remember who had sung what. Nice work.

Saturday I felt a little bit ill, but Anji brought me home chips and we sat in the sun on the front steps to eat them, and then we cleaned the kitchen. Well, I pyramidded every dish on teh bench, and dried, and mopped the floors, but she did all the heavy lifting of moving another table in there so we have more bench space. Then I got STUPID PERIOD CRAMPS and there were no drugs. Booh. I wanted to hide under my blanket and stay on my couch, but instead I went and met Brad at the bus stop and then Katy at Liquor King on the other side of the tunnel. I made us take a taxi down to Katipo though, and our driver told us all about his toasted sandwich. Bless. With some hastily purchased nurofen from New World, I was ready to party.

Now, Katipo may very well apparently be the new Treehouse Cafe (ie: full of lousy hippie goths) but it was closed for the night for a private party, since many of the partiers were staff, so I don’t think the people there were representative of its usual crowd. Or maybe they were. I thought that it was Lisa-whose-house-I-went-to-last-weekend-who-still-isn’t-Lisa Fur’s birthday party, but in fact it was Lisa-from-Atomic-two-weeks-ago’s party(*), but I was still apparently personally invited, and expected to debate political issues. Brad, on the other hand, felt very obtrusive and sat back in the corner, texting Dave to help him get over the pain the pain the pain of me uninviting him. Katy has a lot of movie loving friends. Some of them are quite cute. Some of them highfived me when I said that The House of Leaves was terrifying and I had to only read it during the day. It was strange to be sitting in a cafe and have it full of smoke. It was even a little nostalgic, but mostly just very smokey. After the nurofen and the red wine started kicking in, I realised that I was having a very good time, even though my head was a little crazy.

On Sunday I cried and shivered in delight watching 7 Worlds Collide which Miss Fur had leant me in exchange for series 3 of her new addiction. Fuck it was an amazing concert. I must buy the cd. I made lemon pie to take to Karen’s for dinner, and beef burgandy for tonight’s dinner. When we got home from Karen’s three and a half hours later, the house was filled with the delicious odour of the stew. Guess who’d forgotten to turn the stove off? I am a fucking moron. The meat’s deliciously shredded now though. It’s also greatly reduced in volume. I will have to pump up the volume somehow. I suspect another can of tomatoes will be involved.

If you think that the above paragraph was boring, you should a) consider yourself lucky that I didn’t subject you to a line by line retelling of dinner at Karen’s (I was hungry, cold and tired) and b) dude, Christian Slater references! Almost fires! Culinary excellence! How can that be boring?