Two different 2amish entries

Friday

I wish I:
A. Didn’t listen to people/took more responsibility for my actions/wasn’t such a stupid little miss doubter
B. Lived alone when I come home at 1am and the front door and all the windows are wide open, and Dawn of Azazel or some such is blasting out at some kind of crazy volume, and they’re playing poker in the dining room so that I can neither watch The Gilmore Girls or go straight to sleep like I’d like to
C. Didn’t have to go to my mother’s tomorrow morning to look after the house while she has an open day
D. was married to both the boys from Boulot
E. had workmates and ex-workmates who talked about more than the things that make me yell “SO, what’s your favourite fact about monkeys?” at all and sundry in hopes of changing the channel, although I do appreciate having drinks and dinner bought for me.
F. Had the ability to time travel, but like, controlled-like, not all making me cry at 3am in the morning when I finish it Timetraveller’s Wife like.

Other than that, and my right shoulder being SO FUCKING SORE, life is pretty sweet. Oh, and my friend texted me tonight to tell me that she’s become a umm, I can’t remember the word, so I will use the word “Fuckerware Demonstrator”, so if there are any ladies in Wellington who’d like to have one, let me know.

Saturday

I don’t remember the background music in Go being like this, and I saw it a bunch of times. We even had the motherfucking Go banner in our dining room, and I know that cos I was watching the Garland video again tonight. Welcome to my saturday.

I should probably point out that this entry is brought to you by the new Placebo album, which is (in theory) so new that it still says “title TBC” and it’s all one of those official “ELISABETH EASTER, I AM WATCHING YOU, DON’T YOU DARE RIP IT” versions. But anyway, my point was, and I’m sure you’ll still buy the Pulp and read this for yourself, that the albums, in order are: Hedonism, the comedown, feeling lost, reflecting on life and now the new one is: getting on with things, admittedly with meds to get you through the day. It won’t play in my computer at work, so the first time I heard it was around 9.35am when I got into my car this morning and it made me want to cry on the way to Ngaio. I was, of course, as you would know from the top half of this entry, on my way to help my mother with her open day. When I got there, there was no one else there yet, so I had raisin toast and coffee and chocolate peppermint slice, and she said “is there anything I can do for you?” and I said “can you fix my pants?” so I took them off and she fixed them and oh, it was like magic. And then my daddy came home from Dunedin or wherever he’d been andhe talked all excitedly about this processing place, and the Chinese he was showing around, and how he showed them something and how they asked for something and he showed them something else, and I was like “wow, it’s so cool how great you are at your job and how excited you are about it” and he ignored me becaue he was only paying me attention when he said “and then they got off their plane…” and I was like “got off, heh heh” and he’d laugh, and then he’d go back to talking and I’d be like “meat packing heh heh” and he’d go on and ignore the compliments.

So I decided to leave, so I texted Karen and asked her if she wanted to go to brunch somewhere on the Southern Coast, and she said “should I bring my togs?” and despite the wind, I was like “yes!” and so we went swimming at my favourite secret beach near Scorching Bay, squealing all the way cos it was cooooooooooold, and then had lunch at Chocolate Fish (haloumi and eggplant stack on sour dough). And then we went home and hung up my washing, and put on sneakers, still all salty-like, and then Miss Lisa Fur kindly came and picked us up. We got to Waitangi Park, and it was 2.20pm. I was thinking that the Phoenix Foundation were playing at 2.30pm, but there was a chalkboard saying that the Warratahs were playing at 2pm and the PF would be at 3pm. Well, we’d made jokes about how the Warratahs were like, totally down with the kids cos that wacky rap music was playing and we could see some kids breaking, so i was like “I bet they’re breaking… their HIPS” badoom chish, so we were like aaaaaaargh omg they haven’t even started yet and we’re still feeling those hands on our hearts, holding us, so we ran away to the Paramount for the best ice creams in the Courtenay area, and I had a triple chocolate ice cream, and it was accidently chocolate dipped, so like quadrupale chocolate, and holy crap, it was like an orgy in my mouth, except without the cocks and the semen and the stretching. But it was amazing ice cream. Yeah. And we went back, and sat on the ground, and the Phoenix Foundation played, and fucking oh yeah they were awesome. They didn’t play ‘Nest Egg’ for Lisa, but for me (yes, for me) they did ‘Hitchcock’ and a very rocking ‘The Drinker’ and ‘Forty Years’ and also (of course) ‘Slightest Shift’, and Karen got the Bruce Springsteening, even though she says he has no good songs, and sitting on the ground hurts my back cos I have no core strenght, but nevermind. And then I went home for nap and shower and de-salting.

In the evening I picked Brad up and saw his new house, and we came back here for drinks, and old photos – so many AUT stories to tell each other, and then the video, and sometime after midnight we headed off to Atomic, but wow, it just felt weird and strange. When they played ‘This Charming Man’, I was like “oh ho, really? But they didn’t play ‘love will tear us apart’ first”, so I thought maybe they’d swapped, but then they played the Cure’s ‘Inbetween days’ and I was like woah, parallel dimension and THEN they played ‘Love will tear us apart’ and seriously, what the fuck’s up with that shit? Also, the crowd were weird – they were waaaaaaay more Courtenay than Cuba, and Kristen wasn’t behind the bar, and I didn’t know the crowd, except for Jimmy who is apparently still alive although you wouldn’t know that from the interweb, and he said he was working on a top secret project and if I was the type to gossip I’d say the hot girl he was with was his project, but I don’t gossip. And again, I saw no one I knew, except for that really annoying “oh let me get up on the stage and dance, because I am like so awesome in my vinyl skirt and oh I’m on Suicide girls and oh I’m a drunken goth” girl who is there all the time, not that I dislike randoms that I don’t know or anything, oh no. Anyways, when we were dancing, Brad and I had an aweeeeeesome time, and just fun fun fun, but it was HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT, and so crowded, and my tummy hurt, so some time after 2am I left, and came home, and Mark was watching Go, and that brings us back into a complete circle, and the one thing I think that I’ve forgotten to mention was teh number deleting ceremony. Awesome.

Last Friday was, if you recall, the Prom. Of course, you should all have known that from coming along, but if you did, then you’re people that I don’t know who didn’t introduce yourselves. Wankers.

But nevermind that. Let’s talk about going to Spotlight at lunchtime with Kateb for netting to promify our dresses, and how I was going to get black but the call of the pink was just too strong:

Then let’s talk about how the skies opened around 4pm and I had holes in my shoes, and my car was parked a long way away and luckily I’d given Kate the spare key to it cos I got to it late, and then we had to schlep over to Newtown to decorate the hall and I was soaking wet and freezing cold and reaaaaaally not in a good mood. Plus decorating was tiring and hard, and we were running late and Brad’s friend who was helping us kept on talking and talking and oh oh oh, just the drama of it all. But when we were done, the place looked fucking rad:

Kate came over to my place to get ready, and since I knew I needed to snap out of my grump, I went to “spend a couple of minutes by myself” (read: rub one out), before showering and sorting out my hair. Of course, we ended up looking fabulous, as the above photo will prove. We spent a while having some drinks and trying to convince Bart and Del to come with us, before abandonning that idea and jumping in a taxi. The hall was pretty empty at first, so I was very worried for Brad’s sake, and I was trying to count and do maths and things, but eventually it filled up, helped along by the arrival of these two, Katy and her flatmate:

We sat and drank coruba & coke for a while, cos it was donated, and then Brad started playing ‘Get into the groove’ which is one of my favouritist songs to dance to evah, and since my friends weren’t feeling it, I went and jumped into a group of strangers including this girl Holly:

They were very very rad people and were very complimentary of my outfit, so I decided that I was ON FIRE that night, and that everybody would be my friend. When Katy and I were slowdancing the first slowdance, I spied two boys standing at the side so we grabbed them instead and they didn’t appear to mind at all. Later I fell in love with one of Brad’s tutors (although I suspect I didn’t realise who he was at the time) when he whirled me around the dancefloor and told me to stop leading. How powerful and manly! Oh how I was swooning.

At one stage, I went outside to find Kate, and found her talking to a 15 year old kid who’d wandered up to boast about how he was on his 20th beer. When he turned around and said to the Asian girl behind him “I don’t like Asians!” I decided that was enough, and it was time for him to move on, so I went and found Brad, who grabbed a very tall friend of his and politely asked the young lad if he had a ticket. He moved on then. Apparently he was also kicked in the balls by a friend of the Asian girl. Excellent.

It was just such a fucking fantastic time. I danced and danced and danced, and although I didn’t win Prom Queen, I certainly felt like it, and so I successfully vanquished all my demons from dances at ASIJ 12 years ago. Oh yes, that’s right, all my demons. I’m totally a demon-free zone now. Honest. Here’s some more photos from the prom – if you want to see them larger, go to my flickr account page, obviously. And the best part of all is that Brad made a whole grand.

When Kate and I got home, we found Mark and Bart sitting out on the front steps drinking, so we stayed and talked to them for a long time, and I did the most awesome fall-flat-on-my-face fall ever. Radical.

The next morning, strangely enough, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, but I dutifully rolled out of bed, showered and headed off to pick up Anji and Karen, via a ten minute wait at Macdonald’s for them to serve me up a burger instead of the ick that is the Macdonald’s breakfast. Not that their burgers are much better, of course, but this was an emergency. I got Anji to drive to Waikanae, because I still felt drunk. We went to Swell Cafe for Mum’s birthday brunch, which you might remember from the news stories about its quarter mill bronze statue being stolen. Or you might not. I don’t care either way. Ha! It was really nice there, but oh boy I was feeling ill. Then we went to Oma’s house to sort out more stuff and pick up more furniture and I puked some more and sat on an outdoor step and cried. I was very very happy to get home and unload the buffet and bookshelves.

After a nap, I went to the supermarket and made awesome sandwiches of streaky bacon, camenbert, hummus and rocket. Hurray! And I tried gingerly to drink some beer, but then switched to red wine. Around 11pm, I headed off to Nial’s house for Blair’s goodbye party. Luckily it was a very mellow night, just lots of sitting around in the very cute garden. I didn’t know people at first, but I was overly tired so I was in very giggly very saying lots of stupid things mode, so it was alright. The boy who I’d originally thought was gay talked loudly at me about how gay he was, and about how he used to make his ex girlfriend wear a Hayden Christensen mask when he flipped her over, and I felt ever so slightly embarrassed but mostly I just laughed at the things I was thinking in my head (*).I did tell the hot Canadian right as he was leaving that I fancied him rotton, and he laughed at me. Well, it wasn’t quite a “ha HA, like you could ever have a chance” kind of laugh, or even a laugh of pity, it was just a laugh and a “I’m sure you’ll get your pash this year”. And yes, I told him right when he was leaving, because I am laaaaaaaaaame like that, but at least I told him. So that’s all very well and good, and I don’t feel bad about it. And it’s good that he’s gone, because while he was a very easy crush to have, I just have far too much going on in my head right now(*). Oh, and of course he’s also a stupid maple syrup-eating surrender monkey.

Having been up until 5.30 texting, Sunday was a day for lying on the couch groaning and watching season two of the OC. I think much of the week was like that, actually. Hmm. On Wednesday I saw Capote, which wasn’t the feel-good hit of the summer. Then I decided I needed to stop feeling angsty about the number of people in my house (it’s strange getting used to having two boys and one girlfriend who is still trying to find a flat around, after living with only Anji for six months, but there’s no need for me to have a bug up my ass just because oh the pain, they’re sitting on my couches watching tv when I want to lie down and watch the Gilmore Girls in quiet), so I cooked a flat dinner for them and Brad. I was going to make a pear cake too, cos our tree is loaded down with pears right now, but when I got home, Del was already making one. Great minds and all that.

On Friday after work my workmate Sarah and I escaped down to Monsoon Poon for some very good conversation and some wine. She’s getting married in less than a month, and so she keeps asking me questions about things like invitations or social graces, or accomodation and stuff, which is fine, cos I’m happy to help, but it’s making me plan my own wedding something crazy, and hello, I’m not gettign married for another five years (that’s assuming Brad’s still single then). We were joined by the boys a while later, and then by Rene who is an ex collegue. Eventually KateB showed up to and by that stage I’d consumed quite a lot of wine. Sarah left and we had a platter of food which probably wasn’t nearly enough in proportion to the amount of wine we were drinking, and we went to Ponderosa where I watched Kate pee and she did the same to me. Not like, cos we were doing it in public or anything, just that we assumed that there would be stalls but it was one big room and so we decided to have a significant bonding experience instead. I was thinking that the bathroom looked mighty familiar and then I realised yesterday that it’s tiled like the one in Veronica Mars in which she does all her business. Ha HA ‘business’, do you like what I did there? (Yes, wow, that is a poo you should be proud of).

Somehow we managed to convince Dylan to come to a uni party with us (I did mention that the last time I went to a party at Jess’s there were both nipples shown AND a person in a panda costume), and we headed up to Kelburn via the supermarket for more wine. We probably didn’t need the wine. I had a good time at the party talking to Arthur and Brad who are at drama school together, and the fabulous Jess, and also Robbie, who as it turns out isn’t Lemon Cohen at all, and most awesome of all was that there was no one else from Salient there. Then Kate was a little worse for wear, so we decided it would probably be a good idea to get her home(*). When I saw Jess yesterday in Aro, she laughed at me for being like “omg, leave my friend alone! She’s been my best friend since we were 5, don’t hurt her!” cos people had placed flowers on her head. They laugh because after delivering that speech, I delivered Kate an all-mighty slap. Sorry babe.

Yesterday morning was consequently not much fun either, but I rallied by around 4pm when Anji and I went up to Mum and Neil’s for a BBQ. Boy it was hot, so very hot. I like BBQs. Then I went and picked up Karen and we headed over to Aro Park for the Bitchcraft carnival. I bought pretty earrings and we went and got fish’n chips and settled down on the grass to watch the Dukes of Leisure play. They looked like this:

I’m aware that you probably can’t see that much, but I’m hoping that it’s just that I have a crap monitor. If you can’t make it out, that’s a tree with a string of dead dolls hanging behind them. Anyways, the Dukes were very cool. They’re kind of sonic soundscapey like HDU or Jakob, and since I was lying on my back looking up at the stars, it was perfect. The Bitchcraft fair looked awesome when all the stalls turned on their little lamps. I felt like I was in an alternative Stars Hollow, and that is a rad thing to feel.Then I went home to dance the panda dance for Brad. I contemplated going to the Bitchcraft afterparty, but it was on the other side of town and my hands were still tingly with hangover. One of these days, I’m going to cut down on the amount I drink. For serious.

In honour of everyone at my work now knowing about my journal (dammit, although given that I’m number one on Google I always sort of expected this), here’s what I told the journalist via email.

Hi Danielle,

Please find below answers to your questions – I’m sure I will talk at
length, but if I haven’t explained myself very well at any stage,
please let me know.

There may be a lot of questions but please note, that most are just to help me set you up in my mind and provide background. I would also need to know your full name, age, occupation and where you live. That’s to provide background to the reader, and helps to introduce you into the article.

My full name is Joanna Tiare McLeod, and online I am known as Jo,
Joanna and Jo Hubris (there was another girl for a long time who moved
in the same circles called Joanna, and so we were differentiated from
each other by our domain names – she was Jo Starla. She doesn’t exist
any more though). I am 26 years old, I work doing communications for a
government agency (I work for * which is part of the ministry of
*, but I’d rather not specify if that’s okay – it keeps
things a little simpler with our incredibly long Code of Conduct), and
I’ve had an online journal for the past eight and a bit years.

SO what I want to ask is first, WHY the online journal?

An online journal to me is the virtual equivalent of a piece of paper and a pen – it’s about writing about yourself and being inward-looking. Blogs meanwhile are more outward-looking – too often they come across like “here’s a link and it’s funny” and that’s about the extent of their content. I’m not interested in doing that. I write because I would like to think that I am pretty good at stringing words together, and because I like to tell stories. A blog is usually about one particular subject, like politics or food or architecture (or at
least the good ones are), wheras online journals are a record of one person’s existence.

When I started my website in 1997, the word ‘blog’ didn’t exist. Back then as well as walking five miles to school barefoot in the snow, most web pages were done either in special programmes or hand-coded in HTML, and then uploaded onto the internet. There was none of this fill in a box and click tomfoolery that there is now, so people who had webpages had to be more dedicated and in to what they were doing than people who use things like blogger and myspace these days. I think in a way that meant content was a lot better. As a whole, people put more thought into it, and because it was so much more effort to get things
online, people were more likely to stick with it. This will sound incredibly stuck up, and please be aware that I am mocking myself here, but when blogging came along, and the media jumped all over it, it was kind of like I’d been doing all these great complex oil paintings and then all of a sudden people were like “woah, check out these awesome paint-by-numbers kits that people are doing!”.

I know a couple of people from New Zealand like Robyn from secret-passage.com and Annette (who’s now at nutandbee.com) and we were all doing the online journal and heavy content thing back in 1998 when there was like no one else in NZ doing it, and so we like to call ourselves the tangata whenua of the interweb. I can’t help but feel like I should get special recognition for doing it for so long. Man I got shitty when Bizgirl won a netguide award when SHE’S NOT EVEN REAL. Well, not that shitty, because James Guthrie is a friend of mine, but still…

What do you get out of it?

There used to be a lot of people who would write disclaimers on their pages things like “I keep this journal for me, and me only so if you don’t like it you can go away”, but that always struck me as being kind of silly, because if you didn’t want someone to read what you were writing, why would you put it out in the public forum? For me, I love having the audience. I think it pushes me to try to write better, to try and include more interesting stories and therefore even a little bit to try and live a more interesting life so that I have more
interesting things to write about. Knowing that I have an expecting
public (haha, oh, that sounds so wanky) gives me good motivation to
make sure that I continue to update my site, rather than just let it
slide like so many other projects I start without finishing. Hubris
serves as a useful place to let out my feelings when I am angry about
things, a platform for my opinions when I want other people to hear me
and also a place to build a sense of community in a way, so that if
there are ever people who find themselves going through things that I
have been through who come across the site might not feel so alone.
Which sounds very altruistic, but there’s something very cathartic
about writing about crappy stuff, even if it’s just in semi-coded
vague references.

It also means I can keep a record of more mundane things like books
I’ve read, movies I’ve seen, places I’ve eaten and when I get my periods. Looking back over journal entries is an awesome way to track moods and mental health, and also to see how far I’ve come in many ways.

Do you look at it as a place to express your thoughts, political views, worldwide views, talk about your life, your day or to vent?

All of the above. Hubris is full of pretty vapid empty crap sometimes,
like a big pile of whatever my catchphrase of the day is (“The Gilmore Girls are so hot right now”), and fairly mundane descriptions
of my day, while my locked down footnotes are where I vent. I have
political views that I think come through in my writing – I don’t
think anyone could read more than one entry and think that I was
right-wing, but I really don’t want to be seen a “political blogger”
because I’m just not that interested in the details. You’re much more
likely to find fairly broad statements about living as a decent human
being from me, or stuff like “so Don Brash has had sex with at least
three women? Really? Ewww”.

And I will bitch and moan about the state of the media or the state of
the world, but usually only about things related to me.

What made you start?

When I used to write a paper journal, I used to get a little frustrated thinking that I’d be the only person who ever read it. I wrote sometimes with an audience in mind, and would occasionally read (fairly censored) parts of it out loud to my friends.

I first came across online journals in 1998, when I was really into
Tori Amos, so I used to go to a lot of her fan sites, which were
mostly run by angsty American teenage girls who used to keep online
journals that were written in tiny little 8 point verdana font, and I
just really related to what they were doing. They had an outpost for
their thoughts and rantings, and an audience, and through their
guestbooks, they built a sense of community. I didn’t think I was as
angsty, or as obsessed with Tori Amos, and I didn’t like their sort of
competitive nature – it seemed like in order to be cool you had to be
on six different kinds of medication, cut yourself and have a
borderline eating disorder or a history of sexual abuse, but I could
relate to many of the things that others would write about – a sense
of alienation from your peers, and a yearning to be a writer, or just
to stand out, and so I started keeping an online journal too.

What made you carry on?

I enjoy doing it, and I love being able to look back on things. I’m
gutted that there are chunks of my life that are not as well
documented (like having the ihug hacker delete July-Nov ’98) or when I
was just too depressed to be able to write at all, but I am grateful
that there is this record, because basically all I really want to do
with my life is become famous enough that I can get an autobiography
published. Hehe. There’s a reason I had to use Hubris as a name…

But on a slightly less hubristic note, I’m full of regret that I never
got to hear enough stories about my grandparents’ lives. They left
behind some stories written down, but they’re handwritten, and on my
mother’s side they’re in Dutch, so I can’t really read them. I want to
make sure that there is some record of my life for my grandkids that
they can easily access, if they want it. I really admire what Heather
from dooce.com is doing for her daughter in that way, although I find
it kind of weird that I know more about what it’s like for this
complete stranger I’ve never even emailed to be raising a daughter
than my own mother’s experiences. That’s something I should work on.

Now that you are into it, do you think you will still be doing it a year from now? Two years?

Having been doing it nonstop for the past eight years, I have no doubt
that I’ll always be keeping an online journal of some sort.

Did you write a diary as a child/teenager/adult?

Yep. It was all descriptions of “she said ‘blah blah blah’ at school,
and pinings for the first boy I pashed. Hubris is pretty much no
different.

Is is something you gave a lot of thought to before starting or a spur of the moment thing?

I had wanted to start keeping an online journal for a while, but I
didn’t really give much thought to what I actually wanted to write in
it until I got going. Content has therefore evolved over time.

What do you write about?

I write about my day, parties I’ve had, injokes that are hilarious to
me and maybe two other readers, tasty food I’ve written, hatred of
people who talk at gigs, reviews of stuff, and I also post writing
that I’ve done for publication elsewhere.

Do you know who reads it? Do you have some sort of mechanism to find out who reads it?

I’m lucky with Hubris in that it’s a customised system my friend built
for me, so I can track everyone’s IP address, and also people can have
their own logins to the page which means every time they visit and
they’re logged in, it keeps a record. People can get themselves to
Level One, which is what some entries are locked to, but I have to
chose to bump them up to Level Two which is what my footnotes page is,
and any kind of rant about things that make me unhappy which shouldn’t
be talked about in public (like work issues), or things that I am
currently squeeing over – like crushes on people. I can actually put
in more levels too, so I can choose what information what people see.
Mostly level two membership just goes to people who I know really well
(online or in real life) or people who actively contribute to the
Hubris community – and by that I mean leave me comments, because of
course as an attention seeker, it’s all about the feedback.

Do you care? How careful about personal info on it are you? Do you include details about other people in your life?

Hubris is the number one result on google for a search on Joanna
Mcleod, so I write on the basis that anything I write can be read by
anyone – although as I mentioned above, I do have some security
measures but I’m aware if someone was dedicated enough they could hack
me. In the olden days before google, I used to use people’s full names
when I wrote mean things about them, and use my friends’ full names
and so forth, but I am much more aware of self-googling now so I don’t
do that so much. My restraint also includes never mentioning who I
work for (I don’t want to get dooced!) and trying not to give away too
much information about other people’s crap. One of my friends last
year made me remove every occurence of her name on the site because
she found her parents searching for her and therefore didn’t want her
name associated with drinking and drugs. Many years ago the first
time I went to bed with a certain boy in the morning he was like “this
isn’t going in your journal, is it?” – well that particular incident
didn’t go in, but I’ve said some very non complimentary things about
him since then, and him being a little drama queen, he’s done the
whole “lawyers, defamation, blah blah” speil. But funnily enough the
only legal letter I’ve had in regards to my website was regarding my
improper use of the word Sellotape (r) without using the registered
trademark symbol. Laaaaame.

Have other people, complete strangers (Like me!) been in touch?

Yes, many many many. In 1999, my friend and I used to have a thing
called The Breast Club, where we made scans of our chests in our bras,
and put them online and encouraged random people to send in theirs,
and so I met lots of people through that. Another time someone wrote
to me and said that since they read my site every day and it made them
happy they really wanted to send me a 21st birthday present.

Have you made new friends from it?

More than I can count – oh I’m so popular. Heh. But no, internet
friends are easy to make – you swap “i like your site” emails – well,
in the olden days you did, nowadays you comment instead, usually, and
that can progress to instant messaging, and then maybe you meet in
real life, and it’s all hunky dory.

Sometimes I meet (online and/or in real life) people through them
coming to my site – getting links from publicaddress.net brings them
in – and sometimes I meet them through contacting them on their sites,
or on forums, and then they come to my site to find out more about me.
It’s a way of demonstrating common interests or feelings, I suppose,
like joining a book club or a sports team might be in the real world.

Do you pay particular attention to what you write should someone you do care about it read it? Like your mum?

I do find myself censoring myself more than I’d like to sometimes
knowing that my friends read the site – sometimes I’d just like to
have a bit of a vent about a particular person without having
repercussions about it, but there are ways and means to get around
that, with different levels, or secret journals that others don’t know
about that.

I asked my parents not to read my site, although my dad did but I
think he was more embarrased about it than I was. I don’t have a lot
of boundaries anyway, so I’d like to think that the person I am online
is the person I am if you talk to me in real life – I don’t have that
much to hide.

Do you expect your family/friends to read it?

I’d actually kind of rather than my family didn’t read it, because
who’s more fun to bitch about than family? No one. And I feel
differently about different friends reading my site – I mean, when
it’s people I met online to begin with, that seems perfectly natural,
but the juxtaposition of my real life friends being in my online world
can be odd (and I know that contradicts my statement of being the same
in both worlds). If I’m away, or if my friends are away, I might cut’n
paste from my journal into emails to save telling hte same story over
and over again.

And if you do, do you feel offended if they haven’t?

If they’re not regular readers of my site, I don’t feel offended if
they don’t read it, but if they’re supposed to be regular readers and
I’m talking to them and they’re like “what? when did you do that?”
I’ll be all “DIDN’T YOU READ MY JOURNAL?” mock angry. But seriously, I
know that my journal can be a higher level of self disclosure than
some people might be comfortable reading (case in point: my review of
the Dimmer gig that was just sex sex sex).

But I would like to think that everyone wants to stalk me and know
every single detail about me ever.

Do you read other online journals or blogs?

Yeah there’s about 70 that I read religiously. Thank god for
Livejournal friends lists and RSS feeds, otherwise I’d be surfing all
the time.

Do you have a favourite? WHy?

One of my current favourite sites is what I’d call a blog if I didn’t
cringe at that word so much – it’s http://wellurban.blogspot.com. Tom Beard who writes it is passionate about Wellington, and he takes the time to
read council submissions and all those things I’d never bother doing,
and provides handy summaries, and he always finds new bars, shops and
restaurants for me to try.

I also love www.dooce.com because Heather writes in an easy, funny
way, but she also writes in great detail about her struggles with her
mental health, and she’s just an inspiration, even though that’s a
cheesey-as-fuck word to use.

and I love my friends’ sites because I like catching up with their
lives. And I like it when they write about me, of course.

Do you expect your online journal to take on a particular direction in the future that you haven’t yet established or are thinking about?

I want to write more stories about things that I did in the past -
like the Lost in Translation entry I wrote recently about moving to
Japan. I want to start writing my autobiography (yes I know, I’m 26,
I’m not that interesting and I haven’t really achieved anything, again
with the hubris), and so that’s what I’m keen to do.

How many times a week do you write in?

I used to write every day, but I also used to have a huge list of
people I could only talk to online that I’d spend hours chatting to
and write at the same time. I also used to be a student who didn’t
have bung wrists, so now I only update a couple of times a week. I
wish I wrote more.

For how long?

Entries take about an hour to write – more if there are pictures and
many links, but that’s an hour of much surfing at the same time.

Would you say this takes up a lot of your time? Does reading other blogs take up a lot of your time?

Yeah it does. But that’s okay.

Before email, were you big on writing letters? Or still are?

Only when I lived overseas. Now I wish I kept the letters I used to write.

Are you personal friends bloggers/online journalist or website owners? Family members?

I’ve always had online friends who were journallers (not journalists -
that’s like, media. Although I am trained in that too), and now it’s
weird, I have a group of friends who are so not into computers but
because of goddam myspace they’ve started keeping blogs. And boy are
they ugly…

What do they think of your new hobby?

Eight years isn’t a new thing. People used to think I was weird, but I
suppose at least the one thing I can thank the word ‘blog’ for is that
it’s mainstreamed me. Hang on, do I really want to be mainstream?

And do you consider it a hobby or something else entirely?

My job is writing website content, so writing online hones my job. And
one day I’d love to write a novel – or an autobiography, so maybe it’s
research for that. I just want to have a legacy, even if it’s a “I
watched Buffy all day and then laughed at some emos and got drunk”
legacy.

Ummm, sorry about the novella-length answers, I hope this helps!

Jo

Prom tonight. Vote for me for prom queen. Brad came over last night to discuss decorations, and he ripped some music for slowdancing. Please, for the love of all things good and shiny in the world, will someone slow dance with me tonight? I want to be all triumphant and “check out how much cooler I am now than when I actually went to a real Homecoming dance” but there’s a part of me who’s scared I’ll sit on the metaphorical bleachers and cry when they play Guns’n Roses’ ‘Don’t Cry’ and the cool kids will laugh at me.

But I don’t really have too much time to worry about it, because I have to go and buy black netting at lunchtime to promify my skirt, and then after work KateB and I must rush over to the Wellington Pipe Band Hall to decorate it, and then rush home and get dressed and rush to get drunk and go back in. I also need to make sure I pack a change of clothes, cos while the twins will be definitely coming to the party, I may not be quite as free with my movements as I would like to be in that outfit.

It’s been very rad having KateB back in town. We’ve been eating lunch together every day this week since she’s been freelancing around here, and on Tuesday I took her home with me for drinks and soup, hair dying and watching of the Garland video. I can’t wait until Brad becomes a famous actor so I can unleash his dancing upon the world. Actually I really should take the clip of the Garland Gang cd rom and put it up on the interweb. That sounds like an excellent idea. I’m sure he’d thank me for it. Also, who knows a good place in Wellington to get a crappy old VHS digitised so I can keep it safe forever? You’d think I could do it at work, but the developer was all “no no no”. Dammit, I know how to do it (or at least I did five years ago), you’d think I could borrow the G5 in my own time.

Bart’s been living in my house for nearly two weeks now, as has his girlfriend, who is having trouble finding a flat, so if anyone knows of a place going, please please please let me know. He and She and Mark who is yet to move in are all trained chefs, so I’ve had some dinners cooked for me. That’s great, but a little strange. I’m used to being a much better cook than the boys I’ve lived with. But they’re all lovely, and I’m getting bits and pieces of furniture trickling in from Oma’s in order to fill in the gaps, and that’s great. I’ve also got a car now. Or rather, I have Mum’s old car and I’ll be paying for insurance and registration and all that, but if any of the cousins need to borrow it they’re allowed to. Can you drive, Cous? Not that I’m expecting to see you in Wellignton any time soon probably though.

I saw Brokeback Mountain on Wednesday and decided that I should just punch the girl I fancy in her face and ask her to go fishing with me. I thought there was a little too much scenary, and that Salon’s review of made some really good points, and that if I was to speak like Joss, I’d say that it did more telling than showing. But it was still great, and there were boobs, and hot boys pashing (although not enough), and I cried. But I saw it at a Newstalk ZB preview, and they were the worst audience ever. Maybe because they’re used to talking to the radio they thought it was okay to talk through the film and wear way too much perfume and go “oh yes” and “oh no!” out loud the whole way through? Stupid long time listener/first time movie watchers. And while we’re on the subject of sexuality (oh yeah, Newstalk ZB is like, sooo sexual), I read an interview with Dan Savage in the Onion AV Club, in which he said (to paraphrase) “if your boyfriend is a homophobe, that means he’s also a misogynist because he’s reacting to the belief that in gay relationships one person assumes the role of the woman and he’s seeing it as a bad thing to be a woman” and I was like “yes!”. I like it when people who are smarter than me articulate things real good.

And I think that’s my lot for today. Just come to The Prom okay? And vote for me for Prom Queen. I made the ballot forms so I really should have rigged them, but I was good and didn’t.

I’m kind of very very swamped by girl angst right now. It doesn’t help that I’m due for my period sometime hopefully very soon so that the stomach cramps will go away, or that everyone at work is leaving. But let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about my lovelife instead.

Okay, so let’s slip back to New Year’s Eve, and I’m all “ooh I hope I get to see the Hot Candadian”, and I do, and he’s drunk and hilarious, and then much time passes that night, and it’s some time after 3am and he’s disappeared and so I leave Bodega with this girl who I’ve known for a while and maybe some other people, but it appears that I’m pretty much only noticing her. We go up to Indigo to see a friend who works there, and decide we should do tequila shots. Shortly after that, it seems like something happens, and she says “I didn’t think you even liked me” to me, and I have to pee, and in the bathroom I find myself blushing and going HOLY SHIT, I’M GOING TO GET SOME and feeling quite strange about it. As it happens, I don’t get some, but I do find myself sitting there going “i just think you’re really choice” or words to that effect (probably those exact words) and we sit out on the balcony for hours and hours and hours and I’m totally starstruck and it came out of nowhere, and we make plans to get married because she liked the trifle I made, and she tells me to go to staff movie night and stuff.

Of course, that’s New Year’s Eve, people drink a lot, but I’d never ever thought of her in that way until then. Normally I can tell when it’s just me crushing (ie: all of the time) but it really felt like there was something there. The thing is of course that she’s a girl. And that makes things so much more complicated. It’s not MY sexuality that I have a problem with, it’s everyone else’s. I don’t have gaydar. And girls that I’ve fancied have generally ended up causing me no end of strife. So how do I tell if she a) ever likes girls and b) likes me?

Well, analyzing it to death sure doesn’t help. I’ve been doing that with the boy from work that I fancied – oh he said this, he said that, he tried to walk me home and I said no, what does that all mean? What it means is that I’m crazy. Boys aren’t that complex. But girls are. Or maybe they’re not. Aaaaaaaargh.

Imagine how I felt when a week later I was sitting at a bar with her and the Hot Canadian. Did her eyes light up a little extra when she saw me? Did mine? We were agreeing on everything so much to the point that the Hot Canadian Boy actually said “You guys are obviously in love, why don’t you get married?” to which I blushed and giggled, and she reminded me that we were already scheduled to get married. And then I left with them and shared a taxi with them – oh my stars, what a porno it would have made if in fact it wasn’t all so chaste (although I do think that the number of times that Hot Canadian kisses me on my forehead is only adding to “I AM ABOUT TO EXPLODE” factorness of me).

Since we’d talked about trifle, and The Dirt, and I actually happened to have some trifle sitting in the fridge, I decided to take some and the book in to her work. The note that I wrote her “ever so casually” on the back of a business card in case she wasn’t there took two drafts, and all it said was her name (I think). I only wrote one draft when I left a note at my workmate’s house over the holidays, as a way of comparing. Or as a way of demonstrating how much my craziness has escalated. She appeared to be really stoked and gave me a big hug. I tried not to blush or put my hands anywhere ungentlemanly. I also mentioned the prom to her and she said that sounded very cool.

The next day my sister wanted to go and see a movie, and I agreed since it was on at a particular theatre. She was working again and she told me that the trifle was really good, gave me my ticket for free, and then brought us out an ashtray when we were sitting outside even though she said she didn’t think I smoked. Who me, obsess about details? Yes me.

And then I didn’t see her for a while. When I got to my friend’s drinks on Monday night, I heard the friend mention that the girl wouldn’t be there til late cos she was working so I was like “right, I won’t be going home early then”. When she did show up I was stuck talking to this incredibly stupid guy. Well, he wasn’t stupid, but he was incredibly full of himself, as if he’d just completed a Tony Robbins course, and oh man, I just wanted to be like “shut the fuck up! I want to talk to the hot girl! How else can I win her over with my winning witty banter?” Eventually when Tony Robbins shut his mouth for a while, I got to ask her how she liked The Dirt and she sat up in glee and said it was great and that all her friends wanted to borrow it. I passed out invitations to the prom and she said it sounded great and hoped she wasn’t working. I got invited to the Hot Canadian’s goodbye party. People talked about going swimming. It was after midnight and I knew that they’d be at the bar for about another hour, and then they’d walk to their house, and then to the beach and oh, it would just take forever, so I decided that I really had to leave because I had work the next day, and also because I am a self-sabotaging git. She was like “oh, are you leaving?” and I interpreted her look as being really sad. Then she said “when are we getting married?” and I confessed to her that I’ve been planning weddings cos my workmate keeps talking about hers. Then our friend offered to civil unionise us, but we agreed we wanted an actual marriage. Then I went home and couldn’t get to sleep because it was too hot.

The hot Canadian’s goodbye party is on the 11th, the day after the prom. I probably won’t get to see him before then, which means I’ll never get to tell him how how I find him, cos I can’t tell him at his goodbye party cos duh, how damn tacky and cliched is that? And I can never tell the girl how hot I think she is, cos I just have no idea. Oh I am confuzzled. And also determined to stop fancying the boy at work. I’ve been upping my cold shoulderingness and my “I am like, totally a lesbian” to him, since he didn’t come over for a beer like the note suggested, and then had the cheek to say that was because he didn’t want to hang out with workmates during the holidays but look, he put my number in his phone because HE IS LYING cos he went out with other workmates for New Year’s Eve.

Ahaha oh what a loser I am.