Hubris.co.nz

This week I’m going to try and update my journal every day. I don’t know how interesting this will make the entries, but we’ll see. Today being Monday, I of course talk about the drinking that I did over the weekend first.

On Friday, Miss Fur came and joined me and a workmate and an ex workmate for a couple of quiet drinks at the Poon, and that’s not even a euphemism. They really were quiet drinks, and we left by 8pmish to go back to her house to watch my friend Nigel & co win the 48 Hour Film Festival. Haha, now I sound like Russell with the name-dropping to show how down with the kids I am, except that I did actually go to Uni with Nige. You might remember my story of how my 18th birthday party was ruined by him and Brad and Trudie telling me I was dumb for drinking and smoking? Good times. The best part about them winning was that their movie was actually the best. I laughed myself stupid. And then we ummmm watched something else? Listened to records? I’m having a total mind blank.

On Saturday bright and earlyish, I picked up Anji and Karen and we headed up to Ngaio to decorate the house for Daddy’s party. Of course, before we could start decorating, we had to find the house first. My parents have A LOT of crap. We discussed ways in which we could thin it out, perhaps by taking one object every time we go visit and throwing it away. I need their house to become minimalist so that I can raise my brood of four children in it. But eventually we had a Quiet Meadow room as well as a lounge draped ridiculously in mosquito netting and streamers, with paper picket fences taped to the windows and other goodness around. We went home for a quick nap, and then I got all dressed up like a milk maid and returned. Daddy’s friends are weird. They didn’t want our horny monkeys, pink elephants, moscow mules, brown cows and fluffy ducks. They were all about the moderate drinking of wine. Fluffy ducks are crazy-tasting, by the way. Crazy but tasty. I continued to make drinks anyway. And serve our animal-themed food. And laugh when my Mummy kept turning up the stereo and someone kept turning it down. But eventually we had a boogie anyway. Neil’s friends sat on the floor and watched. There were two members of parliament present. Unsurprisingly, the Labour one was nice. The National MP, meanwhile, said to Anji that he didn’t believe OOS was real. Fucking awesome. I can’t wait til everyone in National takes their own advice and moves to Australia. We had some quality family time at the end of the party, and Mum danced like Axl Rose. It was pretty awesome. But I had too much sugar and couldn’t get to sleep for a long time, and when I finally did, right before 5am, I got woken up pretty much straight away by Smoo who didn’t have his key, and then when I went back to sleep after that Sebastian woke me up. Needless to say, I slept in past 2pm on Sunday.

Did I actually do anything else on Sunday? I don’t think I did. Apart from go to see City of God at the private screening, and make a string of hilarious puns about how much phelgm I have (“If I was a painter, I’d be a phelgmish impressionist. If I was a cricketer, I’d be Stephen Phelgming…”). I don’t understand how I’m not already married when I’m this funny and witty. Annnnnnnnnnnd then we got home at 12am from that, and I changed my sheets, and put in some ear drops and finished my Q and all of a sudden it was 2am. How did that happen? Also, I went to listen to The Wall which you will of course remember that Lisa Fur gave me on vinyl, but it appears that Real Groovy fucked up and gave me two sides 3 and 4 instead of a 1 & 2. No one out there wants to trade do they?

TOnight I was supposed to go to Stitch & Bitch that Martha organised, but I found more appealing the thought of coming home to do some amatuer yoga type stretching to follow up on my half-assed effort at the gym today (it was busy! And the first time I’d been in ten days cos of the coughing out my lungs! Give me a break!) and put on my new pale pink with skull & cross bones on pyjamas and watch TV instead. And so that is what I have done. And now I might return to this desperate trash. Now that Jon Safran has finished, I have been somewhat sucked in to Grey’s. Of course, I’m just doing it to bond with Jessie. Naturally.

While obviously every birthday weekend that is not spent with needles in your arms and lumps the size of testicles growing on your labia can be classed as a success, this one was particularly good. I didn’t go to a tremendous amount of effort in order to organise a party and have almost no one turn up because it was in Ngaio and I didn’t really have many friends anyway, I didn’t lose one of my closest friends because his friend told him what I’d been saying about his (now ex, yay) girlfriend, I didn’t get locked in a toilet at a Turkish restaurant, I’m not still hungover from my 21st or feeling happy for the first time in over a month either. All in all, I think I’m rather on top of things.

Last Friday I was about to get very frustrated and angry again, but some textage to Bart saw him come in as my wingman, and that was fucking awesome (*), and I ended up having a fantastic night, with $2 Speights drunk very very quickly first at the Establishment, then Red Square where I was able to prove that it wasn’t just that I was being a bitch about something, that it actually was a problem, and then to Boulot for pizza, and by that stage there were about ten of us around a table designed for six, and the boys were piling up the glasses and oh, we were just there for a long time. Then we went to The Tasting Room, and Smoo joined us, and when a couple of the boys started hitting on a taller-than-me-even blonde girl, I said, in a fit of awesome Girl Power-ness “You do realise that she’s a guy, right?” and they were like “how do you know? ” and I was like “girls just know these things. Besides, she’s totally got an Adam’s Apple”. Of course, she totally didn’t. But I felt like stirring. And naturally, I wasn’t the only one who felt things. Heh. *. But around 2am D had been kicked out for appearing to sleep on the table, and Shiny had disappeared to get food or something, and Bart and Smoo were hanging out to watch the soccer at 3am so I decided to go home so as to not be too hungover on my birthday.

On the Saturday itself, Daddy picked me up and we went for a family brunch at Capitol. I love Capitol, and so you can go and suck a fuck, Karl Du Fresne. Coffees and potato&mushroom cakes served with rocket and bacon, and bubbles and coffee and truffles and florentines = a very happy giggly stupid McLeod family. Daddy said something very obvious to me that I can now no longer recall, and I replied “Yes, nor am I an artichoke”, and that has been somewhat of a catchcry lately. I went home for nappage and bubbly, and then my old workmate Anita came over for a drink. After that Bart and I jumped on a bus to meet up with everyone at Cafe Istanbul, and by everyone I mean Lisa Fur, and Lisa B, and Katy and Kartini & Mike, and Anji and Karen. A bottle of Brown Brothers Everton, walnut bread and three kinds of meat for dinner put me in a jolly good mood. Kristen showed up, and we walked up to pick up Chrisana from her work, and then we went to Happy to see the Real Hot Bitches dance. Even though my throat was sore and coughy, I yelled myself hoarse at the awesomeness of their music and outfits and moves. I love that they’re all ages and sizes and that they prove that there is not a single person in the whole world who could ever look good in a leopard g-string leotard, and yet they all looked great. Yeah. And then there were more drinks at Good Luck, and then it was hometime.

I would put in a paragraph here about the awesome presents that I have received (Lisa gave me The Wall and Quadrophonia on vinyl, Jessie sent me the Bic Runga vinyl, Heather offered me a subscription to a healthy eating magazine, Karen gave me a POP UP PIRATE BOOK, Anji gave me an assortment of goodies including stripey socks and a knife, as did my parents), but while all of that stuff is truly awesome and well-received, I think what I appreciated most was the fact that people made efforts to be with me, or get in contact with me, and that they bought me things that they knew I’d love because they know me, and like, excuse me while I get all soppy, the fact that I got to be surrounded by the people I care about, who give me every impression that they care about me too, well that’s the best thing of all – people caring about me show that I am a person worthy of being cared about. Unless they’re all fucking stupid. But I don’t think that’s the case.

On Sunday, Mummy came and picked me up and we had coffee and planned out Daddy’s Animal Farm party which is next weekend. We bought much liquor for cocktails, and much foodage, and some more liquor and some more foodage. Good times. And then in the evening I went to a private screening of Labyrinth at the Paramount, which was grand, and was coupled with much gigglage by everyone every time the bulge was on screen. Awesome.

This week I have been coughing up first dry lungs and now wet ones. I took Monday off work, and yesterday morning and this morning. I also discovered that due to the selection of a new staff member, just like I can now say that I’ve seen a workmate naked (due to an accident at the gym), I can now say that I’ve had sex with a cow-orker. Even if I haven’t talked to him in the past two and a half years at all. If we were still friends, this would make faxing him pictures of monkeys much easier(*).

Since I managed to achieve my New Year’s Resolution (or rather, sat fairly passively in a chair while someone else achieved it for me, I suppose), I decided it was time to make a resolution for Matariki too. To this end, I’m going to stop reading the blogs of people I despise. Yes, that’s right, I said the b word. That’s a sign of my disgust at my reading list. I do not need to read about some kitten-eating wanker who posts fairly moderate thoughts but knows full well that his rabid lunatic fringe commentors will take the argument to a much nastier place. I do not need to read about some kitten-eating woman in Hong Kong who thinks that money can buy all and that girl power lies in fucking other women’s husbands (oh shut up), when she’s actually totally transparent. I do not need to read about some stupid little girl in Auckland who thinks Carrie Bradshaw is an inspiration, that Louis Vuitton is like, totally awesome and important, and that proper payment for blow jobs is something expensive, not reciprocal head. Really I don’t.

In the good world of the Internet however, I had lunch with the Wellingtonista crew on Wednesday, and that was very rad. It’s nice to go out with different people so that you don’t keep having the same conversations about tentacle porn over and over again. Not that there’s anything wrong with tentacle porn, of course, but it’s good to challenge myself to try and remember social graces, and how to not punctuate every single thing I say with an in-joke, and how to try and talk about things that everyone can relate to. That said, Martha provided the smut to the conversation, and I was like “hey! that’s what I bring!” in my head. But not in the angry HULK BASH CRASH SMASH kind of anger that other conversations in my head had me having last week.

It’s funny because I can compare myself to the Hulk now, and decide to laugh at myself, but at the time I was biting my arm in the bathroom at Tupelo and then making myself throw up in order to try and get back some sense of control over my life. I spent the rest of the weekend and Monday crying on and off, knowing that it’d take a couple of days to work through the down patch, and that it was truly out of control. I’ve written a lot more about this in my head, but I’m ditching it because it’s too exhausting. Suffice to say I need to find a counsellor again if I’m going to continue to function without pills. My manager at work gave me a list of names (best way to start the week: cry in your weekly catchup at 10am), but meeeeeeeeeeeeeeh, it’s arduous. And besides, now I am up again, and don’t want to think about being down.

Today I am aching from doing yoga stretching instead of cardio yesterday because I just wasn’t feeling it, and also all the project managers and I ordered in pizza from Pomodoro for lunch cos no one wanted to go out in the rain, but I’m still full of love for the high of exercise. Do you know what I did on Wednesday night? I RAN. Sprinted even! Sure, it was only for half a block, but Anji said because she was with her workmate-who-is-stalking-me that I wrote a blog so I went to hit her, and she said “I can run much faster and for longer than you” and took off, so I took off after her, even in the cold-makes-breathing-harder air, and she stopped before I did, and I punched her in the shoulder and felt like I could have run further. And that’s quite exciting. And we saw Take the Lead which wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected it to be, although Karen and I sniggered the whole way through at the dialogue and there were points where I was like “holy crap I need some more sake” cos we’d just had dinner at Kazu, but Antonio Bad-ass was very charming, and the dancing itself was awesome. Now I want some high heels and someone to dance with. Will I sound too Oedipully if I say that I’m rather looking forward to dancing with my father at his birthday party next weekend? It’s just that boys so seldom take the lead. Unless they’re Brad’s tutor from the prom, of course, who I was totally in love with for the duration of our dance.

And on the birthday note, it’s mine tomorrow. Please everyone, keep your legs crossed for me that I will not be spending the day on an IV drip with people poking at my vagina. Some vagina pokage would be acceptable, providing that it’s only carried out by a limited number of people, and if none of them have South African accents. You may also shower me with presents, if you choose to.

But the BEST PRESENT OF ALL is that my current favourite band whose name I won’t utter until I have the tickets in my hot little hands are going to be playing in Auckland on July 12, and I’m going! I’d originally planned to fly up on the 14th for the weekend, but now I will be in town from Wednesday through til Sunday. I would like to hang out with you while I am there, okay? So let’s hang.

I actually can’t think of much else that I wanted to say. I posted a recipe for Lemon Pie, and also the linear notes from my NZM Mixtape Compilation. I need someone to watch soccer with. Shirley left a squeeing message on my answerphone when she received the CD I sent her that contains The Garland Gang CD ROM, The Sound of Garland mixtape in mp3 form (I had to listen to Creed in order to make it, but rest assured that I had my fist and knee up the whole time), a bunch of photos and a copy of the newly digitised Garland tape. I also sent her a copy of 101 Stories. The weather is poos. My boots are awesome. My tummy is full. I haven’t had a period since early April. Maybe my tummy is full of Messiah Baby. Foetal Alcohol Syndromed Messiah Baby.

A while ago, I started a Mixtape Club on NZM. The first assignment was a mixtape based on other mixtapes you’ve received. It took a fuck of a long time to get everyone’s submissions in, but finally I (kind of) did. Here are the linear notes that accompanied mine, so you can play along at home!

1. Patti Smith: ‘Free Money’
This song should be on every mixtape ever made, it?s just that awesome. My number one fantasy until recently has been based around sitting on someone?s floor while they play me all their favourite records which would definitely include this from Horses. But then I decided to stop waiting for the fantasy and to just buy my own bloody record player.

2. The Dead Souls: ‘One More Little Death’
“Oh yeah Jo, we all know why you put this track on”.
“Shut up, voice in my head. I really like this song”.

3. Liz Phair: ‘Fuck and Run’
When I started ninth grade, the American school I was at had a Big Brother/Big Sister programme in place. I’d circled that I didn’t want either a big brother or a big sister, and had listed ‘Grunge/alternative/weirdo music’ as my interest in life, which meant that I got matched up with one Brittany Tobiason, who wrote me a letter going “you seem about as interested in this as me, so how about we team up?”. It was 1994, and Brittany was from SEATTLE. She was basically God to me, the way she wrote lines of poetry on her cigarettes, drank rum from a Superman drink bottle and discussed philosophy over endless cups of coffee. She also made me my first ever mixtape called Jerry, which introduced me to many bands that would be incredibly important to my development, like Liz Phair, and PJ Harvey and Hole. Brittany was so fucking awesome.

4. American Music Club: ‘Last Harbour’
I once received a 23 page letter from someone who reads Hubris who’d emailed to say that since he read my site every day and it made him feel happy he wanted to send me a present for my 21st. Some people would go “freeeeeaaaaak” in reply to that, but I said “hell yeah” and he included this song on one of the compilations he sent me.

5. Bright Eyes: ‘Lover I Don?t Have to Love’
As the divine Miss Fur said on NZM “It seems to win Joanna’s affections musically you need to include songs about sex… see Bright Eyes – Lover I Don’t Have to Love…” well, that?s what she did. I heart this song and while I am of course not a shiny Emo rockstar boy, I can relate somewhat.

6. Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood ‘Summer Wine’
All good mixtapes should have some auld-skool gem on it. That’s the rules. I remember singing this song on long long family car trips, and more recently I resurrected it for a compilation of summer songs I gave to everyone I was friends with that summer. I’m sorry if it puts Jessica Simpson in your head though.

7. Augie March: ‘Asleep in Perfection’
When my friend Annabel had to borrow an episode of The Secret Life of Us that I’d taped off me, she made me a mix CD called Cherries in return. This waltzy song from the Australian band who were played on the show quite a lot ties it all together.

8. Ani DiFranco: ‘Soft Shoulder’
“I will say I have saved / every letter you ever wrote to me”.
I am a prolific letter-writer, but what I hate is that if it’s an actual pen and paper affair, you give it to someone when you’re giving them metaphorical pieces of your heart, and then you don’t get it back afterwards, when it turns out that the letter receivee totally wasn’t worth your words. I don’t think the boy who used to play me this song ever kept my letters. He made sure I had very few physical momentos of him as well. But you can read all about that in my zine 101 Stories That I Want to Tell You. Haha, advertising myself in linear notes. So classy.

9. The Cure: ‘Fascination Street’
Yeah, you’ve probably heard this one many times before, but have you ever heard it loud enough? I don?t think I have. This is one of those songs that needs to be turned up so loud that all you can do is drown in it ? and “move to the beat like you know that it’s over”. It gets to be included here because the man mentioned in #4 put it on a mixtape (an actual tape!) of songs about lust. Ahhh long distance impotency, how amusing you are.

10. PJ Harvey: ‘A Perfect Day, Elise’
The boy from #8 gave me Is This Desire? with a note taped to it saying “Yes!” and I thought that was the most romantic thing in the whole wide world ever. Then he left, and I lost this CD, and when PJ played the BDO she didn?t play anything off this album, and for a while I started to think that maybe it didn’t exist at all. But of course it does, and this song is so awesome that it makes me hold my breath while it’s playing, and then I get all light-headed and that makes the song even more awesome.

11. Fur Patrol: ‘The Lover’
This song is so underrated. I put it on a compilation of all my favourite Nu Zulland Music for someone a long way away, and they said they loved it too, and that’s good.

12. Big Star: ’13′
Phew! After all the intensity of most of the other tracks on this mix, I thought it’d be good to finish off with something incredibly sweet and simple. This came from a CD called Pimpu wa doko desuka? (Where are the pimps?) that arrived in my old work PO box, and I had no idea who the hell it was from for a long time, because it had someone’s real name on it, when I only thought of them by their online nickname. So there you go.

It’s Friday, I’m in love at home
Last Friday night, I didn’t go out. Yes, I know. I was pretty sure that the world was going to implode too. But the one boy left at work who goes out drinking had some mysterious function on (he refused to tell me what it was, apart from a gay pride parade, but I don’t believe him. I am instead suspecting that he’s been drafted in to sell Amway), and I didn’t want to have to make contact with the ex-cows, because eww, boys have cooties (or BIRD FLU) and all that. However, my being lame at homeness provided me with the opportunity to do the supermarket shopping, tidy the house in preperation for vacuuming the next day and spend some quality time with Bart, so that was nice.

Big in Japan, alright / pay, then I’ll sleep by your on my side
It was quite exciting to get up on Saturday morning and start preparing for a Country Club whilst not being hungover. Yeah that’s right, I said morning. And I also said not hungover. You can faint now. But yes, I managed to be so organised that I even had time to go and have coffee with Karen during my errand-running to pick up Singstar Original, ’80s and Rock and bottles of Asahi and Kirin and sexy big cans of Sapporo from Regional Wines and Spirits. Can I just put out a huge big pile’o love for Regional’s website, which is so damn handy when it comes to planning Country Clubs since they list all their stuff by region? Even if the guy at the checkout did pick up my beer bottles and examine them to say “oh, this one’s made in Thailand, this one’s made in Australia…” while I put my hands over my ears and went “LA LA LA LA LA”. Apparently he also did exactly the same thing to Mike when he and Kart were stocking up.

I dressed up as a slutty schoolgirl (gee, that was hard), and went to pick up Lisa and Beverly, and then Karen who was dressed as a ninja, and then Anji and Delwin who were Harajuku girls. We started out Country Club in the dining room, where I handed out specially purchased pieces of paper and pens and instructed people to write Haiku and give Tentacle Porn a go while Karen and I threaded up sticks of yakitori (LITERALLY barbecued chicken, but we also made vege skewers) in the kitchen. What exactly is tentacle porn, you ask? Well I will answer by sucking Lisa’s “bandwidth” (heh) to repost images of her artwork. I hope she doesn’t mind. She shouldn’t, because you can’t even see her hands in these pictures:

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Then we ran out of chairs, as more and more people arrived, so I moved everyone through to the lounge to watch My Neighbor Totoro. I think people were perhaps a little too drunk at that stage to appreciate the simple beauty of the movie, and the absolute radness of the Nekobasu. Philly-steins (Hells yeah, cheese steak and beer. This is my special shout-out to Brad, although I don’t think he reads Hubris, so I can cut’n paste it into an email for him.)! But they were of course, drunk enough for karaoke, and oh how we all rocked that microphone mightily. Well, Katy mostly fell asleep. But others rocked it long and hard. Lisa as the last person to leave left just after 5am. In the time inbetween, glass was broken, many things spilled, so many wacky snacks were consumed, I punched Bart in the face after he took off his glasses and asked me to, and he showed Lisa his Chuck Norris tentacle. I’m shocked. SHOCKED. It was a fucking kickass country club, that’s for sure.

In the cold light of morning afternoon while everyone’s yawning cleaning you’re high tired

The next day I ran away to hide at my parents’ place instead of cleaning up, under the guise of feeding Pixie and doing laundry. I discovered that they had Live8 on their DVD hard drive, so I went through the whole thing, going “fucking wow” at many of the performances (Pink Floyd, Bjork, ummm some others) and scratching my head at many others. And I wondered why the hell they didn’t set out to collect money along with names, because surely they could have raised some amount, even as a side project. Yeah I know i’m nearly a year late to this party. Shoosh.

I’d been just about to cry when I left the house because I was tired, and hungover, and I couldn’t find my glasses. In the grand search for the glasses, however, Bart finally unearthed my long-missed camera cables, so I’m proud to present a selection from the past couple’o months, although you might be best to go look at them directly in Flickr:

Random people who were also at Kai in the City when we were there with Sarah’s Hens’ Party

The Chocolate Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooosse from Canadia at the Country Club

Karen, Bart’s friends and Bart at his Mexican party. As it says in the notes in my flickr account, one of the girls is wearing a note that says “in case of fire, I put out”, which I think is awesome

Russ and Smoo, looking somewhat worse for wear

Spent the afternoon whole day in bed, trying to figure out what it was you said
Queen’s Birthday Monday was dedicated to listening to Tommy which I had pinched from my parents’ overflowing record cabinet, and devouring The Method Actors, which is a book about a fucked up bunch of people living in Tokyo, and it makes me want to box up all my possessions and stick them in storage, and go live the high life over there, teaching English or hostessing or some such nonsense. Just as well I’m not a skinny blonde or I would actually be seriously considering it. I don’t know how I clicked over from hating Japan and all it stood for in my life to craving it. Perhaps it’s because in the book people meet at Hatchiko, and go to Almond Corner in Roppongi, and they draw maps that go past the 109 building, and Tokyu Hands, and Seibu Loft, and oh oh oh I haven’t finished the book yet, but I’m hoping that they will at some stage need to visit the New Zealand embassy so I can see it again through the author’s eyes.

Working nine to five nine twentyish to five thirtyish, what a way to make a living
I have now seen a cow-orker naked. Unfortunately, it wasn’t any of the ones that I want(ed) to see with their clothes off though. Stupid Peti suggesting another woman from work should join my gym. I hate people who talk to me at the gym. I’m there to escape, to replace the noise in my head with the Arcade Fire, or Shihad, or the Walkmen or Britney Spears or whatever else spins up on my ‘Work it out’ playlist, not make chit chat. Yeah that’s right, I said stupid Peti, and I’m glad that she’s leaving. You hear me, Rebbecca? Heh. Boo-urns to the last person on my floor that I have regular conversations with leaving. Sigh. But like, good for her and stuff.

Something’s cooking, I’m at the griddle electric wok
Tonight for family night, I will be making Papas Garbanzo for Bart and Smoo and Lisa. And then we’re going to play Pictionary, cos that’s what families do. Assuming that I do actually have Pictionary. I’m not sure if the board is in the box. Or indeed if I even have the box anymore. And Twister might not work in these jeans. Or even these genes.

One week and two days until my birthday. Woo!

I’ve been on a big Bic Runga kick this week. This is because I got Drive from the Smoke CDs sale for NZMM to replace my copy which Horrible Gay Jonny stole, and because it was the place in the fortnightly timetable where I have to upload the magazine which means literal hours of copying, pasting and deleting carriage returns at the end of every single line, and Birds goes so well with that (although of course being the album of last year it goes well with everything, especially lying on my bed staring at fairy lights and going “holy fuck, this album is unbelievable”). Then there was the very brief “OMG SQUEE, Bic Runga wants to be my myspace friend! She obviously didn’t think I was too much of a dick about her tights then!“, before I realised that it was of course Jessie. And then through her myspace page I saw the video for ‘Say after me’ and it’s a thing of beauty, and more importantly, I realised that parts of my hair are now the same colour as Bic’s, from Karen putting in blue black streaks very hesitantly for me on Tuesday, although I assured her that it’s impossible to fuck up my hair because it always looks awesome, assuming it’s clean and combed anyway. And to finish up with my Bic Runga links, it’s my birthday in two weeks and one day, so if you’d like to order me the vinyl, that’d be fucking awesome. And finally finally, how was the Brighton gig? As beautiful as you expected, or a severe let-down?

To contrast totally and utterly with the wonderfulness of Bic, on Monday I took Miss Lisa Fur and Anji and Karen and Bart to what is quite possibly the worst movie ever made in the entire history of the world – Poseidon. I hate people who talk in movies and at gigs and everything, but seriously, I’d had a half-bottle of wine very quickly before the movie, and it was just so fucking atrocious that I had to whisper stupid things in Lisa’s ear the whole way through, when I wasn’t falling out of my chair laughing, that is. Everyone should go see it. It’s like, totally awesome. And it cost $160 million. Puuuuuuuke. The next day when Karen came over to watch Serenity again and dye my hair, we commented that Joss Whedon managed to put more character development in the first five minutes of that movie than Poseidon had achieved in its entire length and the subsequent thousand sequels, if you know, they actually made them, which God willing they never will. And then I cried a little on the inside thinking of how many more adventures Captain Mal could have had if Joss had been given that $160 million instead (answer: at least three more), and then I died a little on the inside when I realised I was starting to think about what Poseidon would have been like if Joss had written the script. And now I realise that I am a total geek. Cos I’ve never had that revelation before, of course…

Today Heather is squeeing at me because I sent her flowers for her birthday, and she’s also quoting the text messages I sent her last Friday, which is making me laugh out loud so much I had to tell the girl I sit with. Stupid gaxy boys indeed.

I had a hot chocolate at Shoc yesterday when I caught up with my lovely Hubrette Frances, who is ex work, and oh boy, I must squee about that. It was pretty much pure melted dark chocolate with cardomon, and was like omgwtfpolarbear amazing. Sure, it cost $5, but my mouth hasn’t had so much pleasure in quite a while.

What else do I have to tell you? Oh, I remember now. You know that I didn’t join the gym with the active goal of losing weight because I didn’t want to get to a point where I was freaking out about not losing grams or whatever, well after I had that big “you’re shrinking!” speech from one of the trainers, I went in on Tuesday and got weighed, and I’ve actually put on seven kilos since I started in November. Cue the “it’s muscle!” speech, but meh, just as well my reason for exercising – keeping my mental health in better condition and sleeping better – have proved to be such total successes. But she measured me up all over, and so now when I go back in six weeks time for another go, I’ll be all like “holy fuck, I put on another 20 kilos of solid muscle and my buttocks are 2cm smaller”. Radsville. Exercise is funny. My pants are falling down, and I’m presuming that’s a good thing.

Anji reminded me last night when I was at her house for dinner about how my pants have also totally fallen down at Boulot, but like, not in the way you’re probably imagining, unless I already wrote about this, but rather because the bit in the button in between the two holes split, so off came the button and down came the pants when I stood up to go to the bathroom. Luckily I was wearing a skirt over the top, and was able to just discreetlyish kick the puddle of pant under the table. She made me and her friend Delwin vegetable lasagne and boysenberry apple crumble. Yum. My belly was about to pop. Her house is pretty, but I still think I like mine better because I have a dining room. And couches. Mmmm couches. Speaking of which, I haven’t cleaned the house properly in like, a couple of weeks. But don’t you worry, by the time 8pm tomorrow rolls around bringing it with Japan at the Country Club, it will be all shiny again. Honest. I spent ages at A-Mart yesterday picking up all kinds of wacky Japanese snackies. When I was rereading Number 9 Dream which is set in Tokyo, I found myself actually missing the city, rather than wanting to throw up at the thought of it. Perhaps this is what growing up means. That and I can laugh at the profile of this guy on Myspace on whom I used to have a massive crush on, but who was (of course!) part of the people who made 7th grade a living hell for me. Ha ha. Sucks to be him. Rocks to be me on a sunny day like today with my skin smelling all clean and good, and my boots currently rocking my universe.

I appreciate that I haven’t written in quite a while (eleven days? sheesh!), so bear with me while I try to address the many things that I want to tell you about, okay? This may take a while because I’m watching some terrible teen horror flick about virgins getting killed in some small town. Has Brittany Murphy made a good movie ever, apart from Sin City? I don’t think she has.

So, since then, what have I done? Of course I went drinking after work on Friday, even though I wasn’t entirely sure that we would, cos of the blah blah blah, but large bottles of chang were had at the Poon, and then we went to eat at One Red Dog, even though it’s only cocks who like their pizza, and it was funny cos then we went to Boulot (I was a little hesitant, based on the blah blah blah, but it was fine) and I even saw Stephen and expressed some Farrar bashing opinions, so that was amusing to me. The waitress offered us pizza and I felt so dirty for cheating on her. Later in the week, on Thursday to be precise, Karen and I went to Scopa for dinner, and Enzo was like “you can have this discreet table over there” and I was like omg, shame. Even though that was probably just me being paranoid. Scopa is fucking excellent, by the way. The girl waitresses were a tad lax (Water glasses didn’t get filled and I had to ask for more wine), but with all the food under $20, and so so tasty, and cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese and yeah, it’s superb.

On Saturday I took a big pile of CDs in to Real Groovy and got $160 credit, and then spent $180 on old records (The Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Fleetwood Mac, Split Enz, Madonna, The Mamas & The Papas), the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs on vinyl (‘Phenomenon’ is currently my play over and over song), the Punches EP on CD for Karen since I felt stink about not going to the gig with her the night before, even though she did come out drinking with us instead, and the Family Guy movie for Bart. Then I went to Dick Smith and bought a record player, wahoo. I took it home and realised it wouldn’t work with my polk audio speakers, so I went in to Noel Leemings and bought myself a new stereo as well. It’s so pretty and shiny, and also, it’s apparently a DVD player as well. Not that I have a TV in my room, but that’s beside the point.

When I got it all home, along with a new crate for my records, and tried to set it up, the record player was playing waay too quickly. Before you go accusing me of being a moron, yes, I did adjust the 33/45 switch, to no avail. Jessie offered me the helpful text advice of “stop listening to trance” when I complained it was going too fast. Later when Bart was taking a look at it for me, I realised that I’d put the rubber band on it up too high, and so we moved it down and everything played at the right speed,hurrah! Then I even taught myself how to select tracks. I’m like, pratically a DJ now.

That night, we had Bart’s Mexican themed party. Karen Lisa and I hung out in my room for ages playing records and iPods, before we emerged to share tequila shots and laugh at drunken 20 year old boys. There was much postit note abuse going on, and the room ended up buried in peanuts. The tequila wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Bart still ended up with huge grazes on his face though.

What else? Strange things this week have been having ex workmates sign up as Hubrettes, which is nice that they let me know, but it still meant that I had to go and check up on all the things I’ve written, and that meant I found this from April 2005 in my footnotes, which is very amusing if you read this and realise that was who the shiny was. In more real life/internet collisions, I got a myspace request (yes I know, myspace sucks) from this guy whose site I’ve been reading on and off ever since I found it in the referal logs for Hubris, and it turns out that I do actually know him already in the real world as friend of a friend. Yeah it’s Wellington, I should have expected that.

In other woah moments, on Thursday or Friday at work, I found myself going “holy shit!” when I heard myself on the phone to our technical services manager, and I was talking about a problem our client was having, and I proposed a solution, and an alternative solution, and I was like, so smart, and so on to it, like I’m actually good at my job or something. I know right, crazy. And I’ve been working really hard too. Of course, soon there’ll be like no one at all to talk to left. Sigh.

On that note, we had D’s goodbye drinks on Friday, followed by Sarah’s. I’d worried all morning that I was going to be in a crappy mood at it, but then when I went to the gym, the trainer was like “hey guess what? one of the other clients told me that you’re shrinking!” and I was like “what? Huh?” and she was like “yeah, you’re shrinking and she thinks you should be member of the month” and I was like well, I suppose the twins are perkier, and so we made an appointment for me to have another assessment next week, and then I was feeling really good about that, so I worked out extra hard, and felt just fan fucking tastic. Of course, the good mood didn’t last as long as I needed it to though, and when we were at the Last Supper Club and later the Welsh Bar I did wonders for the spirit of womankind and female empowerment by deciding that the reason no one was paying me any attention was that all the women around me were whores. Witness my text messages to Heather: um actually I deleted them, but they were full of “icantstandupstraitanymoreihatethosewhorespleasekicktheirassesformeihategaxyboys” typeness. And yes, that’s right, gaxy boys. Your guess is as good as mine as to what I meant.

Yesterday was a write-off. Today I spent the day in Ngaio doing laundry and reading the paper with my daddy. And crying at the Gilmore Girls. Finally! Fuck man! Took far too long. This week I have Poseiden tomorrow (yay free (bad) movies), dinner at Anji’s on Thursday and then Japan at the Country Club on Saturday. In preperation for it, I picked up my photo albums from Japan, and I can’t believe how long my hair and legs were. I was totally cute, and I wish more people had told me that.