Hubris.co.nz

Goddammit, when is someone going to actually punch me in the face and remind me that English accents aren’t actually as awesome as they make my loins feel?

So this week, my manager has been away, but luckily she gave me a very comprehensive list of things to do which has had me making many many calls. Do you know how easy a comms girl’s job would be if people actually answered their phones? Easy like woah is the answer you are looking for. But as a key feature of Comms is being patient, work has been busy in the sense of lots to do, and slow in the sense of much waiting for others. It’s that waiting that had me having lunch with Miss Kimberley today, so I could give her a copy of 101 Stories that I want to tell you, for her raffle, and now it turns out that instead of just buying some tickets, I’m also selling them. Go to her page for more details, or get in touch with me when I’;m more sober (It’s 3.24am right now).

Anyways, towards the end of the day, we were supposed to go to Concrete for a drink, but I went there with Mel last Friday and most of their cocktails were $20. Seriously? And not even a Long Island Iced Tea? No way am I paying that (although the $8 glass of rare and tasty white that I had was bloody good and also generous), so we suggested that we get a bottle of wine in instead, since our coopted lady wasn’t done (she was waiting for our minister to wake up, apparently), and so I went to Kirks’ and bought an $18 bottle of very tasty Sav. We had nice conversation and plotting for next week and stuff, then I wnet with one of Lani’s friends down to Ministry Drinks. It was Caribbean themed, which meant rasturbated pictures of Bob on the wall and cricket stumps. I sold two tickets and left to go to New World Metro for a $17.50 bottle of Shingle Peak Sav that I thought was $12.50, and a bus up to the lovely Miss Lisa’s house. She cooked me spinachy cheeesy pasta and we watched ANTM the recap episode, until we were joined by Dave, and headed down to Havana for Amber and Karl’s goodbye drinks. It turned out that I’d left not just my phone but also my wallet at Lisa’s house (I am so usually not that girl),so we cabbed back for it, and she stayed, so I went back and talked to many ex CWAers. And I was all woah.

Then I found myself on a couch talking to some British boy, so I made Karl change places with him, and he was saying he flew kites, and I was all “oh,that’s so interesting” so I bid everyone goodbye as they left and settled in to talk to the Brit. He was all blah blah blah and I was all “tehehe accent” and our knees were touching, and our thighs against each other, so I was like omg, makeout. He said he was a chef, so I was like “okay, so what would you cook for me? I’m drunk and kind of cute” (cos I know that he’d been staring at my cleavage like woah), and he started going on about crab, not in a vol e vant (sp?), but rather in a wonton wrapper, and I was like oh yes? saying that I’d never eaten crab but trying to imply that I was totally willing, but then he went to the bathroom, and I was all “okay, he’s got 10 minutes to get back here”, checking my watch, but then he was all talking to others, and he reawlly did remind me of Kateb’s ex, and there’s no way I’d do that, and I was like oh stink bro, you’re a chef, all I wanted was a hot beef injection, but I taxiied home and now I am here. Hurrah. l

Coldplay is welcome to try, but they’re not going to be able to do it, because as of today, I am officially fixed. I know this because today I bid my counsellor goodbye and didn’t make another appointment. Not forever, of course, because I’m aware I will have lapses, but for now my mind is content, and bubbling over with many ideas. Like the Wellingtonista bowling which starts tonight. And domestiscity. And cake tiers! And the need to find a small white plate with a gold rim and small pink flowers on it to complete said tier. She said she’d liked working with me and that I was very bright and clever. Awww.

My cough is finally dying out, which is nice, tomorrow I have an all-chocolate afternoon tea to go to, which is grand, and my nails are still bright green. And tonight I get my newly printed shirt from Glen-or-Martha, and we get to kick Clemenger’s ass. I’m just worried that the Wellingtonista is so sick that I might end up having to actually bowl. Eeek! That wasn’t supposed to happen. All I was supposed to do was moll it up. But I suppose as a fixed person, I will be able to handle bowling, if I need to, and as a fixed person, even if we don’t win (which seems impossible), I will take it gracefully on the chin. Hurrah for being fixed!

So apparently, unless you want to lie away for a significant part of the night listening to your stomach making noises similar to that of Homer’s when he took many a cannonball to the stomach in ‘Homerpalooza’ (one of my all-time favourite episodes), it’s not a good idea to swig most of the bottle of cherry-vanilla robotussin over the course of a day when it says “may have a laxative effect” on the label. Why didn’t my parents teach me this when I was growing up? But I had to have that much cough syrup. I had to leave a lecture on accountability in the public sector twice because I was coughing so much, and the second time I coughed so much that I puked. Fun times. That’s when I ran away to beg a chemist for the strongest thing she had. Now I have to find a new chemist to go to cos my bottle is pretty much empty and I only bought it yesterday and I wouldn’t want her to think I had a problem. Of course the good thing now is that since I missed most of the talk, I can’t possibly be held accountable for my actions. This means I can go to the Dub Pistols’ myspace page and listen to see if it’s their version of ‘Rapture’ that I heard and liked, right? Wrong. I’m not that much of a badass.

What are some other things that I wanted to write about? I had my first Creative Wednesday this week, but I was so sick that I decided to let myself sleep in until whenever I woke up, which was 1pm, and then I just sat on the couch coughing until Brad went and bought me vodka and fresh OJ. Before I got stuck in to making myself feel better though, I paid a visit to the new Ezibuy shop to get a shirt for the lovely Hadyn and stunning Martha to screenprint for our Bowling League. My other achievement as a project on Wednesday was in finally getting that all sorted out, via many mailings to our mailing list. As I said about my shirt to the list today: “It’s pink! And lowcut! So people will recognise me! All my sentences are going to end in exclamation marks today! I am high on cherry-vanilla robotussin!”. Heh.

But today I am not wearing a lowcut top because I also bought leggings which are so much less of a pain than tights, so I’m wearing my short pinstriped dress and boots instead. Hurrah! And my nails are bright bright green, which I’ve decided will be my new trademark thing. Hurrah nu rave! Heh. Oh my stars, why am I being so vapid? I really must add more bad influence websites to my list of things to give up for Matariki, since that’s coming up soon. Also my main Matariki resolution is to wake up with someone this year and not want them to run away ASAP. That’s what grown-ups do.

And on that note about grown-ups, the divine (and crazy for walking 100km) Kimberley asked me five questions, as part of a fad which all the cool kids are doing, so here they are with my answers.

How many nicknames do you have? What’s the story behind each one?

I don’t really have that many nicknames, apart from a thousand variations on Jo (Jo Burger, Jo Blo, Jo Jo Jo etc). Before I left high school, I tried to keep Jo in reserve only for my friends, so people I didn’t like had to call me Joanna, or my father if I was shitty with him, and so on and so forth, but then when I started working and leaving phone messages everywhere, it was easier to call myself Jo than Joanna because I don’t talk very clearly. I will still write Joanna if I’m doing anything where I can’t sign off “xojo”. When I went online in 1997, I called myself Astrid, so I had nicknames based on that – Strid, Striddy, and so on. Also in order to seperate me from the other one (no capital letters) I became known as Jo Hubris to match my domain. To me these days Jo Hubris is the fierce, brave and outgoing side of me, my super hero identity to Joanna McLeod’s Clark Kent, if you will. I am Jo Hubris when drunk, Joanna when sober. There’s also a Canadian who calls me Trouble but I’m not entirely sure why.

What is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do in your life? How did you feel afterwards?

Everything when it happens feels like the hardest thing EVAH (moving to Japan, moving to Auckland, that horrible drawn-out fucked up relationship and subsequent horrible drawn-out fucked up break up), but now I will say having Depression is the hardest thing ever, because once you’ve got to a place where you don’t want to be alive anymore having to claw your way back from that to not just a place where you’re surviving but where you’re actually thriving, well, I think that makes me pretty fucking awesome. And I say this as Jo Hubris, not Joanna, of course.

Have you ever forgotten to put on underpants?

How could you forget something like that? I’ve had to wear shortshorts instead of underpants at primary school when I ran out of clean ones, and once I left my skirt behind at a guy’s house when I ran away in the middle of the night (I had pants as well) cos I couldn’t find it in the dark and had to go back the next day to get it, but I’ve never forgotten to wear underpants, no. If it’s terribly terribly late in the laundry cycle, I might not be able to put on thunderpants though, despite having ten pairs…

Where/ with whom was the last kiss you had?
My last kiss would have been after the Great Blend in my bed, with the ginga who turned out to be an asshole (damn my weakness for English accents!). I don’t know if we’d actually kissed at Mighty Mighty, or in Cuba Mall or in the taxi before then or not. It was the hottest day of the year, we were sweaty (despite the late night swim) and bloody noisy. And I had the Killers on repeat because I couldn’t find any of my records (they were in the lounge).

I think that was my last kiss anyway. I do drink an awful lot.

What thing about yourself do you like the most?
I like that I am such a giving and accepting person. I can validate that statement too with things that others have said about me too. In fact, I spend a lot of time discussing it with my counsellor when I’ll be all “oh I am so selfish, I am so caught up in myself, I let my friend down this one time” and she’ll be all “so you let them down once and that means all the good things you do are wiped out?” and I’ll be all listing things and she’ll be like “hello, duh” and I’ll be like oh this is why I pay you, for that validation. Heh. No but seriously, I’m pretty confident that if you are someone I care about, I will accept anything about you, and I will do whatever I can to be there for you in whatever capacity you need me to be. And that’s awesome. Wahoo!

EDIT: Questions from the fiesty Miss Heather:

1. If you had the chance to wake up with a completely new personality, what would you be careful not to change?
I would make sure that my openness was still there – the way that I will accept people for who they are, the way I try to be completely honest with the way that I’m feeling, and my willingness to take on board new ideas.

2. Desperate for a shag, or frigid?

Seriously? Does this question even need to be asked? Did you not read the part above where I slept with a ginga? So to most people, I would be desperate. To a couple of poor lads who were around at the wrong times though, I suppose I may have appeared frigid.

3. On girls: greying, or dyed? Worst option for dyed? On boys: balding, or wig? Comb-over? Facial hair?

Greying or dyed is fine, but I’m not a fan of platinum blonde on most people. Balding is okay, but is best when shorn real short. I like to rub heads with short haircuts. Never a combover, generally never facial hair. A little stubble’s okay, unless you’re making out with it.

4. What do you think are the seven cardinal sins of blogging? Obviously this doesn’t apply to you, since you’re not a blogger.

Writing “Here’s a link and it’s funny”, and thinking that counts as content.
Apostrophe catastrophes.
Holding political views that are different than mine. Puppy-eaters.
Worshiping anyone that I don’t like.
Not writing about me as often as possible.
Refering to Hubris as a blog.
Constantly doing memes. Like we care.

5. What would the cover stories be on the first ever issue of your own magazine?

Ooooh, I adore this question, although I would have prefered you to say “will”, not wood.

Cover stories:
- The definitive guide to cocktails in Wellington
- How my website got me laid, paid and on display: an autobiography.
- Do get me started: a how-to for new media startups.

So if you want me to ask you five questions to answer, and you want them to be all probing and hip, comment or email me.

I don’t think I have any plans for this weekend. Someone make some for me?

xojo

So Cheney is briefing Dubya on the events of the day, and of course Dubya isn’t paying much attention because he’d rather be playing with his toy cars, but when Cheney says “…oh and three Brazilian soldiers were killed today in Iraq,” George looks up and his eyes seem terrified. “Dick,” he says, “how many is a Brazilian?”

Aha ha ha ha ha. Yes, that’s right, I created a whole Country Club theme just so that I could tell you that very lame joke.

But before there was Brazil there was driving out to the airport in the crazy wind to pick up KateH on Friday night, and then cooking her rare sirloin steak sandwiches in fresh french bread with tamarillo chutney and caramalised onions, and then being picked up by our (and everyone’s!) chauffer for the night, the everylovely Miss Lisa who took us to San Fran to see Sam Flynn Scott play with Lawrence Arabia. They sounded good, but I was tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired and coming down with a nasty sore throat and cough. Katie meanwhile had enough energy to get up and sing on stage.

The next morning she and I went and had brunch at Elements before picking up more party supplies, and she vacuumed while I made Brazilian rice and finished off the feijoada. Then we jumped on my bed (Smoo declined our invitation to join us – wtf?) to listen to the Wellingtonista on Public Address Radio, which you can download here and I giggled at the fact that I got bleeped once but I mostly sounded fairly articulate. The mp3′s not online yet, but I’ll post a link as soon as it’s up. I think that we sounded like pretty smart, on-to-it people, and that’s good, because that’s who we are. And I sounded less nasally and cackly than I expected to.

After that it was nap time before finishing off preparations and heading off to pick up Lisa and Jimmy. I was planning on dressing up all fancy in my hott green dress, and fishnet stockings, and my 4.5 inch wedges, but by the time I’d found my suspenders I’d lost my stockings, and given how low cut the dress is, I thought it was also a bit short (boobs or legs, not both, after all. Not that I’d normally go for legs, until I get to the bit where I write about my day today) so I wore jeans underneath, and didn’t risk breaking my ankle on my shoes. One day I’ll find an occasion to actually wear them. Honest. Maybe when I act out a Tori Amos lyric with someone sometime – “he liked my shoes / I kept them on”. Speaking of Tori Amos, I discovered that someone most unexpected is really in to her music, but I will keep his secret. I was very very surprised though. Anyways.

Brazil turned out to be really good. Caipirinhias are a fantastic drink, especially mixed with copious quantities of cerveza. Rice’n beans is tasty, and Jimmy had made some fantastic sweets that went along with his fact that Nestle stole all the cocoa in Brazil in the 1940s and imported mass amounts of condensed milk instead. Who knew that Nestle could be so tasty and so evil at the same time (well, me, since I’m currently writign a piece on Fair Trade – and calling it Free Trade 70% of the time. Whoops)? I had bought planes, trains & automobile lollies to illustrate my facts about Brazil’s capital Brasilia having been laid out in the shape of an aeroplane and built from scratch in 1960, and also the fact that someone else snaffled, that 40% of Brazilian cars run on ethanol made from corn. I also found tasty ranch-flavoured corn kernels in the scoopermarket bins that went with the theme very well. We didn’t get around to eating fried bananas, but I did scoop out a pineapple that Karen had brought along and serve communal pina coladas in it. In fact, as the night wore on – and oh lordy, did it wear on – many, many more cocktails were served up in that same pineapple and delivered to the boys who were outside playing “soccer” and to the girls sitting civilly on the couches using many many words starting with ‘C’ for some reason. I tried to pressure people into joining the Wellingtonista Bowling League, and since everyone except Barbara, Jack and Nicole were Country Club veterans, there were many facts to be shared. Blair showed up with his iPod so we could listen to CSS and Sepultura instead of our very inauthentic attempts at Brazillian music (One Million Dollars), but no sambaing was done.

Instead the night wound down around 4am with some highly amusing and rather disturbing antics that involved a lot of mocking, bluff-calling and toe-sucking. When are people going to learn that I will always call their bluff? And when I laugh at changes in morality, I am taking the piss out of myself, as I watch myself acting out in jest parts of actions that I’d used in previous lifetimes but then in a serious capacity. This is what happened in that bathroom. This is what happened after the Placebo concert. This is what happened when you so conveniently happened to leave your laptop at my apartment and came back to pick it up at 3am. This is what happened when the boy I was hooking up with at the wedding wouldn’t come home with me so I decided to substitute you instead. And it makes me laugh, and I will always, always go for the cheap laugh.

Sunday was very slow. I went for coffees and the paper and sat and read it on the front steps in the sun while the house was cleaned up behind me, hurrah! Brad came over and did the dishes on Monday as well, so it was like, easiest party evah! We watched a million episodes of The Simpsons off the hard drive and it made me remember how horrible the time around New Year’s was for me. Shirley came down visiting from Palmy in the evening, and we all went and had dinner at Cambodinia in Kilbernie (it’s Cambodian, in case you couldn’t tell), because I wanted something more interesting than the very bland Nahkon Thai in Hataitai. Then we played DVD Cluedo and I went and finished reading the Anthony McCarthen book that I think is called The Death of a Superhero but I’m not entirely sure. If only there was some system of tubes that I could type into that could deliverme the answer…

On Monday I was still coughing up my lungs – assuming that my lungs were dry like wheatbix, so I didn’t go to work. Instead I lay on the couch and napped on and off and moaned with sickness. Brad came home and cooked us dinner and I thought about breaking Katie’s legs so she couldn’t leave but instead I took her to the airport. Today to work I wore my new green dress from Torrid with my new black opaque tights and boots. The dress is, like all my torrid dresses, too short to wear over bare legs (but not bear legs), but I thought it would be fine with the tights since there was no chance of my vajayjay showing. I was super paranoid about the dress coming up, and the tights rolling down – although being footless helped them keep their crotch in the right place – but I like the way it made it look like I had legs a million years long as I strode purposefully down Lambton Quay to meet Jessie for lunch at Kapai. We walked down to the waterfront and sat and shot the shit, and watched the Water Whirler whirl. Good times. Tomorrow I have the day off, hurrah!

If I tell you that the highlight of my weekend was squeezing a lump on my arm and actually hearing an audible pop as it gushed, you might think that I had a very bad, very lame weekend. But no no sir, you would be wrong. My Saturday was totally kickass. I slept in until 2, and then rolled around on my bed for another hour listening to Public Address Radio. Since the only time I listen to the radio is for about six minutes as I get dressed on weekdays, and since that’s Raido Active, I’d totally forgotten how fucking annoying radio advertising is. But nevermind. I learnt something interesting that I thought I would remark on, but I totally can’t remember what it was. Nevermind. I did absolutely nothing else all day. Fuck it was awesome. Even my supermarket trip was just about buying snacks and not weekly groceries. The only person I talked to aside from Smoo in the evening and Sebastian who didn’t talk back was the person at the checkout. Bliss! I just read the paper, and caught up on assorted television that’d been recorded over the week, and veged and veged and veged. I didn’t even feel bad about not cleaning. BEST DAY EVAH.

Today I went for brunch at Fidel’s with Mum and Neil and Karen. There was no parking, and that was stressful, but once I finally made it in, I got to say hi to Fia, so that was nice. We talked more about going to Rarotonga for Neil’s 60th. I want to stay here, as I have no money anyway, and am completely reliant on getting a loan to pay for my ticket, so why not dream about staying in a house that costs $3000 a week? That’s even more than our apartment in Tokyo was! I also did washing, changed my sheets, cleaned the house and prepared a Beef Burgandy for our flat dinner party tomorrow. Productivity is nice.

Just in case you were thinking that I’d become too healthy, parehaps I should tell you about my Friday night. I went to Social Club Drinks, but Lani wasn’t there, and after talking to Jarrod just long enough to find out that he can bring Brazillian porn to Country Club Brazil (April 14! Come!) I felt like a no-mates, so I ran away to Arizona to find Lisa. Man, Arizona is a horrrrrrrible bar. But obviously not too horrible for Jimmy, whom I spotted as I cam out ofo the bathroom. So obviously Lisa and I had to get away from him, so it was off to Vintage Bar (underneath Zibbibo, part of the old police cells) to meet up with D&D, and to drink cocktails made with Absolut Pepper, Franjelico and Passionfruit. YUM! Just like Duffman, I was thrusting drinking the pain away. Jimmy showed up again, so we had to run away to Mighty Mighty. Lisa did her own running away then, as Dave did a little while later, but luckily Bart showed up to make up the magic three. We had many jugs of beer, and then Dyl decided to buy us pizza at Scopa. There were no tables for us for a while, except for the foozeball table, so of course we played. And then we ate. Tasty tasty tasty. Bart kept freaking me out because his moustache kept making him compliment me, so I decided to get my own back. When I came out of the bathroom, I pushed him back in his chair and made like I was about to start lapdancing, and his face was like “eeeek” and I was like hahaha, and that was hilarious. Then we went to the Southern Cross where really they shouldn’t have served us, and/or kicked us out earlier. Glasses were broken when boys decided to drink without using their hands. I fetched straws. Walking towards Mt Vic to find a taxi for me, I spotted a cute boy on Vivian St, and asked him to come home with me. And he did, and we “watched the simpsons together”. Yes, it was Smoo. And those quotation marks weren’t needed. LITERALLY. But let me pretend for a second that I have a chance of actually finding someone to sing Bloc Party songs to. I mean the happy ones, not the ones about empty hollow sex. Mostly.