On my birthday last year I woke up in bed with a nice girl, and then Anji showed up and brought us coffee, we all went to brunch and then cleaned Karen’s apartment. The year before that, I was fucking relieved not to be having vagina surgery, and was possibly still really stoked to have been felt up by a boy who was one the best pashes evah the night before, we went to Cafe Istanbul for dinner and I saw the Real Hot Bitches for the first time ever. And I think that last link does a good job of summing up other years, but I will point out that on the day I turned 20 I dumped my boyfriend (ala, the ASSCUNT of twitter from the previous entry) because he wouldn’t make an effort to see me, and ten years ago, I had a really sucky 18th birthday in which people I cared about said nasty things about me because I drank and (shock horror!) smoked pot (one of those three people is now one of my best friends, one of them does far too many drugs now, and the other is in Australia) and it turns out that another one was sleeping with the guy I fancied at the time. Etc. So today’s not really being able to sleep until after 6am and all the voices in my head speaking in Scottish accents ala Anna from This Life, then workshops, dinner at Caffe Italiano and Quiz Night is really not that stand-out-y.

Has it become apparent to you via this post that birthdays are actually very important to me? I hope it has, because I’m living in a flat who fail to notice that,and it’s weird. Actually, this is the third birthday in a row tat I’ve had in which one of them will fail to pay it any attention. Oh, but, on a non-flatmate note, I haven’t had a birthday cake of my own on my actual birthday since I was 17 – until this year, when Anji and Bambi bought over a beautiful delicious cake for me with champagne bottle corks. I’ll put in photos at some stage. And also creepy video of karaoke. Karaoke was SO fucking awesome, it was such a good night, I love me some friends, and also Yvonne at Longxiang who dealt with me having 18 friends at dinner and that not even being close to all of them. I’m not always entirely sure why anyone likes me sometimes, but at dinner I totally got it and it was lovely.

Also random blah blah. Something about sex. Oh yes, the twitters on Saturday night. I’ll tell you, I am SO fucking horny right now. Like, there’s the usual depression thing of wanting to lose yourself under someone, having them thrust aside all thoughts in your brain even for a couple of minutes, the validation of having someone wrapped around you, and then there’s pre-period hormones, in which everything is a turn-on (see above quizmaster love from tonight, although of course that’s not a new thing because of course I fancy the rare people who appear to be smarter than I) and oh man oh man oh man sometimes all you can think about is getting a pounding.

Then there’s the decision that if 27 was the year of debauchery, which it hardly was, then maybe I wil make an attempt to make 28 year of health (starting tomorrow of course). Even my taxi driver tonight asked me if I suffered from Anxiety, which holy fuck yes I do. I should defend myself in saying that he asked because he had it, not because I appeared totally buttfuck crazy, honest. Anyways. Full circle. I hide in bed to avoid the world (read: flatmates going “oh, not at work today?) then hate onthe world (read: flatmates) for not doing anything for my birthday. Yes, that’s right, you can’t win with me at all, anyone. Haven’t I made that clear already? I should I suppose clarify here: I fucking miss Kat’n Kane, and Bopha and Brad, and Kateb and Clayton and Simon like, so much. I am deeply deeply nostalgic for flats of yesteryear when they were more than just a collection of individuals under one roof.

Except, you know, if you give me a good fucking right now. And that won’t happen because I am far too anxious. Joy! Yes, cycle, yes, I will get out of it. Man, I am looking forward to sleeping tonight.

Oh, and finally, have i mentioned lately that I think Sebastian is gay? There’s always bitemarks on the back of his neck. I wonder if the gay cat world has bears, because he is big and hairy. But he is also poised and handsome and constantly grooming. But the cats he talks to during the day look like twinks to me. I reckon that’s why he kept trying to do Sammy when we lived with Iva, even though Sammy was actually (sort of) female. Ahhh cat sex, that’s a good note to end on, right?

Today, consequently, has been rather slow. I spent a couple of hours at Elements in Lyall Bay eating, drinking latte bowls and reading the paper very very slowly. Now there’s been Thai takeaway and Fred Prinze Jnr movies on the television. And my laptop that I picked up from the shop last weekend is STILL ticking and overheating, but I know that htey must have done something to it because now it says ‘Packard Bell’ on the screen the second time I turn it on. It’s an NEC though. And I say second time because the screen stays blank the first time, every time. Good times.

What else should I talk about? I can’t start my new job yet because my security clearence still hasn’t finished. This is a good thing though because it means I get to have a couple of days off first, wahoo! I can go buy some fancy schmancy clothes to match my fancy schmancy new offices down Lambton Quay way. I’m proud of myself for running around in my underwear last night. It makes me feel more prepared for New Year’s, and it also reminds me of the good times skinny-dipping in KateM’s dad’s pool with not a care in the world, or the olden days when I was regularly doing bad things with bad people when I’d get up and walk around the house butt naked and go read magazines in the lounge – if I knew Clayton was out, of course. Or open the curtains if morning sex was to be had, for the benefit of people in the office building across the road. Heh. My self esteem has been very weird lately, I had some total wigginsing on Thursday night, even though I knew at the time I was just being a dork. If only I’d never gone to that damn talk about Myspace!

Now it’s Sunday, and today would have been Oma and Opa’s 60th anniversay. To celebrate, we got together at my parents’ house and scattered their ashes together around a magnolia tree we planted. That sentence does nothing to describe the comedy of errors that the occasion actually was, with the unmowed lawn all wet and long, and the bugs biting me. The containers with the ashes in them didn’t want to come open for a long long time, until finally Cousin Andrea cleverly pointed out that there were latches on the bottom that could be open and the ashes shaken out. There is something a little bit strange about shaking out your grandparents like salt and pepper, passing the containers around so that everyone could have some time with each of them. But the tree – once we managed to get it staked – is really pretty, and I think it was a nice thing to do. Afterwards, we watched super8 home movies that my parents, my uncle and Oma had all shot in the seventies. The clothes were fabulous, and we were all such fucking cute kids (yes, I wasn’t alive in the seventies, but I whined enough that we got out some ’80s footage too). Mum and Aunt Diz were running around in bikinis and looked hot. My dad was in a floral speedo and despite his womanly hips he still had a good body too. Also, eww, did I just say that? The whole effect was a litle bit like watching many many L&P ads. Or perhaps looking at current fashions. Or super 8 footage played behind the Phoenix Foundation…

I also grabbed Deuchlandriser, which is a board game in which you travel around Germany, and also some large beer mugs. Germany is on October 14, the day after Dimmer, and I’m so very happy because Jessie may be at it. And also I’m very happy that I will finally get to see Dimmer. Assuming that it hasn’t sold out yet. Woo!

Oh, and one more thing that I wanted to talk about was how nice the goodbye speeches for me were, and how genuine they seemed. And also, the best part about them was that they were surprisingly similar to my answers in many job interviews lately about what others would say about me – my ridiculously large banks of trivia in my head, my dry wit and my social skills. If I hadn’t put my card in Bart’s backpack along with my purloined coffee cup (shoosh!), I’d put in actual quotes. But yes, very very good times were had. And everyone who left their computers on will be looking at my face when they get to work as their desktop image…

Wednesday
I flew up on Wednesday 12 July in the afternoon. My shuttle picked me up way too early and my flight got delayed so I can happily report back that Wellington Airport, while better-looking than Auckland, is incredibly boring. Still, finding a $25 Whitcholls voucher to spend on magazines is nice. One of these days, I really must get myself a subscription to Q since it’s the only magazine that I read which I totally respect. I mean, apart from Pulp, of course, but I hear the music reviewer for that genuinely likes the Spice Girls, so what would she know? I was staying at the Comfort Inn again, this time in a one bedroom suite that captured all the afternoon sun, so that sucker was hot. Crazy Aucklanders thinking that they’re in winter when they so aren’t, everyone’s heater was turned up way too high. The suite didn’t have a bath, unfortunately, but the shower was oh-my-stars-I-think-my-scalp-is-being-caressed-by-angels strong. And it’s always nice when no one has written on the walls of the bathroom in their own blood (Smoo is so fucking feral. That’s not part of my Auckland story, but seriously, who the fuck does that? Bart cleaned it up for me when I expressed my total and utter disgust. I wish I’d taken a photo first, because it was actually kind of funny).

First up on my Auckland agenda was meeting Annabel for a drink up at the Odeon. I hadn’t seen her since 2001, but we’ve had many an online conversation since then so it didn’t seem too unnatural. Once the Odeon started giving us the dirty “We’re closing. Get the fuck out now” eye, we went over the road for another drink at Galbraiths, and I decided that I should platonically set her up with Heather, since they live near by each other and have a lot in common.

After that, it was back to my room to try and get a nap in before the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Holy crap that gig was overflowing with gaxys and hipsters! I’m pretty sure that every tight pair of black jeans, little op shop dress and Karen O haircut was in attendance. Drunkenly. And noisily. Holy crap there are few things I hate more than drunk 18 year old girls. I don’t understand why the fuck someone would pay over $60 for a concert ticket and talk the whole way through it. I had to restrain myself from punching people. I should have moved away, but as I was feeling so very old – I arrived while the Mint Chicks were playing and instantly cursed myself for forgetting ear plugs -, I was standing at the back behind the padded barrier and laughing at people who tried to walk through it. And wishing that I was Karen O, of course. I liked it when she screamed, because all the stupid bitches shut up for half a minute. They played songs I didn’t know, and drew out the beginnings to many things, and she writhed around under pieces of shiny material. I waved my fist in the air for ‘Phenomena’ and the long-intro’d ‘Y Control’ and got teary when they came back for their encore with ‘Maps’. I also spent a lot of time thinking about other gigs I’d been to at the St James, including the Roni Size gig where I took e for the first time, and the True Colours gig when I didn’t realise I was going to fall for the boy I’d just left sleeping. Afterwards I thought about taking the bus back up the hill but I couldn’t stand the gaxys anymore so I taxied back up for more glorious showers, even though my feeling-oldness had kept my moshing and therefore my sweatiness to a bare minimum. Man, no wonder it takes me so long to write these kinds of entries, I go way too overboard with details. Nevermind.

Thursday
The next morning I had brunch at Benediction with Elisabeth from Pulp and this time I successfully managed to keep from calling her Carla even a little bit. She said nice things about my reviews, which is always pleasant to hear (who’d have thought that good feedback would be like, good? Woah Jo, you’re out of CONTROL), and loaded me up with many more CDs, including the new Muse, which made me squee with joy. But on the inside of course, because I was pretending to be a cool Aucklander. A cool Aucklander who was nevertheless very impressed when the electronic bus timetables on K’Road proved to be quite accurate. I headed off to Grey Lynn to meet up with Jessie, and so I got to see her very posh offices. Then we went for lunch at Delicious, because I’ve always heard good things about it. Holy fucking crap, that place is delicious. We had bruschetta, and then I had roast beetroot ravioli with smoked ricotta, and every mouthful was like a thousand orgasms. We lingered long over it, and then gave the dessert cabinet the glad eye. After some quick agonisations, we decided to share a piece of pistachio praline chocolate ‘cake’, on the grounds that while their tiramisu also looked amazing, it was more common. The cake was pretty much like tiramisu anyway, with the added bonus of pistachios. Wow. It was like dying and being brought back to life and being fed really fucking awesome sweet desserty treats, without having to die and be brought back to life. My similes are fucking rocking today, I must add.

She dropped me off at Real Groovy so that I could cash in $50 worth of booksellers’ tokens on records: You are free by Cat Power, Funeral by the Arcade Fire, and most exciting of all, Horses by Patti Smith, which was the reason I bought a record player in the first place (now I can totally satisfy all my own fantasies – well as far as sitting on the floor playing myself Patti Smith records goes, anyway. Although my record player is a little too high up in order to do that comfortably. Perhaps I should rearrange my room). Of course I ended up having to spend twice as much as I had in tokens, and the same thing happened in Farmers when I was using vouchers to buy more foundation and also lip gloss because goddamit, I haven’t bought any in a very long time, thank you very much, and no I don’t have an addiction, fuck you. Then I went up to Rakinos to meet Sam for a coffee. Well, I had wine, he had water, and he talked a lot about sales techniques. It made me laugh.

After that it was back to my hotel to be incredibly disturbed by Juice TV (why oh why did anyone let Panic! At the Disco record a song that contains a line “haven’t you people heard of closing the goddam door?” in such dreaful all over the place timing? Their phrasing is like a thousand times worse than the Manic Street Preachers or Silverchair, and that’s saying a lot. Not to mention emo as fuck. I wish my hair was emo so that it’d cut itself. Heh), read, and nap some more. I love holidays with their rich nappy goodness. Around 7.30, I headed off to Annabel’s house where I had arranged to meet Heather before our dinner. This meant I got to meet Elton, which was very choice, and the girls got to meet each other too, instead of just stalking online. We had wine and watched Rockstar and Heather and I were having such a good time we asked if it wouldn’t be too weird if we got our food and ate it there. Annabel pulled out a folder of menus, so we took that as a sign, and Heather went and fetched us Meekong. Mmmmmmoney bags. Mmmmmmmmmmm so much tofu. Mmmmmmmmm goodness. Thanks for dinner Heather – it was an awesome birthday present. Eventually though we had to tear ourselves away as we were due to meet KateH at Match Bar to watch Sam play.

Sam had said that Match has a crappy crowd, but myyyyy god I hate the rich white trash even more than I hate the faux emo gaxys. Not that I judge people on sight or anything, but why the hell are you bothering to order Moet by the bottle when you’re so drunk that you break your glass every time you go outside for a cigarette? We were sitting close to the doors and counting broken glasses, and there were at least eight over the course of the night – from a fairly small crowd. Some of the guys got so drunk that they had to be carried down the stairs. Not pretty. It was lovely to catch up with KateH. We sat and talked for a long long time in egg shaped chairs, and then once they were done playing we went to Denny’s with Sam once he was done trying to get KateH to buy in to his pyramid scheme. By that stage it was after 3am (Did they play ’3am’? I’m pretty sure there was at least one Matchbox 20 cover. Ahh covers, good times. KateH and I laughed and laughed and laughed) and Auckland was drowning in mist. You couldn’t see the Sky Tower, or even more than ten metres in front of you. It was fucking excellent. So pretty and spooky (*).

Friday
Friday had been booked in as Heather’s and my Cultural Day, but I was feeling a little sloooooooow because I’d got to bed after 5am. I met her up at Altezzano and nearly fell flat on my face a couple of times. That whole walking thing is kind of tricky sometimes. We decided that the counter food on offer was not enough for people who’d had salty $18 tequilla cocktails the night before and so we made our way down to Galbraiths. It was about 11.45 at that stage, and Galbraiths was shut. Oh the horror! We needed our greasy NOW! Or rather THEN! Instead we strolled down to the House of Knives to browse amongst the shiny objects (but not the Shiny), having our minds boggled trying to figure out who would own a $1600 knife block. I mean, yes, good kitchen knives are important, and I’m gutted that Horrible Jonny stole my chef’s knife from the famous samurai sword village, and I wish that Del had gotten around to steeling my current knife before Bart broke up with her, but $1600? Woah. We strolled back up to Galbraiths and joined the throngs – and there were throngs – who were also doomed to waiting outside because it was late in opening, but eventually we made it in, ordered large plates of meat, and took our beers out to the back garden. The last time I was in the garden there, it was my last day of work at the Med School and I flashed my cow-orker so that I could win our staring match. The time before that was before the Placebo concert which is a whole diferent era of life (dates! and bedding! and being asked to be someone’s girlfriend!), and boy, Auckland sure likes to stir up the memories huh? It was a gorgeous day. I rolled up the sleeves of my long sleeved tshirt as we basked in the sun and the beer made me come up with the funniest/stupidest joke I’ve come up with in a while:

Q. What’s that noise coming from the BeeGees’ herb garden?
A. It’s just the chives talking.

Ha ha. Heather had chives on her shanks, obviously. Obbbbbbbbbviously. Our master plan called for us to be going to the museum right about then, but we weren’t sure if we could be bothered walking all the way to the domain from where we were at, since we were between two kinds of public transport that could have gotten us there, but then I had the genius idea of busing down to the art gallery and taking a link from there afterwards. Of course, my genius didn’t actually extend to remembering that the 27*s don’t go down Wellesley St, and so we got off on Symonds St and went for a very big long walk down and around Albert Park (and of course on the bus on the way home we realised that if we’d stayed on the bus we could have avoided that). Still, gorgeous day and walking is good for you. The fact that my feet had been screaming at me since Wednesday was irrelevant. I like the quiet echo of the art gallery, and I’m awed by the fact that they have stuff that’s almost a thousand years old, but there were no new exhibits in the old gallery, and then by the time we were done with that, our feet were too sore for the new gallery. We had coffee on the pretty terrace up amongst the trees away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and decided to call it a day then.

More nap, more Juice TV, some vodka purchasing, and then Jessie came over for a drink. She found me in my pyjamas, because they are pale pink with skull & crossbones on them, and what is more awesome than that? Pretty much nothing. Except for italics. We had a bit of a goss, and then cabbed it up to K’Road where my darling social secretary KateH had arranged an AUT dinner for me at Saigon. I even have photos of it, see?:

Brad, who was up in Auckland to shoot a short film for his course, Shirley who was off to Europe the next day, and Nigel who was still flush from winning
48 Hours and you can view his movie here

Andrew-from-Hamilton, KateH. Not pictured: KateH’s friend whose name I can’t remember. Or me.

I think the woman at Saigon was a little bit in love with me. She kept touching me. Maybe that’s just because – as usual – I played The Dominator and chose all our food. Mostly I did really well too. The noodles were a bit unnecessary.

After dinner, we went to The Musket Room in Ponsnobby. It was pretty crowded, but we managed to find ourselves a table and Brad ate one of the mozarella balls that they brought to our table, thinking that they were complimentary, until we got kicked out of that room because apparently it was a private function. We managed to find ourselves a big table though, and Clayton showed up, hurrah!

Shirley, leaving the next day. Clayton, not hating my guts.

We had some good talks about his career, and he’s doing all these amazing things which is awesome. I also invited him to Amy’s Pirates & Cheerleaders party for the next day, because he’s always loved of the young girls. I think Brad’d had a few drinks too because he gave me a big talk on what an awesome writer I am, and blah blah blah. I say blah blah blah not because it’s ever boring hearing about how awesome I am, but rather because I’d had a drink or two myself, and so I can’t remember all the correct wording, rather just the sentiment behind it. I really liked the Musket Room, apart from the private function kerfuffle and a few girls who were a bit too foolishly dressed (White summer dresses? Really? Sienna fucking Miller called to say you look ridiculous). They were playing ‘Fascination Street’ when we arrived, and then the music mix continued to be really electic, with lots of new wave and also indie and general goodness. Plus it was so dark that I had to read the cocktail menu by the light of an obliging young man’s cellphone. But all good things come to an end, and I found myself back at the hotel watching O.C reruns before I knew it.

Saturday

Jessie and Heather came to get me at some ungodly hour of the morning, and we set off for the French food markets somewhere in Parnhell. Jessie’s magnificant parallel parking skills came in handy, and I nearly died queuing for ages in an incredibly busy cafe to get pretty dreadful coffee, but once I had the cup in my hands, and a couple of quick wine tastings, things were much much better. We tried a multitude of tasty tasty things, talked to scensters and finally settled down with big containers full of hot gnochi. Gnoochi? I can’t spell. But I can eat. Oh boy can I eat. I can also take pictures, although Jessie doesn’t like to be on the internet, so I will show you a picture of Heather instead, because she never complains:

I did mention that it was early morning, right?

I can’t remember what I did on Saturday afternoon. I must have done something, right? Oh yeah, I went and camped out at Benediction again and read their magazines and drank their much better coffee. Heather had said that she’d come to Amy’s party with me, because I didn’t think I’d know many people, but then she wavered, so I promised to pay for the taxis and buy her vodka, and that we’d only have to stay an hour if it was terrible (although I knew it wouldn’t be) and so she duly showed up at my hotel to do semi shots of Russian Cocaine with me (licks of instant coffee, shots of vanilla vodka and then licks of sugar not off a lemon since we didn’t have any), lace me up and take photos of me dressed up as a pirate:

Mary-Kate, me, Ashley trying to escape

We cabbed out to Amy’s (“Give me an ARRRRRRRRRRRR”), found our way down an impossibly long driveway, and much red pirate punch and good times were had. I got to talk to JSR and Annette lots, and Amy had three costume changes. Her speeches were done in the form of “I have never”, personalised specifically to embarrass her, which was fantastic. I talked to new and interesting people, and Clayton showed up and did the same. And then I KICKED ASS at Singstar. I was undefeated on the night, and achieved my all-time personal best score of 9200 on ‘Material Girl’. Woohaa! Thank you so much for having me Amy, even though I’m sure I overstayed my welcome. I do that a lot.

Sunday

On Sunday the lovely Jessie picked me up so that I could have somewhere to leave my suitcase all day before she took me to the airport, and in exchange I bought her brunch at Deve. Heather popped in to see us so that we could giggle at her gossip, and then she took me to her house where I sat on her bed in the sun, ate home made cookies and dozed a little for a while, before I went down to Occam to catch up with first Penny and then Bopha. Hurray! And then I cabbed to Heather’s to watch the Gilmore Girls and umm, now I really have to wind this up. Flew back in the evening, Anji picked me up. That’s all. I thought I had other bits and pieces to say, but apparently I don’t. I <3 the 09 though.

“The day before Parliament is set to hold a conscience vote on the Prostitution Reform Bill, the Herald runs a front-page story about a convicted rapist visiting a brothel. This isn’t news. The story isn’t about police catching Michael John Carroll red handed committing another crime (remember that under the double-standard current law, prostitution isn’t actually illegal, just solicitation). This isn’t a serious debate about whether or not he should have been paroled. The story is just an absolutely sickening editorial attempt to sway the vote away from law reform. By linking sex work with rapists, the story intends to imply that sex workers are entirely responsible for the moral decline of society. The front-page placement of the article, despite its lack of newsworthiness (it happened “some time”, not yesterday), clearly demonstrates the editorial position the Herald has taken on attempts at law reform. If prostitution remains illegal, the Herald will have more opportunities to publish those “12 year olds sell themselves for a can of corned beef” moral panic stories that it so dearly loves. Heaven forbid that such a conservative paper should actually support a bill that would improve people’s lives instead of scare mongering to raise sales.” 200 words only

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So it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Well, when did you last hear from me and what did I say then? Ahh June 12, the night before my birthday party. That was a jolly good night, with people dressed in bear costumes (!), much gossip and scandel and me lusting after not one but two gentlemen. I had so many friends there, I wasn’t able to talk to anyone really. That was a shame. Oh well, a good time was had by all, except for Kara, but really, why is that such a suprise? It’s not. The following Tuesday (the 17th) I had my dinner at Canton, and that was lovely dovely, except for losing my wallet and feeling like no one cared about that fact. It was found later, and of course people cared, as I am constantly reminded.Yes, people care about me, I get that. I just feel really isolated a lot lately, and have discovered that it’s far more convinient and possibly a little more mature to push bottle caps into your arm so that they leave marks for a couple of days rather than scarring up with hot knives in hidden places. I’ve been questioning my current meds a little bit too because I feel sometimes like I’m at the stage where I can’t be bothered with people at all (re: Clayton being upset at Kara’s storming off at my party), while at the same time I’m feeling lonely and scared and freaked out. I guess it’s just generally weird when you hear Live on the radio or get books about monkeys and it brings to mind “You took advantage of me. I don’t know why I bother with you”.

It’s not all that though, there’s also gigglestyles at boys in bands who I saw play on Saturday at the Kings Arms for the ‘Here Come The Bulletholes’ release party who I have crushes on and I get to email them and say that they look sexy on stage. And then there’s that I got to talk to Tom McRae last week (thank you soooooo much darling!) and he was absolutely lovely. English people should be banned from saying “erm” instead of “um” because it’s just SO DAMN CUTE. I sounded like a fawning sycophant in the interview, but oh well. How could I help but be anything but?

I’d like to think that Iva has settled well into our flat although I’m sure she finds my disappearing chequebook a little annoying. Our computers are intemittently networked, so I can access her huge amounts of TV and movies. Oh how in love with Bernard Black I am! In other flat gossip, I’m incredibly pissed off with Johnny for buggering off to Queenstown without paying his rent, leaving me almost literally penniless and unable to purchase tampons or painkillers. GRRRRRRRRRRR. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Daniel is coming out of his shell more and more, and although Lance’s fetish for bringing home white picket fence pailings is more than a little disturbing, I adore him, he’s very fun.

Other things going on in my life right now? I think my Masterplan is never going to come to fruition. I’m annoyed with my failing lack of ambition, and the fact that I just churn out shit at work – when I’m doing anything at all, that is. It’s more than a little disconcerting to think of all the people I told about my brilliant idea, and how supportive they all are, to know that that’s going to be swept away in a tide of self pity and bleakness. I think that it’s probably quite likely that I should be going back into counselling (so.much.anger), but the prospect of starting all over again is more than a little daunting.

I miss having people love me. Even if I don’t deserve the love – but surely everyone deserves love? I know this entry is more than a little pukefest, but just like Bobby Brown, that’s my prerogative. There were so many more narratives that I meant to include but have forgotten. Probalby something to do with vidoes. I watched ‘S.F.W’ which I fucking worshiped when I was 15 (people fucking to “Teenage Whore”, Stephen Dorff walking in slow motion through a mall to “Creep” – what’s not to like? Oh, and Amber Benson is in it! I adore Tara. Oh Buffy, how can you be coming to an end so soon?), and it made me feel very nostalgic for a time when I thought I had the right to be “angry at the system, maaaan”. I have no idea what the hell I thought was oppressing me back then, but I want it back. I wanna jump up and down and scream “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” in the mud again. But instead, I will just watch more videos and cry in joy at the end of “It’s a wonderful life”. Is this growing old? I guess so. Shit, I’m 23 now. Time to call out the knackers.

I’m wearing new Napolean mascara Karen sent me (although it’s weird – mascara? rather than eye shadow or lipgloss what I asked for? Surprises are cool.) and I feel like it’s making me open my eyes extra extra wide. That’s no bad thing.

The hot German girls are staying with us – again. I knew they were coming up cos they stayed with my parents a couple of nights ago, and inadvertently stole their toothpaste. Allison is also still here, and Bo’s definitely staying, so that fucking rocks my world more than I can express here. This morning she and I went to the press preview of “Spirited Away” which is by the same people as “Princess Momonoko” – not that I’ve seen it – and it was amazing, so totally dreamlike. Cheesy happy ending, but I guess that’s a good thing.

I forgot to go to Summer Series, so I missed out on DImmer which sucked, but we listened to it out on the porch under the faerie lights, so that was good enough. What else should I talk about? Hmm. Oh, KateH is going to lend us a single mattress for Megan, so that Ammy can get her bed back, and then therefore give Bo back her bed. And apparently Jonny has been paid so he might buy a bed and we’ll get our pullout couch back – either for the ballroom or the lounge, I haven’t decided yet. We have at least four boxes of empty bottles out waiting on the curb, that’s terrible Muriel. And very shortly, I will mobilise the troops and get us to all sneak our extra rubbish into everyone else’s bins.

I can’t get my bond back from the last flat til Clay comes back from America cos we both have to sign the release form, but then I will buy a TV, hopefully before a certain gentleman arrives in the city, because fucked if I would actually want to CONVERSE with him! And speaking of other Gentlemen, well… last night I was all like, no hope, but I have renewed optimism. God bless you young lady, even if I did call you last night and tell you that i hated you.

2. I have also read Harry Potter 2 and 3, and they’re okay, but they seriously don’t stand up to C.S Lewis, although the whole kiddie-Internet-Porn aspect of the Chamber of Secrets was amusing (oh come on, young girls SHOULD NOT be writing in diaries to random strangers!)

3. There’s an ad for our flat up on the channel z website, clearly stating the cost’o the rooms, and that there’s OSP. I got this email about it: “Hi Joanna Just seen your advert on the channelz site for a flatmate. Im 23 yr old prof male. Is there off street parking? How much are you charging for the room? Im a great guy to have around on those mornings when your car wont start! Cheers” On second reading, I realised that his email address is wrx_channelz@* . I’m not very enthusiastic about the idea of him moving in, eh.

4. We had our last ever Party At The Slab. Much sangria was consumed. It was fun.

6. The Departure Lounge has put in booths now, yay. However, they’re now serving Allpress instead’o Gravity. Semi-boo – it’s still nice though.

7. I would like back the three hours of my life that I just gave to Pearl Harbor tonight please.

8. Clay and Bo have both started boxing stuff up. WAAAH!

9. I very very much need to find some flatmates ASAP. Gorgeous house in Balmoral, and all that good stuff. Tell your friends. Email me. Thank you.

10. I got rather drunk at the Admin lunch on Friday. Office ladies oggling waiters – scary.

11. If you’re planning on sending me Xmas pressies (or my late birthday present even) you should email me for my new address, or send them to my parents’ house, cos I am moving out in ONE WEEK’S TIME.

12. I dropped my cellphone in a glass of water. D’oh. If anyone has an old vodaphone they wanna lend me til after Xmas, I will kiss your feet. I miss txts, especially Tom, like crazy.

13. I can’t even afford Therapy anymore. Ick.

Today I went to Rumba! It was hilarious, and also super choice because of the following reasons:

Oh look, Jo’s talking real trivial issues, she must be feeling better!

And actually, I am. even if Cipramil leaves me with a dry mouth and totally inadequate orgasms and weird dizzy spells sometimes. Oh, plus I have a totally burnt thumb. But I suspect that has more to do with Guy Fawkes than any other mental affliction.

So where were we? We talked about the coffee, which sucked. I trained today to do the WebDev Guy’s job while he’s away on leave. He put a sign on our office door that has the Communications Administrator Job being done by a “Joanne” McLeod. Apparently this is his reaction to Bridget telling him off for spelling it “McCloud”. I was like “Skew, you just gave me all your passwords for the webserver, are you sure you wanna say bad things about me?”. I hope he knows I do actually like him, even if there is a little “friendly” tension between me and Terri’s replacement. I’m still infamous at work for doing so well at the quiz on Friday night, and of course for the Hula dance that went along with it.

I worked from 10-3pm today, serving at Skew’s leisure so that he could teach me before he gets all mad panicy, and then I went for my eye appointment, which is very heavily subsidized by my organisation, as long as I made it clear that I need glasses to operate my VDU. I made it very clear. The guy was all young and nice, being a final year Opotometry Student, and it turns out that my glasses are WAY TOO STRONG on my left side. He was nice but too close in some parts, and I felt like I was supposed to pash him, because really, that’s the only time you’re supposed to hear people breathing like that. And then we got to the room where to try on frames, and he put the first pair’o frames on me, and he was like “yeah, that’s so it” and we tried on lots more pairs, but he was right, the first pair really suited me, even though they were $300 frames, and we couldn’t find anything nice that was cheaper (“I have expensive tastes!”) plus when someone is so convinced that something looks that good on you, it’s hard to argue, isn’t it? I told him off during my (incredibly long) eye examination cos he kept laughing at me when I was so obviously wrong reading letters, and he was like “hey, it’s boring to be so clinical”. He also got an abridged version of my full medical history because he damn well asked for it, and yes, thank you, I appreciate why I’m having dizzy periods, and I’m paying $120 an hour to sort that out, and I appreciate that you’re taught to do this, but seriously, get back to writing me out a new glasses prescription. Thank you.

And then this evening there was Quiz, but when Clay and I got there, who was sitting outside but *IV (damn, I wish I was into full name disclosure styles, cos it’d sure as hell make things easier) and I was like umm “okay, I’ll go get the beer” because i am LAME and because he totally wouldn’t even look in my direction at Justin’s last party, and then KateH showed up, and eventually Peter (Hi peter, you’re choice even if you’re not scrawny in a tight tshirt anymore) and a friend of his, and that was our quiz team, although Bo and Leo put in an appearrence for a little. At one stage, I went out to the bathroom, and *IV was out having a cigarette, so I kicked his chair, and said hey, and said that he didn’t need to be afraid’o me cos I didn’t mean to cause trouble at all in any way. He said he was back with his g/f and I said that I knew that, and that was cool and I understood, and he was like, “but you were the first girl since her” and I said that he’d told me that at the time, and then I told a kinda lie and said that I was in love with the boy who’s party we’d hooked up at (a lie in that it wasn’t LOVE as such, but definitely some kinda big feelings) and he was like “what, Justin?” and I laughed my head off and I was like “don’t you remember – we were at a party in Herne Bay” and he was like “ooooh” and I said that he was quite probably the nicest boy I’d ever had sex with, and I’m sorry that I’d snobbed him the first time I saw him after we’d had sex but I hadn’t expected to see him again quite so soon, and he was like “I got a snub in the Hub” which was actually really funny and we were both like, mutal admiration for how cool each other was, and he said that he’d got the note I left him in his letterbox that said he was a total sweetheart, which is true, and he said I had great taste in music, and we had a laugh, and just parted on super terms. So that was lovely.

Meanwhile, back at Quiz. OH MY GOD! Okay, so every Tuesday, we call ourselves “The Slab” on account of it being our apartment name, right? Well, tonight not only were there “The SLAB” but there was “Peanut Slab” as another team, and also “FUCK THE SLAB” as a team name. ATTITUDE! Anyways, we won, and so that’s a $50 tab for us to drink next Monday when I’ve finished my first exam. No more Quiz nights at Vesbar anymore, at least not over summer. He took my number and said he’d call if he started working somewhere else, but Meh, I doubt that’s what I would like it to be, then him and me and KateH played with Sparklers in the Quad. It was pretty choice. ANd then I went up to Kelly and Rowena’s and we set off fireworks on their roof and I burnt my hand. I went home cos I was so drunk I could hardly stand up anymore, especially in the rain, and Kara and Clay and Bo and Leo were all watching Harry Potter, and there were Nachoes on the stove, so I was stoked, and that was cool, except, my god, maybe kids have mucher longer attention spans than I do, cos I so could not be bothered concentrating, so after an hour and a half, I headed off here.

But doesn’t it make you happy? Look, Jo all conscious and stuff – and like, sure she’s drunk, but that just means that her OOS doesn’t hurt as much, and yes, I am, I am looking after myself, MUM. ANd soon, I will post you a rant about happiness, and also about Therapy. White MiddleClass Girl Angst etc. Love you all – well okay, that’s a lie. Love all of you who you know who you are, and care about some of the rest of you, and are glad some of you read me, adn would very much like some of the rest’o you to fuck off now please. Thank you. Xojo.

Anyways, so my day was sleeping in, until Bopha made me and Clay watch ‘Sholin Kids’. Fuck that’s a brilliant movie! So good. And then her and I went to the swoopermomarket adn stopped by to see KateM (KateM kicks ass!) and yeah rah rah. Then i got Emma to drop me at Jeremy’s, cos I was going to his house for dinner. He had a fucking hot english boy staying with him and I think we all know hwat suckers for accents women are, so yeah,my panties were well moist. ALSO! him and this other guy put “well” before all their adjectives, and you just know I”m well going to be doing that from now on.

Much later (ie: two and a half bottles later) me and Jezza took a Taxi to Verboten on Ponsonby Road to wait for everone else. People came later and that was cool. Jezza bought me a fucking nice cocktail – he didn’t know what wsa in it – he said he said to the bartender that he wanted a gorgeous drink for a gorgeous girl, and fuck it was good. Many many drinks, and lots of intense talking. Jezza is super funny and we have lots in common. Heh. Anyways. I guess evetually someone someone decided that we should leave Verboten, and so I found myself inh the backseat of Ryan’s car (he of the long distance and kumikumi pig) and I was completely disorientated, But eventually we were queueing outsidea Wyndam Street Bowling Club, and I was like What the fuck? why am I queieing to pay $15 to listen to HOUSE MUSIC? So I went down to Queen St, walked up a bit and got a taxi home. And here I am. HI! HELLO! HI! Rah rah rah. There’s like, missed oppotunities and shit, but I think this is better in general, me being umm fuck, altruistic and shit. Yeah. Colour me DLT.

1. Oh really, Crushmaster? Someone has just all of a sudden developed a crush on me using “ae” before my domain name? and “gs”? Really? Oh, silly me.
2. When the fuck did I originally design this page if I just used “indigo” as a BGCOLOR instead’o a sexi-hexi decimal number?
3. Am I going to be sick tomorrow? I guess I am, right?
4. One of them had better have been sober-driving it home, or I will be SO mad.
4. I’m sure you knwo me well enough by now to click as to why i haven’t written in ages, if I haven’t written in ages.
5. Bo+Clay+Me flatdinners kick some ass.
6. I don’t think I’ll go to quiznight anymore – I think that ship has sailed. Plus, I have a supershort attention span, and oh yeah, I dunno. Some rant about pointless semi-rockstar semi-crushes etc etc. He’s still real cute though.
7. Clay and I, staggerign up the street, punchdrunk on $50′o liquor with just KateM and Nigel, and he stops to look at some guy, and I figure he’s just angling for a fight cos I thought the other guy bumped him, and I’m like all, oh no, BUT! BUT! It was goddam LEYTON. You know, the first flatmate that I ever kicked out, cos he wasn’t a team player and I wanted Brad to move in.
8. Brad McCormick, calling me on my cellie from work in Whakacarnie after I txted him going “OH MY GOD THE DRAMA” cos he knew I was talking H&A (I love our psychic bond) and he wanted a full description. Oh Kirsty and Kane, when will you find happiness together?
9. I really want to smoke pot with you RIGHT NOW, even if it means that you don’t end up talking at all after that.
10. Should I try and hold out for 32 points?
11. I had a big talk with Joseph today, and feel much better about my PR Practice paper now, even if we probably did quite badly in our report (oh, sorry Haley, I should email you, but to be perfectly honest, I’m more than a little squiffy right now, and I do have semi-proposal type things to write and send you, and then I’ll email you. Oh, that’s not like a “will you marry me?” thing, just in case the audience as a whole didn’t get thta).
12. I’m still loving my haircut and the other Hayley (with two y’s, not one) by default as well.
13. Who was teh fucking mongrel that listed me on crushmaster in the first place? No one has crushes on me. At best, you’d like to put your penis in me for a little while, in one way or another, or just engage me in witty conversation. I know the score, chief.
14. Welly and some valuable chillout alone time tomorrow, yay!

Grr students and interviews and mentors and work and grr and grr and grr. GRRRR! Grrr $218.42 to get the phone reconnected. Grrrr going to work where Terri was also having a bad day. GRRR at ANZ. Grrrr at the HR lady calling me Love and then saying that no, they still hadn’t made up their minds. Grrrr at the memory of the dead mice in the cupboard. Grrr at dynamics that just don’t work. Grrr at the mean receptionist at my doctor’s who told me that Dr. White refused me a new prescription but didn’t say why (yeah, like I can afford $50 for another consultation right now – if my blood pressure is raised, it’s her fault!). Grrr at thousands of clippings to do, adn then GRRRR at problems with avmed stuff. Grrrr at getting rained on the way home. Grrr at Clay being sprawled out on the couch watching some stupid movie when I just wanted to be alone. Grrr at hearing Kara while i was hiding out in my room, rereading the Blind Assassin for the trillionth time. <!– homage mode: He follows her into the empty room, concrete floor bare except for the mattress, piled with messy sheets and pillows.  When she sits on the windowsill, he pushes her against the glass and kisses her intensely, until they move to the mattress. When her moans that she had never heard before have subsided, he tells her his tragedies, and she kisses him every time words fail her. You intrigue me he says, I feel like you’re holding me at a distance.  And she can see his eyes casting around her room, trying to find some clue to her, but there’s nothing, nothing but her Blind Assassin poster on the back of her door.  What’s that about, he asks, pulling her in tightly to his chest.  It’s about lovers who lie in bed telling each other stories, she laughs.) –>

But they went out, and I drifted in and out of conciousness as I have been doing a lot lately, and then I got up to eat spinach soup and watch Buffy. KateM came over half way through it, and asked a lot of questions, but she’s allowed to cos she’s cool. Oh, and I finally got my invitation to Justin’s party, so I can put that slab’o paranoia aside. After KateM left, I ran around my room trying on various clothing combinations. Fuck I need a needle and thread. The slit at the back’o my black dress has split basically almost up to my slit, so I won’t be wearing that tomorrow (eww, did I just use the word “slit” instead of “vagina” or even “panties”? Dirty). Tomorrow is, of course, our industry evening where we all try to impress PR bigwigs and get jobs. I debated wearing my cleavage top, but it doesn’t cover the hole in my bright pink skirt which I really wanna wear, so I think I will stick with my stretchy black skirt, providing it dries in time, damn excess soap powder, and my boots, of course. I figure standing at least 6’1 is one way to make an impression.

Oh, and what with today being you know, THAT anniversary, kinda, except a day ahead, it also means that today it’s also a year since I started taking the everlovely fluox. Of course, I stopped in umm February I think, but I still think it was like an important anniversary for me, cos that was such a fucking hard thing for me to do, and it of course kicked off my whole “why can’t I feel anything? maybe I should have another drink or some more cock” phase. Fun times. And I lost someone I cared about. And etc. Oh inncidently, I think I still have about a month’s worth of fluox, which I’ll trade anyone for a month of estelle35, or some more straight codeiene. I also have voltarin and brufen and maxolon, in case you too have excessive nausea. I like my pill drawer, although most of the pills in it don’t do anything, but some of them, like the brufen and the fluox are pretty colours, and it makes me feel like I’m some late sixties housewife.

I got heat stroke today, which is pretty fucked for early spring. And when I say heatstroke, I mean a sun-induced headache that has withstood drinking lots of water, sponging myself off, naps, beer, nurofen and coffee. So that kinda sucks.

This morning I went to the chemist in Mt Eden to try and get a 3 month repeat on my Estelle35, but they noticed that the repeat expired on the 7th, and said I could have it but the government wouldn’t pay for it, which would have made it $25.95 instead of $3 (incidentally, the only good thing that Jenny Shipley EVER did was subsidise the pill), so I figured I may as well go back to the doctor for a subscription cos that’ll cost $20 but hopefully they’ll give me a 6 month script. The chemist was like “well, you had an extra month written in to the prescription in which to pick it up” but of course, I got a month’s free Diane35 (there is something SO insidious about drug companies giving away free pills) so I’d actually been on it for 4 months, hence why I missed picking it up on time. Because you care. So anyways, that annoyed me.

And then I went in to tech to do an interview, and it wasn’t all that fabulous, so I’m dubious, but hey, and I sat around til one waiting to see if I had another interview to do, but I didn’t, so I went home and decided to go shopping. Bo was like “oh, I’ll come with you and get some shoes” but I was like “nah, I’m just going to the ‘burbs” cos I was all grumpylike, and wanted some alone time. So I got a new top, which is the lowest cut top that I have ever owned. I’m pretty excited.

although I’m guessing at least 60% of my readers have seen everything anyway

And then since I was driving home through Greenlane (past Garland Road and I went “awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww”) I got to shop at Vege World as well, so that’s good cos their produce is much fresher and less smelly than Silverbell. Incidently, does anyone know a good cheap fresh vege place nearer the city?

This evening I put on my top to show Bo, and Clay came in the room and wasn’t really looking at me and was just talking away, and then he looked over and he was like “oh hello!” and kept perving for ages after that. I asked if it was too much, and he said no, so that’s cool. We all went out for coffee, and Bo made me drive down the evil street off City Road in neutral. It was fun. Then we decided to go to Mezze, so we could sit on their lovely lovely deck with the candles and faerie lights, even though we’d originally intended to go to Ponsonby. I like hanging out with my flatmates.

Back at home, Bo and I sat around untangling a big ball’o jewellery of mine that I’d fished out of my drawer tryign to find a suitably dangly necklace to go with this top. I started to watch Lolita, but 1. I didn’t like the book and 2. I fucking hate Kubrick movies, so I decided to go to bed instead. I’m still debating whether or not to wear this top to a PR function. According to Maz, they’re just big pervefests where Joseph lines up the pretty blonde girls to greet the lecherous fifty year old men he invites, but then again, this year might be different, since it’s being organised by students. Hmm. We’ll see.

I’ve had whispers of conspiracy theories going on in my head, which really serve just to demonstrate what a paranoid paranoid paranoid girl I am. Nevermind.

Hmmm, what have I been up to lately? Working yesterday afternoon, but Terri was out sick, and Bridget’s away for a month (dammit, I nearly called them by their real names) and I didn’t have very much to do and I couldn’t move further without help from Terri, so I did do some more work on my zine. It’s nine pages long now, but I figure I have to make it at least 16 to make it worthwhile doing, and I’m finding that really, there’s not all that much more I can write. I’ve already outsmutted myself, I think (oh, for those of you who’ve just tuned in, my zine is called “BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS”). Still haven’t found out if I got the job yet or not. It’s stressing me out more than just a little bit.

I was naughty and wagged my HR Tut this morning, but luckily it turned out that it was canceled anyway. Joseph was more than usually disturbing in our PR Practice tut, so Haley and I ever-so-grownuply wrote notes to one another, mostly about DiscoDan and I think I caught her up on my conspiracy theories and she just laughed at me. She also wrote me a note saying that I should tell Clayton she thinks he’s hot and that he should give her a call if he ever breaks up with Kara. I laughed. Oh, I’ll interrupt me with this side story here – Clay is a little grumpy with me tonight, cos he was telling me a story about this guy who tried to pick him up on the bus, who kept quizzign him about his background and what school he went to and stuff, and so when Clay told him, they tried to compare names of people they knew from there but they had no one in common, so Clay went “oh, but I know (umm forget his name) from Queer Nation”, so in the retelling of it I was like “oh of course Clay – all gay people know each other and they all watch Queer Nation” and so he’s shirty with me for accusing him of stereotyping, but oh well. Typical self loathing!

Anyways. Where were we? Oh yeah. So after our very long plenary meeting, Haley and I went to the Playhouse cos we thought we mighta been meeting the fashion students for an interview, but we weren’t sure cos Haley had sent out the email and not checked it recently (grr!) but they didn’t show, as I kinda expected, so we just had a drink and did much gossiping instead. Then I went home and phoned Momma, and booked plane tickets to Wellington. Yes, I’m going back there, even after declaring loudly many times to many people that I never ever wanted to again. Here’s why:

1. Ayna had invited me to her birthday party on the 18th of September.
2. We’re having a PR social down there to meet and greet (and apparently get leered at) by prospective employers.
3. Mummy and Daddy are going away for a week on the 19th, so I will get the house to myself, plus since I’m flying down on the 18th, I will get to see them for a day,which is probably all I can handle of them.
4. Karen and Anji and my KatieB and my FattySi are all down there and I miss them all and wanna hang out with them big lots.

So now I just have to get the time off work, or rearrange my days somehow. Luckily I do have a day in lieu up my sleeve.

This evening James picked me up and I went to see the team named “Stupid Horse” play indoor netball. It was fun! And it made meeee wanna play, although I haven’t since the glory days’o Standard 4. I have no doubt that I would suck at it – a lot. But still. Oh and Kate – I didn’t say this tonight, in fact I didn’t even think of it, but then I was watching Juice, so guess what? TEHEHEHEHEHEHEHHE. Love you baby.

Bo is still staying at her aunt’s, babysitting her cousin, so I rang her earlier today cos lord knows I can’t go three days without her ray of sunshine in my life. I’m so glad she moved in. Speaking of people that I like, have I said lately that I miss you? And I miss you. And you.

I have been having major crazy dreams lately – last night’s involved the cast of Home and Away, and a supervillan who was placing poisonous evil nasty creatures everywhere. It was fucked up. And oooh, I also dreamt about Amy and Andeee, so I really must give them a call sometime. I have a lot of catching up to do, I’m really quite slack huh?

Yesterday I came home grumpy from work and ended up sitting in my room for an hour cos I didn’t even feel like talking to Bopha, and then it turned out that she’d been feeling semi the same way, not because of anything personal or anything, but just a general bad mood. But then that passed, and we went to the supermarket together, for grocceries and liquor. Then we played Scrabble. I kicked her ass at the first game, and then Clay came home and won the second, even after they allowed me to use the word “cockzone”. It was choice, and Bo drank a whole bottle of wine which is the drunkest I’ve ever seen her, and we gossiped and wrote in the bible lots afterwards.

Today after my HR lecture, it was horrible and rainy and I had a two hour gap, so I decided to go to the movies. After much deliberation, I decided to go see ‘Signs’. Now, you know how staunch and tough and how movies don’t generally scare me at all, they just make me laugh? Well, I was really tempted to leave half way through, I was so scared. And of course, i’m fucked up in that I love being terrified, so I had a bigass grin on my face the whole time, I’m sure. Just as well I went by myself. And then of course, I was an hour late to Corporate Communication so people were mean to me.

This afternoon I discovered that a guy from ASIJ found my name on classmates.com and emailed me to see what I was up to. Now, that is well and truly bizzare, cos I don’t think we ever had a conversation, but this is the email I sent him back:
Yes, I remember you – presuming I’m thinking of the right person – you won a whole box of chocolate bars in the mega prize raffle thingie that Mr Gibson’s advisory did, and then distributed them out to our math class in an act of real generosity? I could go and dig out my yearbook to see if I’m right, but they’re probably in the attic at my parents’ house and that’s in a whole other city, and besides, sifting through ASIJ yearbooks is really NOT one of my favourite things to do, strangely enough.

But anyways, it’s rather bizzare to hear from you, but cool all the same. The only people I’ve kept any form of contact with from ASIJ are Melissa Chaiken and Beth Dodd.

These days I am completing a Graduate Diploma in Public Relations to follow my Bachelor of Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology, in New Zealand. I enjoy it a lot. I’m also working half time doing PR for the medical school here, which is super. I still have fond memories of grunge music, and I still have long hair, but other than that, I think I’m probably (hopefully) completely different to who I was at ASIJ.

What about you?

Thanks for your email, and take care yourself

Around 5.15ish whilst I was watching H&A (note to self: email catchup details to Brad – why are all of my friends all on holiday at the same time?) Jezza rang to tell me that I had to go to Quiz Night cos he’d found us a Sports Expert, since that’s always our weakest area. So of course, I headed down there, after a SUPER amusing phone conversation with KateH (Tehehehehehehehehehehe!) although of course I am madjealous that she got to meet Kelly from HJT. Anyways, so there wasn’t actually anyone else in the bar besides our team, and a couple of other people who left, and one random other guy, so the bar staff decided that they didn’t want to put up bartabs as prizes, and therefore effectively, the quiz was canceled. However! The wonderful Quizmaster (I do actually know his name now, but “Quizmaster” is such a much better title) suggested that we all compete against ourselves as individuals, and everyone put $2 for the prize pool. I won $12, proving once and for all what a geek I am, since I beat everyone by like 11 points and that included scoring 0 in the sports round. But still, it was really cool.

And tomorrow I get to sleep in! Although perhaps I should get up earlish and either go to The SilverBell for veges or finally go and get my work ID, just in case things get all nasty and stuff with this job that I’ve gone for. Bridget would have left for America for 4 weeks by now, but apparently they’re going to make their final decision via a conference call.

Oh my god, if there’s Carnies in the Tane, then there’s Sheer Total Carnage in Matakana. You have to excuse me if I sound a little rambling or crazy – I have an ear ache and also I was woken at 6.30am so that Andy could get back to Auckland in time to go to church. I kid you not. But we’ll take the narrative back to yesterday, which gives me more time to figure out if I wanna include some things that happened last night that I am very not happy about or not, or if we should just leave that in the “really someone else’s business even though it really shoulda been MY business” basket or not. Did you know that lately I have been all about figuring out which baskets to put things into?

So anyways, since I was informed on Friday that the party was to have a SchoolBoys/Schoolgirls theme I went and bought me a tie, which I paired with my tight black shirt, my denim skirt (which I rolled up at the top to make it shorter), my burgandy maryjanes and some black and white striped socks which I borrowed off Bopha. She put my hair into two bubbles on either side of my head, and I loaded up on blusher, eyeliner and blue eyeshadow. The look I was after was Slutty Schoolgirl, since I have never worn a uniform in my life, and since I was very chaste in high school. Clayton wore his hockey uniform – purple top and short shorts. Mmmm lovely. It felt really weird to be wearing a skirt that ended above my knees, but I was feeling good. I felt even better when I got into Andy’s car and Jody handed me a mizone bottle for the trip filled with vodka lime soda. Ahhhh liquor from water bottles, how very highschool! So yeah, the hour plus drive up to Matakana was really fun, singing along to crazy lionel ritchie mix tapes that Andy had made. It was crazy to go out through the country and drive through Warkworth and everything.

When I got to the party, straight away KateM was like “DID YOU SEE HIM? HE’S HERE!!!” and I was like “no way!” and she was like “he’s totally here” and you’re like “who who who?” and I’m like, *I, of course, the first boy I ever pashed, the one who told me that my hair was choice and who I was in luuuuurve with for a year after we scored, and who i never talked to again. So that was very exciting, and naturally, there were carefully orchestrated trips to the kitchen to try and get a look at him, but I felt like i was being too obvious and felt dumb, so instead I just went into the dining room where they were all playing drinking games and asked what they were playing and was told to pull up a seat. Nice. So we played Musical Instruments, which is like Sexual Connotations, except that, obviously, instead of sexual actions, you play pretend instruments. Eventually, I had to do *I’s instrument, and he was like “right back at you, Jo” and I was all !!!!! oh my god he remembers me! Heheheheh I am such a geek sometimes. But of course, me being me, that nessecitated lots of whispering to Jody and KateM and Clayton in excitement afterwards.

And then there was assorted dancing, and more drinking from the mizone bottle and all that sorta shenanigans, and lots of bonding with Jody, and talking to various people, until at one stage, *I came up to me, and was like “hey, I thought I’d be social” and he said that he remembered Clayton from the Gomez concert (you remember how I bitched that Clay had got to see *I and I hadn’t?) and then Clay took the hint from me and drifted away. He was like “so..” and I was like “wow, you remember me – I’m so impressed” and he was like “yeah, and I wanna apologise for anything wrong that I might have done to you – I’m a lot nicer person now” and I tell you, I just about swooned. He was still really really tall and spunky looking and we chatted for ages and ages. I told him he’d been the first boy I’d pashed and so of course I’d had a crush on him, and he seemed all sorry, and I was like “oh don’t be! you didn’t do anything wrong except not call when you said you would!”. And he apologised again. My god, I know it was like, six and a half years ago, so I’m just totally completely impressed. And just a little smitten again, he was so charming. I told him like my entire work history, and he told me about what he’s been up to, and about Sarah and Dylan and yeah. Eventually he was like “well, I’m going to get a drink” so I was like “it was really cool talking to you” and he’s all like “oh, I’ll talk to you later!” and I was just yeah, a little puddle on the floor. I’m so impressed with my ability to chose well at age 15! Although really, there wasn’t much of a choice. But that’s beside the point.

Anyways, that was definitely the highlight of the party, cos pretty much everything went all downhill from there. It was a very very very very very weird night. Do I want to spill my beef? Yes, okay I will. Because it super super super bugs me. You know Jody, my good friend? The one who was trying to organise to get me to score *I again, cos she knew how much of a crush on him that I used to have, and how much I was lusting after him that night, and blah blah blah? Well, yeah. You can guess what ended up happening. And the goddam house music just didn’t stop. It danced on and on and on and on. And there were some cool things that happened too, but thre were too many weird situations, and I ended up taking herbal sleeping pills and codeiene cos the music just wouldn’t stop and consequently had very fucked up scattered dreams on the couch and then was woken at 6.30am by Andy taking me home. And I’ve lost my denim jacket and that really fucks me off. I tried to sleep in the back seat, still wrapped up in my duvet, but I had to make him stop so I could throw up on the wall of a gated community in Albany. I felt like it was a political statement as well.

I showered and went to bed as soon as I got home, but eventually Bo was being a loud crackwhore cos she didn’t realise I was home, so she woke me up. I went to KateH’s to watch Dawson’s Creek, and then we went to Occam for some excellent food. That’s all.

If the phone rings one more fucking time, I swear I am going to hurt someone – but of course, I’m on the net, so HAH, it can’t ring. Take that, motherfuckers. I’ve taken to barking “THEY’RE NOT HOME” every time it rings now, since it’s both Clay and Bopha’s birthdays and the phone has been ringing nonstop and it’s always Clay’s horrible family members. If I wanted to be a receptionist, I would not have spent three and a half years getting multiple qualifications. I probably would have dropped out in sixth form.

So, today is Thursday and the last day I wrote was Monday, so I guess I should feel obligated to fill you in on my week. After all, you’re still my captive audience even if I haven’t heard from you in forever – well, I’m guessing that I am, and if you’re not reading this, then you won’t be able to let me know that I’m wrong, so really, it’s a win-win situation, kinda but not really. But anyways.

Tuesday: I had to get up earlish to get my ass over to Newmarket where we went to Westfield’s Nuffield Street Project’s headquarters to listen to their communications woman talk about their public consultation programme and how successful they have been and how they’ve scaled back the “mega mall” project they were gonna implement, so that was kinda really interesting. Then everyone had to hop it back to campus for Human Resources lectures, and then I went to the library to start looking up my hypothesis – “HR communicators need to have a thorough understanding of the implications of Sick Building Syndrome in order to protect their workers”. This is a reminder once again, children, that you should go to classes in order to avoid the lameass topics (not like i did today). After that, I had coffee with Thomas (because just between you and me, I do still worry about him, and also because it’s cool we’ve got to a stage where I can send him text messages going “BOYS SUCK” and he will text back offering to beat people up for me). Later that evening, after much wardrobe fretting, Haley picked me up and we went to our client’s hat shop opening in Kingsland. I managed two and a half glasses of bubbly and conversation with an ex-lecturer (“that scary guy is still looking t you! he’s giving you the glad eye!” – haley) before Haley had to go to work and I had to go and meet Jezza and Renae at the pub for quiz night. There, tragedy struck – I realised I didn’t feel like drinking! Shock horror, and so consequently, we didn’t win. It felt dirty and wrong and soiled.

Wednesday: Hmmmm, I almost had a total memory blank here, but then I realised that Wednesday was yesterday, so in that case, I can remember. Half a day working, doing name badges and other such things, making sure that our big major event next Saturday is going to go smoothly. I was also told that I’ve been shortlisted for Terri’s position and will probably have an interview on Monday or Tuesday. Gulp. I also spent my time emailing KateH and asking her to make the final decision on an issue for me – BradM told me to ask (one of) the boy(s) I fancy out for coffee, while Jezza says that that particular boy isn’t interesting enough for me and I need someone with more spark – but she claimed she’s too much of a fence sitter. Inncidently, when I say I wanted her to make my decision for me, that’s not actually what I meant. You may or may not know that the way I work is that I make my mind up about something and then canvas opinions from my entire social circle until I find someone who agrees totally with me and then I get to use them as like, my expert witness. We all went out to dinner (like, twelve of us) at the Canton Cafe in Kingsland for Clay’s birthday, cos we’d finally managed to get a booking, adn we made it our mission to last there for at least an hour – it was almost two before dinner was finished. The food there is SO GOOD. But the company was real wack. Leo kept trying to get me drunk (cos sure, that’s hard) and I could see KateH and Jezza discussing me over the other side of the table, wheras Morrison was even less subtle with her appraisal of the particular boy that KateH and Jezza were appraising (their verdict – perhaps a change from the usual drama boys would be healthy for me). I like lazy susans. I also like all the food at Canton. I ended up paying $20 as my share of a feast, which included the rest of us paying for Clay and Bopha both in honour of their birthdays, and a $10 tip. Good good good value. It’s funny though, that Clay’s friends are all cheap and don’t bring their own wine, wheras all of my friends did. After that, we got taxis and went and danced and danced and danced at Retro. I got shirty cos of course goddamfuckingKara put her handbag down in the middle. I HATE DANCING AROUND A MOTHERFUCKING HANDBAG! DO I LOOK LIKE I WEAR WHITE PANTS? Grrr. Anyways, eventually we all went home, and since he’d been flirting iwht me hardcore all night and everyone was whispering “there’s definitely chemistry” to me, I decided to sort things out once and for all with the boy. When we were standing outside my building by ourselves, I said “Pop quiz!” to him, and he was all “umm, okay.. I dunno if I’m good at these” so I said “it’s a simple yes/no question” and he said he could do that, and so I said “are you at all interested in me?” and he was a little taken aback, but he said no, and I said that was cool, and he was like “wow, that was out of the blue (OH REALLY? ARE YOU A FUCKING MORON?) you’re really straight up, aren’t you? That’s really cool” and then Clay came up so I just laughed and reiterated that it was cool. I did end up calling Tom to talk about it later though, because hey, no one likes rejection. Especially rejection that makes you feel like you’re totally not fanciable by anyone. If I want to make myself feel better about it, I can think that maybe it has something to do with the fact that I ruthlessly shagged his best friend the night we all met (oh yeah, cos thinkign about that stage’o my life always makes me feel better). Meh. At least I’m not wasting anymore time on him, and he’s cool enough that hopefully, we’ll still be cool.

Thursday: that being today, of course, was making yoghurt&peach cake for the flatties, more work, and too many goddam people ringing this evening for Clay and Bo. I got to see Emma this afternoon though, which was choice, cos I’d just been thinking about her before I got home. And I wanted to have a catchup chat with both KateB (who was just on her way out) and Anji (except she texted to say she was out to dinner with the whanau) so I didn’t talk to anyone. But I might go have telephone conversations now, and so that will be good. I have a big meeting at work tomorrow to discuss all the final details for this big event, so I guess I gotta get to bed at some decent hour so as to be able to cope with the things I gotta do.

On Saturday, I meant to leave by 9.30am, but instead I ended up getting up then, which meant I left at 10.30am, cos it took time to shower and gather up glam rocker clothes and accessories and my princess dress and bedding and bundle it all into the back of my car and fill up with bagels and petrol. But yes, I was on the way by 10.30am. It was a gorgeous lovely wonderful day, and I was all happy and smiley as I drove along. It only took like an hour and a quarter to get to Paeroa, home of Gil and too many people who listen to Sublime, apparently. So many small towns, so many memories of people who came from there. And there was Waihi, where Shirley took me to one day, so that was choice and I tried to spot her old house as I sped along, but I didn’t – I did pull off the road to text her though – I’m so glad that there are text links to the UK. My wrists got a little sore eventually from the driving, but it was all so sunny and nice, especially the island-like driving just outsidea Tauranga. And then as I was retuning my radio, I suddenly heard Brad’s voice, so I realised i must have found Bayrock and that Whakatane couldn’t be too far away, and it wasn’t. 3.5 hours easy driving – loverly.

So I met Brad’s (intellectually challenged) flatmates and giggled lots, and then he took me on a tour of the town. It actually took a lot longer than I thought it would, and he took me up over the hill to a lookout point where we Parked (i’m using the capital letter there cos we were both like at the same time “hey, we can go Park” although of course we didn’t actually make out or any monkey business like that – I may lick Anji’s belly from time to time but I’m not actually incestuous) and took photos of the pretty view, and then went down to Ohope Beach where he used to live. So that was all cool. Then we went to the completely authentic Whakatane experiances of The Warehouse for masks and Pak’n Slave for food (I got baked potato chips, and let me tell you, they were nice, but they just didn’t satisfy on a chip level – they were far more like crackers). After that, I kicked Brad’s ass at Monopoly without even cheating at all. I am a railway mongol. And then we watched the Olsen twins’ TV show to reminisce about the old Garland Full House days and made lots of savvy commentary.

Eventually after dinner (he’d offered to make me Rice Risotto with Mince, his signature dish, but i declined) we started drinking and got ready for the masquerade party which had provided the extra incentive for me to visit him. Brad wore old blue flares of Fatty Si’s, a brown shirt and my purple feather boa, and I did his makeup all fabulous, and I wore my princess dress and tiara and lots of glitter. His flatmate Asher and some carny friend of his came home and made me play 3Man with them, go the dice drinking games. They were a little suprised at what a filthy mouth I have. Eventually we set out in the mist to this party. Oh dear. All the lights were on in the house and the music was turned down really really low – and plus, it was like, hits from 1999, which would have been fine if the house had been filled with Garlandketeers, but it wasn’t – they were mostly old people, and no one was dressed up. Oh well. We ended up sitting in the kitchen playing 3Man again with a larger group of people. That’s okay though, cos all I wanted to do was get to dress up and see Brad, and I achieved both of those things fabulously. I guess eventually we ended up walking home, but I don’t remember that, and we got changed and went to town. Brad bought me a KGB in keeping with local traditions (ewwww) and we danced like dicks in a bad bar called The Boilerroom cos the rest of town was completely deserted. Eventually the music was just too hideous to put up with any longer so we went and sat in a taxi office for what seemed like hours to get a taxi home. We listened to more music and sent off random texts and watched m2 for a while and I (apparently) told his flatmate in great detail just why Linkin Park are so crap, and then I fell asleep pretty much as soon as I had the couch open.

Brad had to work from 10-2, so I woke up before then, feeling more than a little seedy but fighting it. He left for work and after I’d had a shower and stuff, I managed to extract my car and set off for town. After driving around a little and checking out what times the movies were playing, I decided it was far too nice a day to sit inside crying at people chasing fences, so I went to Ohope Beach again instead, and sat outside in the cold sunny wind reading the paper, fightign the urge to throw up. Eventually I got too cold, so I went and found a suprisingly good coffee and some bad food and sat in that cafe for like an hour and a half reading magazines, getting rude comments from the couple sitting behind me who said to themselves that “you could read magazines at home” but it’s not like there was a shortage of tables or anything, and besides, they ordered Steinlager, so what would they know about anything? Damn carnys.

Finally it was almost 2, so I went to the radiostation to meet Brad and he gave me a tour around it. After that, he was hungry so we went to a cafe called ‘Friends’, and yes, it’s painted the same colour as Monica’s apartment and is hung with posters of the cast. It was scary. But there was a cool purple corduroy couch and they made really good smoothies that made me feel a lot better. And then we went and rented movies. Here’s a tip – if you would like to see Angelina Joile’s breasts, you certainly do get to see a lot of them in “Original Sin” but that’s pretty much within the first 15 minutes, adn you should TURN OFF THE TELEVISION after the long extended softporn scene (complete with softporn music). I want the two hours of my life that I wasted on that movie back please. And then we went and had dinner in an Indian restaurant overlooking the harbour, and it was all 1960s decor (we might have our wedding reception there) and we were the only people in it and it was just carny carny carny. And then I had to drive home. I hate driving in the dark, I must remember to remember that.

And now my back and shouldersa re SO sore from all that driving and I’m tired, and we had Nicky Hager come talk to us today but I don’t feel like deconstructing him right now, so I won’t, but if anyone has suggestions about what I should get Clay for his birthday, do email me.

Most of the weekend was made shit because of the tremendous inconvienience of the fucking film crew in our house blocking off access to the bathroom, phoneline and even electricity for my computer. GRRRR. There were good bits though, like going for a drive with KateH to try and find food – apparently almost every cafe has a closed kitchen at 4.45pm, but I wouldn’t recommend Fire&Earth just cos it’s open – the food really is mediocre, and the service is SLACK and it’s overpriced for what you’re getting. But Saturday night was cool at times – Bo and I went to the Temple to see the rogues play (that’s not their actual band name, it’s just the rogues’ band – you know, Leo and Berrin and Chris and Will, although I guess Lawerence is the original rogue but he’s not actually in the band, he just dances madly and there was a girl there who coulda been his doppelganger in a skirt). We did spots before hand, and then Bo made me walk down that really really steep street off City Road and through the carpark, and I just couldn’t do it, it was really really freaky, and I thought that there were cliffs and she kept pretending like she was going to jump off them, and that coupled with her Coyote Ugly impressions were just sending my head swimming. The rogues were really good, except for oh wait, I actually don’t really like reggae very much. But it was weird to see Leo singing, when he’s normally so quiet and stuff. He was goood though.

And today I had to do a client presentation, and Haley gave me strict instructions to dress all in black, so I wore my new black shirt and my getting old short black skirt, and put my boots in my backpack cos I can’t walk down hills in them, they’re purely just for looking like a hoochie in (except in this case, it was a corporate PR hoochie look I was after). We had Brian Edwards lecture us this morning, and he was fucking excellent and really really interesting. Next week we’re having Nicky Hager, the king’o self PR. And we’re also going on a field trip to Westfield Newmarket for Corporate Communications. Exciting!

Anyways, so I made it down the hill after my lecture safely and comfortably in my birkis, and then switched to my boots and raised my height and self esteem by about 3 inches. Haley and I were working on our presentation, starting from scratch, but then she wrote me a note, since we were working in a crowded office, and we started writing notes to one another, and it turns out we’ve both got a crush on the same boy (there’s not very many boys doing PR at all), and we both kept getting distracted by staring at him or trying to say witty things. And then when we were running through our presentations to practice, he kept trying to catch my eye and distract me, but I ignored him, excellent. Tehehehehhe. I did include in my note to Haley that I have crushes on a dozen boys right now, but in later conversations with Bo tonight, we narrowed it down to four or five. It’s just fun having a crush on a boy at tech, cos like, he makes me smile when I see him, and get all giggly, and that makes class much more exciting! So yeah, plus having collective crushes is all good when it’s not serious (well not yet it’s not). Anyways. So our client came in, and she was impressed with our appearances, so we fessed up that we’d both dressed in black on purpose and had probably spent more time discussing that than what we were gonna say to her, and we presented to her and Aline and it went okay despite being nervous. We’ll probably not get very good marks, but hey, at least that’s step one over. And now we have to start doing some actual work. Our client ended up honking at me and giving me a ride up the hill afterwards, which was excellent cos I was still wearing my uncomfortable boots. She told me if I didn’t want them, she’d have them, which was very flattering cos she’s very well dressed, and opening a hatshop next week that we’re invited to. She even said “I ordered two extra cases of champange when you guys RSVP’d cos you look like lushes,” and when I said that i was, she said I was a girl after her own heart. Excellent.

But when I got home, I was just totally exhausted, too long spent in class and working and gossiping and giggling and being stressed out about formal presentations, plus I had a bad caffiene crash (normally I don’t have caffiene, but if I have a coffee at lunch, I tend to follow it with a coke later – like just one is not enough). So I took to my bed to read American Gods (SO GOOD) some more, and have a siesta, and woke up feeling much better. Then Bo and I went to Two Monkeys for noodles, and hung out lots. We had a big big analytical talk about an issue in my life, and we decided that her and KateH will suss it tomorrow night, and give me the full report back (Katie, don’t forget, you’re mine tomorrow – you WILL get to meet the boy (also, HA, I think it’s funny the way I will use ‘the boy’ a million times in journal entries and will be talking about many different people and I just expect you to know who I’m talking about), who incidently rang to talk to Clay tonight, except that of course Clay was out so he just talked to me for ages and ages, and I called him angsty and traumatised some more, probably in a sick attempt to make him so). We turned out the lights in the lounge to watch two cars get towed outside, and laughed a lot when we realised that the people in the apartment across the hall were doing the exact same thing. Oh yeah, things get pretty exciting in our street!

Friday August 9th

SEND: “Out w darling b friend BradM, but at bar where first pashed i first pashed J so having MAJOR flashbacks – why am I so repulsive that I can’t get any?”

Fridays always = 9am starts, which = scramble outta bed at 8.40 and rush to be there on time and yet I never quite seem to make it – even if I’ve given up getting coffee from the sandwich place on the way in, cos the Christian guy (he plays Life FM in the background) just takes too long to make it and isn’t very good. Work was long, and I had two meetings, and I had to make 30 more phonecalls, but hey, that’s my job so that’s cool, and I finally got them all done and am just waiting on callback confirmations. And oh yeah, I heard about yet more poeple who are applying for the same job as me, which is always fun. Not. At lunch I had a kickass salad from the Turkish cafe though, so that was excellent, discovering it to be a good place to eat – with magazines even. But yeah, day was loooong, the whole 9-5 tedium lifted a little by Gayle telling me a million times that I was dressed for a niteclub just cos my jersey was sparkly, and by Robert dropping by our office every five minutes to chat, and also to pass on vital information about CC Day to me, so now I am fully in charge of that event, scary. Plus, Terri was profiling someone today, and Bridget had spent ages hyping how cute he was, and she was so right. I like eye candy. Have I mentioned lately that I have mini-crushes on three boys named Daniel right now? As well as about a half dozen others. I started my zine today, entirely inspired by Robyn’s. It’s called “BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS”. Guess what it’s about.

In the evening i kept cooking my chilli which I started last night and ended up taking a saucepan full’o it over to KateH’s to eat dinner with her cos she was too sick to leave her house. We watched Shrek (halelooyah!) and gossiped about random people, and it was cool, except it was fucking cold and she was sick. And then I got text from Brad asking me what I was doing tonight and I got all excited at the prospect of him being in town, so I went home at the end of the video and my house was all psycho and full of fake milk and boxes cos Clay is shooting a short film here tomorrow, but then Brad came over adn we bonded and I was media savvy for him cos he doesn’t get that in The’Tane (oh, I’m going down there next weekend for a Masquerade party, we pinkyswore on it even), and we drank wine, and then Clay’s scary Christian/Knight worshiping friends left and Clay hung with uys, and also Boandleo, and that was cool and we guilttripped Clay into coming out with us and I’m sure the waiter at Deschlers was taking the piss, making me try the $19 bottle’o wine. Clay left and me and Brad hung out, and there was much amusing conversation, and then we decided to go to the Hobson Street Lounge cos he was in need of another cool bar. But when we reached the top’o Vulcan Lane, we could hear Creed’s ‘Higher’ belting outta somewhere, so we had to stop and raise our knees and make fists and sing it at the top of our lungs too. I think people took pictures of us. Fuck I love Brad. I told him the stripper story and he just about died, and IT WAS ALL HIS FAULT. He shoulda been in class for me to write notes to. But yeah, hiked up to Hobson Street Lounge,a nd we ended up sitting right next to where it happened, and that was a little weird for me, cos yeah, you were actually quite a big deal for me, but yeah it was still cool and we talked politics. And then we decided to go home, so we trekked up to Sky City cos I only had $5 cash, and I sat in the front seat so as not to scare Brad cos we’d been talking about making out in movign vehicles, and had to stop the taxi three minutes or so ahead’o my house, but it’s all good, and yeah, I only spent $24 tonight, which isn’t that bad at all. Hmmm. Fuck I need some financial control! ]]> http://hubris.co.nz/2002/08/etc-3/feed/ 0