Hubris.co.nz

I used to carry around a tin that mints from a recruitment company had once come in, filled with half pills. It was of course my citalapram, since I have to take a pill and a half, and they’re crumbly pills so I have to cut them at home with a big knife and a chopping board so they don’t totally fall apart, so I prepare them in advance. When I say “I used to”, I of course mean until last Saturday night, when I lost the tin, so I hope someone picked it up and decided that it was full of half Es, and is now off dancing in a club somewhere feeling really nausesous. Because I am nice like that.

On Monday night we had a flat dinner and I made a fucking awesome roast beef. Then because Bart had found a video that his social group had traded around themselves in 1996, I undid all the feminist thinking that I’d been doing since a post by Tze Ming on Public Address made me realise that I need to do more to reinforce feminist thought – so I bought Bitch magazine – by watching German porn with the boys while Lani did the dishes. It was amusing but also really sad. There was a woman dancing in the video who had breast implants the size of her head, and she just looked like a freak. I know that there are some porn stars who make a lot of money and have a lot of power in the industry, but this woman didn’t seem to be one of them. She was just an object of ridicule and that made me really sad.

On a more upbeat note, Bowling League on Tuesdays is still fun. Surprisingly, I don’t think that the Bowlingtonista are going to win the league, but damn we’re pretty. And it’s so much fun to get to hang out with BFF Martha while the men do the hard work.

On Wednesday I went to a wine night at the boatshed called ‘Meet Your Maker’. There were stalls there from various “unique and boutique” winemakers from the Wairarapa, and everything was free to try. I took a series of very detailed notes that included the following dialouge about a Hudson Sav:

Me: it tastes like silver in the mouth
Daddy: No it doesn’t.
Me: Well I think it tastes Metallicy, and Nothing Else Matters.

Tehehe. My favourite wine was the Julicher reserve Pinot Noir, which tasted like chocolate babies, and also the Tirohana wines because the guy remembered us from when we were up for Mum’s birthday and asked where our other sister was (she was across the other side of the room). And they have a dessert wine that’s like woah. There wasn’t really enough food so I ate and enjoyed ham rolls, and craved more of the duck, mushroom and quince paste tarts. Mmmmmm. But why is the Boatshed always so damn hot? Last time I was there for Public Address Great Blend I could go swimming afterwards, but not in May. Too much heating. Nevermind. And I saw a friend of my parents’ who is an MP whom I hate personally, politically and professionally so I made very sure that I didn’t have to talk to him. Afterwards we had dinner at Ernesto, where I was a little silly and had chicken, which was boring, but the potato and prune gallette that accompanied it was tasty like woah. I was just envious of the pork bellies of Karen and Anji, but that’s okay.

On Friday night I went home after work and napped on the couch, before driving in to town to pick up Miss Lisa and Karen, and see Jimmy and Miss Jessie at Dimmer. It didn’t feel quite as sexylicious as last time, but when they played the long, thrusting ‘Seed’ I still wanted to touch myself inappropriately, but settled for stroking myself behind my ears, as that is somewhat less inappropriate.

Saturday was a very amusing night. I had drinks at home with Lani and her friend Nikki who is staying, and then we went to a party in Kelburn. Nikki and I amused ourselves taking photos with someone else’s camera that had be left lying on the TV. Then I spilt red wine on the carpet so we ran away and I watched very guiltily as someone else cleaned it up. I am not normally the type of person who doesn’t clean up after themselves, but I was all like “they’ve got a white carpet! It’s their fault! Everyone always spills stuff on MY carpet…” So of course I was unimpressed with myself for that crappy attitude, and when I found myself in a bathroom queue with the girl who’d cleaned it up I apologised and confessed. She came up to me later to say it was awesome of me to confess, and so Nikki and Lani decided that she was a lesbian and was totally in to me. I was like “ummm, I don’t get that vibe at all”, but I think we all know that I have little to no female gaydar. I still went and tried to talk to her later (because if she was a lesbian obviously she’d fancy me, right?) but I was saved from myself by the need to take photos with someone dressed as a reindeer. Then we went into town, and despite all my protestations, I found myself at Coyote. Shudder. I hate Courtenay Place on weekend nights, I really do. The music was bad, the crowd was bad, and yet I stayed and constantly had a drink in my hand, and I’m not sure how that happened. At one stage a guy came up to me and was all “oh, you are so beautiful, can I get a kiss?” and I was like huh? But I gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he turned his head and asked for another one, so I did, but then he was going to go for a pash, and I was like “hey buddy, you know nothing about me! You don’t know my hobbies or my interests, how can you want to kiss me?” and he was like “what?” and I was all “I mean, for all you know, I could be a member of the Hitler Youth” and he was like “I don’t know what that is” and I was like “I’m a white supremicist!” and he ran away and I laughed and laughed and laughed. And felt like Lily Allen. “I’ve got herpes!” Because after all, my Matariki resolution (along with doing something that will earn me a slow clap) is to wake up with someone and want them to be there, and sifty guys in sifty bars will not help me accomplish that. After that we finally left Coyote for the best kebabs EVAH from Hadi Gari, and then people were going to queue to get into GoGo and I was like “umm, nahuh, there is no way I’m going to wait to get into that crappy place” so I went home with Lani.

Yesterday I got up half an hour before my family were due for an afternoon tea to break in my cake-plate. It was so very civilised! I provided mini afghans and feta & spinach savouries, Mummy & Daddy baked mini scones and brought cream & jam, Anji brought coffee and shortbread, and Karen made chicken, almond and watercress sandwiches. We used fancy china and a good time was had by all. And we also finalised our plans to go to Rarotonga for Daddy’s 60th birthday and now Mum’s booked the flights. Because my job doesn’t finish until June 29, I’m going a week later than them all, and am consequently paying significantly more for the flights, damn it all. But still, Rarotonga, hurrah! We’re hopefully renting a four-bedroom house with a pool as well, so that should be nice.

Tonight instead of doing the whole flat dinner thing, which I really can’t afford to produce any more, I’m just going to make dessert crepes so we can eat the maple syrup that Lani brought back from Canadia. What’s that all aboot eh?

The awesome side of having depression is that when you start to get better, it’s like, so fucking awesome. Yes, this is pretty obvious, but when things have been bad, and you take steps to make them better, and all of a sudden you feel good, you can feel this amazing sense of inner peace and feel like you’re glowing, and everything, just everything is fine, and it’s so fucking good. I’ve had this recently while watching the sun set at Lyall Bay, and when I had Lisa and Brad and Bart around the table for the flat dinenr roast on Tuesday night and my face was starting to ache from smiling, and today while floating in the ocean tryng to pretend that my toes weren’t going numb from the cold. And I know it won’t always be like this, that there are going to be more ups and downs all the time, but you know, let me have my moment in the sun. I deserve it.

And yes, there have of course been ups and downs. I had two days off work last week because I was dizzy and nauseous or just wanted to hide under the covers all day, but the good news is that my blood tests came back clean and when I went to the doctor’s to get a half-hour long blood pressure test, it turned out that I’m down to 118/74, so they didn’t even bother doing the whole half hour thing. Wahoo! I saw my counsellor for the first time on Thursday, and she’s going to make me an appointment with their career counsellor as well as she was quick to discover that I get depressed when I’m bored. She ventured a theory that I rely too much on other people to validate me, and I was like “well, since you said it, it must be true”. Heh. And then I cried when she asked me what I was good at, and what the ideal me would be like. One thing that I’m not good at is talking about what I’m good at without tagging on caveats to everything I say, like “I’m good at writing – but I don’t do it often enough”, “I have a tremendous capacity to love and be compassionate but there are many people that I think I have let down”. I like big buts and I cannot lie. And I talked a lot about feeling like I was 12 years old again and she implied that I was hanging out with a bad crowd and I laughed. The one way that I thought she wasn’t as good as Kalpana who I used to see in 2002/03 was that it was obvious she was looking at her watch all the time, wheras Kalpana had this tremendous ability to guide conversations perfectly in the available time without feeling like anything was rushed, and finding perfect ending places. But that’s okay, I’m sure it’s something I’ll get used to.

Just like I’ve got used to not drinking. Two weeks sober now! Who knew that was possible? Sure, dinner with my family on Friday night was a bit weird, but I’m going to blame that on the disappointly tiny portion of food that the vegetarian dish at the Manhattan Lounge was, and the fact that Horrible Gay Jonny was working behind the bar there, and that made my skin crawl so much that I got my parents to pay for my meal so that I wouldn’t have to talk to him. Brad brought over bubbly on Tuesday to celebrate him landing his first commercial, so I thought I’d have a half a glass to celebrate with him, but after a couple of sips Sebastian knocked my glass over, and so I figured that was a sign. And I tried to have a half glass of red wine tonight with my cumin gouda, but it just didn’t feel right. Of course, it might be that the wine’s oxidised or whatever it is that happens to wine that’s bad since I opened the bottle two weeks ago. I’m planning on drinking again when I get to Auckland, but until then, it’s a no. Did I mention that my doctor warned me to be careful if I do drink on the citalapram “because it lowers your inhibitions quicker, and then come the calls to your ex boyfriends” and I laughed and laughed and laughed. I’m now up to 3/4 pill a day, or I suppose 15mg. I was expecting to go from a half to a whole after a week but I think because I’ve been so nauseous she thought it would be better to take it slower with easing me on it.

I’ve been scatty and spaced out at work, but tonight I finished a thingie that I’ve been trying to work on, so I feel good about that. I also sanded down the other little bookshelf and spraypainted it gold. I bought magazine holders the other day, and sorted out my magazines today. My car is working again although I suspect a new alternator will be on the cards when I get my warrant in February. I found a new flatmate yesterday who I have a really really good vibe about – she works for the same ministry as me, loves Sebastian, wants a home not a house, said she was addicted to Buffy and smiled at my STD paintings. Now I’ve hung them, although they’re not straight. I feel like I’ve been achieving things, and that is good, even if it’s just doing the dishes, doing laundry, going swimming in the ocean. I found a headscarf to wear to the Big Day Out and I’m looking forward to coming in my pants at Dimmer the night before, and then again when Muse play, as long as they play ‘Hysteria’ which once featured in a dream of mine where I was making a porn movie with a guy who looked like Jesus, and we were timing our anal sex so that we’d both come right when this particularly impressive bit of guitar comes in in the song. And also I’m annoyed that I wrote two ‘in in’ together like that, because that’s so Danielle Steele with her bad writing skills being all about the “had had” and I fucking hate that. I also hate that I read two Danielle Steele books in a row, but I’m blaming that on the scattiness and blaaaaaaah of adjusting to my pills, like the proliferation of teen movies I’ve been watching. Much better are Jasper Fforde’s books about the Nursery Crime Division – The Big Over-Easy has Jack Spratt solving the case of who murdered Humpty Dumpty and the sequel The Fourth Bear speaks for itself. Sooo good. And full of word jokes which make me hot.

And that was far too long a paragraph, wasn’t it? Now all I have to do is tax returns for 2005 and 2006 because apparently they owe me money from 2001 (which is odd since Nicky did my tax returns for 2002 and 2003 and they said nothing then), set up a term deposit account and get my stuff back from everyone who has it (my camera is at the Aro house – I’m hoping I can sweet-talk Lisa into retrieving it for me) and reply to people’s emails and I’ll be like, totally on top of my life. For now. And that’s nice.

Tonight, I had sex with Shayne Carter. Before you call the Sunday Truth (or actually, probably the Sunday Star Times is more tabloidy these days) though, you should know that I wasn’t the only one. There were probably about three hundred other people who did it too. None of them had as good an orgasm face as him though. And for such a rockstar, he’s not a selfish lover. He totally gave me aural pleasure.

I think if you’d been at San Frindigo tonight, you would understand why I am all about the comparing this gig to sex (you know, aside from intense sexual frustration, of course). It’s not a new thing for me to review gigs like sex – I started doing it with Shihad, but tonight Shayne’s face said “my guitar is a penis, and it is an awesome thing”, and it truly truly was.

Dimmer opened with ‘Crystalator’ (or as others have refered to it, the “reeeeeeeeeeeeh reeeeeeeeh reeeeeeeh song”), and has it really been TEN YEARS since I got that on the Pop Eyed Flying Nun compilation for Xmas? Holy crap! It was loud, so loud that I could have believed that the speakers had come to life and crawled in my ears. After a couple of songs from There My Dear on which the absense of Bic and Anika and Annna doing backing vocals demonstrated even more how Straitjacket Fitsy that album is, they played ‘Drop you off’. Live, it was perhaps a little less menacing than the video – trees out the back of a car window at night time, like lying in the back seat as a kid, normally makes it, but it was more pounding, and thrusting, and pushed and pushed and pushed at you, and my breathing sped up to go along with it, and the very strong coffee I’d made before I left the house and the nurofen plus worked together in harmony, and it was all washing all over my body. ‘Seed’ afterwards was even more thrusty, and it went on and on, and even in the bourbon-washed summer of 01/02 that I believe you are a star was on high rotate in my computer and I was actually literally fucking, I was never fucked as intensely as that song brought it tonight. Well, maybe a couple of times.

The only time that Shayne took off his ‘O’ face was when they played “You’re only leaving hurt”, the first chords of which made me well up, naturally. For that, he was cradling his guitar like it was the last dance with a lover, instead of the pornstar stance of other songs (and I mean that in the best possible way, of course). He said at the end “That’s a sad song”, and then said “this is another sad song” as an introduction to ‘Scrapbook’. I recently managed to find Siamese Dream on vinyl ($50 secondhand, mind you!), and so I’ve been listening to that quite a lot, so I can say with good authority that ‘Scrapbook’ reminds me (see, I told you I had authority) of ‘silverfuck’ – most especially the pounding pounding pounding drums, but ‘Scrapbook’ manages to be a thousand times more bitter and powerful , the whole “bang bang, you’re dead” line aside.

The last gig I saw at San Frindigo was of course the Phoenix Foundation, so I enjoyed the contrast between the highly personable stage banter between Sam & Luke, and stony silence and the eyes of daggers it seemed like James was getting as he tuned his guitar. A couple of songs in, it seemed like someone flicked the “make smalltalk with the audience now” switch though, and even the way too fucking predictable wanker yelling “Play ‘She speeds’!” and the so very stoic “Ta” after applause didn’t detract from the overwhelming intensity of the gig. During ‘Scrapbook’ I even wished that it was Shihad on stage, because I so so wanted to throw some goats, and they’re the only band I’ve seen that you can get away with non-ironic goats at.

The last track of the two-song encore had huge rolling cymbals that were waves of sound, and the feedback was totally consuming, just flooding into every last inch of me. I’m sounding like some druggie loser right now, I know, but I’m not. On drugs. Except for the aforementioned caffeine and codeine, of course. I’m just all woah still. My head is buzzing, and there are oceans of feedback still playing in my ears, and every inch of me is sore from the dancing, and from the bass that rose up from the floor, but I don’t care. I came in my pants like a thousand times tonight.

And awesomely, I just got a text from my friend going “Do you feel like Shayne is making love to you with the music?” Hahaha! Yes, yes I do! And holy fucking shit, I hope it was as good for him as it was for me.

On Thursday night I had my first summer ale and then yesterday I had my first swim of the summer. Around 1am. At Oriental Parade. In my panties. With my now ex workmates and Bart. It was awesome, and not very warm. Luckily the booze in me kept me warm.

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…